Recently updated blogs

Jason Roberts’s Every Living Thing has perhaps the most gorgeous cover I’ve ever seen on a natural history book. That alone would have been enough for me to pick it up and look more closely – but the subtitle, The Great and Deadly Race to Know All Life, is darn near irresistible. The flap copy […]

We are told that energy transitions are always slow. But this is not supported by history. When a nation decisively commits to building energy infrastructure, it can build fast.We perceive that “energy can’t change quickly” because of recency bias. Most people in The West today have not experienced a major energy transition in their lifetimes. We think it's impossible to build new energy infrastructure quickly, because we haven’t recently.People are …

Ben Krause, Hamed Mousavi, Joni Teräväinen, and I have just uploaded to the arXiv the paper “Pointwise convergence of bilinear polynomial averages over the primes“. This paper builds upon a previous result of Krause, Mirek, and myself, in which we demonstrated the pointwise almost everywhere convergence of the ergodic averages as and almost all , whenever is a measure-preserving system (not necessarily of finite measure), and , for some with …

Tokyo Dawn Records has released a vinyl mastering simulator, which includes a prediction of the end result of the mastering process. If you have a plan to becoming a mastering engineer for vinyl, you can start practicing immediately.

Nonfiction Sick Societies, by Robert B. Edgerton, published 1992. An anthropological critique of cultural relativism, detailing how some folk societies develop maladaptive behaviors that harm themselves or others. Fascinating book with lots of interesting (and often sad and disturbing) anecdotes. From the Psmiths’ review, which is where I heard about the book in the first place: “That’s the case the late UCLA anthropologist Robert Edgerton set out to make in …

From a busy Waterloo Station, take a short train to Twickenham and you’re in a riverside village, transported back in time. Twickenham was absorbed into London when Middlesex County Council was abolished in 1965 and now makes up part of the London Borough of Richmond Upon Thames. With such a recent move into the metropolis its no wonder that a stroll around the historic riverside feels a world away from …

What could Lizzie Manley possibly see in George Burgess, alias George Crittenden?He was a bounder, a cad, a lowlife reprobate of the first water. She was a worldly-wise madam of a very prosperous brothel on Cincinnati’s notorious Longworth Street. Yet Lizzie fell hard for this scoundrel and carried her passion into the spirit realm.Lizzie and George were married on 2 May 1884. She was 45 years old and he might …

When a good friend of Eat Sleep Cycle from Denmark suggested we set up a trip in his homeland we started to research. We found an emerging gravel scene, an amazing variety of routes and a bike-friendly country where we cannot wait to take more Eat Sleep Cycle guests! Read on to find out why Denmark should be on every gravel-lovers bucket-list. La entrada Gravel Cycling in Denmark: A Hidden …

A recently concluded agreement makes it easier for American companies to launch from Australia. Four experts describe the benefits of that agreement but also the obstacles Australia faces to host American launches.

The Revel Pucks returns to South East London for a limited run from 17 October with their hit new show, Nose Dive Assembly, which has been out on a successful tour around the country. The show is the third and final instalment in The Revel Pucks ‘Risk’ Trilogy. (Read our review of The Wing Scuffle Spectacular to get a sense of what you can expect from this multi-award-winning contemporary circus …

Join the Knife Steel Nerds Patreon if you want to support knife steel research and get articles and videos early. Or go for the “Ultimate” tier and get a Knife Steel Nerds mug! Intro I have many articles about all of the nitty gritty details of heat treating and the metallurgy behind every step. However, there may be some cases where knifemakers are afraid of all of the terminology and …

This is the text of my talk September 19th at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Free tickets are available here. Hope to see some of you there! For those who can’t make it, a recording will be posted...

AI is everywhere—we’re in a middle of a technology shift that’s as big as (and possibly bigger than) the arrival of the web in the 1990s. Even though ChatGPT appeared almost two years ago, we still feel unprepared: we read that AI will change every job, but we don’t know what that means or how to prepare. Here are a few ideas about preparing for that shift. The primary thing …

Someone posted this on Twitter, I can't remember whoBurial songs be like *thunderstorm sfx* *6 separate vinyl crackle loops* (ASMR whisper) 𝑜𝓃 𝓂𝓎 𝑜𝓌𝓃... *moody ambient synth* *UKG beat mixed -8db below the crackle sounds* (nightcored R&B vocal) ALL YOUR LOVIN’s GONE *entire song stops* (in the distance) ᴅᴏᴜʙʟᴇ ᴋɪʟʟ...I chuckled, we all chuckled... But then self-parody is the price - the inevitable next stage - of originalityOnly true originals …