How did the picture of time as a line come to be so entrenched in Western thought, and what effect does it have on how we experience reality? This Essay by professor of philosophy Emily Thomas takes us on a jaunt through history to find out more
One is never too old to master a new creative endeavour.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart waited until he was 5 years old until he had the age and experience needed for musical composition.
Really nice article and interview. As Molz says, there were some things in this study that were surprising and some that weren't at all (if you'd been paying attention).
www.reviewertoo.com/theres-no-ge...
Funny thing though: Musk and the other tech lords are still saying such things, and the media credulity has not lessened one whit. And they are richer than ever.
I seem to have a memory of having a lovely Christmas dinner yesterday with my family, but I forgot to take a photo for social media. Does that mean it didn't really happen?
'We don’t really know how AI reaches its conclusions – even the programmers admit as much. Nor can we verify its reasoning against clear, objective criteria. So when we follow AI’s advice, we are not guided by reason. We are back in the realm of faith.'
Our souls are like those orphans whose unwedded mothers die in bearing them
An aerial view of Christmas in central London.
Thinking lots about baking lately. Wittgenstein apparently once wrote that ‘Raisins may be the best part of a cake; but a bag of raisins is not better than a cake.’ @nigelwarburton.bsky.social calls this Wittgenstein's 'critique of pure raisin', which rather made my day. @wiglet1981.bsky.social
Answer to Jung....
What if thinking doesn’t begin in the brain, but in the ceaseless labour of our cells? Today’s essay rethinks the question of how we become minds, arguing that cognition begins not in the mind but in the collective processes that keep a body alive @annaciaunica.bsky.social
Some of the longest-lived organisms on Earth aren’t whales, trees or corals, but microbes buried deep in the earth. This eye-opening essay examines the slowest lives on Earth, asking what such lives mean for how we define life itself @karenlloyd.bsky.social
Hm, maybe I should try that. I'm also an Erasmus fan. In Praise of Folly is a text for our times.
We need an extension of Clarke's Law third law along the lines of.
"Any technology can be perceived as sufficiently advanced and thus indistinguishable from magic if we just give it a new pseudoscientific name."
Exposome is just one of many such terms.
What a desk!
#writingdesk
BnF MS Français 17211; Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, French translation by Claude de Seyssel, volume 1; early 16th century; f.1r @gallicabnf.bsky.social
it is by no means uncommon to see the needles in the compasses, at intervals, go round and round
Interesting perspective on scientific writing in generative AI era: when an idea arrives from a model and not a source, then we lose the attribution, as well as the context, limitations, and the commentary of the original paper. The future looks grim 🧪
"Having an AI do it and fail half the time isn't exactly a winning alternative”
LZ uses 10 tonnes of ultrapure, ultracold liquid xenon. If a WIMP hits a xenon nucleus, it deposits energy, causing the xenon to recoil and emit light and electrons that the sensors record. Deep underground, the detector is shielded from cosmic rays and built from low-radioactivity materials, with multiple layers to block (or account for) other particle interactions – letting the rare dark matter interactions stand out.
New results are in from the huge, underground LZ experiment: We really, really, really have not found dark matter.
LZ is so sensitive that it can see neutrinos! But still no sign of the hypothetical WIMP dark matter it was designed to detect. 🔭🧪
sanfordlab.org/news/lz-sets...
My end-of-year leader for 2025 is about the need to defend science against the encroaching darkness, not just because it is the best way to make sense of the world, but also because it is an endless source of wonder and whimsy www.newscientist.com/article/mg26...
I’ve never actually heard Ted talk
Wow, this is a very impressive embryo model. "What sets the model described in this study apart from other embryo models is its ability to continuously mimic primate development from pre-implantation through to late gastrulation." (Nice, @amartinezarias.bsky.social!)
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
A glimpse of beauty within Sherborne Abbey.
The Nobel Prize committee should announce the World Cup winner tomorrow
'The Open Window.' (1907) Much like his friend Vilhelm Hammershøi, Carl Holsøe is celebrated for his depictions of sparse interiors, which convey stillness and introspection.
bus meme me when i find a cool stick staring at the wall and being happy billionaires with only 10 yachts looking at the sunset being sad.
Some #astrobiology reading for a Saturday morning: I really enjoyed this pop sci BBC article on finding biology like mould and frogs (!) adapting to life in radioactive Chernobyl by increasing melanin, i.e. what shields human skin from UV rays 🧪🔭 ”Life, uh, finds a way”
www.bbc.com/future/artic...
#astrophotography #redcat51
My backyard shot of the spaghetti nebula SH2-240, an enormous but faint supernova remanent. It makes me think of the flying spaghetti monster :P.
