Environment
October 1, 2020

Artist Knits “Temperature Scarf” To Track Climate Change Every Day for a Whole Year [Interview]

When artist and author Josie George started knitting her temperature scarf in January, she could not have imagined how this calendar year would unfold. The year 2020 has been unpredictable in many ways—from the emergence of a global pandemic to the social unrest and protests around the world to the wildfires ravaging Australia and then the United States.

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History
September 30, 2020

Uppercase and Lowercase: An Etymological Tale of Two Scripts

To start a sentence, one uses an uppercase letter to begin the first word. But where do the opaque terms uppercase and lowercase come from? To understand why capital letters are “uppercase”—and their smaller counterparts are “lowercase”—one has to look back in history to early handwriting and follow that tale to the printing press. The existence and etymology (the history of a word) of uppercase and lowercase is a fascinating tale.

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Bicycles
September 30, 2020

Man Designs an Off-Road Wheelchair for His Wife To Have Outdoor Adventures

Wheelchairs may not seem like they can go off-roading, but thanks to Not a Wheelchair, they can. Zack Nelson and his wife Cambry Kaylor developed the adaptive device that they call The Rig. The somewhat vague name is intentional, as their creation is hard to define what, exactly, it is. “What do you call a chair with four wheels, off-road capabilities, totally silent, super-fast, and a great long-range?” Nelson says in a video introducing it.

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My Modern Met

Celebrating creativity and promoting a positive culture by spotlighting the best sides of humanity—from the lighthearted and fun to the thought-provoking and enlightening.