Netflix’s editorial division hit with layoffs
Four months ago, the streaming service ‘aggressively’ recruited a small army of journalists – primarily women and people of colour – to run its new fan site, Tudum. This week, it abruptly axed a significant portion of those hires. After posting disastrous results for its March quarter – the loss...
Current in Culture
Opinion – why Julia Fox is the perfect celebrity throwback
From being relatively unknown to becoming a household name in just a few weeks, let’s explore why Julia Fox is the celebrity Hollywood has been missing. As we jump from one global crisis and (unwillingly) right into the next, it can feel like the only collective source of mindless escapism...
What’s it like to live with synesthesia?
Do you associate certain colours with numbers and letters, or see time as a colourful shape? You might have synesthesia – one of the most weird and wonderful neurological conditions. When I was in my late teens, I asked my mother how she ‘saw a year’. In hindsight, this sounds rather...
Students build solar greenhouse that produces energy
Traditional greenhouses typically use a ton of energy to work properly, but students in Catalonia have built a solar powered structure that creates energy rather than consuming it. Who says greenhouses can’t adapt to modern energy needs? First built in the nineteenth century, greenhouses are a nifty way to grow plants...
Opinion – Why assuming celebrities are pregnant is damaging
Though watching our favourite celebrities venture into motherhood is both exciting and weirdly humanising, can sensationalising their pregnancies be damaging? Society has had a fascination with Hollywood couples for as long as celebrities have existed, but where our adoration really takes hold is when they’re expecting a child together. In recent...
Dyson reveals air purifying headphones that block pollution
The vacuum company Dyson has just announced its new over-ear headphones that include an air-purifier for your mouth. A little dystopian, but a novel example of how we’ll need to adapt with a changing climate and world. Dyson has just unveiled a new set of headphones that include an air-purifying...
Milked is a tea-spitting look at dairy’s dark reality
Now available to watch for free on environmentally-focused streaming service Waterbear, Milked offers a magnified look at New Zealand’s dairy industry and the damage it's inflicting on the country and world as a whole. Why are we still drinking cow’s milk? This is the question that Milked, a new documentary available on Waterbear, wants you to ask. Fair warning, be prepared for every conceivable pro-dairy argument to be debunked during the...
This robot dog will help identify safety issues in Pompeii
Called ‘Spot’, this four-legged robot will be exploring the ruins of Pompeii, diving underground to examine and monitor tunnels and ancient structures. A new robot ‘dog’ is being deployed in Pompeii to monitor and analyse various underground structures. The ancient archaeological park was close to becoming an ‘in peril’ heritage site due to a lack of suitable preservation methods a mere decade ago. Its hoped that this new initiative will...
Feral girl summer proves we’re officially in our unhinged era
Following in the footsteps of goblin mode and all its deviant glory, this latest trend is yet another rebellious buck against the new wave of self-optimisation that most of us are sick and tired of seeing on our feeds. Hot on the heels of #goblinmode, a direct departure from the self-improvement movement that’s defined the past two years and counting, feral girl summer is here to prove just how deeply...
South Korea has 15-acre floating city backed by the UN
Atop large, buoyant concrete platforms anchored to the seabed, a South Korean city will house 12,000 by the mid-century. Able to rise and fall with the water, this trailblazing project has now been backed by the UN. By the mid-century, some 800 million people will be residing in conurbations where surrounding sea levels could rise by more than half a meter. When this happens, many of the 500+ threatened cities...
