High Protein Diets Make You Look Good, Kill You

Hamilton Nolan · 03/11/14 10:35AM

Americans do not remember anything from chemistry or biology class, but they will damn sure buy anything that contains "protein," because I think it gives you muscles? Sadly, it appears that high protein diets may also cause you to die.

Sorry, It Looks Like Lobsters and Crabs Feel Pain

Hamilton Nolan · 03/11/14 09:06AM

David Foster Wallace's famous essay "Consider The Lobster" explores unsettling questions about how much pain lobsters feel when we cook them. By law, that introductory sentence must be on this blog post, which is about new research into whether lobsters and crabs feel pain.

Gabrielle Bluestone · 03/10/14 11:32PM

Zach Galifianakis' Funny or Die series Between Two Ferns just got real serious: two weeks ago, Barack Obama taped an episode that's scheduled to be released early tomorrow morning. The interview was part of an ongoing attempt to promote Obama's policies through fun, viral appearances.

Gabrielle Bluestone · 03/10/14 08:31PM

[Paralympic track star Oscar Pistorius, on trial for killing his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, reportedly cried and vomited into a bucket today during a pathologist's graphic testimony about Steenkamp's death. Pistorius claims he shot Steenkamp thinking she was an intruder. Image by Siphiwe Sibeko via AP.]

Hamilton Nolan · 03/10/14 04:19PM

"One-quarter of [American] Indian children live in poverty, versus 13 percent in the United States. They graduate high school at a rate 17 percent lower than the national average...Their experience with post-traumatic stress disorder rivals the rates of returning veterans from Afghanistan."

Julian Assange and Edward Snowden Speak to SXSW: A Tale of Two Rebels

Michelle Dean · 03/10/14 04:19PM

Julian Assange appeared, as we told you before, by Skype at SXSW over the weekend. Set against a green-screened Wikileaks logo, wearing a scarf straight from the Doctor Who wardrobe department and an actually respectable showing of facial hair, he gave his usual kind of speech. That's to say, one grounded in a lot of really honorable principles about disclosure and democracy and openness and how constant surveillance undermines all of those things.

Sarah Hedgecock · 03/10/14 03:53PM

[Claudia Breidbach, right, demonstrates a bionic hand that is steerable by a mobile phone to German Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Prime Minister David Cameron during the opening day of the computer fair CeBIT in Hannover, Germany, on Monday. Image via Frank Augstein/AP.]