Esther

The concept of “genius loci” – the spirit of a place, often with a connotation of protection or nurturing – is the foundation of Esther Rutter’s revivifying blend of memoir, literary history and travelogue. Eliding three books into one, she explores her own terrifying mental collapse and tentative recovery, the lives of Romantic poet William Wordsworth, his sister Dorothy and their confrère Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and the efforts to preserve the Wordsworths’ cottage at Grasmere within the context of the Lake District as…

Photo: Jorge Jimenez / GizmodoCES 2024 was certainly interesting this year; while we did anticipate AI being inserted into everything from TVs to cars, there were some genuine surprises from the show floor here in Las Vegas. Despite going to what felt like a million press conferences and keynotes, the Gizmodo team did manage to find loads of cool, interesting, and just plain weird gadgets from this year’s Consumer Electronics Show. Be sure to keep checking as we add new products until the show’s end. Photo: Jorge…

Do we really need a full-body suit and massive VR headset like a reject Ready Player One concept to get immersed in our games? Razer is imagining haptics in a much more constrained—and more comfortable—fashion with a simple seat cushion stuffed with advanced rumble. Some gamers will do anything to increase immersion, but Razer’s concept haptics show that a small, subtle sensation can go a long way.The First Things To Do In VR, Part 3Razer’s prototype “Project Esther” haptic gaming cushion is supposed to make you feel…

Image: ParamountNearly 15 years ago, Jaume Collet-Serra’s Orphan released in theaters. Unlike other horror films involving a seemingly sweet young child, the twist of their dark tendencies was considerably more straightforward, Isabella Fuhrman’s nine-year-old Esther wasn’t possessed by a demon or a conduit to hell, she was in reality a woman named Leena with a rare genetic disorder that stunted her growth, and she’s spent years posing as a little girl and killing people to cover up her secret. Rainn Wilson’s First…

NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft captured this view of Earth—appearing as a speck of light—on February 14, 1980, at a distance of roughly 3.2 billion miles (6 billion km) from the Sun—beyond the orbit of Neptune. The words of Carl Sagan, as featured in his 1994 book, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of a Human Future in Space, best describes the significance of this ultra-famous image:... Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human…

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Esther Inglis Manuscript. Credit: University of St Andrews A never-before seen manuscript by Scottish-based artisan Esther Inglis, dating back to the early 1600s, was unveiled at The University of St Andrews this week at The International Conference on Medieval and Renaissance Scottish Languages, Literature and Culture. Esther…

Adrift in Berlin, the narrator of Esther Yi’s intricate debut novel works as a copywriter for a business selling canned artichoke hearts. Her job, she informs us, “required to credibly infuse the vegetable with the ability to feel romantic love for its consumer”. She has a sort-of boyfriend, Masterson, though she introduces herself at parties as his adoptive sister, not to shock so much as to indicate the true psychological state of their relationship. Masterson cannot bring himself to fall in love with her, a state of…

It's due to hit consoles, PC and Game Pass in early 2024.The Chinese Room — the studio behind Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs, Dear Esther and Everybody's Gone to the Rapture — is back with a new horror experience, Still Wakes the Deep. It's a narrative horror game, taking the studio back to its roots, and it's set on an oil rig in 1975. It's a first-person game and its announcement trailer captures a series of tense, lethal-looking moments on the rig. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWh4ThaGayw Here's how The Chinese Room…

California couldn’t catch a break from consecutive storms this winter. Heavy precipitation caused widespread flooding, while strong winds felled trees and damaged roads, power lines, and homes. The weeks of severe weather also turned fields into a muddy mess and disrupted work for the state’s many agricultural workers.The Mississippi River is Drying Out | Extreme EarthEster is one of those workers. She lives in Monterey County, which is along California’s central coastline and is known for grapes and wine production.…