The Marginalian

30 May. 2023
The art-science that captured the wonder of some of “the most brilliant productions of Nature.” While the French seamstress turned scientist Jeanne Villepreux-Power was solving the [...]
27 May. 2023
How to bear the gravity of being. In many ancient creation myths, everything was born of a great cosmic ocean with no beginning and no end, lapping matter and spirit into life. In the cosmogony of [...]
25 May. 2023
How to “include everything coherently and harmoniously in an overall whole that is undivided, unbroken, and without a border.” Life is an ongoing dance between the subjective reality of [...]
22 May. 2023
The psychological machinery of our commonest coping mechanism for the terror of hurt, rejection, and abandonment. The hardest thing in life isn’t getting what we want, isn’t even knowing [...]
20 May. 2023
“We’ve come this far, survived this much. What would happen if we decided to survive more? To love harder?” We know that the atoms composing our bodies and our brains can be traced [...]
17 May. 2023
Notes on the eternal dialogue between art and science in our yearning to know reality. On the morning of April 10, 1535, the skies of Stockholm came ablaze with three suns intersected by several [...]
17 May. 2023
“The people we love are built into us.” “There is no place more intimate than the spirit alone,” the young May Sarton (May 3, 1912–July 16, 1995) wrote in her stunning ode [...]
16 May. 2023
Searching for “that principle which keys us deeply into the pattern of all life.” “Genius is nothing more nor less than childhood recovered at will,” Baudelaire wrote — [...]
15 May. 2023
“Love bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back.” Love is both the tenderest mirror and the cruelest. How much and how well we show up for love reflects what we believe ourselves worthy of. [...]
14 May. 2023
“Self-knowledge… is not an aim in itself, but a means of liberating the forces of spontaneous growth. In this sense, to work at ourselves becomes not only the prime moral obligation, [...]

Lex Fridman

Radiolab

26 May. 2023
At the 1998 Olympics in Nagano, Japan, one athlete pulled a move that, as far as we know, no one else had ever attempted. In this episode, first aired in the Spring of 2016, we tell you about Surya [...]
19 May. 2023
In 2021, editor Alex Neason's grandfather passed away. On his funeral program, she learned the name of his father for the first time: Wilson Howard. Not Neason. Howard. And when she asked her family [...]
12 May. 2023
Foreign enemies have seldom brought war to U.S. soil… right? In this episode from 2017, we tell you strange stories of foreign enemies landing on our shore. From bombs floating across the country [...]
5 May. 2023
Testudinology. Enigmatology. Hagfishology. Raccoonology. Meteorology. Chronobiology. Chickenology. Delphinology. Bryology. Vampirology. Zymology. Echinology. Screamology. Melaninology. Dolorology.In [...]
28 Apr. 2023
At first glance, Golden Balls was just like all the other game shows — quick-witted host, flashy set, suspenseful music. But underneath all that, each episode asked a very serious question: can you [...]
21 Apr. 2023
Heaven and hell, Judgement Day, monotheism — these ideas all came from one ancient Persian religion: Zoroastrianism. Also: Sky Burials. Zoroastrians put their dead on top of a structure called The [...]
14 Apr. 2023
Abortion pills — a combo of two drugs, mifepristone and misoprostol — are on notice: on April 7, 2023, a federal judge said the FDA’s approval of mifepristone was invalid. And then, not more [...]
7 Apr. 2023
How much does knowledge cost? While that sounds like an abstract question, the answer is surprisingly specific: $3,096,988,440.00. That’s how much the business of publishing scientific and academic [...]
31 Mar. 2023
Tuesday afternoon, summer of 2017: Scotty Hatton and Scottie Wightman made a decision to help someone in need and both paid a price for their actions that day — actions that have led to a legal, [...]
24 Mar. 2023
Cat Jaffee didn’t necessarily think of herself as someone who loved being alone. But then, the pandemic hit. And she got diagnosed with cancer. Actually, those two things happened on the exact same [...]

Science News

30 May. 2023
Anyons, anyone? Scientists have created strange new particle-like objects called non-abelian anyons. These long-sought quasiparticles can be “braided,” meaning that they can be moved [...]
30 May. 2023
While volunteering at the University of New Mexico’s Children’s Hospital in Albuquerque, Quinton Smith quickly realized that he could never be a physician. Then an undergrad at the [...]
29 May. 2023
If you ever come across a Cooper’s black orchid in the wild, you probably would mistake it for a stick — or perhaps an odd potato if you dig a little underneath it. Unlike many others of its [...]
26 May. 2023
It’s hard to know how busy this year’s Atlantic hurricane season will be, thanks to a rarely observed combination of ocean and climate conditions. The Atlantic Ocean is in an active storm [...]
26 May. 2023
Planetary scientists now know how thick the Martian crust is, thanks to the strongest Marsquake ever observed. On average, the crust is between 42 and 56 kilometers thick, researchers report [...]
26 May. 2023
Meet the house that diapers built. Researchers have designed and erected a house that has shredded, disposable diapers mixed into its concrete and mortar. A single-story home of about 36 [...]
25 May. 2023
Giardia has plagued people for a long time. The parasite can bring about dysentery — a miserable (and occasionally deadly) mixture of diarrhea, cramps and fever. Scientists have now [...]
25 May. 2023
Microbial stress can be a boon for young trees. Saplings grown in soil microbes that have experienced drought, cold or heat are more likely to survive when faced with those same conditions, [...]
25 May. 2023
More than 5,000 animal species previously unknown to science live in a pristine part of the deep sea. Their home — called the Clarion-Clipperton Zone — sits in the central and eastern [...]
24 May. 2023
Beer breweries’ trash may have been Danish painters’ treasure. The base layer of several paintings created in Denmark in the mid-1800s contains remnants of cereal grains and brewer’s [...]

ScienceAlert

The MIT Press Reader

29 May. 2023
An excerpt from François Caradec’s book “Dictionary of Gestures.”
22 May. 2023
As an object, “TV Bra” perfectly encapsulates Paik’s artistic goals, Moorman’s brilliance as a performer, their personal history, and its cultural context.
17 May. 2023
The quantification of bodies, senses, and experience did not begin with surveillance capitalism but can be traced back to mathematical and statistical techniques of the 19th century.
15 May. 2023
Twenty-five years before our era of fake news and celebrity pseudoscience, the star actor teamed up with Montel Williams to promote an unfounded conspiracy.
11 May. 2023
Bonnie Marranca, the longtime editor of PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art, speaks with the legendary performer, visual artist, composer, poet, and filmmaker.
8 May. 2023
A track record of successful progressive investments has been refracted through decades of bad data, bad statistics, bad analysis, and propaganda.
4 May. 2023
Sociologist Madison Van Oort offers a firsthand account of retail worker surveillance and resistance in the fast fashion industry.
1 May. 2023
Barbara Mazzolai’s roboplants could analyze and enrich soil, search for water and other chemicals, or even be used to grow infrastructure from scratch.
27 Apr. 2023
For immigrants, linking citizenship to using up one’s body and mind exerts an additional pressure to downplay damage and push through pain.
24 Apr. 2023
“Usually, those who do seem to understand the essence of the house begin to behave a little strangely, as if they were under its spell.”

xkcd

29 May. 2023
26 May. 2023
24 May. 2023
22 May. 2023

NASA: Image of the Day

30 May. 2023
A Rocket Lab Electron rocket stands on Pad B, Launch Complex 1, in Māhia, New Zealand, just ahead of a successful launch on Friday, May 26, with NASA’s Time-Resolved Observations of Precipitation [...]
26 May. 2023
The jellyfish galaxy JW39 hangs serenely in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.
24 May. 2023
"If I can advocate for all the groups that need equity, I'm glad to do it." – Anita Dey, Strategic Partnerships Manager, Outreach and Engagement, NASA Headquarters
24 May. 2023
Two black-bellied whistling ducks walk through a field of wildflowers at Kennedy Space Center in Florida on May 19, 2023.
23 May. 2023
The SpaceX Dragon crew spacecraft, named Freedom, is seen as it approaches the International Space Station with four Axiom Mission 2 private astronauts aboard on Monday, May 22, 2023.
22 May. 2023
Scores of baby stars shrouded by dust are revealed in this infrared image of the star-forming region NGC 2174.
19 May. 2023
The densely packed globular cluster NGC 6325 glistens in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.
18 May. 2023
The four astronauts who will fly around the Moon on NASA’s Artemis II visited Washington on Wednesday, May 17, to discuss their upcoming mission with members of Congress and others.
17 May. 2023
Laguna San Rafael National Park, photographed on May 9, 2023 as the space station orbited 268 miles above Chile.
16 May. 2023
The waxing gibbous Moon stands out against the stark darkness of space on May 3, 2023.
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