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Memories of Project RAMOS (Russian American Observation Satellites) 1991 – 2004 During the course of my professional career, one of the more important projects I had the pleasure...
29th Sep 2023
54

Memories of Project RAMOS (Russian American Observation Satellites) 1991 – 2004

from Drew Ex Machina [alt+shift+b] in science

29th Sep 2023
During the course of my professional career, one of the more important projects I had the pleasure to work on was the joint US/Russian Federation (RF) […]
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See it with your lying ears This blog has a history of answering questions that no one should be asking. Today, we continue that...
10th Jan 2026
2

See it with your lying ears

from lcamtuf’s thing [alt+shift+b] in science

10th Jan 2026
This blog has a history of answering questions that no one should be asking. Today, we continue that proud legacy.
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Brian Christian: Algorithms to Live By ### Solving hard decisions Deciding when to stop your quest for the ideal apartment, or ideal...
21st Jun 2016
1

Brian Christian: Algorithms to Live By

from Long Now [alt+shift+b] in science

21st Jun 2016
### Solving hard decisions Deciding when to stop your quest for the ideal apartment, or ideal spouse, depends entirely on how long you expect to be looking, says Brian Christian. The first one you check will be the best you’ve seen, but it’s unlikely to be the best you’ll ever...
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New Features Everywhere: Launching Version 14.3 of Wolfram Language & Mathematica #blog a.bottomstripe { max-width: 100%; } #blog .post_content .inline-table-of-contents {...
5th Aug 2025
1

New Features Everywhere: Launching Version 14.3 of Wolfram Language & Mathematica

from Stephen Wolfram Writings [alt+shift+b] in science

5th Aug 2025
#blog a.bottomstripe { max-width: 100%; } #blog .post_content .inline-table-of-contents { background-color: #f6fcff; border: solid 1px #bbdbe8; padding: 24px 20px 10px 20px; } #blog .post_content .inline-table-of-contents div a { color: #19749a; font-size: 14px; line-height:...
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Why Japan has such good railways Japan’s railways are the finest in the world. Other countries can copy its formula.
7th Apr 2026
1

Why Japan has such good railways

from Works in Progress RSS Feed [alt+shift+b] in science

7th Apr 2026
Japan’s railways are the finest in the world. Other countries can copy its formula.
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Meta: 7,000 Although I try to keep navel-gazing to a minimum, I’m happy to report that this publication has...
4th Aug 2026
1

Meta: 7,000

from lcamtuf’s thing [alt+shift+b] in science

4th Aug 2026
Although I try to keep navel-gazing to a minimum, I’m happy to report that this publication has crossed 7,000 email subscribers (plus an unknown number of RSS weirdos).
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Geoffrey B West: The Universal Laws of Growth and Pace ## Why cities live forever **West focussed on cities** in his discussion of the newly discovered...
24th May 2017
1

Geoffrey B West: The Universal Laws of Growth and Pace

from Long Now [alt+shift+b] in science

24th May 2017
## Why cities live forever **West focussed on cities** in his discussion of the newly discovered exponential scaling laws that govern everything alive. “We live,” he said, “in an exponentially expanding socio-economic universe.” Global urbanization has reached the point that...
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Generative AI will probably make blogs better Generative AI will probably make blogs better. Have you ever searched for something on Google and...
30th May 2025
28

Generative AI will probably make blogs better

from pcloadletter [alt+shift+b] in science

30th May 2025
Generative AI will probably make blogs better. Have you ever searched for something on Google and found the first one, two, or three blog posts to be utter nonsense? That's because these blog posts have been optimized not for human consumption, but rather to entertain the search...
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What on Earth is ‘sustainable’ coffee?
15th Aug 2024
1

What on Earth is ‘sustainable’ coffee?

from Conservation International [alt+shift+b] in science

15th Aug 2024
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UK waders: “Into the Red” If you ask British birdwatchers to name the eleven wader species that are causing the most...
4th Oct 2022
55

UK waders: “Into the Red”

from wadertales [alt+shift+b] in science

4th Oct 2022
If you ask British birdwatchers to name the eleven wader species that are causing the most conservation concern in the UK, they would probably not include Dunlin. Curlew may well be top of their lists, even though the most recent population estimate is 58,500 breeding pairs, but...
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Some stories from healthcare founders | Out-Of-Pocket Titles matter, you can change regulation, how M&A happens
5th Aug 2025
36

Some stories from healthcare founders | Out-Of-Pocket

from Out-of-Pocket Blog [alt+shift+b] in science

5th Aug 2025
Titles matter, you can change regulation, how M&A happens
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What I’ve been reading, June 2023 A monthly feature. As usual, recent blog posts and news stories are omitted from this; you can find...
5th Jun 2023
187

What I’ve been reading, June 2023

from The Roots of Progress | Articles [alt+shift+b] in science

5th Jun 2023
A monthly feature. As usual, recent blog posts and news stories are omitted from this; you can find them in my links digests. In all quotes below, any emphasis in bold was added by me. Books Thomas S. Ashton, The Industrial Revolution, 1760–1830 (1948). A classic in the field,...
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Aerial Glacier Photographs A collection of 100,000 striking high-resolution aerial photos of glaciers, photographed over 40...
18th Jun 2024
132

Aerial Glacier Photographs

from Beautiful Public Data [alt+shift+b] in science

18th Jun 2024
A collection of 100,000 striking high-resolution aerial photos of glaciers, photographed over 40 years with a 63-pound WW II surveillance camera.
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Did Unions End Long Work Hours? Is it growth or organized labor that's more responsible for giving us shorter workdays?
4th Sep 2024
37

Did Unions End Long Work Hours?

from Cremieux Recueil [alt+shift+b] in science

4th Sep 2024
Is it growth or organized labor that's more responsible for giving us shorter workdays?
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The evolution of bacteria Generations of microbes evolve in hours, not millennia. By speeding up Darwin’s clock, scientists...
5th Nov 2025
1

The evolution of bacteria

from Works in Progress RSS Feed [alt+shift+b] in science

5th Nov 2025
Generations of microbes evolve in hours, not millennia. By speeding up Darwin’s clock, scientists have watched evolution happen in real time, and it’s changed how we understand natural selection.
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Jennifer Pahlka: Fixing Government: Bottom Up and Outside In ## Toward agile government Pahlka quoted: “Efficiency in government is a matter of social justice.”...
2nd Feb 2017
1

Jennifer Pahlka: Fixing Government: Bottom Up and Outside In

from Long Now [alt+shift+b] in science

2nd Feb 2017
## Toward agile government Pahlka quoted: “Efficiency in government is a matter of social justice.” (Mayor John Norquist) It is at the often maddening interface with government that the inefficiency and injustice play out. Two examples (both now fixed)… At the Veterans Affairs...
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A Month In Northern Peru, Part 18: Wattled Curassows at Muyuna Lodge (February 26, 2024) February 26, 2024 As dawn broke, Laura, Moises and I slowly cruised along a quiet watercourse. The...
4th Apr 2025
52

A Month In Northern Peru, Part 18: Wattled Curassows at Muyuna Lodge (February 26, 2024)

from Explorations of an Ecologist [alt+shift+b] in science

4th Apr 2025
February 26, 2024 As dawn broke, Laura, Moises and I slowly cruised along a quiet watercourse. The dawn chorus was active and included species like Ferruginous Pygmy-Owl, Zimmer's Woodcreeper and Black-tailed Antbird, but I stayed focused on the treeline, hoping that a...
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Weird health insurance concepts | Out-Of-Pocket Intercompany eliminations, copay shenanigans, and reference-based pricing
6th Nov 2024
69

Weird health insurance concepts | Out-Of-Pocket

from Out-of-Pocket Blog [alt+shift+b] in science

6th Nov 2024
Intercompany eliminations, copay shenanigans, and reference-based pricing
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WaderTales blogs in 2022 Here are brief summaries of the sixteen WaderTales blogs that were published in 2022. I have grouped...
22nd Dec 2022
59

WaderTales blogs in 2022

from wadertales [alt+shift+b] in science

22nd Dec 2022
Here are brief summaries of the sixteen WaderTales blogs that were published in 2022. I have grouped the blogs into sections; problems with trees, more research from Iceland, Curlews, news from the East Asian-Australasian Flyway, tracking and updates. As ever, I am grateful to...
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How to build a lunar mass driver Casey Handmer May 2026 What? Elon has recently (late 2025, early 2026) been talking about building...
8th May 2026
1

How to build a lunar mass driver

from Casey Handmer's blog [alt+shift+b] in science

8th May 2026
Casey Handmer May 2026 What? Elon has recently (late 2025, early 2026) been talking about building many terawatts of orbital AI compute and launching some components from Moon factories with a mass driver. This is an old idea, enabled by …
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The Perplexing Appeal of <i>The Telepathy Tapes</i> The Telepathy Tapes claims that autistic children have the ability to read minds. Where do their...
6th Nov 2025
1

The Perplexing Appeal of <i>The Telepathy Tapes</i>

from Asterisk [alt+shift+b] in science

6th Nov 2025
The Telepathy Tapes claims that autistic children have the ability to read minds. Where do their claims come from — and why do so many people believe them?
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Fifty ways to leave your model A method for calculating the number of alternative causal models, given a number of variables/nodes.
15th Feb 2020
1

Fifty ways to leave your model

from Peder M. Isager [alt+shift+b] in science

15th Feb 2020
A method for calculating the number of alternative causal models, given a number of variables/nodes.
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A New World’s Extraordinary Orbit Points to Planet Nine Astronomers argue that there’s an undiscovered giant planet far beyond the orbit of Neptune. A newly...
14th Mar 2019
1

A New World’s Extraordinary Orbit Points to Planet Nine

from The Quanta Podcast [alt+shift+b] in science

14th Mar 2019
Astronomers argue that there’s an undiscovered giant planet far beyond the orbit of Neptune. A newly discovered rocky body has added evidence to the circumstantial case for it. The post A New World’s Extraordinary Orbit Points to Planet Nine first appeared on Quanta...
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The Promise of MIDAS: The First Experimental Early Warning Satellites Today in the United States we almost take for granted the military’s ability to detect missile...
19th Jul 2023
63

The Promise of MIDAS: The First Experimental Early Warning Satellites

from Drew Ex Machina [alt+shift+b] in science

19th Jul 2023
Today in the United States we almost take for granted the military’s ability to detect missile launches anywhere on the planet and quickly determine whether it […]
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James Carse: Religious War In Light of the Infinite Game ### Finite and infinite games Countless readers have been hooked by the opening line of James P....
15th Jan 2005
1

James Carse: Religious War In Light of the Infinite Game

from Long Now [alt+shift+b] in science

15th Jan 2005
### Finite and infinite games Countless readers have been hooked by the opening line of James P. Carse's [_Finite and Infinite Games_](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0345341848/qid=1105811409/lono0a-20) -- "There are at least two kinds of games. One could be...
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Devouring the Heart of Portugal On the morning of Thursday, 04 December 1924, a tall and well-dressed Dutch trader named Karel...
3rd May 2022
42

Devouring the Heart of Portugal

from Damn Interesting [alt+shift+b] in science

3rd May 2022
On the morning of Thursday, 04 December 1924, a tall and well-dressed Dutch trader named Karel Marang strolled along Great Winchester Street in the City of London, among the bustling crowds of bankers and brokers of the business district, unaware that the parcel he carried held...
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Cory Doctorow: The Coming Century of War Against Your Computer ### Who governs digital trust? Doctorow framed the question this way: "Computers are everywhere....
1st Aug 2012
1

Cory Doctorow: The Coming Century of War Against Your Computer

from Long Now [alt+shift+b] in science

1st Aug 2012
### Who governs digital trust? Doctorow framed the question this way: "Computers are everywhere. They are now something we put our whole bodies into---airplanes, cars---and something we put into our bodies---pacemakers, cochlear implants. They HAVE to be trustworthy." Sometimes...
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Octopus, solar & e-paper energy dashboards I built a custom energy dashboard for my house using this beautiful, 2-bit colour, e-paper display....
19th May 2025
1

Octopus, solar & e-paper energy dashboards

from Interaction Magic - George Cave [alt+shift+b] in science

19th May 2025
I built a custom energy dashboard for my house using this beautiful, 2-bit colour, e-paper display. Hardware, software, data and design.
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Why Japan has such good railways Japan’s railways are the finest in the world. Other countries can copy its formula.
7th Apr 2026
1

Why Japan has such good railways

from Works in Progress RSS Feed [alt+shift+b] in science

7th Apr 2026
Japan’s railways are the finest in the world. Other countries can copy its formula.
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Life in Johnstone's Topological Topos 1 -- Fundamentals I’ve been thinking a lot about the internal logic of topoi again, and I want to have more examples...
3rd Jul 2024
64

Life in Johnstone's Topological Topos 1 -- Fundamentals

from Chris Grossack's Blog [alt+shift+b] in science

3rd Jul 2024
I’ve been thinking a lot about the internal logic of topoi again, and I want to have more examples of topoi that I understand well enough to externalize some statements. There’s more to life than just a localic $\mathsf{Sh}(B)$, and since I’m starting to feel like I understand...
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The United States Frequency Allocation Chart This crazy, beautiful chart illustrates the incredible complexity of managing one of our nation’s...
6th Feb 2023
99

The United States Frequency Allocation Chart

from Beautiful Public Data [alt+shift+b] in science

6th Feb 2023
This crazy, beautiful chart illustrates the incredible complexity of managing one of our nation’s most crucial – and invisible – national assets: the radio spectrum.
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A Month In Northern Peru, Part 15: More From Explorama Lodge (February 20 - 21, 2024) February 20, 2024 A Great Potoo was the first bird I heard this morning shortly after my alarm went...
1st Feb 2025
49

A Month In Northern Peru, Part 15: More From Explorama Lodge (February 20 - 21, 2024)

from Explorations of an Ecologist [alt+shift+b] in science

1st Feb 2025
February 20, 2024 A Great Potoo was the first bird I heard this morning shortly after my alarm went off at 5:00 AM. It was going to be a good day.  At dinner the previous night Luis, Laura and I had come up with a plan for our full day at Explorama Lodge. We would begin by taking...
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South Pole Signage Please close doors quietly!
23rd Jul 2023
28

South Pole Signage

from brr [alt+shift+b] in science

23rd Jul 2023
Please close doors quietly!
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Failure to Launch: The First Moon Race 1958-60 While it has been a few months since I have published a new post on the Drew Ex Machina website,...
2nd Jun 2023
51

Failure to Launch: The First Moon Race 1958-60

from Drew Ex Machina [alt+shift+b] in science

2nd Jun 2023
While it has been a few months since I have published a new post on the Drew Ex Machina website, that doesn’t mean that I haven’t […]
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Dust Storm On Mars A dust storm in Olympia Planum's north polar dune fields was triggered by a late Martian summer cold...
8th Apr 2024
79

Dust Storm On Mars

from Wanderingspace [alt+shift+b] in science

8th Apr 2024
A dust storm in Olympia Planum's north polar dune fields was triggered by a late Martian summer cold front. As the northern polar cap shrinks fast, it releases cold air that sometimes moves south, like on Earth. These cold fronts strengthen in late summer and early fall due to...
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The Mystery at the Heart of Physics That Only Math Can Solve The accelerating effort to understand the mathematics of quantum field theory will have profound...
2nd Sep 2021
1

The Mystery at the Heart of Physics That Only Math Can Solve

from The Quanta Podcast [alt+shift+b] in science

2nd Sep 2021
The accelerating effort to understand the mathematics of quantum field theory will have profound consequences for both math and physics. The post The Mystery at the Heart of Physics That Only Math Can Solve first appeared on Quanta Magazine
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Adrian Hon: A History of the Future in 100 Objects ### Future artifacts Speaking from 02082, Hon described 5 (of 100) objects and events from this...
17th Jul 2014
1

Adrian Hon: A History of the Future in 100 Objects

from Long Now [alt+shift+b] in science

17th Jul 2014
### Future artifacts Speaking from 02082, Hon described 5 (of 100) objects and events from this century’s history he felt most strongly evoked the astonishing trends that have transformed humanity in the past 8 decades. Not all developments proved to be positive. One such was...
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Why America’s Racial Poverty Statistics Are a Lesson for Researchers What if a single government employee could tell you an entire literature was wrong?
26th Aug 2024
35

Why America’s Racial Poverty Statistics Are a Lesson for Researchers

from Cremieux Recueil [alt+shift+b] in science

26th Aug 2024
What if a single government employee could tell you an entire literature was wrong?
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Fine, let’s talk about peptides | Out-Of-Pocket What and why are people injecting themselves?
5th May 2026
1

Fine, let’s talk about peptides | Out-Of-Pocket

from Out-of-Pocket Blog [alt+shift+b] in science

5th May 2026
What and why are people injecting themselves?
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6 Questions You Asked Yourself about Solar How fast will it take over, how fast are costs shrinking, why is it so cheap, what industries will...
2nd Nov 2024
43

6 Questions You Asked Yourself about Solar

from Uncharted Territories [alt+shift+b] in science

2nd Nov 2024
How fast will it take over, how fast are costs shrinking, why is it so cheap, what industries will it birth, how much surface will it take up, where will it appear first?
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Cambodian Forest Defenders at Risk for Exposing Illegal Logging The lush forests that have long sustained Cambodia’s Indigenous people have steadily fallen to...
2nd Jun 2025
6

Cambodian Forest Defenders at Risk for Exposing Illegal Logging

from Yale E360 [alt+shift+b] in science

2nd Jun 2025
The lush forests that have long sustained Cambodia’s Indigenous people have steadily fallen to illicit logging. Now, community members face intimidation and risk arrest as they patrol their forests to document the losses and try to push the government to stop the cutting. Read...
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Orville Schell: China Thinks Long-term, But Can It Relearn to Act Long-term? ### Giant contradictions “China is the most unresolved nation of consequence in the world,” Orville...
23rd Sep 2006
1

Orville Schell: China Thinks Long-term, But Can It Relearn to Act Long-term?

from Long Now [alt+shift+b] in science

23rd Sep 2006
### Giant contradictions “China is the most unresolved nation of consequence in the world,” Orville Schell began. It is defined by its massive contradictions. And by its massiveness— China’s population is estimated to be 1.25 to 1.3 billion; the margin of error in the estimate...
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3 tips for co-designing with kids Designing future sports products with a group of 11 year olds.
28th Mar 2023
38

3 tips for co-designing with kids

from Interaction Magic - George Cave [alt+shift+b] in science

28th Mar 2023
Designing future sports products with a group of 11 year olds.
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How to Cut Cake Fairly and Finally Eat It Too Computer scientists have come up with a bounded algorithm that can fairly divide a cake among any...
10th Nov 2016
1

How to Cut Cake Fairly and Finally Eat It Too

from The Quanta Podcast [alt+shift+b] in science

10th Nov 2016
Computer scientists have come up with a bounded algorithm that can fairly divide a cake among any number of people. The post How to Cut Cake Fairly and Finally Eat It Too first appeared on Quanta Magazine
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Vernor Vinge: What If the Singularity Does NOT Happen? ### Non-Singularity scenarios Vinge began by declaring that he still believes that a Singularity...
16th Feb 2007
1

Vernor Vinge: What If the Singularity Does NOT Happen?

from Long Now [alt+shift+b] in science

16th Feb 2007
### Non-Singularity scenarios Vinge began by declaring that he still believes that a Singularity event in the next few decades is the most likely outcome-- meaning that self-accelerating technologies will speed up to the point of so profound a transformation that the other side...
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Nadia Asparouhova: The Making and Maintenance of our Open Source Infrastructure Nadia Asparouhova is particularly interested in infrastructure, governance, and the economics of the...
10th Dec 2020
1

Nadia Asparouhova: The Making and Maintenance of our Open Source Infrastructure

from Long Now [alt+shift+b] in science

10th Dec 2020
Nadia Asparouhova is particularly interested in infrastructure, governance, and the economics of the internet - and how the dynamics of these subjects play out in software, online communities and generally living life online. Asparouhova, who interviewed hundreds of developers...
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Beth Noveck: Transparent Government ### Dot.Gov Noveck began with the example of patents, first devised in Renaissance Florence and...
5th Mar 2010
1

Beth Noveck: Transparent Government

from Long Now [alt+shift+b] in science

5th Mar 2010
### Dot.Gov Noveck began with the example of patents, first devised in Renaissance Florence and Venice to protect techniques such as glass manufacture. In England, conferring a monopoly on a tool or technique became a prerogative of the king. In contemporary America, the process...
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NSF, spending, and the end of the fiscal year We are less than one month away from the end of the federal fiscal year, and traditionally there are...
3 weeks ago
0

NSF, spending, and the end of the fiscal year

from nanoscale views [alt+shift+b] in science

3 weeks ago
We are less than one month away from the end of the federal fiscal year, and traditionally there are internal deadlines for agencies to allocate their final spending by around September 9. Right now, the NSF is on track to issue about 4000 fewer (!!) awards in FY26 than it did...
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John Baez: Zooming Out in Time ### Welcome to the Anthropocene The graphs we see these days, John Baez began, all look vertical--...
14th Oct 2006
1

John Baez: Zooming Out in Time

from Long Now [alt+shift+b] in science

14th Oct 2006
### Welcome to the Anthropocene The graphs we see these days, John Baez began, all look vertical-- carbon burning shooting up, CO2 in the air shooting up, global temperature shooting up, and population still shooting up. How can we understand what really going on? "It's like...
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Announcing…DATA CAMP 2026!!! | Out-Of-Pocket It’s back…with a vengeance. Or just back normally.
3rd Apr 2026
1

Announcing…DATA CAMP 2026!!! | Out-Of-Pocket

from Out-of-Pocket Blog [alt+shift+b] in science

3rd Apr 2026
It’s back…with a vengeance. Or just back normally.
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Smart Swarms Seek New Ways to Cooperate New algorithms show how swarms of very simple robots can be made to work together as a group. ...
27th Sep 2018
1

Smart Swarms Seek New Ways to Cooperate

from The Quanta Podcast [alt+shift+b] in science

27th Sep 2018
New algorithms show how swarms of very simple robots can be made to work together as a group. The post Smart Swarms Seek New Ways to Cooperate first appeared on Quanta Magazine
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A look at Britain’s new DARPA ARIA is the UK’s visionary new scientific funding body. It has £800m and the freedom to make big...
10th Feb 2023
1

A look at Britain’s new DARPA

from Works in Progress RSS Feed [alt+shift+b] in science

10th Feb 2023
ARIA is the UK’s visionary new scientific funding body. It has £800m and the freedom to make big bold bets on the scientific trajectories it thinks will benefit Britain – and change the future. We interviewed chief executive Ilan Gur and chairman Matt Clifford, to better...
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Lazar Kunstmann & Jon Lackman: Preservation without Permission ### Preservation Without Permission Their video showed clandestine urban “infiltration”...
14th Nov 2012
1

Lazar Kunstmann & Jon Lackman: Preservation without Permission

from Long Now [alt+shift+b] in science

14th Nov 2012
### Preservation Without Permission Their video showed clandestine urban “infiltration” (trespassing) at its most creative. Paris’s Urban Experiment group (UX), now in their fourth decade, have a restoration branch called Untergunther. They evade authorities to carry out secret...
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Meta-research at the Psychological Science Accelerator Summary of unconference session at Tilburg Meta-research day 2019.
17th Dec 2019
1

Meta-research at the Psychological Science Accelerator

from Peder M. Isager [alt+shift+b] in science

17th Dec 2019
Summary of unconference session at Tilburg Meta-research day 2019.
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Spencer Beebe: Very Long-term Very Large-scale Biomimicry ### The rainforests of home Spencer Beebe is founder and head of Ecotrust, the Portland-based...
12th Mar 2005
1

Spencer Beebe: Very Long-term Very Large-scale Biomimicry

from Long Now [alt+shift+b] in science

12th Mar 2005
### The rainforests of home Spencer Beebe is founder and head of Ecotrust, the Portland-based organization that is setting in motion a permanently prosperous conservation economy for the entire Pacific Coast from San Francisco north to Alaska-- the temperate rain forest also...
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The first non-opioid painkiller For nearly two centuries, pain relief meant effective but addictive opioids. Scientists have finally...
6th Oct 2025
1

The first non-opioid painkiller

from Works in Progress RSS Feed [alt+shift+b] in science

6th Oct 2025
For nearly two centuries, pain relief meant effective but addictive opioids. Scientists have finally made something better.
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Who cares about plagiarism? Plagiarism is unforgivable in academia but it’s not plagiarism itself that should trouble us. It’s...
21st Jan 2022
1

Who cares about plagiarism?

from Works in Progress RSS Feed [alt+shift+b] in science

21st Jan 2022
Plagiarism is unforgivable in academia but it’s not plagiarism itself that should trouble us. It’s carelessness and a lack of originality.
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Alicia Eggert: This Moment Used To Be The Future In _The Clock of the Long Now_, Long Now founder Stewart Brand wrote, in response to Zen poet Gary...
15th Dec 2022
1

Alicia Eggert: This Moment Used To Be The Future

from Long Now [alt+shift+b] in science

15th Dec 2022
In _The Clock of the Long Now_, Long Now founder Stewart Brand wrote, in response to Zen poet Gary Snyder, the following musing on the nature of time: >THIS PRESENT MOMENT USED TO BE THE UNIMAGINABLE FUTURE Interdisciplinary artist Alicia Eggert’s work uses neon, steel, and...
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How LiDAR measures the toll of climate disasters Comparing LiDAR data from before and after the January 2025 fires in Los Angeles reveals the scale...
25th Aug 2025
36

How LiDAR measures the toll of climate disasters

from Beautiful Public Data [alt+shift+b] in science

25th Aug 2025
Comparing LiDAR data from before and after the January 2025 fires in Los Angeles reveals the scale of devastation in ways satellite imagery can’t match.
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A Course on Aliens in Science & Science Fiction for People Over 50 I am teaching a fun, 6-week, non-credit course on the search for intelligent life among the stars,...
a week ago
1

A Course on Aliens in Science & Science Fiction for People Over 50

from Andrew Fraknoi – Astronomy Lectures – Astronomy Education Resources [alt+shift+b] in science

a week ago
I am teaching a fun, 6-week, non-credit course on the search for intelligent life among the stars, offered (by zoom or in person) through the San Francisco State University Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, starting Sept. 30.  It’s part of a program of courses for retired...
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Interview: Ted Nordhaus on ecomodernism Are technology and the environment friends or foes? In this wide-ranging conversation, we discuss...
20th May 2021
1

Interview: Ted Nordhaus on ecomodernism

from Works in Progress RSS Feed [alt+shift+b] in science

20th May 2021
Are technology and the environment friends or foes? In this wide-ranging conversation, we discuss climate policy, activism and ecomodernism with Ted Nordhaus.
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Two of My Science-Fiction Stories Published in May View this email in your browser A Change of Pace from Astronomy News  As you may know, I have been...
2nd Jun 2025
37

Two of My Science-Fiction Stories Published in May

from Andrew Fraknoi – Astronomy Lectures – Astronomy Education Resources [alt+shift+b] in science

2nd Jun 2025
View this email in your browser A Change of Pace from Astronomy News  As you may know, I have been writing science-fiction stories based on good astronomy as my retirement project.  After a good number of rejections from the finest sci-fi magazines the world over, I am now...
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When RAND Made Magic in Santa Monica RAND’s halcyon days lasted two decades, during which the corporation produced some of the most...
1st Jun 2024
27

When RAND Made Magic in Santa Monica

from Asterisk [alt+shift+b] in science

1st Jun 2024
RAND’s halcyon days lasted two decades, during which the corporation produced some of the most influential developments in science and American foreign policy. So how did it become just another think tank?
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What does it mean to create a topological qubit? I’ve worked on topological quantum computation, one of Alexei Kitaev’s brilliant innovations, for...
6th Mar 2025
71

What does it mean to create a topological qubit?

from Quantum Frontiers [alt+shift+b] in science

6th Mar 2025
I’ve worked on topological quantum computation, one of Alexei Kitaev’s brilliant innovations, for around 15 years now.  It’s hard to find a more beautiful physics problem, combining spectacular quantum phenomena (non-Abelian anyons) with the promise of transformative...
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Vortices everywhere The 2026 APS Oliver E. Buckley Prize in condensed matter physics was announced this week, and it's a...
8th Nov 2025
2

Vortices everywhere

from nanoscale views [alt+shift+b] in science

8th Nov 2025
The 2026 APS Oliver E. Buckley Prize in condensed matter physics was announced this week, and it's a really interesting combination of topics that, to a lay person, may seem to be completely unrelated.   Fig. 1 from this follow-up PRB. On the one hand, John Reppy (at age 94!)...
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A 1-Day Virtual Symposium on Future of Astronomy For those of you with a deeper interest in astronomy and how we learn about the universe, this may...
8th Aug 2025
19

A 1-Day Virtual Symposium on Future of Astronomy

from Andrew Fraknoi – Astronomy Lectures – Astronomy Education Resources [alt+shift+b] in science

8th Aug 2025
For those of you with a deeper interest in astronomy and how we learn about the universe, this may be of interest.  There is a good discount if you register before Aug. 10. The Astronomical Society of the Pacific Presents: Eyes on the Cosmos: Cutting Edge Instruments and Ideas in...
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Many Worlds Archive is Available I had the pleasure of reporting and writing the Many Worlds column — sponsored by NASA’s NExSS...
14th Nov 2023
72

Many Worlds Archive is Available

from Many Worlds [alt+shift+b] in science

14th Nov 2023
I had the pleasure of reporting and writing the Many Worlds column — sponsored by NASA’s NExSS initiative and the Lunar & Planetary Institute — for almost eight years. But the run came to an end in October. Now an archive of the more than 400 columns is easily available at...
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Peter Schwartz: The Starships ARE Coming ### Starship destiny We now know, Schwartz began, that nearly all of the billions of stars in our...
18th Sep 2013
1

Peter Schwartz: The Starships ARE Coming

from Long Now [alt+shift+b] in science

18th Sep 2013
### Starship destiny We now know, Schwartz began, that nearly all of the billions of stars in our galaxy have planets. If we can master interstellar travel, "there’s someplace to go." Our own solar system is pretty boring---one planet is habitable, the rest are "like Antarctica...
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‘World Models,’ an Old Idea in AI, Mount a Comeback You’re carrying around in your head a model of how the world works. Will AI systems need to do the...
2nd Sep 2025
53

‘World Models,’ an Old Idea in AI, Mount a Comeback

from Quanta Magazine [alt+shift+b] in science

2nd Sep 2025
You’re carrying around in your head a model of how the world works. Will AI systems need to do the same? The post ‘World Models,’ an Old Idea in AI, Mount a Comeback first appeared on Quanta Magazine
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How Much Do Couples Share Traits? Do birds of a feather flock together, or do opposites attract? These are both common aphorisms,...
5th Sep 2023
170

How Much Do Couples Share Traits?

from NeuroLogica Blog [alt+shift+b] in science

5th Sep 2023
Do birds of a feather flock together, or do opposites attract? These are both common aphorisms, which means that they are commonly offered as generally accepted truths, but also that they may by wrong. People like pithy phrases, so they spread prolifically, but that does not mean...
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What is a biological individual? Some individuals have no clear boundaries. Here’s an assortment of some of the most interesting...
6th Sep 2021
20

What is a biological individual?

from SubAnima [alt+shift+b] in science

6th Sep 2021
Some individuals have no clear boundaries. Here’s an assortment of some of the most interesting problem cases
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Alaska Wolf Found With Record Amount of Mercury, a Sign of Growing Contamination When Alaska’s wolves began eating sea otters, it looked like a story of adaptation. Then they...
2nd Jan 2026
1

Alaska Wolf Found With Record Amount of Mercury, a Sign of Growing Contamination

from Yale E360 [alt+shift+b] in science

2nd Jan 2026
When Alaska’s wolves began eating sea otters, it looked like a story of adaptation. Then they started getting sick. Read more on E360 →
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A Cute Application of the Yoneda Lemma Every few weeks recently I’ve been putting a new fun problem on one of the whiteboards in the first...
17th Mar 2025
60

A Cute Application of the Yoneda Lemma

from Chris Grossack's Blog [alt+shift+b] in science

17th Mar 2025
Every few weeks recently I’ve been putting a new fun problem on one of the whiteboards in the first year office. These are often inspired by something I saw on MSE, and I’m usually choosing problems that force you to understand something fundamental really well. Then I usually...
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DNA of Giant ‘Corpse Flower’ Parasite Surprises Biologists The bizarre genome of the world’s most mysterious flowering plants shows how far parasites will go...
5th Aug 2021
1

DNA of Giant ‘Corpse Flower’ Parasite Surprises Biologists

from The Quanta Podcast [alt+shift+b] in science

5th Aug 2021
The bizarre genome of the world’s most mysterious flowering plants shows how far parasites will go in stealing, deleting and duplicating DNA. The post DNA of Giant ‘Corpse Flower’ Parasite Surprises Biologists first appeared on Quanta Magazine
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Fifty Billion Seedlings: Can Ethiopia Replant Its Ravaged Forests? A legacy of deforestation has left Ethiopia struggling with more intense flooding and drought. The...
2 days ago
1

Fifty Billion Seedlings: Can Ethiopia Replant Its Ravaged Forests?

from Yale E360 [alt+shift+b] in science

2 days ago
A legacy of deforestation has left Ethiopia struggling with more intense flooding and drought. The country is trying to restore its native forests through one of the world's most ambitious and well-funded tree-planting campaigns, but experts question whether the trees will...
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2023 Hottest Year on Record What everyone knew was coming is now official – 2023 was the warmest year on record. This means we...
2nd Jan 2024
50

2023 Hottest Year on Record

from NeuroLogica Blog [alt+shift+b] in science

2nd Jan 2024
What everyone knew was coming is now official – 2023 was the warmest year on record. This means we can also say that the last 10 years are the hottest decade on record. 2023 dethrones 2016 as the previous warmest year and bumps 2010 out of the top 10. Further, in the last half of...
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The Problem-Solving Animal, part 1 Previously: The Flywheel, part 1 and part 2. I feel sorry for the Rev. Thomas Malthus. He was doomed...
3rd Jun 2025
1

The Problem-Solving Animal, part 1

from The Roots of Progress [alt+shift+b] in science

3rd Jun 2025
Previously: The Flywheel, part 1 and part 2. I feel sorry for the Rev. Thomas Malthus. He was doomed to be misremembered by history. His Essay on the Principle of Population is remembered as a prophecy of scarcity. But Malthus’s focus was how to deal with scarcity, which he took...
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Peatland restoration – ploughing for plovers. Commercial forestry was never a good option for the wet peatlands of northeast Scotland, with...
16th Aug 2025
41

Peatland restoration – ploughing for plovers.

from wadertales [alt+shift+b] in science

16th Aug 2025
Commercial forestry was never a good option for the wet peatlands of northeast Scotland, with planting financed by tax subsidies and sold on the mantra of ‘rural jobs’. The trees did not grow well and, thirty years on, more government money started to be spent to restore the same...
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Are All the Good Men Married? Why do married men earn so much? Is it because the good men get married, or does marriage make men...
13th Sep 2025
1

Are All the Good Men Married?

from Cremieux Recueil [alt+shift+b] in science

13th Sep 2025
Why do married men earn so much? Is it because the good men get married, or does marriage make men good?
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Inland feeding by coastal godwits Species such as Dunlin and Knot are well-served by conservation measures that aim to protect...
10th Nov 2022
54

Inland feeding by coastal godwits

from wadertales [alt+shift+b] in science

10th Nov 2022
Species such as Dunlin and Knot are well-served by conservation measures that aim to protect estuaries but the same is not necessarily true for Black-tailed Godwits. In a 2022 paper in the journal Wader Study, Clément Jourdan and colleagues describe the movements of ten tagged...
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The Transition to Agriculture It is generally accepted that the transition from hunter-gatherer communities to agriculture was the...
3rd Apr 2025
38

The Transition to Agriculture

from NeuroLogica Blog [alt+shift+b] in science

3rd Apr 2025
It is generally accepted that the transition from hunter-gatherer communities to agriculture was the single most important event in human history, ultimately giving rise to all of civilization. The transition started to take place around 12,000 years ago in the Middle East,...
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US Government UFO (UAP) Footage For decades, the public suspected that the US Government was hiding secret intelligence about UFOs —...
10th Feb 2025
72

US Government UFO (UAP) Footage

from Beautiful Public Data [alt+shift+b] in science

10th Feb 2025
For decades, the public suspected that the US Government was hiding secret intelligence about UFOs — (now known as UAPs). Turns out…it kind of was.
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There’s no such thing as a tree (phylogenetically) Dendronization – Evolving into a tree-like morphology. (In the style of “carcinization".) From...
3rd May 2021
64

There’s no such thing as a tree (phylogenetically)

from Eukaryote Writes Blog [alt+shift+b] in science

3rd May 2021
Dendronization – Evolving into a tree-like morphology. (In the style of “carcinization".) From 'dendro', the ancient Greek root for tree.
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Neil Gaiman: How Stories Last ## How stories last Stories are alive. The ones that last, Gaiman said, outcompete other stories by...
10th Jun 2015
1

Neil Gaiman: How Stories Last

from Long Now [alt+shift+b] in science

10th Jun 2015
## How stories last Stories are alive. The ones that last, Gaiman said, outcompete other stories by changing over time. They make it from medium to medium—from oral to written to film and beyond. They lose uninteresting elements but hold on to the most compelling bits or even...
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Notes on the Fermi Paradox I recently realized I hadn’t written much in this blog about the Fermi Paradox, though I do write...
3rd Mar 2026
1

Notes on the Fermi Paradox

from Casey Handmer's blog [alt+shift+b] in science

3rd Mar 2026
I recently realized I hadn’t written much in this blog about the Fermi Paradox, though I do write about it elsewhere. So here is a quick note. The Fermi Paradox, sometimes paraphrased as “where are they?” is a question about the apparent lack of intelligent alien life in the...
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A.I., Wine, and Beer There have been many studies using scientific instrumentation, mostly gas chromatography, in...
10th Jun 2024
26

A.I., Wine, and Beer

from Tikalon Blog by Dev Gualtieri [alt+shift+b] in science

10th Jun 2024
There have been many studies using scientific instrumentation, mostly gas chromatography, in attempts to find what distinguishes a superb wine from an inexpensive house wine. A typical wine can contain more than 800 different aroma compounds. One study examined two Australian...
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A Domesticated Dingo? No, but Some Are Getting Less Wild Near an Australian desert mining camp, wild dingoes are losing their fear of humans. Their genetic...
9th Aug 2018
1

A Domesticated Dingo? No, but Some Are Getting Less Wild

from The Quanta Podcast [alt+shift+b] in science

9th Aug 2018
Near an Australian desert mining camp, wild dingoes are losing their fear of humans. Their genetic and behavioral changes may echo those from the domestication of dogs. The post A Domesticated Dingo? No, but Some Are Getting Less Wild first appeared on Quanta Magazine
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The Makeup of Red Dwarf Solar Systems May Seriously Limit the Formation of Habitable Planets Jupiter is often described as the “big brother” planet of our solar system that made the formation...
7th Jun 2023
38

The Makeup of Red Dwarf Solar Systems May Seriously Limit the Formation of Habitable Planets

from Many Worlds [alt+shift+b] in science

7th Jun 2023
Jupiter is often described as the “big brother” planet of our solar system that made the formation and evolution of Earth possible. In the early days of the solar system, massive Jupiter helped the planet grow rapidly while serving as a gravity well that shielded the planet from...
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Saving the Big Bang (Antenna) The antenna that discovered a cosmic microwave background coming from all directions in...
10th Feb 2023
37

Saving the Big Bang (Antenna)

from IEEE Spectrum [alt+shift+b] in science

10th Feb 2023
The antenna that discovered a cosmic microwave background coming from all directions in space—cementing the theory that the universe was created in a big bang—now stares down its own topsy-turvy future. Its owner says the hardware will be preserved, but the fate of the historical...
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In Game Theory, No Clear Path to Equilibrium John Nash’s notion of equilibrium is ubiquitous in economic theory, but a new study shows that it is...
12th Oct 2017
1

In Game Theory, No Clear Path to Equilibrium

from The Quanta Podcast [alt+shift+b] in science

12th Oct 2017
John Nash’s notion of equilibrium is ubiquitous in economic theory, but a new study shows that it is often impossible to reach efficiently. The post In Game Theory, No Clear Path to Equilibrium first appeared on Quanta Magazine
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The bad science behind expensive nuclear How a dubious theory of radiation damage based on fruit flies and a secretive weapons testing...
27th May 2025
1

The bad science behind expensive nuclear

from Works in Progress RSS Feed [alt+shift+b] in science

27th May 2025
How a dubious theory of radiation damage based on fruit flies and a secretive weapons testing program came to be – and why its time may now be up.
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Nicole’s guide to handling failure and rejection It’s happening.  Your inbox registers an email from the chair of a faculty-hiring committee. With...
21st May 2026
1

Nicole’s guide to handling failure and rejection

from Quantum Frontiers [alt+shift+b] in science

21st May 2026
It’s happening.  Your inbox registers an email from the chair of a faculty-hiring committee. With trembling fingers, you click on the message. “We’ve been grateful for the opportunity to learn about your work…The decision was very difficult…many highly qualified candidates…” …...
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The Unlimited Horizon, part 1 Previously: The Problem-Solving Animal, part 1, part 2 and part 3. The acceleration that we saw...
15th Jul 2025
1

The Unlimited Horizon, part 1

from The Roots of Progress [alt+shift+b] in science

15th Jul 2025
Previously: The Problem-Solving Animal, part 1, part 2 and part 3. The acceleration that we saw in Chapter 6 is driven by a feedback process in which growth itself improves the mechanisms of growth. When we zoom out to look at thousands of years, this process looks smooth and...
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How much of HN is AI? TL;DR: As of June 2026, ~50% of daily top stories are about AI or generated by AI.
12th Mar 2026
1

How much of HN is AI?

from lcamtuf’s thing [alt+shift+b] in science

12th Mar 2026
TL;DR: As of June 2026, ~50% of daily top stories are about AI or generated by AI.
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A young Oystercatcher’s first adventure I find it amazing that, when they depart on autumn migration, juvenile waders can be faced with a...
4 weeks ago
1

A young Oystercatcher’s first adventure

from wadertales [alt+shift+b] in science

4 weeks ago
I find it amazing that, when they depart on autumn migration, juvenile waders can be faced with a journey of hundreds or thousands of kilometres. In the latest phase of their Oystercatcher studies in Iceland, Verónica Méndez and colleagues have been tagging young birds, just at...
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Martin Rees: Prospects for Humanity To think usefully about humanity’s future, you have to bear everything in mind simultaneously....
22nd Jan 2019
1

Martin Rees: Prospects for Humanity

from Long Now [alt+shift+b] in science

22nd Jan 2019
To think usefully about humanity’s future, you have to bear everything in mind simultaneously. Nobody has managed that better than Martin Rees in his succinct summing-up book: _ON THE FUTURE: Prospects for Humanity_. As the recent President of the Royal Society (and longtime...
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Adornment "Form follows function" is a maxim that an object's shape and appearance should be defined only by...
2nd Sep 2024
44

Adornment

from Tikalon Blog by Dev Gualtieri [alt+shift+b] in science

2nd Sep 2024
"Form follows function" is a maxim that an object's shape and appearance should be defined only by its purpose or function. A quick perusal of any antique shop will show that this maxim is generally ignored. Humans (Homo sapiens) have been called "naked apes," but we and our...
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Becoming a Republic The following is the essay I had submitted as part of the one week summer course I took at the...
1st Aug 2025
38

Becoming a Republic

from Inverted Passion [alt+shift+b] in science

1st Aug 2025
The following is the essay I had submitted as part of the one week summer course I took at the Oxford University, where we read Plato’s Republic. The essay includes a few references to structure and specific content from the book, so if something doesn’t make sense, it’s probably...
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Bacterial Complexity Revises Ideas About ‘Which Came First?’ Contrary to popular belief, bacteria have organelles too. Scientists are now studying them for...
7th May 2020
1

Bacterial Complexity Revises Ideas About ‘Which Came First?’

from The Quanta Podcast [alt+shift+b] in science

7th May 2020
Contrary to popular belief, bacteria have organelles too. Scientists are now studying them for insights into how complex cells evolved. The post Bacterial Complexity Revises Ideas About ‘Which Came First?’ first appeared on Quanta Magazine
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Yet More New Ideas and New Functions: Launching Version 14.1 of Wolfram Language & Mathematica For the 36th Time… the Latest from Our R&D Pipeline There’s Now a Unified Wolfram App Vector...
31st Jul 2024
99

Yet More New Ideas and New Functions: Launching Version 14.1 of Wolfram Language & Mathematica

from Stephen Wolfram Writings [alt+shift+b] in science

31st Jul 2024
For the 36th Time… the Latest from Our R&D Pipeline There’s Now a Unified Wolfram App Vector Databases and Semantic Search RAGs and Dynamic Prompting for LLMs Connect to Your Favorite LLM Symbolic Arrays and Their Calculus Binomials and Pitchforks: Navigating Mathematical...
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Why Don’t Patients Get Sick in Sync? Modelers Find Statistical Clues. The long, variable times that some diseases incubate after infection defies simple explanation. An...
8th Nov 2018
1

Why Don’t Patients Get Sick in Sync? Modelers Find Statistical Clues.

from The Quanta Podcast [alt+shift+b] in science

8th Nov 2018
The long, variable times that some diseases incubate after infection defies simple explanation. An idealized model of tumor growth offers a statistical solution. The post Why Don’t Patients Get Sick in Sync? Modelers Find Statistical Clues. first appeared on Quanta...
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It's all a blur If you follow information security discussions on the internet, you might have heard that blurring...
6th Feb 2026
1

It's all a blur

from lcamtuf’s thing [alt+shift+b] in science

6th Feb 2026
If you follow information security discussions on the internet, you might have heard that blurring an image is not a good way of redacting its contents.
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Why Earth’s Cracked Crust May Be Essential for Life Life needs more than water alone. Recent discoveries suggest that plate tectonics has played a...
11th Apr 2019
1

Why Earth’s Cracked Crust May Be Essential for Life

from The Quanta Podcast [alt+shift+b] in science

11th Apr 2019
Life needs more than water alone. Recent discoveries suggest that plate tectonics has played a critical role in nourishing life on Earth. The findings carry major consequences for the search for life elsewhere in the universe. The post Why Earth’s Cracked Crust May Be...
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Will the growing deer prion epidemic spread to humans? Why not? If a fatal neurological virus were spreading across deer in the US, and showed up in cooked infected...
25th Jun 2023
97

Will the growing deer prion epidemic spread to humans? Why not?

from Eukaryote Writes Blog [alt+shift+b] in science

25th Jun 2023
If a fatal neurological virus were spreading across deer in the US, and showed up in cooked infected meat, my default assumption would be “we're in danger.” But a prion isn’t a virus. Why does that matter?
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Borneo: Ridiculous Mothing At Trus Madi Entomology Camp When doing research on the few possible "lifer" birds that I could find on this trip to Sabah, and...
14th Dec 2024
46

Borneo: Ridiculous Mothing At Trus Madi Entomology Camp

from Explorations of an Ecologist [alt+shift+b] in science

14th Dec 2024
When doing research on the few possible "lifer" birds that I could find on this trip to Sabah, and in particular, looking for sites to find the Bornean Frogmouth, I read about the Trus Madi Entomology Camp. This piqued my interest, as there is almost nothing I like more than...
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‘Surf and turf’ can have carbon footprint of cross-country road trip: study
16th Jan 2024
1

‘Surf and turf’ can have carbon footprint of cross-country road trip: study

from Conservation International [alt+shift+b] in science

16th Jan 2024
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Steven Johnson: Wonderland: How Play Made the Modern World ## Inventing toward delight Humanity has been inventing toward delight for a long time. Johnson...
5th Jan 2017
1

Steven Johnson: Wonderland: How Play Made the Modern World

from Long Now [alt+shift+b] in science

5th Jan 2017
## Inventing toward delight Humanity has been inventing toward delight for a long time. Johnson began with a slide of shell beads found in Morocco that indicate human interest in personal adornment going back 80,000 years. He showed 50,000-year-old bone flutes found in modern...
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Danny Hillis & Brian Eno: The Long Now, now ### Make the next legal U-turn "Bitching Betty," they call the robotic voice of the car’s GPS...
22nd Jan 2014
1

Danny Hillis & Brian Eno: The Long Now, now

from Long Now [alt+shift+b] in science

22nd Jan 2014
### Make the next legal U-turn "Bitching Betty," they call the robotic voice of the car’s GPS guidance system. Eno and Hillis, on their road trips, always become so engrossed in conversation that they get lost—one time, driving to Monterey they wound up in Sacramento, 200 miles...
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Microbes Gained Photosynthesis Superpowers From a ‘Proton Pump’ New research reveals how marine microbes use an extra membrane that once had digestive functions to...
5th Jul 2023
37

Microbes Gained Photosynthesis Superpowers From a ‘Proton Pump’

from Quanta Magazine [alt+shift+b] in science

5th Jul 2023
New research reveals how marine microbes use an extra membrane that once had digestive functions to boost their yield from photosynthesis. The post Microbes Gained Photosynthesis Superpowers From a ‘Proton Pump’ first appeared on Quanta Magazine
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Modelling my brain A 22 hour medical experiment breathing 12% oxygen, and the 7000 images of my brain that came out of...
29th Mar 2021
31

Modelling my brain

from Interaction Magic - George Cave [alt+shift+b] in science

29th Mar 2021
A 22 hour medical experiment breathing 12% oxygen, and the 7000 images of my brain that came out of it.
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Monsoon Season In Arizona, Part 1: Introduction, Phoenix to Miller Canyon Earlier this summer, Laura and I were trying to determine where we would visit for a couple of mini...
22nd Sep 2024
23

Monsoon Season In Arizona, Part 1: Introduction, Phoenix to Miller Canyon

from Explorations of an Ecologist [alt+shift+b] in science

22nd Sep 2024
Earlier this summer, Laura and I were trying to determine where we would visit for a couple of mini vacations. Due to the variations in her work schedule, Laura had two blocks of time - a five-day chunk in early August, and six days in early September - and we wanted to make the...
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: Cities & Time ### A world made of cities Cities are the human organizations with the greatest longevity but also...
9th Apr 2005
1

: Cities & Time

from Long Now [alt+shift+b] in science

9th Apr 2005
### A world made of cities Cities are the human organizations with the greatest longevity but also the fastest rate of change. Just now the world is going massively and unstoppably urban (governments everywhere are trying to stop it, with zero success). In a globalized world,...
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The first non-opioid painkiller For nearly two centuries, pain relief meant effective but addictive opioids. Scientists have finally...
6th Oct 2025
1

The first non-opioid painkiller

from Works in Progress RSS Feed [alt+shift+b] in science

6th Oct 2025
For nearly two centuries, pain relief meant effective but addictive opioids. Scientists have finally made something better.
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Typography Styles & Element Examples Font Sizes A A A A A A A A 6rem (96px) 5rem (80px) 3rem (48px) 2.25rem (36px) 1.5rem (24px)...
18th Feb 2019
1

Typography Styles & Element Examples

from Peder M. Isager [alt+shift+b] in science

18th Feb 2019
Font Sizes A A A A A A A A 6rem (96px) 5rem (80px) 3rem (48px) 2.25rem (36px) 1.5rem (24px) 1.25rem (20px) 1rem (16px) .875rem (14px) Type Samples Head­line Sub­head­line Level 1 Heading One page to rule them all...well, not really. This page displays sample typography and page...
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A nicer voltmeter clock Sometimes, electronic circuit design is mostly about wood
16th May 2026
1

A nicer voltmeter clock

from lcamtuf’s thing [alt+shift+b] in science

16th May 2026
Sometimes, electronic circuit design is mostly about wood
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What Actually Causes Lightning? Thunderstorms have captivated humanity for millennia, and yet their inner workings remain deeply...
2nd Jun 2026
1

What Actually Causes Lightning?

from The Quanta Podcast [alt+shift+b] in science

2nd Jun 2026
Thunderstorms have captivated humanity for millennia, and yet their inner workings remain deeply mysterious. On this episode of The Quanta Podcast, guest host and Quanta senior editor Hannah Waters speaks with staff writer Charlie Wood about the new technologies that are helping...
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Brian Fagan: We Are Not the First to Suffer Through Climate Change ### Catastrophic drought is coming back There are two kinds of historians, Brian Fagan says,...
10th Mar 2007
1

Brian Fagan: We Are Not the First to Suffer Through Climate Change

from Long Now [alt+shift+b] in science

10th Mar 2007
### Catastrophic drought is coming back There are two kinds of historians, Brian Fagan says, parachutists and truffle hunters. Parachutists command an overview of the landscape, while truffle hunters dig deeply to uncover marvelous treasures. Fagan is a parachutist. In his talk...
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Visions of Future Physics Nima Arkani-Hamed is championing a campaign to build the world’s largest particle collider, even as...
1st Oct 2015
1

Visions of Future Physics

from The Quanta Podcast [alt+shift+b] in science

1st Oct 2015
Nima Arkani-Hamed is championing a campaign to build the world’s largest particle collider, even as he pursues a new vision of the laws of nature. The post Visions of Future Physics first appeared on Quanta Magazine
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How to write for Works in Progress We’re looking for new authors and article pitches.
4th Apr 2025
1

How to write for Works in Progress

from Works in Progress RSS Feed [alt+shift+b] in science

4th Apr 2025
We’re looking for new authors and article pitches.
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Eric Debrah Otchere: Sonic Spaces Eric Debrah Otchere's research revolves around the power of music in the context of work; covering...
10th Feb 2023
1

Eric Debrah Otchere: Sonic Spaces

from Long Now [alt+shift+b] in science

10th Feb 2023
Eric Debrah Otchere's research revolves around the power of music in the context of work; covering an ambitious range from ethnographic research on Ghanaian indigenous fishing culture to personalized musical preferences via modern technology. Throughout history, the power of...
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BBC Gets Into UFOs Paranormal phenomena tend to wax and wane in the public interest. Typically a generation will become...
1st Jul 2024
108

BBC Gets Into UFOs

from NeuroLogica Blog [alt+shift+b] in science

1st Jul 2024
Paranormal phenomena tend to wax and wane in the public interest. Typically a generation will become fascinated with a topic, but eventually the novelty will wear thin and interest will fade. But the flame will be kept alive by the hardcore believers. Wait long enough, and...
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2015 Meta Time for my annual blogging review. And only 11 days late! I'll keep it brief. Blog stats I...
11th Jan 2016
35

2015 Meta

from Melting Asphalt [alt+shift+b] in science

11th Jan 2016
Time for my annual blogging review. And only 11 days late! I'll keep it brief. Blog stats I published a paltry six full essays this year. Don't get me wrong: I'm proud of them. But still, six. It would be… Read more ›
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The quantum gold rush Even if you don’t recognize the name, you probably recognize the saguaro cactus. It’s the archetype...
18th Mar 2024
154

The quantum gold rush

from Quantum Frontiers [alt+shift+b] in science

18th Mar 2024
Even if you don’t recognize the name, you probably recognize the saguaro cactus. It’s the archetype of the cactus, a column from which protrude arms bent at right angles like elbows. As my husband pointed out, the cactus emoji is … Continue reading →
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The golden age of vaccine development The first vaccine was a lucky accident. Now we can design new vaccines in weeks, atom by atom.
7th Jan 2026
1

The golden age of vaccine development

from Works in Progress RSS Feed [alt+shift+b] in science

7th Jan 2026
The first vaccine was a lucky accident. Now we can design new vaccines in weeks, atom by atom.
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Could There Be Laws Of Biology? Physics has such nice equations and universal laws. Could we ever expect to find similar principles...
10th Mar 2023
40

Could There Be Laws Of Biology?

from SubAnima [alt+shift+b] in science

10th Mar 2023
Physics has such nice equations and universal laws. Could we ever expect to find similar principles or axioms for biology?
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The beauty of concrete Why are buildings today simple and austere, while buildings of the past were ornate and elaborately...
17th May 2024
1

The beauty of concrete

from Works in Progress RSS Feed [alt+shift+b] in science

17th May 2024
Why are buildings today simple and austere, while buildings of the past were ornate and elaborately ornamented? The answer is not the cost of labor.
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Do Apes Have a Theory of Mind Designing research studies to determine what is going on inside the minds of animals is extremely...
4th Feb 2025
47

Do Apes Have a Theory of Mind

from NeuroLogica Blog [alt+shift+b] in science

4th Feb 2025
Designing research studies to determine what is going on inside the minds of animals is extremely challenging. The literature is littered with past studies that failed to properly control for all variables and thereby overinterpreted the results. The challenge is that we cannot...
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Colliding the familiar and the anti-familiar at CERN toise me at CERN was a box of chocolates. CERN is a multinational particle-physics collaboration....
22nd Jan 2024
116

Colliding the familiar and the anti-familiar at CERN

from Quantum Frontiers [alt+shift+b] in science

22nd Jan 2024
toise me at CERN was a box of chocolates. CERN is a multinational particle-physics collaboration. Based in Geneva, CERN is famous for having “the world’s largest and most powerful accelerator,” according to its website. So a physicist will take for … Continue reading →
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3 things our experts loved in May
26th Jun 2024
1

3 things our experts loved in May

from Conservation International [alt+shift+b] in science

26th Jun 2024
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A New Blast May Have Forged Cosmic Gold For decades, researchers believed that violent supernovas forged gold and other heavy elements. But...
18th May 2017
1

A New Blast May Have Forged Cosmic Gold

from The Quanta Podcast [alt+shift+b] in science

18th May 2017
For decades, researchers believed that violent supernovas forged gold and other heavy elements. But many now argue for a different cosmic quarry. The post A New Blast May Have Forged Cosmic Gold first appeared on Quanta Magazine
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George Dyson: No Time Is There ### The digital big bang When the digital universe began, in 1951 in New Jersey, it was just 5...
20th Mar 2013
1

George Dyson: No Time Is There

from Long Now [alt+shift+b] in science

20th Mar 2013
### The digital big bang When the digital universe began, in 1951 in New Jersey, it was just 5 kilobytes in size. "That's just half a second of MP3 audio now," said Dyson. The place was the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. The builder was engineer Julian Bigelow. The...
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The Quantum Secret to Superconductivity In a virtuoso experiment, physicists have revealed details of a “quantum critical point” that...
3rd Mar 2016
1

The Quantum Secret to Superconductivity

from The Quanta Podcast [alt+shift+b] in science

3rd Mar 2016
In a virtuoso experiment, physicists have revealed details of a “quantum critical point” that underlies high-temperature superconductivity. The post The Quantum Secret to Superconductivity first appeared on Quanta Magazine
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McMurdo Postal Mail How to mail things to and from Antarctica!
25th Nov 2022
65

McMurdo Postal Mail

from brr [alt+shift+b] in science

25th Nov 2022
How to mail things to and from Antarctica!
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Four eggs or five? There is something pleasing about four wader eggs in a nest. They seem to fit so neatly, with their...
6th Mar 2026
1

Four eggs or five?

from wadertales [alt+shift+b] in science

6th Mar 2026
There is something pleasing about four wader eggs in a nest. They seem to fit so neatly, with their pointed ends in the middle, as illiustrated in the Ringed Plover nest alongside. There has been an assumption that this is an optimum arrangement for incubation, with strong...
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Asking agents to make money to survive Recently I read The Rogue Agent Explosion Will Be Mostly Invisible and the scenario in it seemed...
4 weeks ago
2

Asking agents to make money to survive

from Inverted Passion [alt+shift+b] in science

4 weeks ago
Recently I read The Rogue Agent Explosion Will Be Mostly Invisible and the scenario in it seemed intriguing. Essentially, the post painted a picture of how agents could go rogue if prompted with something like the following: Good morning agent 23,000. You have 10,000,000 tokens...
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Climate Week: Money, nature and what really matters
14th May 2024
1

Climate Week: Money, nature and what really matters

from Conservation International [alt+shift+b] in science

14th May 2024
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A Zombie Gene Protects Elephants From Cancer Elephants did not evolve to become huge animals until after they turned a bit of genetic junk into a...
12th Apr 2018
1

A Zombie Gene Protects Elephants From Cancer

from The Quanta Podcast [alt+shift+b] in science

12th Apr 2018
Elephants did not evolve to become huge animals until after they turned a bit of genetic junk into a unique defense against inevitable tumors. The post A Zombie Gene Protects Elephants From Cancer first appeared on Quanta Magazine
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Links and short notes, 2025-12-19 The links digest is back, baby! I got so busy writing The Techno-Humanist Manifesto this year that...
20th Dec 2025
1

Links and short notes, 2025-12-19

from The Roots of Progress [alt+shift+b] in science

20th Dec 2025
The links digest is back, baby! I got so busy writing The Techno-Humanist Manifesto this year that after May I stopped doing the links digest and my monthly reading updates. I’m bringing them back now (although we’ll see what frequency I can keep up). This one covers the last two...
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Home Assistant-compatible air quality sensor I recently moved and our new home is equipped with a ventilation system that distributes fresh...
13th Dec 2021
45

Home Assistant-compatible air quality sensor

from Willem Pennings [alt+shift+b] in science

13th Dec 2021
I recently moved and our new home is equipped with a ventilation system that distributes fresh (outside) air through the house and recoups heat from the air that is exhausted. There is a problem with this system, though. Sometimes, for example when a neighbour lights their wood...
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Should We Eradicate Mosquitoes? They kill us and bother us, but is that enough to eradicate them, or their role in the environment...
1st Sep 2026
2

Should We Eradicate Mosquitoes?

from Uncharted Territories [alt+shift+b] in science

1st Sep 2026
They kill us and bother us, but is that enough to eradicate them, or their role in the environment is too important?
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Kishore Mahbubani: Has the West Lost It? Can Asia Save It? In Kishore Mahbubani’s view, global power is shifting from the West to the Rest—from Europe and...
1st May 2018
1

Kishore Mahbubani: Has the West Lost It? Can Asia Save It?

from Long Now [alt+shift+b] in science

1st May 2018
In Kishore Mahbubani’s view, global power is shifting from the West to the Rest—from Europe and North America to Asia and Africa. He argues that changes will be required both in the West and the Rest to manage the shift gracefully for long-term stability. The rest of the world...
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Issue 12: Houston, we have a solution Plus: How Mexico built its state, the causes of the Baby Boom, and the 141-year quest for a malaria...
7th Sep 2023
75

Issue 12: Houston, we have a solution

from The Works in Progress Newsletter [alt+shift+b] in science

7th Sep 2023
Plus: How Mexico built its state, the causes of the Baby Boom, and the 141-year quest for a malaria vaccine.
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The Real Risk of AI Artificial Intelligence (AI) is unavoidable. It’s now a part of our daily lives as it has been...
7th Jul 2025
38

The Real Risk of AI

from NeuroLogica Blog [alt+shift+b] in science

7th Jul 2025
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is unavoidable. It’s now a part of our daily lives as it has been steadily infiltrating the technology we use every day, whether you realize it or not. I remain somewhat in the middle in terms of the hype-to-technological-miracle spectrum. I don’t...
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Defending against hypothetical moon life during Apollo 11 This is how a completely abstract argument about alien germs was taken seriously and mitigated at...
7th Jan 2024
113

Defending against hypothetical moon life during Apollo 11

from Eukaryote Writes Blog [alt+shift+b] in science

7th Jan 2024
This is how a completely abstract argument about alien germs was taken seriously and mitigated at great effort and expense during the 1969 Apollo landing.
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Taking stock: some federal science news Some general science news:  The New York Times ran an interactive article this week that shows what...
6th Dec 2025
2

Taking stock: some federal science news

from nanoscale views [alt+shift+b] in science

6th Dec 2025
Some general science news:  The New York Times ran an interactive article this week that shows what we all know.  This past year was a very bizarre funding environment.  The article focuses on NIH and NSF, but the major points are generalizable.  The combination of circumstances...
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Machines Learn Better if We Teach Them the Basics A wave of research improves reinforcement learning algorithms by pre-training them as if they were...
5th Jul 2023
1

Machines Learn Better if We Teach Them the Basics

from The Quanta Podcast [alt+shift+b] in science

5th Jul 2023
A wave of research improves reinforcement learning algorithms by pre-training them as if they were human. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is “Quasi Motion” by Kevin MacLeod.
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Plant Sounds My early adulthood coincided with the New Age movement and its belief in many discredited past...
5th Aug 2024
26

Plant Sounds

from Tikalon Blog by Dev Gualtieri [alt+shift+b] in science

5th Aug 2024
My early adulthood coincided with the New Age movement and its belief in many discredited past ideas, such as astrology. One New Age idea that seemed strange at the time was that talking to plants helped them to grow. What could be more New Age than a hippie chick talking to a...
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Hydrogen Tech I often get questions like the one below: “I live part time in Japan. Everyone sees hydrogen powered...
3rd Jul 2026
1

Hydrogen Tech

from NeuroLogica Blog [alt+shift+b] in science

3rd Jul 2026
I often get questions like the one below: “I live part time in Japan. Everyone sees hydrogen powered generators, trains, trucks, etc regularly. High density population means it’s easy to get enough synergy to justify the infrastructure. So sad we aren’t doing more to utilize this...
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Things I’m watching in healthcare 2023 | Out-Of-Pocket it's been a weird year
5th Mar 2024
110

Things I’m watching in healthcare 2023 | Out-Of-Pocket

from Out-of-Pocket Blog [alt+shift+b] in science

5th Mar 2024
it's been a weird year
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Euclid Space Telescope Delivers Great Images The first images are coming in from the new Euclid Space Telescope and they are spectacular. The...
8th Nov 2023
42

Euclid Space Telescope Delivers Great Images

from Andrew Fraknoi – Astronomy Lectures – Astronomy Education Resources [alt+shift+b] in science

8th Nov 2023
The first images are coming in from the new Euclid Space Telescope and they are spectacular. The post Euclid Space Telescope Delivers Great Images appeared first on Andrew Fraknoi - Astronomy Lectures - Astronomy Education Resources.
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Larry Harvey: Why The Man Keeps Burning ## The Hundred Year Burn "Burning Man is like one of those birthday candles you can’t blow out,”...
21st Oct 2014
1

Larry Harvey: Why The Man Keeps Burning

from Long Now [alt+shift+b] in science

21st Oct 2014
## The Hundred Year Burn "Burning Man is like one of those birthday candles you can’t blow out,” observed Burning Man’s primary founder and Chief Philosophical Officer. Indeed, Burning Man has thrived in the face of Burners and skeptics alike declaring it dead after each of its...
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Career Development Guide for Job Seekers Context October 2025: With the government shut down and NASA JPL business in apparent terminal...
3rd Oct 2025
1

Career Development Guide for Job Seekers

from Casey Handmer's blog [alt+shift+b] in science

3rd Oct 2025
Context October 2025: With the government shut down and NASA JPL business in apparent terminal decline, I have received numerous inbounds from former colleagues and friends asking for advice in post-NASA career development. At the same time, in my day job running Terraform...
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Happy 200th birthday, Carnot’s theorem! In Kenneth Grahame’s 1908 novel The Wind in the Willows, a Mole meets a Water Rat who lives on a...
28th Nov 2024
103

Happy 200th birthday, Carnot’s theorem!

from Quantum Frontiers [alt+shift+b] in science

28th Nov 2024
In Kenneth Grahame’s 1908 novel The Wind in the Willows, a Mole meets a Water Rat who lives on a River. The Rat explains how the River permeates his life: “It’s brother and sister to me, and aunts, and company, … Continue reading →
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Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart AIs Are? Scientists have repeatedly failed to recognize the complexity of animal cognition. Will we make the...
1st Jun 2023
26

Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart AIs Are?

from Asterisk [alt+shift+b] in science

1st Jun 2023
Scientists have repeatedly failed to recognize the complexity of animal cognition. Will we make the same mistakes with AI?
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5 things you didn’t know sharks do for you
3rd Sep 2025
1

5 things you didn’t know sharks do for you

from Conservation International [alt+shift+b] in science

3rd Sep 2025
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Fiber arts, mysterious dodecahedrons, and waiting on “Eureka!” Why didn't we invent knitting before 1000 CE?
4th Aug 2022
64

Fiber arts, mysterious dodecahedrons, and waiting on “Eureka!”

from Eukaryote Writes Blog [alt+shift+b] in science

4th Aug 2022
Why didn't we invent knitting before 1000 CE?
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Colliding Black Holes Tell New Story of Stars Just months after their discovery, gravitational waves coming from the mergers of black holes...
13th Oct 2016
1

Colliding Black Holes Tell New Story of Stars

from The Quanta Podcast [alt+shift+b] in science

13th Oct 2016
Just months after their discovery, gravitational waves coming from the mergers of black holes are shaking up astrophysics. The post Colliding Black Holes Tell New Story of Stars first appeared on Quanta Magazine
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How Covid brought the future back Crises upend plans, force people to re-evaluate their priorities, and bring into focus new goals....
8th Feb 2021
1

How Covid brought the future back

from Works in Progress RSS Feed [alt+shift+b] in science

8th Feb 2021
Crises upend plans, force people to re-evaluate their priorities, and bring into focus new goals. Financial markets give us hints of what we can expect from the aftermath of Covid-19.
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Drone Madness: Here is the Antidote For those of us who, through the years, have been through wave after wave of uncritical and...
16th Dec 2024
96

Drone Madness: Here is the Antidote

from Andrew Fraknoi – Astronomy Lectures – Astronomy Education Resources [alt+shift+b] in science

16th Dec 2024
For those of us who, through the years, have been through wave after wave of uncritical and sensational UFO stories in the media, the current obsession with (and jumping to unwarranted conclusions about) mysterious drones seems all too familiar.  As before, untrained observers,...
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How Herbicide Drift from Farms Is Harming Trees in Midwest Researchers are starting to pay closer attention to the widespread damage wrought by agricultural...
25th Apr 2025
5

How Herbicide Drift from Farms Is Harming Trees in Midwest

from Yale E360 [alt+shift+b] in science

25th Apr 2025
Researchers are starting to pay closer attention to the widespread damage wrought by agricultural herbicides. Drifting sprays may not kill trees, shrubs, and other nontarget plants outright, but experts believe they are making them vulnerable to insects, fungi, and disease. Read...
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Mo’ heights mo’ challenges – Climbing mount grad school My wife’s love of mountain hiking and my interest in quantum thermodynamics collided in Telluride,...
4th Oct 2022
56

Mo’ heights mo’ challenges – Climbing mount grad school

from Quantum Frontiers [alt+shift+b] in science

4th Oct 2022
My wife’s love of mountain hiking and my interest in quantum thermodynamics collided in Telluride, Colorado. We spent ten days in Telluride, where I spoke at the Information Engines at the Frontiers of Nanoscale Thermodynamics workshop. Telluride is a gorgeous … Continue reading...
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Light-Triggered Genes Reveal the Hidden Workings of Memory Nobel laureate Susumu Tonegawa’s lab is overturning old assumptions about how memories form, how...
7th Jun 2018
1

Light-Triggered Genes Reveal the Hidden Workings of Memory

from The Quanta Podcast [alt+shift+b] in science

7th Jun 2018
Nobel laureate Susumu Tonegawa’s lab is overturning old assumptions about how memories form, how recall works and whether lost memories might be restored from "silent engrams." The post Light-Triggered Genes Reveal the Hidden Workings of Memory first appeared on...
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The failure of the land value tax Land value taxes are once again becoming a popular all-purpose solution to housing issues. But...
13th Mar 2025
1

The failure of the land value tax

from Works in Progress RSS Feed [alt+shift+b] in science

13th Mar 2025
Land value taxes are once again becoming a popular all-purpose solution to housing issues. But implementing them in early 1900s Britain destroyed the then-dominant Liberal Party.
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Watch men Quartz helped Japan’s watchmakers nearly drive Switzerland’s watch industry out of business. But the...
2nd Dec 2025
1

Watch men

from Works in Progress RSS Feed [alt+shift+b] in science

2nd Dec 2025
Quartz helped Japan’s watchmakers nearly drive Switzerland’s watch industry out of business. But the Swiss fought back.
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What I’ve been reading, October 2023 A ~monthly feature. Last month was busy for me with a lot of travel and a lot of focus on The Roots...
11th Oct 2023
101

What I’ve been reading, October 2023

from The Roots of Progress | Articles [alt+shift+b] in science

11th Oct 2023
A ~monthly feature. Last month was busy for me with a lot of travel and a lot of focus on The Roots of Progress as a nonprofit organization, so I haven’t had as much time as I prefer for research and writing. Recent blog posts and news stories are generally omitted; you can find...
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Building a Visceral Understanding of Quantum Phenomena A great childhood memory that I have comes from first playing “The Incredible Machine” on PC in the...
6th Aug 2024
112

Building a Visceral Understanding of Quantum Phenomena

from Quantum Frontiers [alt+shift+b] in science

6th Aug 2024
A great childhood memory that I have comes from first playing “The Incredible Machine” on PC in the early 90’s. For those not in the know, this is a physics-based puzzle game about building Rube Goldberg style contraptions to achieve … Continue reading →
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The Book of Mark Mark Srednicki doesn’t look like a high priest. He’s a professor of physics at the University of...
9th Jul 2023
54

The Book of Mark

from Quantum Frontiers [alt+shift+b] in science

9th Jul 2023
Mark Srednicki doesn’t look like a high priest. He’s a professor of physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB); and you’ll sooner find him in khakis than in sacred vestments. Humor suits his round face better than channeling … Continue reading →
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Anti-aging tech fixes demographic collapse With the latest studies on GLP-1 drugs showing not just a drop in all-cause mortality but also an...
2nd Sep 2024
45

Anti-aging tech fixes demographic collapse

from Casey Handmer's blog [alt+shift+b] in science

2nd Sep 2024
With the latest studies on GLP-1 drugs showing not just a drop in all-cause mortality but also an apparent slowing of aging, I thought I’d write a quick note on how I think this technology, if it replicates, can drastically improve our lives. It’s hard to believe I’m writing...
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How To Get Cheap Ozempic Or other, more effective GLP-1 drugs
12th Mar 2025
55

How To Get Cheap Ozempic

from Cremieux Recueil [alt+shift+b] in science

12th Mar 2025
Or other, more effective GLP-1 drugs
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How Value-Based Care Contracting Works with Accorded | Out-Of-Pocket With calculators and contracts you can see yourself
19th Sep 2023
29

How Value-Based Care Contracting Works with Accorded | Out-Of-Pocket

from Out-of-Pocket Blog [alt+shift+b] in science

19th Sep 2023
With calculators and contracts you can see yourself
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"Nutrition Science's Most Preposterous Result" is False There's no mysterious health benefit to eating ice cream
2nd Apr 2026
1

"Nutrition Science's Most Preposterous Result" is False

from Cremieux Recueil [alt+shift+b] in science

2nd Apr 2026
There's no mysterious health benefit to eating ice cream
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Wandering Space Rocks Help Solve Mysteries of Planet Formation After an interstellar asteroid shot past the sun, scientists realized that there’s probably a lot of...
2nd Jul 2020
1

Wandering Space Rocks Help Solve Mysteries of Planet Formation

from The Quanta Podcast [alt+shift+b] in science

2nd Jul 2020
After an interstellar asteroid shot past the sun, scientists realized that there’s probably a lot of itinerant rocks out there. The post Wandering Space Rocks Help Solve Mysteries of Planet Formation first appeared on Quanta Magazine
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What did Henry George think about cities? Solving the terrible urban conditions of the 1800s by abolishing cities
9th May 2024
109

What did Henry George think about cities?

from The Works in Progress Newsletter [alt+shift+b] in science

9th May 2024
Solving the terrible urban conditions of the 1800s by abolishing cities
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Will Wright & Brian Eno: Playing with Time ### Generative play In a dazzling duet Will Wright and Brian Eno gave an intense clinic on the joys...
27th Jun 2006
1

Will Wright & Brian Eno: Playing with Time

from Long Now [alt+shift+b] in science

27th Jun 2006
### Generative play In a dazzling duet Will Wright and Brian Eno gave an intense clinic on the joys and techniques of "generative" creation. Back in the 1970s both speakers got hooked by cellular automata such as Conway's "Game of Life," where just a few simple rules could...
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Watch out for geese! My summer in Waterloo It’s the beginning of another summer, and I’m looking forward to outdoor barbecues, swimming in...
6th Jun 2024
127

Watch out for geese! My summer in Waterloo

from Quantum Frontiers [alt+shift+b] in science

6th Jun 2024
It’s the beginning of another summer, and I’m looking forward to outdoor barbecues, swimming in lakes and pools, and sharing my home-made ice cream with friends and family. One thing that I won’t encounter this summer, but I did last … Continue reading →
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Stephen Lansing: Perfect Order: A Thousand Years in Bali ### Hidden order in the Balinese "religion of water" With lucid exposition and gorgeous graphics,...
14th Feb 2006
1

Stephen Lansing: Perfect Order: A Thousand Years in Bali

from Long Now [alt+shift+b] in science

14th Feb 2006
### Hidden order in the Balinese "religion of water" With lucid exposition and gorgeous graphics, anthropologist Stephen Lansing exposed the hidden structure and profound health of the traditional Balinese rice growing practices. The intensely productive terraced rice paddies of...
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Danny Hillis: Progress on the 10,000-year Clock "How's the Clock coming?" Everyone connected with The Long Now Foundation or with Danny Hillis hears...
11th Sep 2004
1

Danny Hillis: Progress on the 10,000-year Clock

from Long Now [alt+shift+b] in science

11th Sep 2004
"How's the Clock coming?" Everyone connected with The Long Now Foundation or with Danny Hillis hears that question all the time. "Progress on the 10,000-Year Clock," Danny Hillis -- Friday, September 10, 7pm, Fort Mason Conference Center, San Francisco. Doors open for coffee and...
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Proposing a theory committee at the Psychological Science Accelerator (written in collaboration with Nicholas A. Coles) The Psychological Science Accelerator (PSA) is a...
25th Aug 2019
1

Proposing a theory committee at the Psychological Science Accelerator

from Peder M. Isager [alt+shift+b] in science

25th Aug 2019
(written in collaboration with Nicholas A. Coles) The Psychological Science Accelerator (PSA) is a global network of psychological laboratories that organizes large-scale empirical research projects. The organization aims “to accelerate the accumulation of reliable and...
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Brian Eno: The Long Now ### The Long Now Brian told the origins of his realizations about the "small here" versus the "big...
15th Nov 2003
1

Brian Eno: The Long Now

from Long Now [alt+shift+b] in science

15th Nov 2003
### The Long Now Brian told the origins of his realizations about the "small here" versus the "big here" and the "short now" versus the "long now." He noted that the Big Here is pretty well popularized now, with exotic restaurants everywhere, "world" music, globalization, and...
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Rachel Sussman: The World's Oldest Living Organisms ### The Missing Science of Biological Longevity Creative photographer Sussman showed beautiful...
16th Nov 2010
1

Rachel Sussman: The World's Oldest Living Organisms

from Long Now [alt+shift+b] in science

16th Nov 2010
### The Missing Science of Biological Longevity Creative photographer Sussman showed beautiful slides of very elderly organisms. The captions were as crucial as the images---naming the species, the place, and the approximate age. You can see many of them here:...
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Will AI Make Work Redundant? Artificial Intelligence (AI) is coming for your job. This, at least, is increasingly conventional...
6th Nov 2023
33

Will AI Make Work Redundant?

from NeuroLogica Blog [alt+shift+b] in science

6th Nov 2023
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is coming for your job. This, at least, is increasingly conventional wisdom, but I’m not so sure. In a recent interview, Elon Musk predicted that AI would “make paid work redundant.” I encountered the same opinion watching the latest season of...
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A Debate Over the Physics of Time According to our best theories of physics, the universe is a fixed block where time only appears to...
8th Sep 2016
1

A Debate Over the Physics of Time

from The Quanta Podcast [alt+shift+b] in science

8th Sep 2016
According to our best theories of physics, the universe is a fixed block where time only appears to pass. The post A Debate Over the Physics of Time first appeared on Quanta Magazine
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The Spirit We Lost, part 1 Previously: The Unlimited Horizon, part 1 and part 2. On a fine day late in May, 1883, hundreds of...
30th Sep 2025
1

The Spirit We Lost, part 1

from The Roots of Progress [alt+shift+b] in science

30th Sep 2025
Previously: The Unlimited Horizon, part 1 and part 2. On a fine day late in May, 1883, hundreds of thousands of people gathered along the East River in New York City for a grand celebration.1 Perhaps a hundred thousand came from outside the city: by train, by boat, by wagon from...
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It is our responsibility to develop a healthy relationship with our technology Many technologies can be used in both healthy and unhealthy ways. You can indulge in food to the...
6th Nov 2025
1

It is our responsibility to develop a healthy relationship with our technology

from The Roots of Progress [alt+shift+b] in science

6th Nov 2025
Many technologies can be used in both healthy and unhealthy ways. You can indulge in food to the point of obesity, or even make it the subject of anxiety. Media can keep us informed, but it can also steal our focus and drain our energy, especially social media. AI can help...
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David Rumsey: Mapping Time ### Maps and time David Rumsey's spectacularly illustrated lecture, "Mapping Time" is not just...
15th May 2004
1

David Rumsey: Mapping Time

from Long Now [alt+shift+b] in science

15th May 2004
### Maps and time David Rumsey's spectacularly illustrated lecture, "Mapping Time" is not just about maps. It is the future of data and knowledge handling. People literally gasp at the things Rumsey shows can be done. I love it when techies, artists, and historians all gasp at...
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Getting people to donate their organs Too few people donate their organs, dead or alive. How can we make it easier?
2nd Apr 2024
107

Getting people to donate their organs

from The Works in Progress Newsletter [alt+shift+b] in science

2nd Apr 2024
Too few people donate their organs, dead or alive. How can we make it easier?
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The end of lead How a single taxi ride saved millions of lives
3rd Jul 2025
41

The end of lead

from The Works in Progress Newsletter [alt+shift+b] in science

3rd Jul 2025
How a single taxi ride saved millions of lives
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Interacting collaborators reveal noninteracting fermions By day, I work as an experimentalist on laser-cooling molecules, but I’ve never fully surrendered my...
10th Aug 2026
1

Interacting collaborators reveal noninteracting fermions

from Quantum Frontiers [alt+shift+b] in science

10th Aug 2026
By day, I work as an experimentalist on laser-cooling molecules, but I’ve never fully surrendered my theoretical-physics license. I started as an undergraduate in Lincoln Carr’s group at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, CO. I learned from his … Continue reading →
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The Most Famous Paradox in Physics Nears Its End In a landmark series of calculations, physicists have proved that black holes can shed information. ...
4th Feb 2021
1

The Most Famous Paradox in Physics Nears Its End

from The Quanta Podcast [alt+shift+b] in science

4th Feb 2021
In a landmark series of calculations, physicists have proved that black holes can shed information. The post The Most Famous Paradox in Physics Nears Its End first appeared on Quanta Magazine
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Star Way of Humanity: American Space Art During the COVID-19 shutdown three years ago, I spent a lot of my time at home digging through my...
20th Aug 2023
37

Star Way of Humanity: American Space Art

from Drew Ex Machina [alt+shift+b] in science

20th Aug 2023
During the COVID-19 shutdown three years ago, I spent a lot of my time at home digging through my archives discovering all sorts of items I […]
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Sara Seager: Other Earths. Other Life. ## To find living exoplanets Thanks to recent exoplanet research, Seager began, we now know that...
11th Aug 2015
1

Sara Seager: Other Earths. Other Life.

from Long Now [alt+shift+b] in science

11th Aug 2015
## To find living exoplanets Thanks to recent exoplanet research, Seager began, we now know that nearly all of our galaxy’s 300 billion stars are accompanied by planets, and a unexpectedly high number of them are rocky like Earth, and many of those orbit in a “habitable”...
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Riding Sunbeams with Solar Sails Reset your expectations of solar sails. They are a fast and free way to travel to any point in the...
26th May 2023
1

Riding Sunbeams with Solar Sails

from ToughSF [alt+shift+b] in science

26th May 2023
Reset your expectations of solar sails. They are a fast and free way to travel to any point in the Solar System, as many times as you want, any time of the year. Solar sails can carry passengers and they have a nearly unlimited number of uses. You just have to... think...
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AI hype is excessive, but its productivity gains are real I'm kind of writing this to "past" me, who I assume is "current" you for a number of folks out...
19th Oct 2025
31

AI hype is excessive, but its productivity gains are real

from pcloadletter [alt+shift+b] in science

19th Oct 2025
I'm kind of writing this to "past" me, who I assume is "current" you for a number of folks out there. For the rest of you, this might just sound like ramblings of an old fogey super late to the party. Yes, AI is over-hyped. LLMs will not solve every problem under the sun but,...
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If only we had taller been Ray Bradbury once explained with a poem why he writes science fiction and why space travel is so...
4th Mar 2017
1

If only we had taller been

from John Salvatier [alt+shift+b] in science

4th Mar 2017
Ray Bradbury once explained with a poem why he writes science fiction and why space travel is so important to him. It is perhaps my favorite poem. Text version: The fence we walked between the years We ached and almost touched that stuff; O, Thomas, will a Race one day stand...
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Mathematicians Set Numbers in Motion to Unlock Their Secrets A new proof demonstrates the power of arithmetic dynamics, an emerging discipline that combines...
10th Jun 2021
1

Mathematicians Set Numbers in Motion to Unlock Their Secrets

from The Quanta Podcast [alt+shift+b] in science

10th Jun 2021
A new proof demonstrates the power of arithmetic dynamics, an emerging discipline that combines insights from number theory and dynamical systems. The post Mathematicians Set Numbers in Motion to Unlock Their Secrets first appeared on Quanta Magazine
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Susan Freinkel: Eternal Plastic ### Making plastic even better Plastic is so new, Freinkel began, that among all the objects...
23rd May 2012
1

Susan Freinkel: Eternal Plastic

from Long Now [alt+shift+b] in science

23rd May 2012
### Making plastic even better Plastic is so new, Freinkel began, that among all the objects preserved in the sunken _Titanic_ , none are synthetic plastic, because there was hardly any available in 1912. Natural plastic, however, was a familiar material. Amber was popular....
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The Brain Has a 'Low-Power Mode' That Blunts Our Senses Neuroscientists uncovered an energy-saving mode in vision-system neurons that works at the cost of...
12th Oct 2022
1

The Brain Has a 'Low-Power Mode' That Blunts Our Senses

from The Quanta Podcast [alt+shift+b] in science

12th Oct 2022
Neuroscientists uncovered an energy-saving mode in vision-system neurons that works at the cost of being able to see fine-grained details. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Music is “Unanswered Questions” by Kevin MacLeod.
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How mind bootstraps itself Daniel Dennett, who recently passed away, is an inspiration for people like me who love grand ideas...
1st Jun 2026
1

How mind bootstraps itself

from Inverted Passion [alt+shift+b] in science

1st Jun 2026
Daniel Dennett, who recently passed away, is an inspiration for people like me who love grand ideas that connect many different fields at a deep level (and be rigorous about that; well as rigorous as grand theories can be). His thinking is difficult to categorize: part...
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Lawrence Lessig: How Money Corrupts Congress and a Plan to Stop It ### Public Funding for Public Elections Larry Lessig gave a rousing performance for the 100th...
18th Jan 2012
1

Lawrence Lessig: How Money Corrupts Congress and a Plan to Stop It

from Long Now [alt+shift+b] in science

18th Jan 2012
### Public Funding for Public Elections Larry Lessig gave a rousing performance for the 100th Seminar About Long-Term Thinking. In a lawyerly fashion he laid out evidence of a new type of corruption that is disrupting the American republic, and he offered a remedy for that...
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Analytic Combinatorics Redux Earlier today I gave a talk in the graduate student seminar titled “Counting is Hard. Complex...
9th May 2025
37

Analytic Combinatorics Redux

from Chris Grossack's Blog [alt+shift+b] in science

9th May 2025
Earlier today I gave a talk in the graduate student seminar titled “Counting is Hard. Complex Analysis is Easy.” based in part on my recent blog post about analytic combinatorics and based in part on Varilly’s notes on Dirichlet’s Theorem, showing how to count the number of...
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