You might have thought sticks had gone away. Oh boy, no. The game of Kubb? Throwing sticks. Conducting? Waving a stick around. Harry Potter merch. Fetch. Drumming. There’s even a stick appreciation movement, via Stick Nation’s “reviews” of cool finds in nature by “Stick Heads” that are posted on Instagram and TikTok. It makes you

Slowly but surely, we are making good on the gadgets we imagined, as kids, that the future would hold. Penny Brown’s video watch from Inspector Gadget? Check. The Starfleet tricoder from Star Trek? Almost there. But web-shooting? Web-slinging? That wasn’t one we really thought would make the crossover. And it wasn’t exactly in the plans