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Welcome! BoredReading is a fresh way to read high quality articles (updated every hour). Our goal is to curate (with your help) Michelin star quality articles (stuff that's really worth reading). We currently have articles in 0 categories from architecture, history, design, technology, and more. Grab a cup of freshly brewed coffee and start reading. This is the best way to increase your attention span, grow as a person, and get a better understanding of the world (or atleast that's why we built it).

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This year we give thanks for Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem. (We’ve previously given thanks for the Standard Model Lagrangian, Hubble’s Law, the Spin-Statistics Theorem, conservation of momentum, effective field theory, the error bar, gauge symmetry, Landauer’s Principle, the Fourier Transform, Riemannian Geometry, the speed of light, the Jarzynski equality, the moons of Jupiter, space, black hole … Thanksgiving Read More » Related Posts: Thanksgiving Thanksgiving Thanksgiving
over a year ago

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More from Sean Carroll

George B. Field, 1929-2024

George Field, brilliant theoretical astrophysicist and truly great human being, passed away on the morning of July 31. He was my Ph.D. thesis advisor and one of my favorite people in the world. I often tell my own students that the two most important people in your life who you will (consensually) choose are your […]

7 months ago 60 votes
New Course: The Many Hidden Worlds of Quantum Mechanics

In past years I’ve done several courses for The Great Courses/Wondrium (formerly The Teaching Company): Dark Matter and Dark Energy, Mysteries of Modern Physics:Time, and The Higgs Boson and Beyond. Now I’m happy to announce a new one, The Many Hidden Worlds of Quantum Mechanics. This is a series of 24 half-hour lectures, given by … New Course: The Many Hidden Worlds of Quantum Mechanics Read More » Related Posts: New Course: The Higgs Boson and Beyond Mysteries of Time: New Teaching Company Course Prof in a Box

a year ago 13 votes
Thanksgiving

This year we give thanks for a feature of nature that is frequently misunderstood: quanta. (We’ve previously given thanks for the Standard Model Lagrangian, Hubble’s Law, the Spin-Statistics Theorem, conservation of momentum, effective field theory, the error bar, gauge symmetry, Landauer’s Principle, the Fourier Transform, Riemannian Geometry, the speed of light, the Jarzynski equality, the moons of Jupiter, space, black hole entropy, electromagnetism, and Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem.) Of course quantum mechanics … Thanksgiving Read More » Related Posts: Thanksgiving Thanksgiving Thanksgiving

a year ago 30 votes
Proposed Closure of the Dianoia Institute at Australian Catholic University

Just a few years ago, Australian Catholic University (ACU) established a new Dianoia Institute of Philosophy. They recruited a number of researchers and made something of a splash, leading to a noticeable leap in ACU’s rankings in philosophy — all the way to second among Catholic universities in the English-speaking world, behind only Notre Dame. … Proposed Closure of the Dianoia Institute at Australian Catholic University Read More » Related Posts: Full disclosure Summer Institute in Philosophy of Cosmology, Santa Cruz The Cosmologist vs. The Cardinal

a year ago 39 votes

More in science

‘Next-Level’ Chaos Traces the True Limit of Predictability

In math and computer science, researchers have long understood that some questions are fundamentally unanswerable. Now physicists are exploring how even ordinary physical systems put hard limits on what we can predict, even in principle. The post ‘Next-Level’ Chaos Traces the True Limit of Predictability first appeared on Quanta Magazine

yesterday 2 votes
What Asian Development Can Teach the World

The Magic Development of Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, and China, and What That Tells Us about US Tariffs, China’s Future, EU Protectionism, Japan’s Zombie Debt, Argentina’s Arrested Development, and more

yesterday 7 votes
Some updates on the NSF and related issues

Non-blog life has been very busy, and events have been changing rapidly, but I thought it would be a good idea to give a brief bulleted list of updates regarding the NSF and associated issues: A court decision regarding who has the authority to fire probationary federal workers has led to the NSF hiring back 84 of the employees that it had previously dismissed, at least for now.  The Office of Personnel Management is still altering their wording on this. There is likely some kind of continuing resolution in the offing in Congress, as the current funding stopgap expires on March 14.  If a CR passes that extends to the rest of the fiscal year (Sept 30), that would stave off any big cuts until next FY's budget. At the same time, a number of NSF-funded research experience for undergraduate programs are being cancelled for this year.  This is very unfortunate, as REU programs are many undergrads' first exposure to real research, while also being a critical mechanism for students at non-research-heavy institutions to get research experience. The concerns about next year's funding are real.  As I've written before, cuts and programmatic changes have been proposed by past presidents (including this one in his first term), but historically Congressional appropriators have tended not to follow those.  It seems very likely that the White House's budget proposal will be very bleak for science.  The big question is the degree to which Congress will ignore that.   In addition to the budget, agencies (including NSF) have been ordered to prepare plans for reductions in force - staffing cuts - with deadlines to prepare those plans by 13 March and another set of plans by 14 April.  Because of all this, a number of universities are cutting back on doctoral program admissions (either in specific departments or more broadly).  My sense is that universities with very large components of NIH funding thanks to medical schools are being particularly cautious.  Schools are being careful because many places guarantee some amount of support for at least several years, and it's difficult for them to be full-speed-ahead given uncertainties in federal sponsor budgets, possible endowment taxes, possible revisions to indirect cost policies, etc. Enormous uncertainty remains in the wake of all of this activity, and this period of comparative quiet before the staffing plans and CR are due is an eerie calm.  (Reminds me of the line from here, about how it can be unsettling when a day goes by and you don't hear anything about the horse loose in the hospital.) In other news, there is a national Stand Up for Science set of rallies tomorrow.  Hopefully the net impact of this will be positive.  The public and our legislators need to understand that support for basic science is not a partisan issue and has been the underpinning of enormous economic and technological progress.

2 days ago 5 votes
Where Are All the Dwarf Planets?

In 2006 (yes, it was that long ago – yikes) the International Astronomical Union (IAU) officially adopted the definition of dwarf planet – they are large enough for their gravity to pull themselves into a sphere, they orbit the sun and not another larger body, but they don’t gravitationally dominate their orbit. That last criterion […] The post Where Are All the Dwarf Planets? first appeared on NeuroLogica Blog.

2 days ago 3 votes
Getting Healthcare Data To Train An AI Model - with Protege | Out-Of-Pocket

And all the different ways you can “train” a model

2 days ago 5 votes