WIRED UK

POSITIVE BALANCE Jack Lawson photographs Gemma McGough—a Patriotic Millionaire who wants the rich to pay more tax: “We used natural light, some flash, and bright backdrops. Gemma was a dream, bringing a positive attitude and lots of patience, even with a four-week-old baby!” STRIKE A POSE Keanu Reeves and John Wick director (and Reeves’ Matrix stunt double) Chad Stahelski are both 6’1”, but positioning one behind the other posed a perceptual challenge for photographer Art Streiber—who ended up having Reeves stand on a quarter apple-box. “The composition was the least complicated of our setups and used just one light source,” Streiber says. “It illustrates the pair’s cinematic collaboration, which is both brotherly and unique.” TIM MARSHALL In an extract from his latest Geography book, Marshall writes that space is the next geographic frontier, with China…

What is the value of a wild ape? According to a recent talk by the ecologist Ian Redmond at the Rebalance Earth – Natural Capital Conference, to poachers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, it’s about $25. The dead animals are sold for meat, their hands possibly ending up as an ashtray for an oligarch. The creation of value, a tangible dollar significance, lies in the act of killing them. But ecologists argue that there is utility to keystone species like mountain gorillas that is harder to measure: Apes are herbivores—prodigious and effcient seed-dispersal agents. They act to regenerate the forest in multiple ways through their lifecycle, which can be up to forty years, if they’re not shot or their habitat destroyed. According to the 2022 World Wildlife Fund Living…

At an old shoe factory in the outskirts of Paris, new life is taking shape. Behind a heavy door, a bank of PCR machines multiplies plant DNA molecules by hundreds of billions every few hours. Inside a gleaming white chamber, tiny emerald shoots are coaxed from single cells, unfurling in millimeters over a period of months. “It’s like a biologist’s wet dream,” says Patrick Torbey, CTO of Neoplants, a Parisian startup taking a multi-million-dollar punt on the air we breathe. Torbey grabs one of the small, plastic receptacles from inside the chamber and squints at his verdant creation: Nestled in a jelly-like growing medium, it looks like a canapé—or, possibly, the future. This is the Neo P1—a genetically modified houseplant the company claims could help combat indoor air pollution. P1 is a…

As the sun sets, Andrew McCarthy scans the skies for bad omens: Twinkling stars and wispy contrails. But he’s not an oracle or mystic. In fact, McCarthy is an astro-photographer, and these subtle clues are indicators of a hazy atmosphere that could foil his attempts to take pin-sharp pictures of the cosmos. From his back garden in Florence, Arizona, McCarthy creates beautiful images of distant stars and celestial bodies. He is perhaps best known for his shots of the moon, which capture the intricate details of every crevice and crater. But deep space is his favorite subject—his Instagram feed, which has garnered more than half a million followers, seems to crackle with the deep purples and royal blues of nebulae and supernovae. Taking such detailed photos requires a combination of skill, knowledge…

The offces of GSC Game World smelled like a gas station. The Kyiv studio, responsible for cult-classic S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl, had stockpiled thousands of liters of fuel in its corridors during the nervy winter of 2022. Who could blame them? Headlines earlier that year had warned of an imminent Russian invasion. GSC Game World is known for taut gunplay, but now the studio was forced to contend with a more pressing reality. “Emergency buses were waiting at the GSC offce throughout the winter, with drivers ready for action,” says Maria Grygorovych, lead producer on sequel S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2. GSC is one of the many Ukrainian companies attempting to stay afloat despite the mass displacement, comprehensive shortages, and frequent trips to public shelters that define an active war zone. As reports from the Russian…

In the summer of 2017, Gemma McGough found herself to be a member of the UK’s 1 per cent: a multi-millionaire from the sale of her company Product Compliance Specialists. She’d never have to work again. Then she read This Changes Everything, Naomi Klein’s book about the impact of capitalism on the climate. “It was a massive shift in my thinking,” she says. “I sold my Porsche and bought a Tesla.” In 2019, she founded Eleos Compliance, modeled on the B Corp principles of transparency and social and environmental accountability. She took a salary, but her income was mainly from investments, bondsandrental properties—fromwealth. McGough analyzed the tax she was paying on her salaried income versus the lower rates on income from the sale of assets. She concluded first that the country’s tax policy…