Vocabulary

For a stretch late last year into the early months of this year, the most withering style assessments available online came in the form of Mark Boutilier’s very round, very calm, very expressionless face. On TikTok, he used the app’s duet function, with which you can post a reaction video side by side with someone…

Today, Ms. Sialuk Jacobsen uses historical documents, artifacts and the Qilakitsoq mummies — several of which are now on display at the Greenland National Museum — to research traditional Inuit tattoo designs. Then she hand pokes or stitches the patterns onto the faces and bodies of Inuit women, and occasionally men, helping them connect with…

He is also behind the Makoko Floating System, a series of triangular structures on the water in five cities. The ones in Lagos, Nigeria; Venice; Bruges, Belgium; and Chengdu, China, were used temporarily, while the Floating Music Hub, which he is building in Mindelo, Cape Verde, is designed to be . “My mission is to…

Note: The winners of the September Vocabulary Challenge have been announced.Fervid, hasten, enclave, meander: What stories could these words tell? Our story-writing challenge is back for a second school year. Middle and high school students are invited to choose four or more of the Words of the Day we published in October, then use them…

For $100, overnight visitors break into groups and are assigned a guide to tour the four floors and multiple wards of the asylum, attempting to make contact with the spirit world along the way. As if that wasn’t promising enough, in the wee hours of the morning, visitors are allowed to free, staying up until…

It was sleek, cone-shaped, a little confusing — like something Hollywood would give a sci-fi villain for a quick getaway. It wasn’t a helicopter. And it wasn’t an airplane. It was a between the two, with a curved hull, two small wings, and eight spinning rotors lined up across its nose and tail.

Monks once hoped to turn lead into gold through alchemy. But consider the cauliflower instead. It takes just two genes to the ordinary stems, stalks and flowers of the weedy, tasteless species Brassica oleracea into a formation as marvelous as this fractal, cloudlike vegetable. This is the true alchemy, says Christophe Godin, a senior researcher…

Have you ever taken in a natural vista, say the soaring ranges of a national park, and thought: Three thousand feet of nothingness between me and the ground would really improve this. For Breannah Yeh, a 24-year-old professional slackliner, such an experience is quite a walk in the park. Ms. Yeh shares her aerial escapades…

On the beaches of Western Australia, by California’s crashing waves and in sight of Hawaii’s blue depths, “shark attacks” are slowly disappearing, at least as a phrase used by researchers and officials who have been rethinking how to describe the moments when sharks and humans meet. Last week, two Australian states drew mockery when The…

“TikTok is the biggest thing that happened to me in my career, and honestly the reason why I am where I am today,” he said. In 2018, when TikTok was officially introduced in America — it was already enormously popular elsewhere around the world — the app was lip syncs and dance challenges. But food…