PinnedMember-onlyTomorrow’s Tech You Don’t Hear About — YetNo SciFi prepared you for what’s really coming 1. Observing the Impossible It started with a bit of a crime mystery. In the mid-1980s, at the shores of the Oneida Lake, next to the town of Syracuse, NY, some geochemists were baffled: the manganese dioxide sludge at the bottom of the lake was somehow dissolving into the water — and fast. The…Biotech7 min readBiotech7 min read
Sep 9Member-onlyTwo Genocides With One StonePutin did have a plan, and it was working … until just about now. First things first, just to make my place in this very clear: It is hard for me to write articles about the war in the Ukraine. It is hard to put what I feel into words, the closest would probably be “confused, helpless rage”. See, my dad was a convinced…History10 min readHistory10 min read
Aug 29Member-onlySufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a brick.The real reason we won’t recognize alien technology when we see it 1947 was the year of the Roswell incident. It also happens to be the year the transistor was invented. The transistor, and the material science behind it, is the technology on which most of the modernity is based, culminating in the device you are reading this article on. It is…Technology6 min readTechnology6 min read
May 7Member-onlyMost of the world is already a farm while we are facing world hunger, but you’ll never hear it on the news.My apologies in advance, the rest of this is a serious but hopefully not too dry journal paper. Please bear with me. I’ll rewrite it in the style of umair haque later, if I ever have the time. Agriculture Currently there are close to 8 billion people on the planet, according…Food36 min readFood36 min read
Apr 17Member-onlyThe world has been ruled by an AI for centuries. Why worry now?You, and everyone you know are cogs in a learning, evolving machine your ancestors invented. This machine is outside of your control, and doesn’t care about your individual existence. It doesn’t need you as a battery — it doesn’t even run on electricity. Nor does it need a conspiracy: respected…Economy9 min readEconomy9 min read
May 21, 2022Member-onlyConstraints are Freedom: Both are the Reason You Exist.When everything is possible, nothing useful can happen. That includes your life choices. Paradoxically, it is limits and constraints that make anything at all possible. Starting from the quantum soup, it takes three or four levels of constraints of for matter to become organized enough for life to become possible…Limits9 min readLimits9 min read
Apr 13, 2022Member-onlyThis is why democracy will always win.*Real democracy, not what the US or the UK have. Many forms of government have been attempted over the course of millennia of human civilization. I hate to be a downer, but every single form of government attempted so far has already failed at least once in the past. This is why we speak of “ancient Greece”, “old Rome”, “ancient…Democracy9 min readDemocracy9 min read
Apr 7, 2022Member-onlyThe little critter big enough to change the climate.Feeding it could fix our problems for free. — To continue our series on future technologies that people are not talking enough about, let’s take a look at an unexpected carbon capture solution — a way that avoids many of the problems that plagues the traditional methods, while using things that we already have too many of. Surprisingly, even…Biotechnology14 min readBiotechnology14 min read
Mar 22, 2022Member-onlyPutin has created his own worst nightmare. And ours.On February 24th, Putin and his “Greater Russia” nationalists have made their own worst nightmares come true, destroyed any hope for Russia’s near future, and put every Russian in the world in danger. First things first: if you want to help, please donate to one of the charities operating in Ukraine, for example the Ukrainian Red Cross. And now to the article. I come from a country that does not exist. My mother left what was the smoldering remains of the Soviet Union…Russia5 min readRussia5 min read
Published inPredict·Feb 7, 2022Member-onlyThe Next Inevitable Crisis in ScienceWho connects the dots? — You might know Leonardo Da Vinci as one of the greatest painters in the history of art, and one of the founders of the Renaissance. Or you might know him as a sculptor — or an architect, or an engineer, or an inventor. He was all of those things, but…Science10 min readScience10 min read
