5it

5 Intriguing Things

November 3, 2014

1. The translated poems of Xu Lizhi, a Foxconn worker who committed suicide. “On My Deathbed” I want to take another look at the ocean, behold the vastness...

Hello from Vacationland

October 27, 2014

Hi. As most of you know, I left The Atlantic earlier this month and I'm starting at Fusion, the ABC-Univision joint venture, next month. I was going to keep...

5 Intriguing Things, 10/15

October 15, 2014

1. Gather round, kids, to hear the story of warez, a word that used to practically set my heart racing. "Warez is a virtual, global network of people...

5 Intriguing Things, 10/14

October 14, 2014

1. This is heavy and worthwhile. An anthropologist argues that one reason Ebola has spread is that public health spending now focuses on individual diseases...

5 Intriguing Things, 10/13

October 13, 2014

1. THE SEGWAY OF UNICYCLES. "I’ve used other futuristic rideables, like the Zboard and E-Go Cruiser, but this was my first interaction with a unicycle —...

5 Intriguing Things

October 10, 2014

1. Modeling the ebola outbreak with a "live" scientific paper. "We have developed in the past week a modeling approach aimed at assessing the progression of...

5 Intriguing Things

October 9, 2014

1. USA Today is kicking off serious coverage of the racial pay gap in the tech industry. "In the same high-skilled positions such as computer programmers and...

1 Intriguing Thing

October 8, 2014

Hey Friends, There was big news in my own little world yesterday. I announced that I am leaving The Atlantic for Fusion, the ABC/Univision joint venture....

5 Intriguing Things

October 6, 2014

1. Meet the Mosers, Nobel Prize winners for their work finding our brain's "inner GPS." "If anyone knows how we navigate home, it is the Mosers. They shot to...

5 Intriguing Things

October 3, 2014

1. These future scenarios are not implausible enough. "Ten years after the introduction of Google’s self-driving car, it still shows ads for businesses in...

5 Intriguing Things

October 1, 2014

1. Right this minute, these people are going looking for a lost town at the bottom of Lake Shasta with a remotely operated vehicle they made. "Based on an...

5 Intriguing Things

September 29, 2014

1. This guy mapped the microwave tower networks used for high-frequency trading. "I’ve researched and written about high-frequency trading (HFT) since 2012,...

5 Intriguing Things

September 26, 2014

Hello from Chicago. I want to apologize for the attenuation of the newsletter this week. These days have been the busiest of my life. Next week, I promise at...

5 Intriguing Things

September 25, 2014

1. India sent a satellite to Mars for only $74 million. "The Mangalyaan satellite was confirmed to be in orbit shortly after 0800, Indian time. It is,...

5 Intriguing Things

September 23, 2014

1. The GoPro genre. "The genre is characterized by point of view, by brevity, and by incident. The ones that go viral contain something extraordinary, be it...

5 Intriguing Things

September 19, 2014

1. A visit to China's shale gas country. "The clouds faded as we climbed, revealing a quilt of farmland dotted with pingfang, or flattop houses. We drove...

5 Intriguing Things

September 18, 2014

1. The body-cameras-for-cops movement is gaining steam. "The U.S. Border Patrol will begin wearing cameras this year at its training academy, a test to see...

5 Intriguing Things

September 17, 2014

1. What happened when the Nevada DMV tested one of Google's self-driving cars. "They have driven more than 1 million kilometers since the company started...

5 Intriguing Things

September 16, 2014

1. The lesson here: Refrigeration slows biological time. "Now doctors at the University of Pittsburgh are taking therapeutic hypothermia to a literally new...

5 Intriguing Things

September 15, 2014

1. Joi Ito, the head of the MIT Media Lab, visits Shenzhen. "We started in the section of the market where people were taking broken or trashed cellphones...

5 Intriguing Things

September 12, 2014

1. This biting talk on ed-tech is really something. On monsters and machines and labor and teaching. "Quite recently I literally etched this into my skin...

5 Intriguing Things

September 12, 2014

1. 24-year-old woman goes to doctor complaining of dizziness and nausea, discovers she has no cerebellum. "Doctors did a CAT scan and immediately identified...

5 Intriguing Things

September 10, 2014

1. Berg is closing. They have long been an inspiration. You should go gaze upon their work. "We’ve not reached a sustainable business in connected products....

5 Intriguing Things

September 9, 2014

1. Steve Jobs introducing the first iPhone. "This is a day I've been looking forward to for two-and-a-half years. Every once in a while, a revolutionary...

5 Intriguing Things

September 8, 2014

1. "Deep linking" is a subterranean change happening in the way mobile apps work—and it's a big deal. "Mobile app developers are humans driven by business...

5 Intriguing Things

September 5, 2014

1. What caffeine does for plants. "Caffeine evolved long before sleep-deprived humans became addicted to it, probably to defend the coffee plant against...

5 Intriguing Things

September 4, 2014

1. Close reading spam at The Paris Review. "That swerve at 'Peter dislikes his daughter'—whoa! Dissertations have been written about less. And to see a...

5 Intriguing Things

September 3, 2014

1. Daimler wants to make sure it is in the car services business, too. "Moovel GmbH, a unit of the Stuttgart, Germany-based maker of Mercedes-Benz cars, said...

5 Intriguing Things

September 2, 2014

1. Blue light, the enemy. "An eye doctor says he’s recently seen a few 35-year-old patients whose lenses, which are typically clear all the way up until...

5 Intriguing Things

August 29, 2014

1. Drone federalism: a legal proposal. "Civilian drones are scheduled to be permitted in the national airspace as early as 2015. Many think Congress should...

5 Intriguing Things

August 28, 2014

1. Brain-to-brain communication. "The recent development of brain-computer interfaces (BCI) has provided an important element for the creation of brain-to-...

5 Intriguing Things

August 26, 2014

1. Growing new eyes. "The Laboratory for Organogenesis and Neurogenesis is growing tissues and organs using an altogether different approach, which doesn’t...

5 Intriguing Things

August 25, 2014

1. What happens when you average many, many photos of the same place. "An iconic landmark such as the Statue of Liberty fractures into a dozen possible...

5 Intriguing Things

August 22, 2014

1. The theory and science of cryopreservation are one crazy thing, but the actual process of putting one's dead body on ice is another. "First, the standby...

5 Intriguing Things

August 21, 2014

1. If the most effective treatment for age-related degenerative diseases is young blood, the future is going to be even weirder than we thought. "Now, the...

5 Intriguing Things

August 20, 2014

1. This is the kind of sensible digital afterlife legislation I expect out of Delaware. "Delaware has become the first state in the US to enact a law that...

5 Intriguing Things

August 19, 2014

Two quick things: 1) If you were having the tiny-text problem reading this email on your mobile device, it should be fixed. All gratitude should go to...

5 Intriguing Things

August 18, 2014

1. Somewhere, there is a box with a headphone jack waiting for you. "Bonner created the unique circuit technology for the battery powered music boxes....

5 Intriguing Things

August 15, 2014

1. The guy who built Bitcoin. "That person is Gavin Andresen, a mild-mannered 48-year-old picked by the real Satoshi Nakamoto, whoever he or she is, as his...

5 Intriguing Things

August 14, 2014

1. The satellite imagery available to you is about to get better, thanks to this new satellite, the Worldview-3. "With 31 centimeter (12 inch) resolution, it...

5 Intriguing Things

August 13, 2014

1. A vigorous, fascinating attack on the anti-stuff/Apple aesthetic. "This is fine for the cyber elite; they can live as they wish. But why is their ideology...

5 Intriguing Things

August 12, 2014

Thanks to all who sent in screenshots yesterday. We've identified that the formatting problem occurs with the Gmail and Mailbox apps for the iPhone. It's not...

5 Intriguing Things

August 11, 2014

Hey Friends: I've heard from some of you that reading 5IT on mobile devices is not a good experience. Specifically, I've heard complaints that the text is...

5 Intriguing Things

August 8, 2014

1. O, Excellent Air Bag: On the nitrous craze of 1799. "After an eternity he was brought back to earth by the sensation of Dr. Kinglake removing the...

5 Intriguing Things

August 7, 2014

1. On the man behind Slack, enterprise software that's slicker than the slickest app. "Slack’s strategy is to insinuate itself into the workplace from the...

5 Intriguing Things

August 6, 2014

1. On Judy Malloy and the forgotten female e-literature pioneers. "When Robert Coover anointed Michael Joyce the ‘granddaddy’ of hypertext literature in a...

5 Intriguing Things

August 5, 2014

1. Museum reviews on Yelp as "vernacular criticism." "In this way, many Yelp reviews confront the engineered homogeneity of the museum experience, the...

5 Intriguing Things

August 4, 2014

1. A challenging project. "Over the next year or so, as I’ve mentioned in recent posts, I plan on tracing out as much as possible of what can be known or...

5 Intriguing Things

August 1, 2014

1. On the virtues of "democratic secrecy." "Regardless of the cause of this trend, by insisting upon greater transparency as a goal unto itself, critics have...

5 Intriguing Things

July 31, 2014

1. Portland legalizes Airbnb, essentially. "Portland will start issuing permits for its first legal short-term rental operations in private homes as soon as...