Cool — I’ll take a look!

4/3 And while Sean knows infinitely more than me about, well, stuff, it gives me a warm feeling to know that I apparently encountered Terry Bisson's "They're Made of Meat" before him. (I first came across it in Steven Pinker's How The Mind Works [1997].) 🥩 🧠 🤖

3/3 Anil's essay: www.noemamag.com/the-mytholog...; Sean & Ned's Mindscape episode: www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2026... #science #philosophy #consciousness

2/3 ...but @anilseth.bsky.social says something almost identical in his recent Noema essay ("Digital computers and brains differ fundamentally in how they relate to time...There could be a microsecond or a million years... and it would still be the same algorithm, the same computation.")

Many congrats!! I will read the essay with interest!

Ah! Well, I like History Extra — reliably interesting episodes, expert guests, solidly produced, and frequent new episodes. I also like Stuff You Missed in History Class, and Short History Of, and (with a comedic element) You’re Dead to Me. (There are prob a zillion others that I don’t know about.)

😐

I’ll have to think about that. (The second part of the quote, about NH winter, seems fine. You’d think SH summer would also have to be shorter…)

7. A private company is keen on launching satellites with giant reflectors -- "space mirrors" in effect -- into low-Earth orbit. Astronomers, and others who value the night sky, are concerned, as I reported for @smithsonianmag.bsky.social:
www.smithsonianmag.com/science-natu... #space

6. How prepared are we for a rare but powerful "solar storm"? Another feature that I wrote for @smithsonianmag.bsky.social, this fall:
www.smithsonianmag.com/science-natu... #space #physics #science

5. A century ago, the town of Dayton, Tennessee, was thrust into the international spotlight as one of the most famous legal confrontations of the 20th century got underway. I wrote about the legacy of the Scopes “monkey trial” for @smithsonianmag.bsky.social:
www.smithsonianmag.com/science-natu...

4. Low-Earth orbit is getting dangerously crowded. I wrote about the perils of "space junk" for @smithsonianmag.bsky.social:
www.smithsonianmag.com/science-natu... #space #science

3. Gravitational wave research is still in its infancy -- but a new technique involving rapidly-spinning stars, called pulsars, is revealing low-frequency gravitational waves coming from every direction in the sky, as I wrote for @smithsonianmag.bsky.social: www.smithsonianmag.com/science-natu...

2. Why is our universe made up almost completely of matter rather than antimatter? An elusive particle known as the neutrino could provide clues, as I wrote for @knowablemag.bsky.social:
knowablemagazine.org/content/arti... #physics (cont'd...)