A year ago, the very first edition of Esquire's About Time newsletter carried a story about an unusual auction at Sotheby’s.

Researchers used high-speed X-ray imaging to capture laser-metal interactions in less than a millisecond.

It's essentially a cropped cut hair, but a little bit tousled and grown-out. I, along with everyone else on the planet, was hankering after a reinvention. And what better—or more straightforward ...