Stephen Morrow

YouTube video by WIRED I Cheated At Poker By Hacking A Casino Card Shuffling Machine | Hacklab | WIRED

For the latest episode of Hacklab, we carried out one of the more fun and stressful hacking experiments of my career: We hacked a casino card shuffler to help me cheat in a game of poker against unsuspecting players in Vegas. www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQ20...

Screenshot of the posit:: conf livestream, showing a man in a plaid shirt next to an optical illusion image of two concentric circles that look like they’re not concentric

“Whoever designed the human visual system has a lot to answer for. Maybe not as much as the knee team, or the lower back group, but a lot.”

- @kjhealy.co , making me shoot my afternoon coffee out my nose.

An Evening With Carl Zimmer, science journalist and book author Carl Zimmer is an award-winning New York Times columnist and author of 15 books about science. His talk, "Science, science communications and science jo...

I'm headed to Notre Dame next week to give a public lecture on Thursday 9/25 about science writing in an age of <waves hands> all this. Details here: science.nd.edu/events/2025/...

Drawing of gnat

Drawing of silk

Drawing of a needle's point

Robert Hooke's drawings of objects under the microscope were so beautiful. These are from "Micrographia" in 1665

Painting of a breaking wave

It's been six months since I started tracking the dire science news in my newsletter. For a long time, it felt like an ominous ocean swell. Now it feels like a breaking wave.
buttondown.com/carlzimmer/a...

Opinion | The Texas Democrats Won by Losing

On the value of fighting battles you think you might lose

@madva.bsky.social and I with some ideas in today's NYT, drawing from our new book, with @dryan149.bsky.social, Somebody Should Do Something: How Anyone Can Help Create Social Change.

www.nytimes.com/2025/08/29/o...

@mitpress.bsky.social

Oops! The Evolutionary Accidents That Made You Human Author Madeleine Beekman shares 5 key insights from her new book, The Origin of Language: How We Learned to Speak and Why.

nextbigideaclub.com/magazine/oop... I bet Stephen Jay Gould would not have approved of the image, but I like to think he would have applauded Madeleine Beekman's THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE.

A First Time for Everything | Sean M. Carroll Scientific theories about the origin of the universe often involve a vigorous give-and-take between speculation and discovery.

Dark energy? Inflaton fields? Eternal inflation? “It is a good time for books that take stock of where we are [in modern cosmology] and that illustrate which puzzles modern physicists choose to take seriously.” — @seanmcarroll.bsky.social

The new admin strategy for facts and real data is to fire the messenger or demand retraction. That isn't going to work.

Three thousand years of backstory: carlzimmer.com/books/airbor...

Here we are talking about Ada Palmer’s new book and I think I should tag her @adapalmer.bsky.social and her publisher @uchicagopress.bsky.social.

How did I get this far in life and _just_ find out that every cube is a multiple of 9, ±1?
1³ = 1 = 0⸱9 +1
2³ = 8 = 1⸱9 -1
3³ = 27 = 3⸱9 +0
4³ = 64 = 7⸱9 +1
5³ = 125 = 14⸱9 -1
6³ = 216 = 24⸱9 +0
7³ = 343 = 38⸱9 +1

Proof is easy: any can be written as (3k-1)³, (3k)³, or (3k+1)³; then just expand.

Excellent! Congratulations Neil!!

Infinitesimals revisited How infinitesimal calculus became rigorous

Please enjoy this excerpt from my book Lectures on the Philosophy of Mathematics on the topic of infinitesimals revisted, exploring diverse issues in nonstandard analysis. www.infinitelymore.xyz/p/infinitesi... #InfinitelyMore #PhilMaths

3x3 grid of trend plots for writing styles.

New paper. Trends in scientific writing. More noun chunks and sensational language. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

If you're looking to improve and maintain your health as you age, take a look at Dr. Eric Topol's new book "Super Agers." It's filled with lots of interesting information. One of the best books I've read in a long time 💪

The Natural Philosophy Symposium is underway! I had some idea of live-skeeting, but the real-time event is too absorbing.

www.naturalphilosophyhopkins.org/natural-phil...

Anyway, we've had:

(cont)

Using new adaptive-optics techniques, researchers have created ultra-high resolution images of the Sun's corona--and the results are astonishing.

This video shows "coronal rain": loops of magnetic plasma arching out from the Sun, cooling, and flowing back down. 🧪🔭

nso.edu/press-releas...

Cover of Air-Borne: The Hidden History of the Life we Breathe by Carl Zimmer.

I’m thoroughly enjoying this book. Although the part about biological warfare is terrifying.

Thanks to the @newyorker.com for featuring the new @mitpress.bsky.social THE WEAPONIZATION OF EXPERTISE in their "The Best Books We Read This Week" roundup.

"Their persuasive account illustrates how tentative conclusions proclaimed by the powerful can harden into orthodoxies." -- The New Yorker

Andy has a gift for reporting on the strangest, most daring people. One of his wildest ever? Trust him.

Introducing: The Future of Aging by The World as You’ll Know It: The Future Of Aging

I'm thrilled to share my new project: a podcast about the science of aging. Here's the trailer megaphone.link/CAD4784658285

Great to see you today, as always, Anil. Thank you! I'm dreaming about your next book...

‘Get rid of the pseudoscience’: top doctor’s plan to improve America’s health Eric Topol says we can prevent age-related disease and live fuller lives – but only if we reject anti-science ‘malarkey’

Using the advances in the science of aging to prevent the major age-related diseases (no reversal of aging required) www.theguardian.com/world/2025/m... @theguardian.com

‘Super Agers’ Review: Living the Good Life For a long and healthy life, diet and regular exercise are a better bet than trendy supplements and expensive longevity clinics.

Review of SUPER AGERS by @dshaywitz.bsky.social @wsj.com gift link www.wsj.com/health/welln...

Whole-Genome Sequencing of a Healthy Aging Cohort The genomic characterization of humans that age without developing diseases suggests that healthy aging is a distinct phenotype from exceptional longevity and that it may be enriched with disease-prot...

The Wellderly. For the most part, it's not in their genes.
Mrs Rushall's remarkable healthspan isn’t shared by her family members. Her mother died at age 59; her father at 64. Her two brothers died at ages 43 and 75.
As we found in our study of ~1,400 www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

And, hi Acanthobothrium zimmeri!

Super Agers: An Evidence-Based Approach to Longevity An Evidence-Based Approach to Longevity

We talk about ideas from Eric's most recent two books:

Deep Medicine: How Artificial Intelligence Can Make Healthcare Human Again

bookshop.org/p/books/deep...

and Super Agers: An Evidence-Based Approach to Longevity

bookshop.org/p/books/supe...