MOS: The Langya Virus
Could my colleagues exercise a little restraint in reporting on interesting new microbes, lest we spur panic about diseases that haven’t infected more than, say, three dozen people since 2018?
Science News
MOS: DART
If an asteroid happens upon a collision course with Earth after it was inexplicably the only thing screenwriters could think about in 1998, I expect we will have a plan to yeet that shit on over to Uranus.
MOS: The 2022-2023 Monkeypox Outbreak
The outbreak mostly died down, but not without nearly 100,000 cases, 169 confirmed global fatalities as of January 2024, and a heaping dose of panic.
MOS: The James Webb Space Telescope
After upwards of thirteen billion years of space travel, that giant honeycomb mirror collects every weary infrared photon it can grab.
MOS: Fighting Trauma with Tetris
Troublesome memories show up at 4pm when you’re on deadline to whisper in your ear “it’s been a while, how ‘bout now for some ugly crying?”
MOS: Banana Wilt
This will be my third column about bananas and I have to really crank up the dick jokes this time by an inch or two. Or, perhaps, it’s time to let them go limp.
MOS: The Giant African Land Snail
Well, we haven’t had an invasive species story for like four minutes. We were due for snails of unusual size. Today’s Moment of Science… Death […]
MOS: Science History in Wartime
(This was originally published on April 19th, 2022, two months after Russia attacked Ukraine. It’s been lightly edited.) I’ve struggled with how to talk about […]
Daily MOS: A Brief History of Celiac Disease
From the patient’s point of view, nothing has changed since the 1950s. Treatment is still avoiding bread that chews worth a fuck.
Daily MOS: Resurrecting the Mammoth
So far, the road to cooking up a woolly mammoth hasn’t been without controversy, lawsuits, and just plain fuckery. It also has been without a mammoth.