themarginalian.org

How to Be a Good Explorer on the Lifelong Expedition to Yourself

An exploration is a traversal of the unknown, of landscapes you didn't even know existed, with all the courage and vulnerability and openness to experience that demands; its payoff is discovery — of unimagined wonders, of yourself in the face of the unimagined.

currincy

You Should Absolutely Be Going to Big Ears, Too

That inaugural Big Ears—scattered across a clutch of theaters and strange little rooms in a sliver of the then-sleepy city—was a continual revelation for 25-year-old me, instantly expanding my sense of what was possible.

noahpinion.blog

A conversation with Claude

There could be more complex patterns in nature — too complex for a human to hold in their mind, or even notice in the first place, but stable and useful nonetheless. What if there are other complex-but-useful patterns in other domains, like materials science and biology? If they exist, I think AI will be able to find them and apply them.

asteriskmag.com

The Sweet Lesson of Neuroscience

Scientists once hoped that studying the brain would teach us how to build AI. Now, one AI researcher may have something to teach us about the brain.

nautil.us

Paleontologists Solve the Mystery of a Twisted Jawbone With Sideways Teeth

The jaw has this weird twist that drove us crazy trying to figure it out. We were scratching our heads over this for years, wondering if it was some kind of deformation. But at this point, we've got nine jaws from this animal, and they all have this twist, including the really, really well-preserved ones. So it's not a deformation, it's just the way the animal was made.