The individual isn't what it used to be

Tim Waring thinks human evolution is shifting from genetic and individual to cultural and collective

Women have no genetic blueprint

Neither do men, but women *really* don't

Paper Roundup October 2025: dark matter, emergence, and dinosaur mummies

Papers on big questions at the frontiers of science, curated by hand each month

Does biology play dice?

Some thoughts on nature, nurture, and chance in development

Political (neural) networking

Eddie Lee mapped the political landscape underpinning the increasingly polarized US Senate using the same physics that sparked the AI boom

True fictions

The storytelling instinct conjures illusions of consensus in science

Paper Roundup September 2025: Mars life, exploding black holes, quantum computing

Papers tackling the biggest questions in science, curated by hand each month.

There is no time telescope

The Mars that may have hosted life long ago is our neighbor in space only.

The Loeb Scale for science PR disasters

The Loeb Scale measures the severity of science PR disasters from typos to fraud

Hydra are a cosmos in a cuvette

To see order emerge from chaos, Anaïs Bailles shreds up immortal animals and watches them re-grow

Paper Roundup August 2025: Alpha Centauri Ab, Worm Circuits, AI Chess

Every month, I publish a curated list of scholarship on "big questions" in science — the stuff you'd find sitting on the desk of an old timey natural philosopher whisked to the present.

Why does complexity science like ants so much?

Ants are basically the unofficial mascot of complexity science. Why?