dynomight

While I’d like to understand the world, reality isn’t structured to make that possible. Powerful big ideas are great, but inevitably you need to look at the details, and those connect to other details and it branches out forever. The chasm between this complexity and the meager capabilities of my human brain/lifespan gives me a constant feeling of dread and wonder.

You’re in the mood for destruction. One day, you hear about this phenomenon of “radiation” where matter gives off energy. You think—perhaps you can harness this property of nature to make a big boom.

There’s a certain phenomenon I often wonder about, one that only seems to occur with culture war topics.

Nations could build nuclear warheads much more powerful than they have now. But they have no interest in doing so. Why is that?

Imagine you’re flying a plane full of babies. Initially, they’re all sleeping peacefully. But if one wakes up, they’ll start crying. That will eventually wake up some of the neighbors who will also start crying, and soon your plane will be an unhappy place. In this situation, you’d try very hard to keep all the babies asleep.

The puzzling movement reduce diagnostic tests because of harmful downstream treatments

Who can deny that many store-bought tomatoes have a certain similarité to acidic balls of cardboard?