Kim Kelly

Tech NewsInternet

A Beginner’s Guide to Heavy Metal Nazi Hunting Online

A few weeks ago, I wrote a piece for the Columbia Journalism Review about the way that my lifelong interest in heavy metal and ongoing career as a metal journalist had equipped me with a very specific skill set—namely, spotting Nazis, especially when they would prefer not to be found. In this respect, I am … Continued

Tech News

DIY Organ Removal, Pain, and Bloody Miracles: The Grisly World of First Surgeries

The Wound Man (or Man of Wounds, depending on how you translate it in Fasciculus medicinae, the 1491 medical treatise in which his image first appears) is one of the most well-known medieval surgical diagrams going. It’s up there with da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man (né 1490) but is far less aesthetically pleasing than what everyone’s favorite … Continued

ScienceHealth

These Men Ate Poison So You Could Have the FDA

If you sat down to eat at any point and in any part of the U.S. in the 1800s, nothing on your plate was quite what it seemed. The level of vile, often toxic contamination in basic consumer products was almost unimaginable to modern folk raised under the auspices of the FDA. Your morning coffee? … Continued

ScienceHuman History

Real-Life ‘Zombie’ Animals Walk the Earth Thanks to Thousands of Parasites

Consider the ladybug. Our polka-dotted little friend spends its days munching aphids, climbing leaves, occasionally alighting upon a delighted child’s outstretched finger, and generally beetling around being adorable. It’s one of nature’s most inoffensive critters, which is perhaps why the Dinocampus coccinellae wasp is such a troubling one by comparison. See, in order to lay … Continued

Tech News

The Complex Legacy of World War I’s Women Scientists

During World War I, far away from the lines of battle, the UK was faced with a different crisis. As thousands of khaki-clad “Tommies” shipped off to the front, the British economy teetered on the cusp of grinding to a halt. With the men gone, the task of keeping the country’s lights on fell to … Continued

io9Books & Comics

This Book Is All About Death, Murder, Mourning, and ‘an Anatomical Christ’

“On an average day, visitors might encounter Dr. Couney’s Infant Incubators, where premature babies were kept alive by novel technology that had yet to be adopted by hospitals,” writes Joanna Ebenstein of the medical miracles once tucked away inside New York City’s most famous amusement park in her new book, Death: A Graveside Companion. “Although … Continued