Month: April 2019

Enlarge / (GERMANY OUT) Schlaflosigkeit, Frau mit Wecker (Photo by Wodicka/ullstein bild via Getty Images) (credit: Ullstein Bild | Getty Images)

The whole world is exhausted. And it’s killing us.

But particularly me. As I write this, I’m at TED 2019 in Vancouver, which is a weeklong marathon of talks and workshops and coffee meetings and experiences and demos and late-night trivia contests and networking, networking, networking. Meanwhile, I’m sick as a dog with a virus I caught from my 3-year-old, I’m on deadline for what feels like a bazillion stories, and I’m pregnant, which means I need coffee but can’t have too much, and need sleep but can only lay on my left side, and can’t breathe without sitting propped up with a pillow anyway, since I can’t safely take any cold medication.

According to neuroscientist Matthew Walker, I’m doing serious damage to my health—and life—by not sleeping enough.

Enlarge / Sheila (Drew Barrymore) and Joel (Tim Olyphant) Hammond are married real estate agents with an undead secret. (credit: Netflix)

The Santa Clarita Diet, Netflix's smart, slyly satiric sitcom about a zombie outbreak in suburban Southern California, has largely flown under the pop culture radar since it debuted in February 2017. And that's a shame, because it's easily one of the best half-hour comedies on TV right now. Season 3 brings the same winning blend of satire, snappy dialogue, slapstick, and of course, plenty of zombie-munching gore.

(Some spoilers below.)

The series centers on Joel and Sheila Hammond (Tim Olyphant and Drew Barrymore), married real estate agents in Santa Clarita who find their lives irrevocably altered after Sheila has an extreme upchucking incident while showing a house to prospective clients. She thinks it's a bad case of food poisoning but soon begins to crave human flesh. The upside: she feels better than she has in years, and her increased libido kickstarts the Hammonds' previously humdrum sex life into overdrive. Season 1 was a bit uneven, especially in the earlier episodes, but the show found its stride by the end of that first 10-episode run, and both seasons 2 and 3 are sheer bingeable delights.

Warning: Mild spoilers ahead.

Dystopian stories take many forms, but it's a rare dystopian novel that prominently features man's best friend. Author of the Oversight and Stoneheart trilogies, C.A. Fletcher doesn't hide the importance of dogs in his latest novel. Aptly titled A Boy and His Dog at the End of the World, it follows a young boy named Griz as he goes on a journey to retrieve his stolen pet.

"Dogs were with us from the very beginning," Griz writes. "And those that remain are still with us now, here at the end of the world."

Enlarge (credit: Jonathan Gitlin / Aurich Lawson)

NEW YORK—On Friday morning, the annual New York International Auto Show opened its doors to the public. In stark contrast to last year—when I foolishly predicted that NYIAS was now the premier US auto show—this year's event feels very lackluster.

The Shanghai Auto Show is partly to blame. It opened earlier this week and pretty much every automaker with something new to show chose China over the US. In fact, some brands like BMW and Volvo weren't present at all. The Internet didn't help either, as what little new metal there was coming to the Big Apple got shown off online in the weeks leading up.

But given that we missed both LA and Detroit in recent months, I braved Amtrak's rapidly deteriorating service from DC to wander the Javits center and see what was neat among the vehicles that did show up in NYC. While have some other stories from NYIAS to come, we're kicking off this year's event with our Best Of awards.

Enlarge

Ars makes every effort to cover its own travel costs. To attend Nikola's conference, we covered the flight out to Scottsdale, Arizona, but Nikola covered one night in a nearby hotel.

SCOTTSDALE, Arizona—The Nikola Motor Company wants to reinvent trucking by replacing diesel heavy-duty trucks with hydrogen fuel cell trucks. But hydrogen skeptics are numerous, and not without good reason. Although hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are quiet, emissions-free (with the exception of water) during operation, and relatively fast-charging compared to battery electric vehicles, they have a host of other problems.

First, hydrogen is hard to store, and it must be cooled and compressed. It's also hard to transport. Additionally, H₂ is not a green fuel in the US, for the most part. Generally, natural gas (CH₄) is reformed to create H₂ in ways that still cause carbon emissions. There is a way to create hydrogen fuel without the carbon emissions: by applying electricity to water (a process called water electrolysis). But water electrolysis has been prohibitively expensive, and if hydrogen can't compete with diesel, what's Nikola's value proposition to freight companies that will make them want to switch?