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Europe’s Hidden Buddhist Mongolian Republic
The Kalmyk people live in an unusual place. Mongols are not a group of people you’d expect to find in Europe in large numbers, unless perhaps it is the 1200s and your peasant armies currently being overrun by horse archers. Certainly a Mongol ethnic group that predominately follows Tibetan Buddhism doesn’t seem like they should…
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Games I love, ranked by “spreadsheet factor”
I’m a big fan of video games. There are lots of specific of games that I enjoy, from indie titles like Celeste and Outer Wilds to triple-A masterworks like Baldur’s Gate 3. But there’s one genre I keep coming back to, which I like to call “spreadsheet games”. It’s a descriptive name. If you have…
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NASA is Scott, China is Amundsen
There are two programs right now trying to bring back the first rock samples from the surface of Mars: one by NASA and ESA, the other by China’s CNSA. The agencies aren’t saying it’s a race, but it’s a race. And China is going to win.
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Philosophy-shaped mind shards
As I’m driving from my parents’ house to my apartment late at night, I start having a panic attack because I’m afraid of the anthropic principle. Philosophy is not driving me to madness. Instead, I think everyone’s personal anxieties and delusions flow to fit the shape of their container. People more religious than I am…
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Vikings. Vikings everywhere.
You probably have an image of a Viking in your head – a fierce warrior from the icy north, clad in armor and furs, sailing in on a longship with a dragon carved into its bow. If you know a bit more about Vikings, you may know that they reached the Americas before Columbus, and…
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Tides are weirder than you think
Our world relies on the sea more than ever: 80% of goods traded worldwide move by ship. Today’s mariners take it for granted that they can get an accurate chart of the tides for any location on Earth. This would not have been possible without the work of countless scientists through history.
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Review: The Alameda-Weehawken Burrito Tunnel, by Maciej Cegłowski
The Alameda-Weehawken Burrito Tunnel is an engineering marvel that stretches underneath the US from coast to coast, whisking San Francisco mission burritos to hungry New Yorkers. Originally built as a pneumatic mail tube in 1933, the tunnel fell out of use with the advent of air travel before being repurposed to carry burritos in 1979.…
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8 forgotten facts about the Olympics
Like any 130-year-old huge international event, the Olympic games have acquired some quirks over the decades. There are scandals that make the news – corruption, doping, politics, etc. – but there’s also plenty that’s just bizarre. Here are a few of the weird or obscure facts about the Olympics that I’ve come across:
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You can just do experiments
We all do science, at a basic level. To test if it’s raining, you go outside your house and see if water droplets are falling on you. To test if the oven is on, you open it and see if you feel heat. There are lots of facts about reality which we might like to…
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Were the Space Shuttle’s boosters really the size of two horse butts?
I’m a Space Shuttle-horse butt truther. A copypasta/chain letter type post that dates back to at least 2001 argues the space shuttle boosters are the size of two horse butts…
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