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How do strong muscles keep your brain healthy?

Myokines are released into the bloodstream when your muscles contract, create new cells, or perform other metabolic activities. When they arrive at the brain, they regulate physiological and metabolic responses there, too.... Read more »

Software can do better than ‘male,’ ‘female,’ and ‘other’

Why something as dehumanizing as “other”? Even a choice of the three most popular—“he,” “she,” and “they”—would be reasonable. From a coding perspective, it would be quite simple to update the dropdown... Read more »

We may never fully know how video games affect our well-being

The moral panic around video games has stuck in a way that previous entertainment-fueled panics such as those around rock music and TV haven’t. But the evidence isn’t there.  Media reports that... Read more »

The Download: an “unhackable” phone, and Ring’s TV show

The fight for “Instagram face” Through beauty filters, platforms like Instagram are helping users achieve increasingly narrowing beauty standards—though only in the digital world—at a stunningly rapid pace. There is evidence that... Read more »

Ring’s new TV show is a brilliant but ominous viral marketing ploy

The costs of market domination  In 2021, Ring sold 1.7 million devices, roughly the same number as its next four competitors combined, according to business intelligence firm Strategy Analytics. In other words,... Read more »

Erik Prince wants to sell you a “secure” smartphone that’s too good to be true

Prince told investors the UP Phone is built by “engineers with deep experience in lawful interception, surveillance, and spoofing capabilities.”  Unplugged’s day-to-day technology operations are run by Eran Karpen, a former employee... Read more »

The fight for “Instagram face”

But behind every filter is a person dragging lines and shifting shapes on a computer screen to achieve the desired look. Beauty may be subjective, and yet society continues to promote stringent,... Read more »

A Chicago city sensor project goes global

Each node in the Array of Things was equipped with an Nvidia graphics processing unit (or GPU) to perform computations on images out in the field and sent only processed data along... Read more »

The Download: transphobic panic, and the US-China chip war

When Jay told his mom he was bisexual at 14, she was supportive. But when he came out as transgender a few years later, she pushed back. YouTube videos and online forums... Read more »

How the idea of a “transgender contagion” went viral—and caused untold harm

The ROGD paper was not funded by anti-trans zealots. But it arrived at exactly the time people with bad intentions were looking for science to buoy their opinions. The results were in... Read more »