Beautiful Public...
Mapping the Sea Floor
USGS research vessels equipped with cameras, sonar and scanners created a map of 125 square miles of...
29th Dec 2022
USGS research vessels equipped with cameras, sonar and scanners created a map of 125 square miles of the sea floor off Cape Ann, MA.
Conservation...
Why Indigenous rights matter
1st Aug 2025
The Roots of...
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
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...
Long Now
Philip Tetlock: Why Foxes Are Better Forecasters Than Hedgehogs
### Ignore confident forecasters
"What is it about politics that makes people so dumb?"
From his...
27th Jan 2007
### Ignore confident forecasters
"What is it about politics that makes people so dumb?"
From his perspective as a psychology researcher, Philip Tetlock watched political advisors on the left and the right make bizarre rationalizations about their wrong predictions at the time...
Cremieux Recueil
Fast Fact Check: Does Hep B Vaccination Cause Autism?
Obviously not
5th Mar 2026
Long Now
Walter Mischel: The Marshmallow Test: Mastering Self-Control
### Thinking hot and cool
**In the 1960s, Mischel** and colleagues at Stanford launched a series of...
3rd May 2016
### Thinking hot and cool
**In the 1960s, Mischel** and colleagues at Stanford launched a series of delayed-gratification experiments with young children using a method that later came to be known as “the marshmallow test.” A researcher whom the child knew and trusted, after...
Long Now
Bruce Sterling: The Singularity: Your Future as a Black Hole
One reason lots of people don't want to think long term these days is because technology keeps...
12th Jun 2004
One reason lots of people don't want to think long term these days is because technology keeps accelerating so rapidly, we assume the world will become unrecognizable in a few years and then move on to unimaginable. Long-term thinking must be either impossible or irrelevant.
The...
The Works in...
From MANUALS to YOUTUBE
A new section from Stewart Brand's Maintenance on Books in Progress
14th Aug 2023
A new section from Stewart Brand's Maintenance on Books in Progress
NeuroLogica Blog
Problems with the Institute Of Noetic Sciences
I was interviewed recently for a Daily Beast article on recent research involving the Institute of...
1st May 2023
I was interviewed recently for a Daily Beast article on recent research involving the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS). Overall the article is very good, and author Maddie Bender was fair and reasonable in how I was quoted. I can’t always take that as a given. No matter how...
Asterisk
The Illogic of Nuclear Escalation
How much is enough? It’s the most basic question in the nuclear arms race. For over sixty years, few...
1st Nov 2022
How much is enough? It’s the most basic question in the nuclear arms race. For over sixty years, few have asked it, and even fewer have received an answer.
The Quanta Podcast
Interspecies Hybrids Play a Vital Role in Evolution
Hybrids, once treated as biological misfits, play a vital role in the evolution of many animal...
18th Jan 2018
Hybrids, once treated as biological misfits, play a vital role in the evolution of many animal species. Now conservationists are trying to reconcile that truth with policies.
The post Interspecies Hybrids Play a Vital Role in Evolution first appeared on Quanta...
Yale E360
Bizarre New Creatures Discovered 30,000 Feet Under the Sea
The Titanic lies about 12,500 feet under the ocean. The pressure down there is so immense that even...
1st Aug 2025
The Titanic lies about 12,500 feet under the ocean. The pressure down there is so immense that even submersibles supposedly built for those conditions can, as we know, tragically fail. Now imagine taking a sub nearly three times deeper.
Read more on E360 →
Out-of-Pocket Blog
AI in healthcare - defensibility, capabilities, and cost reduction | Out-Of-Pocket
17th May 2024
The Works in...
Notes on Progress: A winter's tale
Melting snow can make the season easier
4th May 2023
Melting snow can make the season easier
Long Now
Dmitry Orlov: Social Collapse Best Practices
### Managing social collapse
With vintage Russian black humor, Orlov described the social collapse...
14th Feb 2009
### Managing social collapse
With vintage Russian black humor, Orlov described the social collapse he witnessed in Russia in the 1990s and spelled out its practical lessons for the American social collapse he sees as inevitable. The American economy in the 1990s described itself...
Beautiful Public...
50,000 boat names
From SEA SLUT II to BILBOAT BAGGINS, a deep dive into AIS vessel data turns up 50,000 boat names...
10th Aug 2026
From SEA SLUT II to BILBOAT BAGGINS, a deep dive into AIS vessel data turns up 50,000 boat names packed with nautical puns, dirty jokes, and Tolkien deep cuts.
Long Now
Robert Neuwirth: The 21st Century Medieval City
### World squatter reality
Humanity is urbanizing at a world-changing pace and in a world-changing...
11th Jun 2005
### World squatter reality
Humanity is urbanizing at a world-changing pace and in a world-changing way. A billion squatters are re-inventing their lives and their cities simultaneously. One of the few to experience the range of the phenomenon first hand is Robert Neuwirth,...
NeuroLogica Blog
Do We Have Free Will?
Let’s dive head first into one of the internet’s most contentious questions – do we have true free...
1st Dec 2023
Let’s dive head first into one of the internet’s most contentious questions – do we have true free will? This comes up not infrequently whenever I write here about neuroscience, most recently when I wrote about hunger circuitry, because the notion of the brain as a physical...
IEEE Spectrum
Chuck E. Cheese’s Animatronics Band Bows Out
That may have been the last time I entered a Chuck E. Cheese pizzeria. And yet, when I heard that...
2nd Dec 2024
That may have been the last time I entered a Chuck E. Cheese pizzeria. And yet, when I heard that the company was phasing out the animatronic bands from all but five locations by the end of this year, I felt a twinge of nostalgia. Much to my surprise, I was truly sad that the...
The Quanta Podcast
Mathematician Hurls Structure and Disorder Into Century-Old Problem
A new paper shows how to create longer disordered strings than mathematicians had thought possible,...
3rd Feb 2022
A new paper shows how to create longer disordered strings than mathematicians had thought possible, proving that a well-known recent conjecture is “spectacularly wrong.”
The post Mathematician Hurls Structure and Disorder Into Century-Old Problem first appeared on...
Articles - Chris...
My $500M Mars Rover Mistake: A Failure Story
Some mistakes feel worse than death.
27th Nov 2023
Some mistakes feel worse than death.
Probably...
Planning for your midlife crisis
Yesterday I presented a talk at ODSC East 2026, called “Counterfactual Analysis with Bayesian...
1st May 2026
Yesterday I presented a talk at ODSC East 2026, called “Counterfactual Analysis with Bayesian Models: What Drives the Life Expectancy Gap?” Here’s the abstract Across nearly every country in the world, women live longer than men—but the size of this gap varies from about two...
Conservation...
To save coffee's future, 100 million trees — and counting
1st Apr 2026
Quantum Frontiers
Little ray of sunshine
A common saying goes, you should never meet your heroes, because they’ll disappoint you. But you...
28th Jul 2025
A common saying goes, you should never meet your heroes, because they’ll disappoint you. But you shouldn’t trust every common saying; some heroes impress you more, the better you know them. Ray Laflamme was such a hero. I first heard … Continue reading →
The Quanta Podcast
The New History of the Milky Way
Over the past two years, astronomers have rewritten the story of our galaxy.
The post...
4th Mar 2021
Over the past two years, astronomers have rewritten the story of our galaxy.
The post The New History of the Milky Way first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Long Now
Rose McDermott: Ideology in our Genes: The Biological Basis for Political Traits
While traditionally social factors have been considered to have primary influence on political...
1st Dec 2017
While traditionally social factors have been considered to have primary influence on political behaviors and preferences, more recent research shows that there's also a strong heritable component to ideological attitudes. Rose McDermott, professor of International Relations at...
The Roots of...
Accelerating science through evolvable institutions
This is the written version of a talk presented to the Santa Fe Institute at a working group on...
4th Dec 2023
This is the written version of a talk presented to the Santa Fe Institute at a working group on “Accelerating Science.”
We’re here to discuss “accelerating science.” I like to start on topics like this by taking the historical view: When (if ever) has science accelerated in the...
Long Now
Sander van der Leeuw: The Archaeology of Innovation
### History of Innovation
The development of human mental ability can be tracked through the...
19th Nov 2009
### History of Innovation
The development of human mental ability can be tracked through the progressive crafting of stone tools, Van der Leeuw explained. First we learned to shape an edge---a line---then the surface, then the whole volume of the tool, then the sophisticated...
Chris Grossack's...
Analytic Combinatorics -- A Worked Example
Another day, another blog post that starts with
“I was on mse the other day…”. This time, someone...
8th Apr 2025
Another day, another blog post that starts with
“I was on mse the other day…”. This time, someone asked
an interesting question amounting to “how many unordered rooted
ternary trees with $n$
nodes are there, up to isomorphism?”. I’m a sucker for these kinds of
combinatorial...
Long Now
Michael Tubbs: Upsetting the Setup: Creating a California for All
Governance moves slow.
The work of the politician and the public servant ought to inherently be...
16th Aug 2022
Governance moves slow.
The work of the politician and the public servant ought to inherently be one of long-term thinking — of taking in concerns both urgent and longstanding and crafting solutions to them that will live on beyond any official’s term of office.
As Mayor of...
Long Now
Matt Ridley: Deep Optimism
### Undeniable Progress
Hominids had upright walking, stone tools, fire, even language but still...
23rd Mar 2011
### Undeniable Progress
Hominids had upright walking, stone tools, fire, even language but still remained in profound stasis. What led to humanity's global takeoff, Ridley argues, was the invention of exchange about 120,000 years ago. "That's ten times older than...
SubAnima
How NOT To Think About Cells
Are we all just running on molecular clockwork?
14th Oct 2022
Are we all just running on molecular clockwork?
NeuroLogica Blog
The Race Question
As a scientific concept – does race exist? Is it a useful construct, or is it more misleading than...
5th May 2025
As a scientific concept – does race exist? Is it a useful construct, or is it more misleading than useful? I wrote about this question in 2016, and my thinking has evolved a bit since then. My bottom line conclusion has not changed – the answer is, it depends. There is no fully...
Light from Space
The Soul of the Heart Nebula
A spectacular emission Nebula, the Heart Nebula is one of the classics of Northern Hemisphere...
5th Nov 2022
A spectacular emission Nebula, the Heart Nebula is one of the classics of Northern Hemisphere amateury astronomy.
In the gallery below, I've highlighted 3 very different areas of the image:
Left: Planetary Nebula WeBo-1
Middle: Melotte 15 in the... heart of the Heart...
Long Now
Philip Rosedale: 'Second Life:' What Do We Learn If We Digitize EVERYTHING?
### 2nd Life takes off
What is real life coming to owe digital life?
After a couple years in the...
1st Dec 2006
### 2nd Life takes off
What is real life coming to owe digital life?
After a couple years in the flat part of exponential growth, the steep part is now arriving for the massive multi-player online world construction kit called "Second Life." With 1.7 million accounts,...
Eukaryote Writes...
Book review: Air-borne by Carl Zimmer
Man, it’s embarrassing to be part of a field of study (biosecurity, in this case) that had such a...
15th Jun 2025
Man, it’s embarrassing to be part of a field of study (biosecurity, in this case) that had such a public moment of unambiguously whiffing it.
NeuroLogica Blog
What to Make of Havana Syndrome
I have not written before about Havana Syndrome, mostly because I have not been able to come to any...
1st Apr 2024
I have not written before about Havana Syndrome, mostly because I have not been able to come to any strong conclusions about it. In 2016 there was a cluster of strange neurological symptoms among people working at the US Embassy in Havana, Cuba. They would suddenly experience...
Works in Progress...
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
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.
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Emergent, Fringe Behaviors in Healthcare | Out-Of-Pocket
tweeting out your labs, induced mental states, and more
2nd May 2025
tweeting out your labs, induced mental states, and more
Casey Handmer's blog
Australia will run an overt command economy by 2040
Australia’s Fiscal Point of No Return Last September I wrote about Australian economic stagnation —...
16th Apr 2026
Australia’s Fiscal Point of No Return Last September I wrote about Australian economic stagnation — how taxation past the Laffer curve’s point of peak growth, zero public sector productivity improvement since 2001, and the systematic eradication of manufacturing and ICT from the...
The Quanta Podcast
New Map of Meaning in the Brain Changes Ideas About Memory
Researchers have mapped hundreds of semantic categories to the tiny bits of the cortex that...
11th May 2022
Researchers have mapped hundreds of semantic categories to the tiny bits of the cortex that represent them in our thoughts and perceptions. What they discovered might change our view of memory.
The post New Map of Meaning in the Brain Changes Ideas About Memory first...
Andrew Fraknoi –...
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
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,...
Conservation...
3 ways to prevent the next pandemic with nature, according to science
18th Oct 2024
Beautiful Public...
Trademark Design Codes
The United States Patent and Trademark Office has a system of 1,400 descriptive "design codes"...
9th Apr 2024
The United States Patent and Trademark Office has a system of 1,400 descriptive "design codes" allowing you to search for trademarks with “Rickshaws”, “Centaurs” or “Mechanical women”.
NeuroLogica Blog
AC vs DC and other Power Questions
I was away last week, first at CSICON and then at a conference in Dubai. I was invited to give a 9...
4th Nov 2024
I was away last week, first at CSICON and then at a conference in Dubai. I was invited to give a 9 hour seminar on scientific skepticism for the Dubai Future Foundation. That sounds like a lot of time, but it isn’t. It was a good reminder of the vast body of knowledge that is...
Yale E360
London Inches Closer to Running Transit System Entirely on Renewable Power
Under a new agreement, London will source enough solar power to run its light railway and tram...
1st Jul 2025
Under a new agreement, London will source enough solar power to run its light railway and tram networks entirely on renewable energy.
Read more on E360 →
Works in Progress...
The great reinforcer
Alongside all the successes of science in the Covid era, the pandemic has also sparked an outbreak...
8th Feb 2021
Alongside all the successes of science in the Covid era, the pandemic has also sparked an outbreak of viral misinformation and sloppy research, revealing the glaring flaws in our scientific system.
wadertales
Conservation beyond boundaries
When an environmental impact assessment concludes that only a small number of shorebirds will be...
7th Apr 2023
When an environmental impact assessment concludes that only a small number of shorebirds will be affected by a new airport, because relatively small flocks are counted during field surveys, is there an assumption that the birds encountered are always the same individuals? What if...
Stephen Wolfram...
What Is Ruliology?
Ruliology is taking off! And more and more people are talking about it. But what is ruliology? Since...
12th Jan 2026
Ruliology is taking off! And more and more people are talking about it. But what is ruliology? Since I invented the term, I decided I should write something to explain it. But then I realized: I actually already wrote something back in 2021 when I first invented the term. What I...
Long Now
Beth Shapiro: How to Clone a Mammoth
## De-extinction science
When people hear about “ancient DNA” in fossils, Shapiro began, the first...
12th May 2015
## De-extinction science
When people hear about “ancient DNA” in fossils, Shapiro began, the first question always is “Can we clone a dinosaur?” Dinosaurs died out so many millions of years ago, their fossils are nothing but rock (and by the way, there’s no workaround with...
Long Now
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
## 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...
Quanta Magazine
Scientists Re-Create the Microbial Dance That Sparked Complex Life
Evolution was fueled by endosymbiosis, cellular alliances in which one microbe makes a permanent...
2nd Jan 2025
Evolution was fueled by endosymbiosis, cellular alliances in which one microbe makes a permanent home inside another. For the first time, biologists made it happen in the lab.
The post Scientists Re-Create the Microbial Dance That Sparked Complex Life first appeared...
Casey Handmer's blog
Career Development Guide for Job Seekers
Context October 2025: With the government shut down and NASA JPL business in apparent terminal...
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...
Quanta Magazine
When Data Is Missing, Scientists Guess. Then Guess Again.
Across the social and biological sciences, statisticians use a technique that leverages randomness...
2nd Oct 2024
Across the social and biological sciences, statisticians use a technique that leverages randomness to deal with the unknown.
The post When Data Is Missing, Scientists Guess. Then Guess Again. first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Can patients be good healthcare shoppers? | Out-Of-Pocket
Should their be limits to patient agency?
8th Aug 2024
Should their be limits to patient agency?
Chris Grossack's...
Estimating a Difference of Products
Wow, it’s been a long time! Both since my last blog post, and since my last
quick analysis trick....
28th Aug 2023
Wow, it’s been a long time! Both since my last blog post, and since my last
quick analysis trick. But I’ve been itching to
write more blog posts lately, and I thought that something quick and easy like
this would be a good way to get back into it without the kind of effort...
nanoscale views
New updates + tetrahedra, tunneling times, and more
Here are a number of items from the past week or so that I think readers of this blog might find...
9th Jul 2025
Here are a number of items from the past week or so that I think readers of this blog might find interesting:
Essentially all the news pertaining to the US federal funding of science continues to be awful. This article from Science summarizes the situation well, as does this...
Wanderingspace
The First Ever Real-Time Video from Another Planet
When you watch this video, if you find yourself thinking of the Apollo moon landings— here is why:...
5th Mar 2021
When you watch this video, if you find yourself thinking of the Apollo moon landings— here is why: this is the first real-time video taken from another world since 1972, and this is the first ever taken on another planet.
Most “video” you see from other planetary missions are...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Some stories from healthcare founders | Out-Of-Pocket
Titles matter, you can change regulation, how M&A happens
5th Aug 2025
Titles matter, you can change regulation, how M&A happens
ToughSF
Fusion without Fissiles: Superbombs and Wilderness Orion
Fusion technology today relies on expensive, building-sized equipment for ignition, or the help of...
25th Mar 2022
Fusion technology today relies on expensive, building-sized equipment for ignition, or the help of an already powerful fission detonation. What if we could do away with both?
Fusion power without the need for fissiles, but also small enough to be launched into space. It is...
Melting Asphalt
The Elephant in the Brain
It's finally here! The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life — my first book,...
3rd Jan 2018
It's finally here! The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life — my first book, coauthored with Robin Hanson — is now widely available. You can find the ebook version on Kindle, Google Play, and iBooks. It's also…
Read more ›
Interaction Magic -...
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
A 22 hour medical experiment breathing 12% oxygen, and the 7000 images of my brain that came out of it.
nanoscale views
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
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...
The Roots of...
What I’ve been reading, November 2023
A ~monthly feature. Recent blog posts and news stories are generally omitted; you can find them in...
7th Nov 2023
A ~monthly feature. Recent blog posts and news stories are generally omitted; you can find them in my links digests. All emphasis in bold in the quotes below was added by me.
Books
Finished Lynn White, Medieval Technology and Social Change (1962). Last time I talked about the...
The Quanta Podcast
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
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
Works in Progress...
Escaping science’s paradox
Scientific research today is afflicted by poor reliability and low utility, despite the best efforts...
19th Oct 2020
Scientific research today is afflicted by poor reliability and low utility, despite the best efforts of individual researchers.
The Roots of...
What I’ve been reading, March 2023
A new monthly feature, let me know what you think.
Books
Matt Ridley, How Innovation Works (2020)....
9th Mar 2023
A new monthly feature, let me know what you think.
Books
Matt Ridley, How Innovation Works (2020). About halfway through, lots of interesting case studies, very readable.
Vaclav Smil, Creating the Twentieth Century (2005). I read the first chapter; saving the rest of it for when...
Drew Ex Machina
The Largest Launch Vehicles in Service – 1957 to the Present
With the successful launch of NASA’s Artemis I test flight, we now have a new holder of the title...
16th Nov 2022
With the successful launch of NASA’s Artemis I test flight, we now have a new holder of the title “the largest launch vehicle in service”: the […]
IEEE Spectrum
The Saga of AD-X2, the Battery Additive That Roiled the NBS
Senate hearings, a post office ban, the resignation of the director of the National Bureau of...
1st Aug 2024
Senate hearings, a post office ban, the resignation of the director of the National Bureau of Standards, and his reinstatement after more than 400 scientists threatened to resign. Who knew a little box of salt could stir up such drama?
What was AD-X2?
It all started in 1947 when...
brr
South Pole Topography
The relentless accumulation (and management) of snow.
27th Jan 2023
The relentless accumulation (and management) of snow.
The Works in...
The end of lead
How a single taxi ride saved millions of lives
3rd Jul 2025
How a single taxi ride saved millions of lives
nanoscale views
DOE experimental condensed matter PI meeting, + other items
This week I am attending the every-two-years DOE Experimental Condensed Matter Physics PI meeting. ...
8th Sep 2025
This week I am attending the every-two-years DOE Experimental Condensed Matter Physics PI meeting. Previously I have written up highlights of these meetings (see here, here, here, here, here), though two years I was unable to do so because I was attending virtually. I will do...
Works in Progress...
Who’s afraid of artificial flavors?
‘Artificial’ didn’t scare Americans in the 19th century. Why does it scare them now?
8th May 2026
‘Artificial’ didn’t scare Americans in the 19th century. Why does it scare them now?
SubAnima
Have We Already Found Life On Mars?
Definitions are a funny thing..
4th May 2022
Definitions are a funny thing..
Andrew Fraknoi –...
The Lunar Tourist Attraction the Artemis Astronauts Will be Looking For
I hope you are allowing the trip four humans are taking around the Moon to distract you a bit from...
7th Apr 2026
I hope you are allowing the trip four humans are taking around the Moon to distract you a bit from all the problems we are facing down here on Earth! Artemis II is mostly designed to test the engineering of the Orion spacecraft and all the systems that keep humans alive. The...
Quantum Frontiers
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
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 →
Explorations of an...
The Gambia, Part 1 of 2
In November I visited The Gambia along with ten travellers from Quest Nature Tours. Why The Gambia,...
19th Dec 2025
In November I visited The Gambia along with ten travellers from Quest Nature Tours. Why The Gambia, you may ask? This tiny country is not well-known to the international community, but it is an attractive ecotourism destination. The Gambia is a stable, English-speaking democracy...
Uncharted...
The Ruthless Liquidity of Modern Love
Sex & Relationship Updates, H1 2026
6th May 2026
Sex & Relationship Updates, H1 2026
Quantum Frontiers
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
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 →
Quantum Frontiers
Let gravity do its work
One day, early this spring, I found myself in a hotel elevator with three other people. The cohort...
13th May 2024
One day, early this spring, I found myself in a hotel elevator with three other people. The cohort consisted of two theoretical physicists, one computer scientist, and what appeared to be a normal person. I pressed the elevator’s 4 button, … Continue reading →
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Quick Hinge Health S-1 Thoughts | Out-Of-Pocket
This episode of Out-Of-Pocket is brought to you by…
3rd Apr 2025
This episode of Out-Of-Pocket is brought to you by…
Beautiful Public...
Special Database 18: 3,248 Mugshots Used for Training Image Recognition Systems
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has maintained a dataset of mugshot photos...
18th Mar 2023
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has maintained a dataset of mugshot photos of 1,573 people for decades, including 175 minors, until we asked about them.
pcloadletter
The ChatGPT wrapper product boom is an uncanny valley hellscape
Here we go again: I'm so tired of crypto web3 LLMs.
I'm positive there are wonderful applications...
20th May 2024
Here we go again: I'm so tired of crypto web3 LLMs.
I'm positive there are wonderful applications for LLMs. The ChatGPT web UI seems great for summarizing information from various online sources (as long as you're willing to verify the things that you learn).
But a lot fo the "AI...
Drew Ex Machina
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
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 […]
Wanderingspace
Kind of Cool Image of Io from Juno
Image Courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI
The brightest spot is a radiation signature, but all the...
18th Aug 2021
Image Courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI
The brightest spot is a radiation signature, but all the rest are thought to be active volcanos on the Io surface. The moons are not a primary target of the Juno mission, but they do occasionally take a peek to try and monitor such...
Long Now
Lazar Kunstmann & Jon Lackman: Preservation without Permission
### Preservation Without Permission
Their video showed clandestine urban “infiltration”...
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...
Wanderingspace
URANUS FROM THE JAMES WEBB SPACE TELESCOPE
This is not natural light, nothing is from Webb. The infrared image combines data from two filters...
21st Jul 2023
This is not natural light, nothing is from Webb. The infrared image combines data from two filters which are shown in blue and orange,. The planet displays a blue hue in the resulting representative-color image which is similar to the planet’s actual color. But in reality Uranus...
The Roots of...
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
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...
The Works in...
How Poor Maintenance Loses Wars - 2022, Ukraine Maintains
A new section from Stewart Brand's Maintenance on Books in Progress
2nd Nov 2023
A new section from Stewart Brand's Maintenance on Books in Progress
IEEE Spectrum
The Rise and Fall of 3M’s Floppy Disk
A version of this post originally appeared on Tedium, Ernie Smith’s newsletter, which hunts for the...
2nd Apr 2024
A version of this post originally appeared on Tedium, Ernie Smith’s newsletter, which hunts for the end of the long tail.
if you look on 3M’s own website, you will see no mention of this legacy—it’s a firm that sells abrasive materials, adhesive tapes, filters, films, personal...
The Quanta Podcast
A Math Theory for Why People Hallucinate
Psychedelic drugs can trigger characteristic hallucinations, which have long been thought to hold...
5th Jul 2019
Psychedelic drugs can trigger characteristic hallucinations, which have long been thought to hold clues about the brain’s circuitry. After nearly a century of study, a possible explanation is crystallizing.
The post A Math Theory for Why People Hallucinate first...
Yale E360
Nearly Half of Wolves in Italy Are Now Part Dog
Italy has seen a growing number of wolf-dog hybrids, raising concerns about the future of its...
1st May 2026
Italy has seen a growing number of wolf-dog hybrids, raising concerns about the future of its wolves.
Read more on E360 →
The Quanta Podcast
The Quantum Secret to Superconductivity
In a virtuoso experiment, physicists have revealed details of a “quantum critical point” that...
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
Andrew Fraknoi –...
A Comet Visible in Our Evening Sky
A newly discovered comet is now faintly visible in our skies soon after sunset, if you have clear...
15th Oct 2024
A newly discovered comet is now faintly visible in our skies soon after sunset, if you have clear skies and a view low toward the west-southwest horizon. See our diagram from Sky & Telescope magazine, in which the yellow numbers show you the comet’s location in the evening sky...
The Quanta Podcast
A World Without Clouds
A state-of-the-art supercomputer simulation indicates that a feedback loop between global warming...
2nd Jan 2020
A state-of-the-art supercomputer simulation indicates that a feedback loop between global warming and cloud loss can push Earth’s climate past a disastrous tipping point in as little as a century.
The post A World Without Clouds first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Conservation...
3 things our experts loved in May
26th Jun 2024
Interaction Magic -...
Plastic archeology
The history, science and engineering of Lego bricks, on the cusp between trash and treasure.
20th Nov 2023
The history, science and engineering of Lego bricks, on the cusp between trash and treasure.
pcloadletter
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
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,...
Long Now
Kim Stanley Robinson: How Climate Will Evolve Government and Society
Humanity’s adaptation to climate change will require novel, global cooperation and societal...
1st Aug 2017
Humanity’s adaptation to climate change will require novel, global cooperation and societal evolution. The award-winning science fiction author of _2312_ , the _Mars_ Trilogy, and _Aurora_ shares his vision for how the world must change in advance of his 02017 novel _New York...
IEEE Spectrum
How Tech Automated the January 6 Investigations
Josh Coker’s Facebook page doesn’t show any MAGA memes or Trump quotes. He wasn’t live-streaming on...
5th Jan 2024
Josh Coker’s Facebook page doesn’t show any MAGA memes or Trump quotes. He wasn’t live-streaming on 6 January 2021, and no one has ever stepped forward to identify him as one of the mob that stormed the US Capitol that day.
Oregon, Ohio, with five counts connected to the failed...
The Works in...
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
Plus: How Mexico built its state, the causes of the Baby Boom, and the 141-year quest for a malaria vaccine.
Eukaryote Writes...
The rare, deadly virus lurking in the Southwest US, and the bigger picture
If you live in this one county in California, you might be more likely to die from Sin Nombre Virus...
14th Nov 2025
If you live in this one county in California, you might be more likely to die from Sin Nombre Virus than in a car crash.
Long Now
Frank Ostaseski: What the Dying Teach the Living
## Death’s Honesty
**In one of Long Now’s most moving talks** , Ostaseski began: “I’m not romantic...
11th Apr 2017
## Death’s Honesty
**In one of Long Now’s most moving talks** , Ostaseski began: “I’m not romantic about dying. This is the hardest work you will ever do. It is tough. It’s sad and it’s messy and it’s cruel and it’s beautiful sometimes and mysterious, but above all that, it’s...
Long Now
Saul Griffith: Climate Change Recalculated
### The Terawatt World
Engineer Griffith said he was going to make the connection between personal...
17th Jan 2009
### The Terawatt World
Engineer Griffith said he was going to make the connection between personal actions and global climate change. To do that he's been analyzing his own life in extreme detail to figure out exactly how much energy he uses and what changes might reduce the...
Eukaryote Writes...
COVID-19 FAQ
A lot of people have been asking me questions about the COVID-19 (novel coronavirus) outbreak, in my...
12th Mar 2020
A lot of people have been asking me questions about the COVID-19 (novel coronavirus) outbreak, in my informal capacity as “local biodefense person”.
Casey Handmer's blog
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
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 …
Eukaryote Writes...
Who invented knitting? The plot thickens
Last time on Eukaryote Writes Blog: You learned about knitting history. You thought you were done...
4th Feb 2023
Last time on Eukaryote Writes Blog: You learned about knitting history. You thought you were done learning about knitting history? You fool. You buffoon. I wanted to double check some things in the last post and found out that the origins of knitting are even weirder than I...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
What Do Hospitals Care About? | Out-Of-Pocket
Let’s look at three big priorities and a real hospital
11th Feb 2025
Let’s look at three big priorities and a real hospital
The Quanta Podcast
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
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
Works in Progress...
The ultimate horse
Selective breeding has pushed horses to the limits of biology. But at what cost?
5th Aug 2026
Selective breeding has pushed horses to the limits of biology. But at what cost?
Cremieux Recueil
Americans Are Richer Than Everyone Else
The U.S. is the place to be if you're ambitious, but not necessarily if you're poor
7th Aug 2026
The U.S. is the place to be if you're ambitious, but not necessarily if you're poor
Eukaryote Writes...
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
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?
nanoscale views
So you want to build a science/engineering laboratory building
A very quick summary of some non-negative news developments:
The NSF awarded 500 more graduate...
15th Jun 2025
A very quick summary of some non-negative news developments:
The NSF awarded 500 more graduate fellowships this week, bringing the total for this year up to 1500. (Apologies for the X link.) This is still 25% lower than last year's number, and of course far below the original...
Asterisk
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
Scientists have repeatedly failed to recognize the complexity of animal cognition. Will we make the same mistakes with AI?
Asterisk
Risk-Adjusted Return
What are we afraid of?
15th Apr 2026
Yale E360
A Home Battery Revolution Is Reshaping the Power Grid
As residential batteries have become more energy dense, cheaper, and smaller, more households are...
1st Jul 2026
As residential batteries have become more energy dense, cheaper, and smaller, more households are storing their excess solar power. Now, utilities and energy companies in dozens of countries are buying up those electrons, bundling them together, and using them to balance the...
Long Now
Kim Carson: Inspired by Intelligence
What if AI is not here actually to replace us, but to remind us who we actually are?
That was the...
13th Jun 2025
What if AI is not here actually to replace us, but to remind us who we actually are?
That was the question at the heart of Kim Carson’s Long Now Talk. In _Inspired by Intelligence: Purpose and Creativity in the AI Era_, Carson challenged us to avoid the easy narratives of...
Quanta Magazine
The Symmetry That Makes Solving Math Equations Easy
Learn why the quadratic formula works and why quadratics are easier to solve than cubics. ...
24th Mar 2023
Learn why the quadratic formula works and why quadratics are easier to solve than cubics.
The post The Symmetry That Makes Solving Math Equations Easy first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Sean Carroll
331 | Solo: Fine-Tuning, God, and the Multiverse
Certain features of our universe seem unnatural to us. These include "constants of nature" such as...
6th Oct 2025
Certain features of our universe seem unnatural to us. These include "constants of nature" such as the cosmological constant and […]
Damn Interesting
The Unceasing Cessna Hacienda
Warren “Doc” Bayley was a man of the people. When he and his wife Judy opened their Las Vegas resort...
26th Oct 2021
Warren “Doc” Bayley was a man of the people. When he and his wife Judy opened their Las Vegas resort in 1956, Bayley had no plans to compete with the flashier, corporate casinos at the center of the Strip. Instead, the Hacienda Hotel catered to families, as well as to locals who...
Uncharted...
How to Beat Cancer with Viruses: An Interview with Beata Halassy
How viruses kill cancers, which viruses to use, how many injections, at what stage of the cancer,...
1st Oct 2024
How viruses kill cancers, which viruses to use, how many injections, at what stage of the cancer, and much more
Asterisk
No Retvrn
An American tradition of embracing modernity.
4th Aug 2025
An American tradition of embracing modernity.
Casey Handmer's blog
How to reason from first principles
This post is a follow up on my general questions on AI post, and expands on ideas I published here...
16th Jul 2025
This post is a follow up on my general questions on AI post, and expands on ideas I published here and here in the ancient times. Every time one of the labs releases an updated model I give it a thorough shakedown on physics, in the style of the oral examination that is still...
Works in Progress...
Watt lies beneath
The earth’s core is hot. So hot, that if we drilled deep enough, we could power the world millions...
15th Nov 2023
The earth’s core is hot. So hot, that if we drilled deep enough, we could power the world millions of times over with cheap, clean energy, supporting renewables when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining. But getting there is tough.
Long Now
Martin Rees: Prospects for Humanity
To think usefully about humanity’s future, you have to bear everything in mind simultaneously....
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...
Long Now
Sylvia Earle & Tierney Thys: Oceanic
### Oceans alive
Neither of them eats fish.
Both marine biologists applaud the improved regulation...
21st May 2014
### Oceans alive
Neither of them eats fish.
Both marine biologists applaud the improved regulation of American fishing and the resulting recovery of important fisheries, but they note that 90% of our seafood is imported, and one-third of that is caught illegally. Two-thirds of...
Casey Handmer's blog
Stuff you should have been taught in college but weren’t
As part of my job running Terraform Industries, I get to build an amazing team of super smart...
4th Feb 2025
As part of my job running Terraform Industries, I get to build an amazing team of super smart people, and that involves interviewing hundreds of people. Over time certain patterns have become obvious, but I remember when they weren’t obvious to me on the other side of the table!...
Quantum Frontiers
Spooky action nearby: Entangling logical qubits without physical operations
Einstein and I have both been spooked by entanglement. Einstein’s experience was more profound: in a...
3rd Feb 2026
Einstein and I have both been spooked by entanglement. Einstein’s experience was more profound: in a 1947 letter to Born, he famously dubbed it spukhafte Fernwirkung (or spooky action at a distance). Mine, more pedestrian. It came when I first … Continue reading →
Interaction Magic -...
Metaphors mold minds
Every good design is founded on a great metaphor. How to use metaphors to design more a inclusive...
21st Mar 2022
Every good design is founded on a great metaphor. How to use metaphors to design more a inclusive future for our cities. My IXDA Interaction 22 conference talk.
ToughSF
Hypervelocity Macron Accelerators
We
look at the various ways of accelerating micro-scale projectiles up to hypervelocity
(10-10,000...
27th Nov 2019
We
look at the various ways of accelerating micro-scale projectiles up to hypervelocity
(10-10,000 km/s) and their use in space.
Going
small to go fast
Macrons
or macroscopic particles are tiny projectiles that sit on the border between
the complex structures we see under a...
Quanta Magazine
How Math Has Changed the Shape of Gerrymandering
New tools make it possible to detect hidden manipulation of maps.
The post How Math Has...
1st Jun 2023
New tools make it possible to detect hidden manipulation of maps.
The post How Math Has Changed the Shape of Gerrymandering first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Probably...
Bayesian Decision Analysis
At PyData Global 2025 I presented a workshop on Bayesian Decision Analysis with PyMC. The video is...
9th Jan 2026
At PyData Global 2025 I presented a workshop on Bayesian Decision Analysis with PyMC. The video is available now. This workshop is based on the first session of the Applied Bayesian Modeling Workshop I teach along with my colleagues at PyMC Labs. If you would like to learn more,...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Patient Messaging Conundrum pt. 2 | Out-Of-Pocket
Some thoughts from an academic, a behavioral scientist, a patient, and more
3rd Oct 2023
Some thoughts from an academic, a behavioral scientist, a patient, and more
Damn Interesting
A Blight on Soviet Science
On a hazy afternoon in March 1927, a Russian scientist was walking through the dense forests of...
4th Mar 2021
On a hazy afternoon in March 1927, a Russian scientist was walking through the dense forests of Abyssinia, ducking under low-hanging branches and stopping to inspect the wild coffee trees lining his path. Accompanied by a group of local guides, the young traveller had been hiking...
The Roots of...
What I’ve been reading, September 2023
A quasi-monthly feature. Recent blog posts and news stories are generally omitted; you can find them...
6th Sep 2023
A quasi-monthly feature. Recent blog posts and news stories are generally omitted; you can find them in my links digests. I’ve been busy helping to choose the first cohort of our blogging fellowship, so my reading has been relatively light. All emphasis in bold in the quotes...
Many Worlds
After Seven Years Away Exploring an Asteroid, OSIRIS-REx is Landing Soon with Precious Samples
Bits of pebbles and dust from the asteriod Bennu that were collected during the long journey of the...
11th Sep 2023
Bits of pebbles and dust from the asteriod Bennu that were collected during the long journey of the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft should be landing in the Utah desert later this month. The delivery will be a first for NASA — its first sample return from an asteroid and one of a very...
Stephen Wolfram...
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
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...
Chris Grossack's...
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
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...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Open Source in Healthcare Is An Opportunity | Out-Of-Pocket
Can AI bring the benefits of open source to a slow, sclerotic industry?
6th Mar 2026
Can AI bring the benefits of open source to a slow, sclerotic industry?
Andrew Fraknoi –...
Perseid Meteor Shower Aug 12-13, 2023
We make suggestions for how best to see the 2023 Perseid meteor shower.
The post Perseid Meteor...
5th Aug 2023
We make suggestions for how best to see the 2023 Perseid meteor shower.
The post Perseid Meteor Shower Aug 12-13, 2023 appeared first on Andrew Fraknoi - Astronomy Lectures - Astronomy Education Resources.
The Quanta Podcast
How Mutant Viral Swarms Spread Disease
A new understanding of viral swarms is helping researchers predict how viruses will evolve and where...
3rd Sep 2015
A new understanding of viral swarms is helping researchers predict how viruses will evolve and where disease is likely to spread.
The post How Mutant Viral Swarms Spread Disease first appeared on Quanta Magazine
brr
South Pole Signage
Please close doors quietly!
23rd Jul 2023
Please close doors quietly!
Conservation...
Bolivia brings an Incan legend to life with new protected park
3rd Nov 2025
Peder M. Isager
Why does correlation not equal causation?
In this blog post I will explain why it makes sense to think about causal explanations when we see...
24th Nov 2023
In this blog post I will explain why it makes sense to think about causal explanations when we see correlation, why correlation does not always imply causation, and which alternative causal models to consider when you are trying to figure out why two variables in your data are...
Asterisk
Rust in Numbers
Why do manure spreaders have life cycles?
6th May 2026
Why do manure spreaders have life cycles?
Works in Progress...
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
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.
Explorations of an...
Dominican Republic, October 2025: Mountain Endemics At Zapotén
Zapotén is a legendary birding area in southwestern Dominican Republic quite close to the Haiti...
1st Nov 2025
Zapotén is a legendary birding area in southwestern Dominican Republic quite close to the Haiti border, and it is a must-visit site for any birder on Hispaniola. This rough track climbs high into the Sierra de Bahoruco, a beautiful mountain range cloaked in pine and broadleaf...
Andrew Fraknoi –...
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
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...
Chris Grossack's...
Talk -- Factorization Homology and Quantum Character Stacks
Today Yesterday in the Representation Theory Seminar at UCR I gave a talk about
Factorization...
20th Feb 2026
Today Yesterday in the Representation Theory Seminar at UCR I gave a talk about
Factorization Homology and how it lets us compute a “Quantum Character Stack”.
This is all based on a great paper,
Integrating Quantum Groups Over Surfaces by Ben-Zvi, Brochier, and
Jordan, which...
Long Now
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
### 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...
Chris Grossack's...
Proving Another "Real Theorem" with Topos Theory
Another day, another post that starts with “So I was on mse…”, lol.
Somebody asked whether...
25th Mar 2024
Another day, another post that starts with “So I was on mse…”, lol.
Somebody asked whether maximizing over a compact set is a continuous thing
to do. That is, given a continuous function $f : K \times X \to \mathbb{R}$ is the
function $x \mapsto \max_{k \in K} f(k,x)$...
Long Now
Caroline Winterer: The Art and Science of Deep Time: Conceiving the Inconceivable in the 19th...
The ambition to think on the scale of thousands, millions, even billion of years emerged in the 19th...
6th Feb 2020
The ambition to think on the scale of thousands, millions, even billion of years emerged in the 19th century. Historian and author [Caroline Winterer](https://history.stanford.edu/people/caroline-winterer) chronicles how the concept of “deep time” has inspired and puzzled...
Damn Interesting
The Anticipated Future of the Moon
When the Earth was young, shortly after the moon formed, our planet was spinning so fast that a day...
15th Feb 2021
When the Earth was young, shortly after the moon formed, our planet was spinning so fast that a day was approximately five hours long. During the intervening billions of years, the dragging effect of the moon’s gravity slowed the Earth’s spin to the 24-hour day we now observe....
Conservation...
On island nation, ‘ancestral bond’ to crocodiles is tested
1st Jun 2026
Out-of-Pocket Blog
How To (Properly) Text Patients | Out-Of-Pocket
Do’s and don’ts + tactical tips from an actual doctor
10th Apr 2024
Do’s and don’ts + tactical tips from an actual doctor
Interaction Magic -...
Orientation
Using Mahony & Madgwick to calibrate and process Arduino orientation data.
1st Jul 2018
Using Mahony & Madgwick to calibrate and process Arduino orientation data.
The Quanta Podcast
Deep Learning Poised to 'Blow Up' Famed Fluid Equations
For centuries, mathematicians have tried to prove that Euler’s fluid equations can produce...
3rd Aug 2022
For centuries, mathematicians have tried to prove that Euler’s fluid equations can produce nonsensical answers. A new approach to machine learning has researchers betting that “blowup” is near. Read more at quantamagazine.org. Music is “Pulse” by Geographer.
Explorations of an...
A Month In Northern Peru, Part 17: White-sand Birding At RN Allpahuayo-Mishana and Muyuna Lodge...
February 24, 2024
Just outside of the city of Iquitos lies an expansive area containing white-sand...
16th Mar 2025
February 24, 2024
Just outside of the city of Iquitos lies an expansive area containing white-sand forest. The particular forest types that grow on white sand are somewhat uncommon in the Amazon, yet the stunted tree growth provides quite the contrast to "typical" Amazonian...
Yale E360
More Than 110 New Species Discovered In Deep Waters Off Australia
Scientists have identified more than 110 new species found in deep water beyond the edges of...
1st Apr 2026
Scientists have identified more than 110 new species found in deep water beyond the edges of Australia's Great Barrier Reef.
Read more on E360 →
wadertales
When mates behave differently
Iceland’s 40,000 Oystercatchers are an interesting mix of resident birds and migrants, providing an...
7th Aug 2022
Iceland’s 40,000 Oystercatchers are an interesting mix of resident birds and migrants, providing an ideal system in which to study the costs and benefits of the two options, and to try to work out what influences whether an individual becomes a ‘resident’ or a ‘migrant’. I’ve...
Works in Progress...
Advancing antivenom
Snakebites kill between 80,000 and 140,000 people every year. Better antivenom should be a high...
8th Dec 2022
Snakebites kill between 80,000 and 140,000 people every year. Better antivenom should be a high priority – thankfully new technology can help.
Long Now
George Dyson: There's Plenty of Room at the Top: Long-term Thinking About Large-scale Computing
### Long-term thinking about large-scale computing
Ever since his 1997 breakthrough book, _Darwin...
10th Jan 2004
### Long-term thinking about large-scale computing
Ever since his 1997 breakthrough book, _Darwin Among the Machines_ , Dyson has become regarded as a leading historian and interpreter of computer science, bringing a rigorous and unconventional perspective. Thus his willingness...
wadertales
Inland feeding by coastal godwits
Species such as Dunlin and Knot are well-served by conservation measures that aim to protect...
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...
Works in Progress...
The ultra-selfish gene
We now have the power to genetically modify entire species by inserting certain genes into them with...
3rd Sep 2024
We now have the power to genetically modify entire species by inserting certain genes into them with brute force. Doing this to malaria-carrying mosquitoes could allow us to wipe out humanity’s most deadly killer.
Probably...
Young Adults Are Not Very Happy
Since 1972, the General Social Survey has asked respondents: “Taken all together, how would you say...
19th Mar 2026
Since 1972, the General Social Survey has asked respondents: “Taken all together, how would you say things are these days—would you say that you are very happy, pretty happy, or not too happy?” The following figure shows how the responses have changed over time and between birth...
Chris Grossack's...
Is a Random Perfect Group Nontrivial?
So it’s finals season, and earlier today
some of the younger grad students were asking me for...
20th Mar 2026
So it’s finals season, and earlier today
some of the younger grad students were asking me for help
studying for their topology finals. One of their practice
problems was to build a cell complex with one 0-cell,
two 1-cells, and two 2-cells which has nontrivial $\pi_1$
but...
Cremieux Recueil
Storks Take Orders From the State
Pronatal benefits and economic booms lead to greater numbers of births
2nd May 2025
Pronatal benefits and economic booms lead to greater numbers of births
Long Now
Richard Kurin: American History in 101 Objects
### American objects
Figuratively holding up one museum item after another, Kurin spun tales from...
19th Nov 2013
### American objects
Figuratively holding up one museum item after another, Kurin spun tales from them. (The Smithsonian has 137 million objects; he displayed just thirty or so.)
The Burgess Shale shows fossilized soft-tissue creatures ("very early North Americans") from 500...
Conservation...
Our work in the news, February 2026
3rd Mar 2026
Inverted Passion
Words are minimum-viable coordination tools
Words have a bewitching tendency as we assume they point to some deep essences. But, game...
4th Feb 2026
Words have a bewitching tendency as we assume they point to some deep essences. But, game theoretically speaking, words exist to get a job done so they operate at the level of coarse graining that’s sufficient to get the job done of the speaker. Evolution doesn’t like to waste...
The Works in...
How Poor Maintenance Loses Wars: 1973, Israel Maintains
A new section from Stewart Brand's Maintenance on Books in Progress
5th Oct 2023
A new section from Stewart Brand's Maintenance on Books in Progress
Long Now
Frans Lanting: Life's Journey Through Time
### The deep past in the remote present
It began on a New Jersey beach. Frans Lanting was...
28th Apr 2007
### The deep past in the remote present
It began on a New Jersey beach. Frans Lanting was photographing horseshoe crabs for a story about how they are being ground up for eel bait and at the same time their blood is used for drug testing--a $100 million industry. The crabs have...
Probably...
Multiple Regression with StatsModels
This is the third is a series of excerpts from Elements of Data Science which available from...
4th Dec 2024
This is the third is a series of excerpts from Elements of Data Science which available from Lulu.com and online booksellers. It’s from Chapter 10, which is about multiple regression. You can read the complete chapter here, or run the Jupyter notebook on Colab. In the previous...
Drew Ex Machina
You Can’t Fail Unless You Try: NASA’s Pioneer P-3 Lunar Orbiter
Space enthusiasts of a certain age, like myself, grew up learning about the trio of NASA’s unmanned...
26th Nov 2024
Space enthusiasts of a certain age, like myself, grew up learning about the trio of NASA’s unmanned programs which provided scientists and engineers with vital information […]
Long Now
Lynn Rothschild: Nature’s Hardware Store
What if the solutions to humanity’s greatest challenges — on Earth and beyond — have already been...
5th Nov 2025
What if the solutions to humanity’s greatest challenges — on Earth and beyond — have already been invented by nature? In this forward-looking talk, evolutionary biologist and astrobiologist Dr. Lynn Rothschild explores how life’s patterns, materials, and mechanisms, refined over...
Stephen Wolfram...
Nestedly Recursive Functions
Yet Another Ruliological Surprise Integers. Addition. Subtraction. Maybe multiplication. Surely...
27th Sep 2024
Yet Another Ruliological Surprise Integers. Addition. Subtraction. Maybe multiplication. Surely that’s not enough to be able to generate any serious complexity. In the early 1980s I had made the very surprising discovery that very simple programs based on cellular automata could...
Blog - Practical...
Every US Electrical Outlet Explained
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.]
I love the periodic table of...
2 days ago
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.]
I love the periodic table of the elements. I love it because it reveals the deeper order of what seems like an otherwise wildly disparate collection of atoms with different physical forms, chemical properties,...
The Quanta Podcast
The Art of Teaching Math and Science
The impasse in math and science instruction runs deeper than test scores or the latest educational...
26th Jan 2017
The impasse in math and science instruction runs deeper than test scores or the latest educational theory. What can we learn from the best teachers on the front lines?
The post The Art of Teaching Math and Science first appeared on Quanta Magazine
lcamtuf’s thing
Weekend trivia: your process' memory is a file
The underappreciated gem of /proc/
/mem
1st Jun 2026
The underappreciated gem of /proc/
/mem
Conservation...
'My son's son will see this elephant'
6th Jul 2026
Long Now
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
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...
The Quanta Podcast
The Hidden Magnetic Universe Begins to Come Into View
Astronomers are discovering that magnetic fields permeate much of the cosmos. If these fields date...
3rd Dec 2020
Astronomers are discovering that magnetic fields permeate much of the cosmos. If these fields date back to the Big Bang, they could solve a major cosmological mystery.
The post The Hidden Magnetic Universe Begins to Come Into View first appeared on Quanta Magazine
NeuroLogica Blog
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
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...
Chris Grossack's...
Analytic Combinatorics Redux
Earlier today I gave a talk in the graduate student seminar titled
“Counting is Hard. Complex...
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...
Wanderingspace
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
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...
Conservation...
A rare eagle returns to Colombia’s coffee country
2nd Dec 2025
Stephen Wolfram...
In Memory of My Wife, Elise Cawley (1961–2026), with Thanks for 36 Wonderful Years
4th Aug 2026
Yale E360
African Forests Have Become a Source of Carbon Emissions
Africa’s forests have turned from a carbon sink into a carbon source, according to research that...
1st Dec 2025
Africa’s forests have turned from a carbon sink into a carbon source, according to research that underscores the need for urgent action to save the world’s great natural climate stabilizers.
Read more on E360 →
Quantum Frontiers
Ten lessons I learned from John Preskill
Last August, Toronto’s Centre for Quantum Information and Quantum Control (CQIQC) gave me 35 minutes...
20th Jan 2025
Last August, Toronto’s Centre for Quantum Information and Quantum Control (CQIQC) gave me 35 minutes to make fun of John Preskill in public. CQIQC was hosting its biannual conference, also called CQIQC, in Toronto. The conference features the awarding of … Continue reading →
Quanta Magazine
Why Everything in the Universe Turns More Complex
A new suggestion that complexity increases over time, not just in living organisms but in the...
2nd Apr 2025
A new suggestion that complexity increases over time, not just in living organisms but in the nonliving world, promises to rewrite notions of time and evolution.
The post Why Everything in the Universe Turns More Complex first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Inverted Passion
Don’t compete
The Internet is full of people winning all the time. Someone is traveling to exotic locations,...
22nd Mar 2025
The Internet is full of people winning all the time. Someone is traveling to exotic locations, someone else is raising funds, and another person is winning awards. Essentially, everyone around you is succeeding while you do spend your days as the nature intended – sleeping,...
Long Now
Mary Lou Jepsen: Toward Practical Telepathy
With her stunning breakthroughs in neural imaging, Mary Lou Jepsen is making the brain readable (and...
5th Nov 2018
With her stunning breakthroughs in neural imaging, Mary Lou Jepsen is making the brain readable (and stimulatable) in real time. That will revolutionize brain study and brain medicine, but what about brain communication? Could a direct high-resolution interface to the brain lead...
Chris Grossack's...
Monoidal Monoidoidoids
So I was on the nlab the other day, and I saw a fantastic joke:
A 2-category is “just” a monoidal...
21st Aug 2022
So I was on the nlab the other day, and I saw a fantastic joke:
A 2-category is “just” a monoidal monoidoidoid! Here’s a screenshot
in case the nlab page for 2-categories changes someday:
There’s a thing called the Category Theorist’s “Just”, which describes
the joy that many...
Beautiful Public...
14,000 Photos of Army Uniforms and Rations from the 70s and 80s
An incredible archive of 14,000 photos of Army uniforms, military gear and rations from the 70s and...
20th Nov 2024
An incredible archive of 14,000 photos of Army uniforms, military gear and rations from the 70s and 80s.
Quanta Magazine
Cryptographers Discover a New Foundation for Quantum Secrecy
Researchers have proved that secure quantum encryption is possible in a world without hard problems....
3rd Jun 2024
Researchers have proved that secure quantum encryption is possible in a world without hard problems.
The post Cryptographers Discover a New Foundation for Quantum Secrecy first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Stephen Wolfram...
What’s Really Going On in Machine Learning? Some Minimal Models
The Mystery of Machine Learning It’s surprising how little is known about the foundations of machine...
22nd Aug 2024
The Mystery of Machine Learning It’s surprising how little is known about the foundations of machine learning. Yes, from an engineering point of view, an immense amount has been figured out about how to build neural nets that do all kinds of impressive and sometimes almost...
Works in Progress...
How to write for Works in Progress
We’re looking for new authors and article pitches.
4th Apr 2025
We’re looking for new authors and article pitches.
Long Now
Drew Endy & Jim Thomas: Synthetic Biology Debate
### Terms of Biocontainment
"I want to develop tools that make biology easy to engineer," Drew Endy...
18th Nov 2008
### Terms of Biocontainment
"I want to develop tools that make biology easy to engineer," Drew Endy began. The first purpose is better understanding fundamental biological mechanisms through "learning by building." The toolkit of Synthetic Biology starts with DNA construction...
The Quanta Podcast
What Happens When Lakes Stop Mixing
Every summer since 1983, scientists at Crater Lake National Park have gathered data about the lake’s...
2nd Dec 2025
Every summer since 1983, scientists at Crater Lake National Park have gathered data about the lake’s famous clarity. This past summer, Quanta contributing writer Rachel Nuwer journeyed with them as they conducted their annual tests. On this week’s episode, Nuwer and host Samir...
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