Depending on your perspective, space travel (distinguished from purely scientific space exploration) is either a thrilling, morally necessary hedge against planetary destruction, or a laughably phallic preoccupation of middle-aged men with far more money than is healthy. But could the emergence of space-balloon travel – for now an exorbitant luxury – turn it into something in between? Jessica Camille Aguirre asks the question for Afar.
With ski season fast approaching in the Northern Hemisphere, ski resorts are dying. Glaciers are receding, snow thinning, wildfires encroaching. From water-intensive artificial-snow machines to outlandish glacier blankets and pivots to other mountain activities, Isabelle Gerretsen asks how resorts are managing their own demise.
2023 was the most devastating wildfire year in Canadian history. An area larger than Greece was torched, including many settlements. Earlier this summer, The Tyee published a series of heart-wrenching interviews with people who had to flee their homes in Lytton, as the town burned to the ground. “One of the realizations I had was, ‘Ken, there’s nothing you can do about this. This is it. This is going to burn everything,’” recalls Ken Pite in this conversation. “There was no doubt in my mind whatsoever.”
Next time you fly through turbulence, heart leaping into your mouth as the plane shakes and drops, spare a thought for Heather Holbach As a hurricane researcher, Holbach and fellow scientists spend much of the summer flying directly into the eye of hurricanes to collect essential forecasting data. Here’s how it all happens.
Homo erectus evolved into homo sapiens by tripping on magic mushrooms, which helped us develop larger brains and more intellectual capacity. At least, so goes the Stoned Ape Theory – contender for the trippiest (evolutionary) sliding-doors moment of all time – first proposed by Terence McKenna. But what does the evidence say? Suzannah Weiss does some digging for Double Blind Mag.