Why the Coronavirus Has Been So Successful
A look at the origins, composition and behaviour of the new coronavirus itself, in a piece that results in what its author Ed Yong calls “a rough preliminary portrait of SARS-CoV-2”.
Snow Science Against the Avalanche
An insight into specialist avalanche mitigation teams and the challenges they face working with a natural material that is “light and fluffy and soft and downy, and it’s everybody’s favorite thing in the world” but also “one of the most destructive forces in nature”.
The Secret History of a Cold War Mastermind
A great story about a master player in the “murky intersection of spycraft, politics, and war” during the Cold War, and whether his biggest operation was a “monkey wrench or a major event?”
Why outbreaks like coronavirus spread exponentially, and how to “flatten the curve”
A data story modelling the potential impact of different responses to infectious diseases, using a fictitious disease ‘simulitis’ for illustrative purposes.
The Drone Boat of ‘Shipwreck Alley’
A self-driving boat is helping with the discovery and exploration of shipwrecks.
Was the Millennium Dome really so bad? The inside story of a (not so) total disaster
The inside story of an often reviled, yet somehow enduring British infrastructure project – the Millennium Dome.
Golden Dawn: the rise and fall of Greece’s neo-Nazis
The alarming story of a party with overtly far right beliefs that won seats in successive Greek elections between 2012 and 2015, all while being accused of criminality of various sorts, for which many of their senior members are now on trial.
Clearview AI Says Its Facial Recognition Software Identified A Terrorism Suspect. The Cops Say That’s Not True.
Clearview AI’s offering to police forces of facial recognition using images scraped from social profiles and elsewhere across the web is either a dystopian vision of a surveillance state, or next generation policing tool, depending on your perspective. This story suggests the company’s pitch may be out of sync with the reality.