There's a great, underappreciated scene in Project Hail Mary that's a wink at the classic problem of how hard it is to make doing science exciting on screen (and in real life):
The protagonist, after many hours of hard science-ing has a breakthrough. Everybody is asleep.
Look, you always have to give science fiction some leeway for unrealistic scenarios
An earnestpost about the things that made the Project Hail Mary movie great:
1. Man (+sentient rock) vs. nature story
2. Beautiful space things
3. Puppets!
4. Actually imaginative alien technologies
5. Two buddies teaming up to save the world with technology and science
It will never stop being striking how quickly assumptions about the future can change.
"Translating machines are very hard"
"Wireless energy transmission by 2000 and interstellar probes by 2025, duh"
and
"Infinite energy+matter, finite brainpower"
(From O'Neill's 2081)
Applications close in one week!
If you (or someone you know) has what it takes to run an ambitious research program, we want to hear from you.
Feet! #inktober
Applications for the 2026 cohort of the Brains Research Accelerator are now open!
If you have a deep technical background and an ambitious research idea that's beyond the scope of a startup or academic lab, you should apply!
spec.tech/brains
We realized that (to our knowledge) nobody had unpacked where the money for “misfit research” — work that is a poor fit for academia, startups, or large companies — was coming from.
So I wrote a short but hopefully comprehensive overview.
blog.spec.tech/p/who-funds-...
It's funny how at meetings in DC I'm the whippersnapper and in SF I'm basically a walking corpse.
I am frustrated with lumping a huge number of things under the terms "AI" and "science" :-/
Part of @ifp.bsky.social's ifp.org/the-launch-s...
There are a lot of scientists over here on Bluesky -- would like your takes!
I do think AI could increase scientific productivity.
But so much of science isn't easily mechanized tasks like pipetting -- it's adjusting optics, troubleshooting custom equipment, and keeping critters from dying.
Here's a plan to capture and use this "tacit knowledge."
ifp.org/teaching-ai-...
We finished building the Millennium Falcon! #caturday
Sometimes I wonder if the thing that makes startups possibly the most dynamic modern institution is just because it's the one place in today's world where it's normalized for young/undercredentialed people to be in charge of organizations and significant resources.
(Re)published a piece on the Spectech Blog about how efficiency warps the types of ideas that get support, which ones get killed too early, and which ideas people choose to pursue in the first place.
blog.spec.tech/p/efficiency...
Every once and a while, we're allowed to have nice things ...
For the historians out there --
There are some hardcore, dig-into-the-undigitized-archives-and-try-to-piece-things-together-from-account-books history research projects about the financial history of technology that nobody is tackling:
blog.spec.tech/p/some-open-...
Checks out: arguably, venture capital has its roots in funding whaling expeditions ...
For some reason I get a lot of joy out of the flight path from Helsinki to Tokyo
A lot of new thoughts about:
- State capacity
- Scale dependence for governments
- The difference between governments and people of a state
- American LARPing
That are probably too politically-charged and out of my lane for the internet.
Ok! Time to stop procrastinating.
You’ve done harder things than applying to AI Brains. Knock it out this weekend.
Applications close Monday June 16th!
😭
Don't forget!
AI Brains Q&A session today at 1p ET.
You bring questions, we'll bring answers.
I’m noticing that there’s a funny motte-and-bailey attribute of most disciplines that I think are BS:
If done really really well, they’re super insightful and valuable; it’s just that the vast majority of ideas are garbage and practitioners are charlatans.
This is today at 8p ET!
Q+A session about the impending AI cohort of the Brains Research Accelerator.
We'll talk about anything: how it works, who should apply, our theory of change, etc.
This is the kind of not-incremental metascientific experiment I want to see more of!
Oo oo I can ruin it here too 😜
Testing gentle ways of reminding people in group chats to clean tracking information off of links