What Comes Next_
Thoughts on AI, predictive text, technological metaphors, and the string of thought.
🦌All the World's a Stag
Game theory research reveals how political inequality destroys cooperation and why groups prove less trusting than individuals.
🙏Does Forgiveness Lead to Forgetting?
New research reveals that forgiveness transforms the emotional weight of painful memories without erasing their details.
🪦World's Oldest Mummies Discovered in Southeast Asia
Ancient remains from Southeast Asia reveal mummification practices dating back 12,000 years, predating Egyptian and South American examples.
🌊Ancient Egyptian Watersports Revealed in Tomb Paintings
Plaster fragments from an 18th Dynasty tomb chapel near Thebes unveil scenes of recreational activities from over 3,300 years ago.
👑What Ramesses II's Mummy Reveals About Egypt's Greatest Pharaoh
The mummy of Ramesses II offers insights into the 66-year reign and not-so-mysterious death of ancient Egypt's longest-ruling pharaoh.
🏊Mercedes Gleitze
Mercedes Gleitze becomes the first known person to swim the Strait of Gibraltar from Spain to Morocco in 1928, battling currents for nearly 13 hours.
🏔️How Petrarch's Mont Ventoux Climb (Sort of) Pioneered Modern Mountaineering
Petrarch's 1336 ascent of Mont Ventoux in Provence was a foundational moment for recreational mountaineering and spiritual self-discovery.
🏯Who Built the Great Wall of China?
The most massive symbol of Chinese culture hasn’t always taken the same route, or served the same purpose—and no single person can take the credit.
⚛️What Countries Have Nuclear Weapons?
The first five nations to build atomic bombs became part of the 'Nuclear Club'; others have since gained weapons, despite global treaties.
🕉️Infinite Reflection
What you learn when you let LLMs follow their bliss
🤖When a Claude Meets a Claude
AI stress tests and the "spiritual bliss" attractor
💡It's All Printing
Semiconductor fabrication continues the age-old tradition of lithography at the bleeding edge of physics
📝Five Questions with Jeffrey Rosen
Explore how the National Constitution Center embraces remote education and reaches new audiences, as Jeffrey Rosen discusses constitutional challenges during COVID-19.
🌟How to Measure a Life Well-Lived
A groundbreaking multinational survey is beginning to uncover insights into the when, where, and why of human flourishing
🤖AI as a Cliche Machine
LLMs excel at distilling, but lag on expansion. Except when they don't ...
🖨️Reclaiming the Cliché
What is it that makes the output of large language models and other varieties of generative AI so interesting, and then so boring? For me the most useful operative metaphor for AI’s promise and problems is the cliche.
✍️Blog Resurrection
Using LLMs to pull thousands of old blog posts back from a grave of mangled database text and rotten links
🤪Limerickipedia
I built this — an online encyclopedia where every entry is a limerick. And it's all generated on the fly by LLMs, of course.
🌉Doves Type
In 1909 T.J. Cobden-Sanderson laboriously destroyed the renowned typeface he had helped create for the Doves Press, lest it ever be used in mechanized reproduction. The destruction didn't take, though, and these words are set in Doves Type. Here's why I chose it (with fear and trembling) for my own dredged-up, AI-reinvigorated online repository.
🔮Future Selves, Future Others
Explore how our connection to future selves influences decisions today, from Malthus's theories to modern psychological experiments.
🧠Freud & Jung, The Original Dream Team
Talking cures, death wishes, and the fraught origins of modern psychology.
⚡Tesla Electrifies the World
Nikola Tesla lit up Philadelphia, shooting sparks and lighting bulbs, offering a glimpse of the powered world to come.
🎤Is it ethical to clone FDR's voice? What if it's really, really funny?
Or, a joke that shall live in infamy...
🩺When America Almost Had Universal Healthcare
How universal healthcare was nearly enacted under FDR, only to face fierce opposition from the AMA.
🤔Could the Challenger Disaster Have Been Prevented?
On a freezing Florida morning, NASA launches Challenger despite engineer warnings. How did it happen, and what happened in the aftermath?
💥How to Stop an Avalanche? Blow Up a Mountain
Alta, Utah launches its first ski lift in 1939, sparking a need for extreme measures—including explosives—to control deadly avalanches.
🗣️In Order to Form a More Tongue-Tied Union
Transforming solemn political promises into a verbal obstacle course
🔮Future-Mindedness
The past, present and future of thinking about the future.
🇨🇺A New Year, A New Cuba
Step into Batista's final New Year's party in 1958 Havana. Feel the anxiety as revolution brews and a new Cuba is about to dawn.
📚Bad Education
How self-discipline impacts educational outcomes and why it may favor girls over boys in school performance. But is it always an asset?
👑Alexander the Great Finds His Destiny
How the 24-year-old king shifted from conqueror to ruler.
🧠Wise Guise
People have been debating what counts as wisdom for a long, long time. Indeed, arguably the oldest literature we have is wisdom literature.
🌋The Last Regular Day in Pompeii
People just going about their lives, about to get buried in ash.
🍷A Glass at Least Half Full
Explore how cultures embody optimism through literature and debate whether this outlook is rational or delusional in our latest study review.
💥An American Mutiny in WWII
Cue a young Thurgood Marshall ...
🎈Cleveland Balloonfest ’86
Launching 1.5 million balloons ... what could go wrong?
🌍Origins of Life
An overview of current theories behind the origins of life.
🗣️What’s the Word?
How gossip evolved from a term of kinship to a tool for social bonding and information sharing, tracing its journey from Shakespeare to evolutionary psychology.
💎Nine Ways to Make a Diamond
Explore how minerals shape life on Earth and beyond in our latest study, revealing nine unique ways to create a diamond.
💀Dying Fast and Slow
Explore the borders of life and death as scientists debate the intricate dance of dying cells at a groundbreaking NIH workshop.
🎭The Overconfidence Game
Explore the Dunning-Kruger effect's latest revelations as experts and non-experts test their limits of self-awareness in new, illuminating experiments.
🎨A Rose By Any Other Name
Explore how a groundbreaking study using paint chips reveals universal patterns in how cultures distinguish colors.
🕊️Forgiveness
Exploring the science of forgiveness.
⏳A Most Taxing Delay
Why, oh why, do we wait? Tax procrastination and its costly psychological underpinnings.
🐦The Surprising Importance of Bird Nest Architecture
Explore how birds' nest designs reveal an evolutionary arms race driven by the cunning strategies of brood parasites like cuckoos.
🕰️Timeless Truths
Does time even exist? Investigating a mind-bending paradox at the heart of our reality.
🤔Intellectual Humility
Psychologists and philosophers are working to tease apart the ways we respond to new ideas and information — and the possible benefits of intellectual humility.
🧠Positive Neuroscience
How our brains are wired for joy, resilience, and well-being.
🔧Fine-Tuning and Foundational Questions
Is the universe fine-tuned for life? The Foundational Questions Institute (FQXi) reviews the latest research.
🏞️John Muir's Quest to Save the Great Outdoors
The Sierra sunrise that sparked John Muir's quest.