When Xander first met Moxie, she taught him how to calm down when he was anxious or mad. Six years later, she mostly watches him play Minecraft and talks about his stuffed animals.

Moxie is a robot—a 15-inch-tall device that looks like a blue, legless astronaut. It's part of a subset designed to assist neurodivergent children by providing connection and helping kids practice social skills usually learned from therapists. But the robot has had a troubled life; its maker went out of business, its servers were shut down, and parents rushed to convert their Moxies before the servers went offline.

The US is now facing a 'censorship-industrial complex', where government agencies, academics, civil society groups, and Big Tech platforms are said to work together to suppress conservative and populist speech online. The theory has moved from the fringes of right-wing discourse into official policy.

Meanwhile, tech giants like Meta have patented facial recognition for AI glasses that could transform dinner parties into highlight reels, while China's CXMT is becoming its most valuable company as Beijing pushes for strategic hardware. As the world grapples with these issues, researchers are finding that long-held assumptions about how our bodies respond to extreme temperatures may be more complicated than we thought.