Sequencer

1 week ago | sequencermag.com | Dan Samorodnitsky

In 2016, a company called EnergyTransfer was getting ready to build a massive pipeline called the Dakota Access Pipeline pumping oil from the Bakken Region of North Dakota. This pipeline passed within a mile of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, underneath a lake near the reservation, as well as underneath the Missouri River, the tribes’ main drinking water source. There were concerns about culturally significant sacred sites, and concerns about climate change as well.

2 weeks ago | sequencermag.com | Dan Samorodnitsky

If what we do with our time is a reflection of our personal anxieties, science journalists have a deep and persistent fear of their own deaths. Become a bioluddite. You can maybe see this in the never-ending coverage of Bryan Johnson, the life extension millionaire obsessive who tracks the strength-over-time of his erections, takes dozens of pills per day (you can of course buy these pills from him), and never seems more than a few weeks between 10,000 word features written about him.

3 weeks ago | sequencermag.com | Max G. Levy

This week I toured a training wing at the Cedars Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, and all I could think about was Nathan Fielder. In this season of Fielder's The Rehearsal series on HBO, the comedian exposes a tense shortcoming in modern aviation: communication between pilots. The immersive way that hospital staff role play bore a striking resemblance. For the uninitiated, The Rehearsal is an awkward, absurd experiment in comedy.

1 month ago | sequencermag.com | Dan Samorodnitsky

In May 1933, Nazis burned some tens of thousands of books across Germany in the Aktion wider den undeutschen Geist, or “action against the un-German spirit.” This not only included books from universities that were considered “un-German,” particularly those written by Jews, leftists, and foreigners, but also attacks against research institutes like the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, the Institute for Sexual Science.

1 month ago | sequencermag.com | Max G. Levy

This article was produced in partnership with The Sick Times, a journalist-founded website chronicling the Long COVID crisis. When a pandemic begins, so does the blame game. Early days of COVID-19 pointed fingers at wild meat markets and debunked lab leak conspiracies, and that crystallized a long-running narrative that outbreaks are generally humans’ fault; roll the dice enough times with wildlife and you’re bound to land on a plague.