Spring is surging out there in the world. A few little flashes of cold, then some rushes of warmth. I have some big pots and extra compost arriving over the next couple of days. Bot traffic is expected to exceed human traffic on the internet by 2027, and, frankly, I can already tell. I note that The Economist is now referring to the current mess in the Middle East as The Third Gulf War, a term that has a bit of a chill on it. A review of two dozen clinical trials suggests that the supposed magic fix for depression through use of psychedelics seems to be mostly down to the placebo effect. Freeze-dried elflord Bryan Johnson is livestreaming himself smoking toad pus. One study suggests that 20% of more than 14,000 books self-published through Amazon are mostly written by AI. However, something like 3.5 million books were self-published last year, and they obviously couldn’t all be checked by that study. When the net tells you to go back out into the world, you should probably listen.
- All 5 fundamental units of life’s genetic code were just discovered in an asteroid sample. This was from asteroid Ryugu. But “pristine samples from NASA’s mission to asteroid Bennu also yielded all five nucleobases in 2025.” Which gives weight to the conjecture that life was delivered to Earth by asteroid.
- FEMA Official Claims He Sometimes Spontaneously Teleports, Including Once Directly to a Waffle House 50 Miles Away
- The Age of Solitude: Why More People Are Choosing to Be Alone—and What It Means for Society: How intentional silence is becoming a modern survival strategy for the soul. Presumably “hermitmaxxing” is on its way.
- New song by Birds of Passage, gentle for a Monday morning:
OPERATIONS: One of those “touching eight different things” days
STATUS: Sleeping poorly. 7hrs 52m, stress marker of 72. I need to take this damned FitBit off again. Watching the exchange rate go up and down like a yoyo.
READING: THE VISIONARIES, Wolfram Eilenberger (UK) (US+), re-reading REALITY HUNGER, David Shields (UK) (US+)
LISTENING: The Early Music Show
MISSION CONTROL: I can be contacted via the Cheng Caplan Company or Inkwell Management. Link in masthead to join my free newsletter.
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