An interesting read. Sterile neutrinos may turn out to be one of a common class of ideas: incredibly elegant, so much so that they almost seem inevitable, yet not realized in nature. In the end, the final word comes from the data. 🧪
an ad for Esquire's New Journalist fragrance
how is this real
you can tell Wired has been doing good journalism lately because there's been increased whining by the extraction class about how Wired mysteriously changed in the decade since tech titans fully revealed themselves as sociopaths
from this recent Dorsey interview:
Sun Tzu (D-NY) - “When your enemy is making a mistake, fix it for him at great cost to yourself.”
A million satellites won't happen, but only because the economics of $/kg won't smile on it. The problem's crux is that even small steps toward this quixotic goal are rewriting the sky (go to a dark place; look for yourself) while the US agency that should mind the gates brandishes a rubber stamp.
The flu and pneumonia kill over 45,000 people a year. Moderna developed a new mRNA flu vaccine for people 50 and older--who are most at risk. Prasad, unilaterally, against the recommendation of experts within the agency, denied Moderna's appplication. www.statnews.com/2026/02/11/m...
Hobbes: What's this? Calvin: A generic snowman. Calvin: I used to make original snowmen, but it was time consuming hard work. So I said, heck, this is crazy! Calvin: Now I crank out crude imitations of what's already popular! It takes no time or thought, and most people don't care about the difference anyway! Hobbes: So cynical, yet so practical. Calvin: And what good is originality if you can't crank it out?
"What good is originality if you can't crank it out," part 10 million
www.nytimes.com/2026/02/08/b...
cover of The Economist this week
You can feel Dan's giddiness in every story, a sense of "I can't believe I get to do this for a living." His writing was great because it was so much fun to read; it was fun to read because he so clearly had fun writing it. A good lesson for everyone who makes stuff for public consumption, I think.
CHARLES RAFFERTY The Problem with Early Warnings People don't like to leave a party unless the house is actually on fire. Even then, if the flames are far enough away to be pretty, they'll finish their drink, take one more pass at the hors d'oeuvres. How things happen has always been unclear. Hurricanes begin in a place where no one lives. Agents of the government start to wear masks. Fascism is a word my neighbors won't use yet. They are following the law, they say, and the sirens are coming for someone else.
This hit so fucking hard today.
Nice article from @nattyover.bsky.social about the state of particle physics as a field. It’s historically been perhaps the highest prestige and most prominent subfield of physics but there are genuine worries about the path forward, as Natalie clearly lays out. 🧪
Screenshot of tweet from Huberman that reads: “The other is that dog breeds w/different shaped heads are predictive of their demeanor and intelligence. And while I don’t! believe in Phrenology I now do pay some attention to how the shapes of peoples heads relates to their intellect and steadiness, or lack thereof.”
In response to announcement that he will be a new CBS contributor, Andrew Huberman tweeted “I’ve always gone issue-by-issue on health & science, spoken to experts w/a range of takes & presented where I see the center of (data) mass pointed. I’ll do the same with @CBSNews”. In Sept he posted this:
In the first of our new series of curiosity-driven essays, Qualia, @nattyover.bsky.social asks particle physicists whether the field is facing a profound crisis. www.quantamagazine.org/is-particle-...
The US withdrawal from #WHO became official today, leaving the world less prepared for dangerous disease outbreaks. “When that will bite us in the ass, it’s impossible to predict. But there is a 100% certainty that it will bite us in the ass,” one expert told me. www.statnews.com/2026/01/22/u...
* MODERNA IS CURBING INVESTMENT VACCINE TRIALS DUE TO US BACKLASH -- BLOOMBERG NEWS
* MODERNA IS CURBING INVESTMENT IN VACCINE TRIALS DUE TO OPPOSITION TO IMMUNIZATIONS FROM US OFFICIALS -- BLOOMBERG NEWS
@reuters.com $MRNA
Condé Nast forgot to renew the trademark for Gourmet and so a group of journalists grabbed it and are relaunching the food magazine as a worker-owned co-op. Love it. [gourmetmagazine.net]
Fascinated once again to see @walkingthedot.bsky.social
work his magic, explaining this story with the perfect touch. Happy to have contributed a small grain to it. Congratulations on this piece! It beautifully captures the emotion of the moment and the roller-coaster nature of research 🎢
These are the year’s computational revelations, as curated by Quanta’s executive editor @mmoyer.bsky.social: www.quantamagazine.org/the-year-in-...
Unbelievable. This would be a terrible blow to American science, writ large. It would decimate not only climate research, but also the kind of weather, wildfire, and disaster research that has underpinned half a century of progress in prediction, early warning, and increased resilience.
"All that stuff dumped on our screens, captured in just four letters: the English language came through again."
Y'all the latest episode of the #Kilauea #eruption just went CRAZY. It looks like pressure built up enough to explode out the ground around the two existing vents (first few seconds), leading to a massive surge in lava fountaining.🌋🤯
USGS Live stream: www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiyt...
heroic work, thank you
We saw it with big tobacco, we saw it with the fossil fuels industry. When their own internal research showed the harm from their product, the defunded the research and attacked independent researchers coming to the very same conclusions.
#ScienceUnderSiege
It's hard to escape the conclusion that the people in charge of medical research in this country think that medical research—indeed, all of modern medicine—is bad.
this shit looks like someone’s about to shoot franz ferdinand
I realize that Bob Iger does not personally read the explanations people give when they cancel Disney+, but still, it was cathartic.
