On the potential usefulness of initially "useless" research (featuring number theory, honey bees' algorithm for seeking nectar, and how some bacteria thrive in hot geysers), from @timharford.ft.com: timharford.com/2026/04/the-...
And "What they teach you at Harvard Business School" has 304 pages, while "What they *don't* teach you..." has only 256.
And that's potentially alongside "being able to use an electric kettle to make a cup of tea within a reasonable time"?
I enjoyed "This House" when it was at the National Theatre - subscribed to the podcast and looking forward to listening to your thoughts!
A desk for people working at home with a cat: soranews24.com/2026/03/27/j.... But Hacker News comments suspect (rightly, I think) cats may ignore the features designed for them and will continue to expect attention at the keyboard where the human is working... (news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4754...)
I already liked "Birdhouse in your Soul" from They Might Be Giants. And after recent YouTube searches for music with alternative time signatures, it correctly suggested I might also like Charles Cornell's enthusiastic exploration of that song's *18 key changes*: youtu.be/vg2CkEgFgXk?...
... and that led to an edit which turns Brubeck's "Take Five" into having a time signature of 6/4 (a shift which, adding some repeated notes, feels less immediately noticeable): youtu.be/VQ3mTMysXow?...
...Dave Brubeck's "Take Five" is famously in 5/4, but YouTube offers alternative arrangements in 4/4 like this (an interesting variation although it does feel like it's always skipping something compared to the original, perhaps unavoidably) youtu.be/I9IfZ2xbNjU?...
"Fly me to the Moon" comes in two time signatures, I now learn - the one which everyone *knows* in 4/4, and the less familiar original in 3/4 waltz - which why the rhythms in my book of piano jazz standards didn't match what I expected! Looking for other pieces with alternative time signatures...
Once you know the formula for narrative non-fiction it’s hard to enjoy reading it tbh because it’s often just watching a story check off bullet points in a specific order.
Some people are great at making it feel organic but many, many people are not.
This is the best product review I’ve read: samhenri.gold/blog/2026031...
It doesn’t matter if you’re interested in the MacBook Neo or not; this is the kind of essay that makes you think about the potential of technology and the joys of exploration.
That should of course be "why I find *other* charts more helpful"!
"Why you should avoid radar charts in data visualization" by @eagereyes.org gives a nice explanation of why I often find charts more helpful: observablehq.com/blog/avoid-r...
"They weren’t just sneakers — they were a signal."
Forget em dashes and the sudden ubiquity of "quietly" as a modifier. The real giveaway a text is AI-assisted? Cadence.
My newsletter, out now.
Greg: What was the wording on the task?
Alex: Make Achilles invulnerable by dipping him in the Styx. Most invulnerable Achilles wins.
Greg: Dip the baby. The whole baby. They’re not going to hang onto a heel or anything stupid like that.
Alex: First, let’s see Thetis’ attempt.
Citations 1728
Visited my Google Scholar page just when it hit an important milestone!
This is later than middle ages, but it reminds me of one very eye opening but of history for me.
Years back, I had just bought the best laptop I had ever owned. I’d saved up for it, as it had cost a fair amount, but I was LIVING out of it. (This will make sense, I promise)
Hadn't heard of these "common books" - sounds like, but rather more practical than, commonplace books of 17th/18th century where thinkers (famously, Locke) recorded theories & copied interesting content for a "personalized encyclopedia of quotations" (Steven Johnson, "Where Good Ideas Come From").
More on slide rules (from paper cut-outs to 3D printing), and some of the unexpectedly sophisticated maths in this 1971 children's puzzle book, is now in my new Eclectic Stacks blog post: www.eclecticstacks.com/post/slide-r...
Now thinking about Tennyson's "'Tis better to have loved and lost / Than never to have loved at all" in terms of statistical Type I and Type II errors...
I am ready and waiting for the call...
Cover of "Nut-Crackers" by John Jaworski and Ian Stewart (1971). Cover illustration: a water-wheel is driven by an endless stream in an impossible ever-descending channel.
Page from "Nut-Crackers" by Jaworski and Stewart, with a slide rule to cut out, with a range of 1-50 on each paper strip.
"Slide rules - anyone still use them?" on Hacker News reminded me of children's maths/puzzle book "Nut-Crackers" (1971) I once had, with cut-out paper slide rule at the back. And I now spot it was an early book (the first?) from subsequently prolific mathematician & writer Ian Stewart!
As a former mathematician, I also like this exchange in Arcadia between Valentine and literary academic Bernard:
B: I'm sorry - did you say trivial?
V: It's a technical term.
B: Not where I come from, it isn't.
(And a nice article on 'trivial' in maths: shreevatsa.wordpress.com/2010/04/03/o...)
For roast potatoes, most of the literature encourages only brief parboiling. But I took inspiration from @ishankolhatkar.com (www.ishankolhatkar.com/food/roastpo...), boiling them until nearly falling apart, before drying and adding to *hot* oil - for a good result, worth trying again!
(In case anyone surprisingly reads my posts for cooking advice, I picked the "high heat first, then turn it down" approach to roast the pork belly, & that - & rubbing the crackling with crushed fennel seeds along with the salt - did the trick. But other methods might have done well too, of course!)
Planning a dinner, reminded of the old saying on clocks & time - as I found a man with one recipe book may know how to roast pork belly, but a man with two may never be sure. (High heat first for the crackling, then low for the rest? Or the other way round? Or low heat all the way for *5 hours*?)
With the best CGI an Acorn BBC Master can conjure up?
Back cover of The British General Election of 2024, including a photo of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak calling the election at Downing Street in heavy rain.
My own copy of The British General Election of 2024 arrived today - and the back cover recalls the surprising, rainy May afternoon which started it all.
