AI can’t beat Pokémon
Something for your inner 12-year-old to feel superior about, as published in Ars Technica. Anthropic’s Claude AI, pretty helpful at summarizing documents and parsing transcripts,… Read the rest “AI can’t beat Pokémon”
Articles by grant
Science Art: Lincoln’s Measurements, compared with “Old Americans,” 1953 (detail).
This is part of a graphic from a 1953 issue of Natural History, the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History’s magazine. The article it’s illustrating is about taking a life mask… Read the rest “Science Art: Lincoln’s Measurements, compared with “Old Americans,” 1953 (detail).”
Far side of the moon’s fiery past.
Space reveals that the far side of the moon was once a vast, glowing ocean of magma, according to samples retrieved by a Chinese lunar lander:
… Read the rest “Far side of the moon’s fiery past.”The Chang’e 6 mission launched in early
Alcohol and cancer
Nature chats with a few researchers about something that’s been known for more than 30 years but is still not really widely accepted – that there’s a demonstrated link… Read the rest “Alcohol and cancer”
Science Art: Mars, Olympus Mons near the terminator, Andrea Luck, 2025
This is the largest volcano in our solar system, as far as anybody knows — the mighty Olympus Mons, as snapped by the ESA Mars Express mission’s HRSC, or High-Resolution Stereo… Read the rest “Science Art: Mars, Olympus Mons near the terminator, Andrea Luck, 2025”
TechDirt is a democracy blog.
Have I cited TechDirt here before? I’m pretty sure I have. Anyway, in a sign of the weird times today, they’ve just come out and said that because they’re an outlet for … Read the rest “TechDirt is a democracy blog.”
100 days with a titanium heart
Nature reports on a new record from the transplant waiting list, with an Australian patient who spent 100 days waiting for a donor organ with a mechanical heart made of titanium pumping in… Read the rest “100 days with a titanium heart”
Science Art: Opportunities for Design & Development Engineers…, 1966.
This is the illustration from a full-page ad from the Hughes Aircraft Company in the Jan/Feb 1966 issue of Information Display magazine.
This isn’t selling a product — at least… Read the rest “Science Art: Opportunities for Design & Development Engineers…, 1966.”
The pigbutt worm: a marine mystery.
National Geographic marvels at a recently discovered sea creature named, due to its bizarrely voluptuous curves and clefts, the pigbutt worm:
… Read the rest “The pigbutt worm: a marine mystery.”Such was the case in 2001 when experts from
AI to translate cat faces.
Nature: Scientific Reports wants you to know why your cat is making faces at you. They’ve published a study that uses artificial intelligence to decipher “CatFACS codings”… Read the rest “AI to translate cat faces.”
Science Art: The Great Paris Reflector, 1898.
This is an image from The New Astronomy, a textbook of space sciences I found on archive.org.
It’s one of what was at the time the largest telescopes ever built, a reflector that used… Read the rest “Science Art: The Great Paris Reflector, 1898.”
A vaccine for pancreatic cancer.
I grew up learning (rightly or wrongly) that pancreatic cancer was “one of the bad ones,” fast-moving and tough to beat. Now, Science Friday is announcing that there’s… Read the rest “A vaccine for pancreatic cancer.”
SONG: Hashtag Exclamation (#!%^)
SONG: “Hashtag Exclamation (#!%^)”. (OGG version here.)
ARTIST: grant.
SOURCE: Based on “‘Just give me the f***ing links!’—Cursing disables Google’s… Read the rest “SONG: Hashtag Exclamation (#!%^)”
Science Art: Lepiota Echinellus, 1887
You probably shouldn’t eat these.
This is an illustration of a Lepiota mushroom from the Bulletin de la Société botanique de France. The genus includes quite a few toxic species, … Read the rest “Science Art: Lepiota Echinellus, 1887”
So just how much life are we already spreading into space?
Mashable wants to know (along with NASA researchers) just what kind of critters are sticking to the International Space Station or surrounding it like an invisible cloud of living things… Read the rest “So just how much life are we already spreading into space?”