A pal points out the wonderfully bonkers Halupedia, an entire lookalike Wikipedia (same fonts, organization, everything) that consists of 100% AI hallucinations in articles that are made up on the spot. An entire mirror universe of hilarious nonsense, all for free.

I post this frequently so you may already know this, but this is the single most important and mysterious thing I have ever discovered. Fig Newtons and Leibniz Keks were both invented independently in 1891!!!

In the West, the Trump Administration has gone to war against… buffalo. Under the umbrella of the InterTribal Buffalo Council, 80+ tribes have been restoring free-range bison to the plains. They're working with big green NGOs like the Nature Conservancy, which have buffalo on land of their own.🧵

our spicier take: this device would not be possible without being a consumer device – the training data needed for the AI used, the incentives on miniaturization and aesthetics (which matter for ease of use!) just would not have had happened if developed exclusively as an accessibility device.

This National Review article lists a litany of errors in Jill Lepore's Pultizer-winning history of the Constitution. Every history has its goofs (believe me, I know!). But do they matter? "There are always fleas on the lion. The question is whether there is a lion under the fleas."

The photographic imagery in this NYTimes article about the last full-time museum taxidermist in the United States is fantastic, as is the guy himself.

Fun overview from Daniel Immerwahr in @newyorker.com of two nose-thumbing, revisionist accounts of the American Revolution. Lots of "I didn't know that!" moments, including this one, about Sultan Hyder Ali, the unsung hero of Yorktown. bit.ly/4eKp0IB

Terrific photo that illustrates how prescribed burns work, with a band of fire sweeping through a longleaf pine stand in North Carolina, burning the undergrowth but leaving the canopy untouched. Source: www.ourstate.com/from-the-ash... (📸 Margaret Fields, who doesn't seem to be On Here)

From my POV, this story exemplifies why I continue, paranoically, to fight my banks' demands that I go paperless. (Gift link)

Canvas is cloud-based software used by ~8K universities to link student work, teacher evaluations, reading materials, etc. These guys have taken it down and are holding it for ransom precisely when it is most used--finals week. Conniptions are ensuing across US higher ed. Ransom deadline: 12 May.

Odd Showers (1870) — An odd little book about frogs and fishes raining down from the sky and the reasons why they do so: https://buff.ly/3o3tHCg

Interesting report: Brazilian researchers use high-frequency ultrasound to rupture viruses (incl. Covid and H1N1 flu) w/o damaging human cells. Viruses are shaped in ways that absorb ultrasound energy faster than cells around them, so they explode w/o raising temps or using chemicals.

Saw my first one of these yesterday. Reminded me of the Biden stickers I saw at gas stations in 2022. Evidently these are now a standard feature of US political iconography. (This isn't the sticker I saw, but one like it I found online. I didn't think to take a picture of the one I encountered.)

A lot of people are asking: “Could #hantavirus become another pandemic?” Probably not. But that’s the wrong question. The better question is: “Do we have systems capable of detecting and responding to unusual outbreaks quickly?” That’s what truly matters.

FDA officials yank two studies of Covid vaxx after they were accepted for publication and forbid scientists to release one study of shingles vaxx. Both Covid studies were large, w/ 11M+ total subjects; both showed vaxx was safe, as did the shingles study. No real explanations given for these acts.

Trump seeks to evict bison from Montana--or, rather, its federal grazing land--in favor of cattle. There's no real reason to do this--cattle and bison can coexist just fine.

19-yr-old Ukrainian drone operator w/ 50 strikes "takes a pink good-luck charm, a toy Labubu, on every combat mission. She pairs it with a pink magazine for her assault rifle ... 'Mom says: "Nastya, you’re a grown woman—what’s with the Labubu?" But I like it,' she explains." tinyurl.com/z2ak7w7e

ICY(like me)MI: Striking moment in New Zealand parliament last summer. Conservative government tries to push through bill cutting back Māori treaty rights, Māori party members react with furious haka (traditional ceremonial war dance) in Parliament. (Video in story is well worth watching.)

"If our world survives, the next great challenge to watch out for will come--you heard it here first--when the curves of research and development in artificial intelligence, molecular biology and robotics all converge." --Thomas Pynchon, remarkably, back in 1984. (Gift link)

Newspaper headline, Rochester, New York, 1908

Our friend E takes care of a family member with advanced Huntington's disease. It's a huge burden, which he does with love but can barely pull off--and only because he gets some help from Supplemental Security Income. Now the Trump ppl want to cut his check by the value of the bedroom he gives her.

"'There are about 70% more bookstores now than there were six years ago in the United States. After 20 years of declining numbers, they’re coming roaring back.' "Since 2020, ... American Booksellers Association membership has grown from 1,900 to 3,200."

Comey's post is puerile and dumb, but not even close to a "true threat." The Sup Ct ruled in Watts v US (1969) that it was protected speech when an 18-yr-old antiwar activist said, “If they ever make me carry a rifle the first man I want to get in my sights is LBJ.” Surely "86 47" is less than that.

"Tuareg drones." Not a term I ever imagined I'd encounter. The game-type music is something else.

Spent the day hiking around Chaco Canyon in New Mexico. So peaceful and dead quiet. No cell signal, no social media.

This is amazing. The former commander of the Border Patrol seems to believe, really believe, that almost 1 out of 3 Americans are here illegally. When told about extraterrestrial aliens, Enrico Fermi looked around and asked, "Where are they?" I'm in a cafe and thinking the same thing.

"These podcasters are, I suppose, the hard-left equivalent of those prosperity-gospel preachers, who dress rich so that they can give others a vision of something to aspire to. They could not look or sound more unoppressed if they tried." www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

One of the minor tragedies of the ongoing collapse of US journalism is that magazines no longer print long, elegant pieces about oddball subjects. Reading @caity.bsky.social's hilariously nutty quest for the best free restaurant bread in America in the current Atlantic made me wish for more.

Update to this post: bsky.app/profile/char...

🧵 BOOKS FOR EARTH DAY 🌎 While writing my book, Becoming Earth, I read — and have continued to read — *a lot* of books about our extraordinary planet. Here are a few of my personal favorites, old and new, with a particular focus on Earth as a dynamic, interconnected, evolving system 🧪 📚💙

At long last...

Today in Robert Kennedy, Jr., Is Trying to Kill Me.

In 2002, when I read Mary Lovell's "The Mitford Girls"--a group bio of the six Mitford sisters--the story seemed like a fascinating peek into a very strange past. Now, 24 yrs later, I'm watching "Outrageous," the TV adaptation, and the politically driven family strife all seems spookily relevant.

@annaleen.bsky.social's book "Future of Another Timeline" is probably the book I recommend most often to people outside of SFF circles, because it's such a perfect example of the genre's ability to comment on real-world issues. And the warning offered only gets more important every year...

Fine NY Times piece about the economics of gas stations--and why prices take longer to come down than to go up. "'I don’t like to shake up the customers every time they drive in, that it’s a different price,' Mr. Nietsche said." (Gift link)

A friend in tech, when asked why tech firms are firing engineers in favor of AI, suffering calamities when AI does something crazy that's not caught by engineers, then rehiring the engineers: "Managements reason in much the same way AI's do. They don't think, just complete thoughts plausibly."

The Vera Rubin observatory has already discovered 11,000 *previously unknown* asteroids... and the proper observing sessions haven't even begun yet! badastronomy.beehiiv.com/p/rubin-bags... 🧪 🔭

The cool thing is that it took scholars 100 years to realize--to their shock--that classical Greece was, by contemporary standards, a really weird place. Now a new generation of Texas-educated students will get to make this exciting discovery all over again.

RFK, Jr., FTW! Measles cases are already well on their way to surpassing last year's record. In addition to the Texas and S Carolina outbreaks, there are new cases in Florida, Maine, Minnesota, North Dakota, Oregon, Texas, and Washington. vaxopedia.org/2026/01/16/t...

A really good interview. I’ve changed my perspective on Will Self over the last couple of years.

Jay McInerney, still with the knack for the unfortunate utterance. Never change, J.M., never change. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/16/s...

A pal sends over this charming WSJ interview with the guy who runs a 150-year-old soy-sauce-making firm on a remote Japanese island (gift link). I, for one, would like to see much more soy-sauce-making content in my legacy media.

Amazing that the New York Times didn't give this story some version of the obvious headline: Yale Report on Universities’ Problems Fingers a Perp--Schools Like Yale. (Gift link)

After big dams on the upper Klamath River in far northern CA were removed in 2024, Chinook (king) salmon migrated upstream for the first time in 100+ years--and now they have hatched.

Just learned that this is a real book that was published in 2022 and is sold on your local online retailer.

Big Danish study (1.5M+ children) in JAMA Pediatrics finds no association between autism and Tylenol consumption during pregnancy. If anything, the link is the other way: Autism was diagnosed in 1.8% of exposed children and 3% of unexposed children.

Devastating: Hampshire College is permanently closing following the Fall 2026 Semester. A beautiful institution & community that has done so much for so many. My child is a current Hampshire senior. Hampshire's approach to education is so unique, humane, & exciting—I've seen it first hand. Tragic

So far, new Berkeley economic study says, CA's new $20 hourly minimum wage has not reduced employment and has had smaller-than-predicted effects on prices (with the size of the pass-thru apparently governed by monopsony effects, so would likely be smaller in more competitive situations).

Large PNAS study in Wisconsin (>10K subjects) finds no correlation between exposure to community levels of fluoridation and IQ decline. Sum of the evidence now seeming to tip away from this worry. Which is great, no? Crossing fingers things keep going this way.

Seems like a good time to share an amazing bit of reporting by Cokie Roberts that has stuck with me: Her discovery of a letter from Louisa Adams detailing how Congress left behind *40 pregnant mistresses* after the extra-long session of 1820, necessitating more orphanage space -->