Modern Movies: The Dark Ages

I've been having a lot of trouble watching movies, and some TV shows, these days. Part of that is due to my eyes lacking enough rods to give me proper vision in dim light, but that's only part. I've talked about this with my family and friends and they agree that a lot of what their watching is darker than it used to be. 

The New York Times has a feature article (gift link) about this. It starts with a reference to the recent movie, The Devil Wears Prada 2. 

“The heartbreaking story of a woman who can no longer afford lamps in her office,” read one viral post, showing Meryl Streep’s Miranda Priestly of yore alongside a screenshot from the new dimly-lit trailer. “So did we just forget how to light movies?” asked another, above bright images from the 2006 film beside shadowy, shrouded shots from the sequel. Noting that the sequel employs the same director and cinematographer as the original, one poster lamented “that isn’t a skill issue it’s a choice. So why DO new movies insist on looking like that. Absolutely lifeless.”

That's someting I noticed when I saw Project Hail Mary recently; it was dim, even in the IMAX format. But there are other things going on. 

The article goes on to reference a YouTube video titled 'Why Movies Just Don't Feel 'Real' Any More" by Tom van der Linden. It's a bit on the nerdy side but I highly recommended. He talks about the various factors influencing the look of modern movies and makes some very incisive points, including the lack of depth-of-field in many shots. 

 

From the Times: 

For van der Linden, the blurry-background conundrum is exacerbated by “fake-looking C.G.I. elements.” He pointed to 2025’s “Jurassic World Rebirth”: Compared to the technically-jankier but actually-superior “Jurassic Park” (1993), the latest installment’s backgrounds are constantly out of focus. The environments — even in scenes shot on location — are rendered “faker” through digital visual effects that undermine the world-building. “Subconsciously, I’m not registering that landscape as a real place, and that detracts from the reality of the movie as a whole,” he said.

I've watched the video and found it quite illuminating (pun intended). It's definitely worth half and hour of your time, though it may make you a lot more ciritical about what you're seeing on screen.  

 

 

Phish Have Transformed The Sphere

Phish were one of the first bands to play Las Vegas' futuristic venu, The Sphere. Given the band's penchant for theatrical extravaganzas as seen at their New Years concerts, fans expected quite a bit fromt he band's performances there and they weren't disappointed. But with their latest residency there in Apri, they've taken the visual elements offered by The Sphere's technology to a new level, as described in this article from GQ (archive link). 

Most bands have used The Sphere's immense screen to display various images and computerized animations. Phish have done something different and new; they've created a virtual version of their touring lighting rig and expanded it many times over to fill the screen, then added effects that aren't possible with a physical rig. The results are stunning. 

It was late April, the fourth night of a nine-show run at Sphere in Las Vegas, and the band had just begun its second set. As they slid from a thin boogie into an atonal blur, the screen that swallowed them took the sold-audience of about 17,000 on a grisly animated tour of a damaged body—teeth pocked with fillings, a tummy laden with plastic toys, lungs puffing hard. As the camera wormed its way up and out of the body and back to the mouth, a wrecking ball swung toward the teeth, smashing them with three terrifying hits. The image faded. The room went dark. The band kept playing. The crowd erupted.

The screen needed to go black because a fleet of video teams with a squadron of computers and servers at their command needed time to load a system that has forever reinvented the way Sphere can work: a physics-defying virtual model of Phish’s famous light rig, programmed and run by a pair of technicians so legendary in lighting and jam circles that they have been profiled by The New York Times. The system, the most expensive visual element of Phish’s two Sphere residences, allows Chris Kuroda and Andrew Giffin to control 7,080 individual sources of light, all designed to look like they’re part of physical light fixtures flying above the band. Because it is not mechanical, it can move in directions and with a nimbleness that traditional lighting rigs could never match. It can charge the audience like a bull or pull back into a bright vanishing point.

WATCH

I've included some videos of their performance that show off the new capabilities. The first includes the songs mentioned in the above quote.

  

And here's one more that gives a sense of the scale of the venue.

Finally, here's a review of one of the concerts from the April residency. The author isn't a Phish fan but he was impressed by the visuals and has some advice about the best seating locations if you are planning to attend a concert at The Sphere. 

Featured Links - May 13, 2026

Things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about.

Overlooking the marsh

• When the Emperor Has No Clothes and the Cabinet Has No Conscience. "A President in Decline, and Only Six Days Until Beijing." The scary quote: 'Dr. John Gartner, among the most vocal of the professionals tracking this deterioration, offers a formulation that is worth sitting with. The Donald Trump you see today, he says, is the best you will ever see him. It will only get worse from here."'
• On Superpower Suicide. "And the recovery of justice." The call for a new era: "The systems that made the United States a superpower cannot be rebuilt as they were, nor should they be: they involved structural injustices that made the present attempt at self-annihilation possible. From where we stand now there are two ways forward: one is the self-induced downfall of the American republic; the other is to reconsider American ideals and to restructure American politics so as to bring the people greater power over a more just future."
• DNA identifies four more crew members of doomed Franklin expedition. "Three served on the HMS Erebus; the fourth was Petty Officer Harry Peglar of the HMS Terror." Modern science and historical sleuthing working together. 
• e.C-200 Ultrasonic 8" Chef's Knife.  High tech meets kitchen knifes. I want this!
• I knew my writing students were using AI. Their confessions led to a powerful teaching moment. "The problem wasn’t just the perfectly polished, yet mediocre prose. It’s what’s lost when we surrender the struggle to translate thought into words."
• How Jeff “Skunk” Baxter took his session guitar experience and inspired a radical digital guitar. "Skunk was involved in designing Roland and Fender's innovative G-5 – an all-in-one guitar offering a plethora of built-in tones and models." No more lugging 15 guitars around on tour. 
• The 'Quick Settings' overhaul is the most underrated part of Android 16. "The changes may not seem like a big deal at first, but after months of using Android 16 on my Google Pixel 8 Pro, I've realized they make a noticeable difference in everyday use." I have found this myself and it's much easier to use than the Apple iPad OS equivalent. 
• Composite Artemis II Animation Shows Just How Much Stuff Is in Low Earth Orbit. "It's like playing dodgeball! Except the ball is traveling at 17,000 mph!"
  
• Meta’s Embrace of A.I. Is Making Its Employees Miserable (gift link). "As it adapts to the artificial intelligence era, the company is pushing many of its 78,000 workers to use the technology, and preparing to lay some of them off."
• The “big one” might not come alone: Double West Coast earthquake threat. "Two major fault systems along North America's West Coast, the Cascadia subduction zone and the San Andreas fault, may be more closely connected than previously believed. A new study suggests that activity on one fault could trigger earthquakes on the other, raising the possibility of closely timed seismic events."
• Free Universal Construction Kit. "The Free Universal Construction Kit is a 3D-printable set of adapters that allow you to connect 10 popular construction toy systems, including Lego, Duplo, Fischertechnik, Gears! Gears! Gears!, K'Nex, Krinkles (AKA Bristle Blocks/Stickle Bricks), Lincoln Logs, Tinkertoys, Zome, and Zoob."
• Reviving the IBM Selectric Composer Fonts. " Before you can start drawing a revival of a typeface originating from any mechanical system, you need to do the math." A great article for typewriter and typography nerds. I occasionally typed on a Selectric in my first job out of university. It was almost a religious experience. The ladies in the office typing pool could hit more than 100 words per minute. I was lucky to do 30. 

We're Toast 66

This post is a collection of links that support my increasingly strong feeling that the human race (or at least our technological civilization) is doomed. 

Springtime in Paris after the AMOC collapses

• A catastrophic climate event is upon us. Here is why you’ve heard so little about it. "This system – known as the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (Amoc) – delivers heat from the tropics to the North Atlantic. Recent research suggests that if it shuts down, it could cause both a massive drop in average winter temperatures in northern Europe and drastic changes in the Amazon’s water cycles. This could help tip the rainforest into cascading collapse and trigger further disaster."
• Key Atlantic Current System Collapse Could Trigger Huge Carbon Dioxide Release, Increasing Global Warming By 0.2 °C. "he Atlantic Ocean has a complex system of currents and eddies known as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), and includes the famous Gulf Stream, which helps with milder temperatures in Northern Europe. Over the last century, however, the AMOC has been slowing down, and new research highlights just how bad things might get for the planet’s climate if it collapses completely."
• Climate change is supercharging hurricane rainfall, contributing to deadly floods. "Freshwater flooding has caused over half of all direct hurricane deaths since 2013. The threat will increase as climate change makes hurricanes wetter and potentially slower-moving."
  
• The Clock Is Ticking on a Global Tragedy. "It’s not just oil that travels through the Gulf; the region is home to a massive industry that produces the agricultural fertilizer required to keep food production going. The ongoing disruption of this trade has raised the spectre of global famine."
  
• SpaceX wants to launch a million satellites. "Here's how that could impact the atmosphere and the night sky. 'These launches affect everyone,' says one astronomer."
• Palantir Meets the Anti-Christ. "More and more, the Silicon Valley tech bros are revealing themselves as very dark figures indeed. Gone are cookies and surfing, now they are peddling “AI Kill Chains” for tracking and targeting state enemies. Those being tracked don’t have to have guns. They can be troublesome journalists or civilians hiding from mass deportation."
• Satellites Could Start Smashing into Each Other in Less Than Three Days, Study Finds. "But new research led by Sarah Thiele at Princeton University has found that one of the biggest threats is a solar storm that could cause a cut in communications between satellites and their operators. If the resulting geomagnetic storm did cut comms, the research shows that it could take just 2.8 days before a collision."
• How climate change threatens the economic backbone of the Pacific. "Warming water temperatures caused by climate change pose a substantial risk to local tuna populations, threatening Kiribati's economic backbone."
• The Man Who Made America Safer for Measles. "A brief history of how crackpot ego became public-health policy."
• Major hurricanes in the Northeast are rare. Could climate change make them common? "A Category 4 hurricane making direct landfall on New York City could cause as much as $500 billion in insured damage."
• How strong can a hurricane get in a warming world? "In the Gulf of Mexico and western Caribbean, hurricanes with 224 mph (100 m/s) winds are possible. Warming the oceans will increase this maximum potential intensity, with potentially devastating effects."
• Panama’s ocean lifeline vanishes for the first time in 40 years. "For decades, the Gulf of Panama has relied on strong seasonal winds to trigger upwelling, bringing cool, nutrient-packed water to the surface. But in 2025, this dependable event didn’t happen. Researchers point to unusually weak winds as the likely culprit, reducing ocean productivity and warming coastal waters. The surprise disruption highlights how vulnerable these critical systems may be to climate change."

Featured Links - May 6, 2026

Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about.

Springtime swans

• Rip.so, the graveyard of dead internet things. 'rip.so is a "graveyard of dead internet things," with a handsome old-web aesthetic (there's even a <marquee>!) with which to enjoy the sites that time forgot.'
• Russia cloaks launch schedule after spaceport falls in Ukraine’s sights. "We had serious inbound attempts to the cosmodrome that day.”
• Utah first state to hold websites liable for users who mask their location with VPNs — law goes into effect, designed to prevent bypassing age checks. "Senate Bill 73 holds websites liable for users who mask their location." Yet another ridiculous law trying to regulate the internet. 
• Rush Lost Its Beloved Drummer. The Band Is Ready to Get Back on the Road (gift link). "After losing Neil Peart to cancer six years ago, the trio is returning to touring with Anika Nilles, a powerhouse drummer who’s forged her own relationship with the group."
• What if Dark Matter Doesn’t Actually Exist? "Modern cosmology assumes dark matter exists. But what makes us so certain that dark matter is the answer—and what if we're wrong?"
• The Paradox of Medical AI Implementation. "From Missed Opportunities to Missing Evidence."
• Where Have All the Book Reviews Gone? (gift link) "What the rise of A.I. and the gutting of books coverage across U.S. media will mean for literature."
• Windows has a tool that shows every app that touched a file on your PC. "Microsoft's Process Monitor was the tool that surfaced all these activities that I never knew existed. Unlike the Task Manager, which shows resource usage percentages, it reveals the exact files my apps are touching in real time. Seeing the volume of activity gives me a deeper understanding of my computer."
• New Lithium-Plasma Engine Passes Key Mars Propulsion Test. "NASA engineers recently tested a next generation electric propulsion system that achieved new records while requiring lithium metal vapor for fuel and holds the potential to be a gamechanger in propulsion systems for the future of space exploration."
• Amazon stuck with months of repairs after drone strikes on data centers. "AWS stops billing Middle East cloud customers as repairs to war damage drag on."
  
• Break free from the fossil-fuel trap. "We're going to pay an extra +$500 billion for oil and gas this year."
• Don't Save This World. Design the Next One by science fiction author and futurist Karl Schoeder. "In this article I’ll lay it out one of the inventive processes I use. This is an approach common to many of my posts. I’ll present it in four easy stages that you can learn to follow yourself. Then, I’ll give you a couple of fun examples of how I’ve used it." 

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Featured Links - April 29, 2026

Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about.

A calm day on the lake

• A Tale of Two Countries. "Two superpowers, one behaving pathetically." The contrast between China and the U.S. is stark. 
• Comrade Trump. The unintended consequences of Trump's policies are not what he intended. 
• Certain Nap Patterns in Older Adults Could Be a Warning Sign, Study Find. "Taking a lot of daytime naps, especially in the morning, is associated with higher mortality rates for older adults, researchers in the US found. This "excessive" napping may signal underlying or developing health problems, they note, and could represent a trackable metric for early detection."
• The new iPhones have a problem turning back on after the battery runs out. If you have an iPhone 17, you should read this. 
• This pitching robot has been a ‘game changer’ for the Blue Jays and its inventors. It all started in a Toronto classroom (gift link). "Twenty-eight MLB teams and many more around the world lease the Trajekt Arc, a baseball training machine that recreates a pitcher’s delivery."
• This exotic particle could finally explain why matter has mass. "A newly spotted exotic particle state could finally expose how the universe gives matter its mass."
• Linus Inside a PDF. Really. Some people have too much time on their hands. 
• The MAHA-MAGA Breakup. "The political marriage brokered by RFK Jr. was doomed from the get-go. And Republicans may pay a steep electoral price in November."
• Where to get the 2026 Hugo finalists. Links to all of the 2026 Hugo Awards finalists. Most of the short fiction and some of the other categroies are free to read online. 
• Peptides, explained: Answers to your top questions. "Catching you up on the flood online information." Reiable information on the latest wellness buzz.
• More Surveillance Demands to Come?: Government Admits Bill C-22’s Lawful Access Provisions Could Be Expanded. Canadians should be aware of what the govrenment is doing here. 
• Galileo’s handwritten notes found in ancient astronomy text. "Discovery sheds new light on how famed astronomer came to lead a scientific revolution."
• The Slopaganda War. "The Iran war isn’t over yet, but on the online battlefield, Trump has lost decisively.."

Featured Links - April 22, 2026

Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about.

Boats at the marina waiting for summer

• Game of drones. "As the federal government spends billions on military modernization, Canadian drone innovators are vying to meet the moment in the sky, on land and in the water." Good coverage of a new industry with lots of photos. 
• Power imbalance. "James S.A. Corey on The Captives War, The Book of Daniel, and how the only way to survive an alien invasion might be appeasement." A fascinating interview with the authors of the wonderfu Expanse series. 
• What Discoveries Might Be Hiding in the Artemis 2 Images and Data? "NASA’s Artemis 2 mission produced a wealth of data that experts will be analyzing for years to come."
• They Are Killing Our People. "This past week, the Mikisew Cree First Nation of Alberta released a report on the massive cancer rates in their community. The Alberta government withheld key medical statistics, and the federal government dragged their feet. The Feds promised to fund a study that would take 10 years to complete. And so, the community paid for their own research." This is what happens when you live downstream from the biggest polluter in Canada. 
• 'For All Mankind' alternative timeline vs reality: How Apple TV's sci-fi show diverges from history.. "How do "For All Mankind"'s six decades of space exploration "history" compare with the real thing?" Spoiler warning for those who haven't watched the show,
• Why Medieval Bread Was A Superfood While Your Modern Bread Makes You Sick (YouTube). "There's a significant issue with the bread we consume today. While bread was once a fundamental part of civilizations, sustaining families and armies, modern bread often causes gut issues, blood sugar spikes, and leaves us feeling unsatisfied. This food history explores how the bread industry has changed, contrasting today's offerings with the traditional bread that nourished our ancestors. We conduct a food industry case study, examining how the history of bread, including ancient grains and sourdough, shows a stark difference from what we find on shelves now."
• The Making of Miles Davis' "Birth of the Cool".  A long essay on one of the true classics of 20th century music. 
• Facebook and Instagram Tighten Censorship Rules for Saying “Antifa”. 'Meta’s new rules let it ban users or suppress comments that include the word “antifa” alongside “content-level threat signals.”'
• How two mathematicians created an equation that quietly runs the planet. "The Diffie-Hellman key exchange secures everything from your text messages to government secrets." This article has the best explanation I've seen ofhow public key cryptography works. 
• Winner of top Sony World Photography Awards $25,000 prize revealed. "With nearly half a million entries, the judges must have had a tough job choosing the winners of this year’s Sony World Photography Awards. The competition is now in its 19th edition, and the overall Photographer of the Year 2026 title has been named as Citlali Fabián with the series ‘Bilha, Stories of My Sisters’."
• Inside the stunning fall of the Maple Leafs: Chaos, dysfunction and AI. For the (probably few) hockey fans reading this blog, a deep dive into the latest pathetic season of the Toronto Maple Leafs. I was in high school the last time this team won the Stanley Cup. The way they are playing, I may not live long enough to see them win one.
• How Ukraine became a drone factory and invented the future of war. "Ukraine has responded to a war it didn’t start by creating an industry it doesn’t want, but could the nation's drone expertise help it rebuild? To learn more, New Scientist gained exclusive access to the research labs, factories and military training schools behind Ukraine’s drones."

Featured Links - April 15, 2026

Things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about.

Docks waiting for summer

• The Cascadia Subduction zone isn’t shutting down – but it’s more complicated than we thought. "But while the discovery is real, the interpretation that the subduction zone is winding down gets ahead of the science. What the new research actually shows is far more complex — and more interesting. But before we can understand what this tear means, we need to go back to plate tectonic theory."
• Helium Is Hard to Replace. "One such supply chain that’s suddenly getting a lot of attention is helium. Helium is produced as a byproduct of natural gas extraction: it collects in the same underground pockets that natural gas collects in. Qatar is responsible for roughly 1/3rd of the world’s supply of helium, which was formerly transported through the Strait of Hormuz in specialized containers. Thanks to the closure of the strait, helium prices have spiked, suppliers are declaring force majeure, and businesses are scrambling to deal with looming shortages."
• 5 takeaways from NASA’s biggest test in decades. While successful, there are a lot of things that will have to be addressed before the next Artemis mission. 
• Bad as Trump Is, What Follows Him May Be Worse. "The fight to define MAGA’s future is turning ugly—and more extreme."
• Trump, Pope Leo and the Lessons of 1933. "There is no way that in this new age of fascist threat, the Church is going to forget the lesson of the Reich Concordat."
  
• Solar panels are creating an unexpected effect by forming rainfall clouds and thriving oases in the middle of the desert. 
• Yellowstone's magma source may be closer than thought, reshaping hazard models. "Now, a research team from the Institute of Geology and Geophysics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (IGGCAS) has developed a comprehensive three-dimensional geodynamic model of western North America that simulates the present-day dynamics of both the lithosphere and the underlying convecting mantle, revealing a mechanism for magma generation beneath supervolcanoes."
• This founder helped build SpaceX’s most powerful rocket engine. Now he’s building a ‘fighter jet for orbit.’ "The company is developing a technology called solar thermal propulsion. Today’s standard satellite engines either burn chemical fuel or convert the sun’s energy to electricity, using that to power efficient but low-powered thrusters. Portal’s engines would instead concentrate the heat of the sun, using that to heat propellant and move the spacecraft along at high speed."
• How AI Is Turbocharging the War in Iran (archive link). "Intelligence, targeting and damage assessments are accelerating thanks to military versions of software now remaking business and daily life."
  
• Chinese Electrotech is the Big Winner in the Iran War. "An energy-hungry world is being pushed away by America and into China’s arms."
• This Experimental Drug Could Be a Game Changer for Pancreatic Cancer. "In a Phase III trial, Revolution Medicines' daraxonrasib almost doubled the survival length of people with advanced pancreatic cancer." 
  
• Members of neo-Nazi ‘active clubs’ join combat events at secretive Virginia compound. 'A network of militant neo-Nazi active clubs from around the US has been participating in riot-style combat events with other white nationalist groups in Virginia as part of what their founder called a “tip-off point for a fascist cultural revolution."
• SpaceX wants to launch a million satellites. Here's how that could impact the atmosphere and the night sky. "'These launches affect everyone,' says one astronomer."

Featured Links - April 1, 2026

 Things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about.

Note:  There are no April fool jokes in the post.

The rite of spring

• The broligarchy's war on journalism. "The capture of US media by Trump allies is accelerating and the UK is the next in line. Plus: the mystery money behind my old newspaper." The financial shenanigans described here are quite remarkable. If you read The Guardian or The Observer, you should read this. 
• When is an alien invasion not an alien invasion? "Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's alien invasion novel is a time capsule from the Cold War, and a reminder that the threat of nuclear annihilation isn't ancient history." A good review of one of my favourite books from the 1980s that places the book in a wider historical perspective. 
• Endgame for the Open Web. "Now, the centibillionaires have begun their final assault on the last, best parts of what's still open, and likely won't rest until they've either brought all of the independent and noncommercial parts of the Internet under their control, or destroyed them. Whether or not they succeed is going to be decided by decisions that we all make as a community in the coming months. Even though there have always been threats to openness on the web, the stakes have never been higher than they are this time."
• ‘Truly spectacular’ drug for sleeping sickness simplifies treatment, raising hopes for eradication. "European regulators greenlight new one-dose compound that could help African countries get rid of an ancient burden." 
• ‘Canadians don’t want to come here any more’: anger over Trump squeezes US border businesses. "Shops and restaurants once bustling with tourists now struggle for survival as Canadians think twice about crossing the border." It's not just anger over the tariffs; people do not want to deal with the increasingly obtrusive border searches and the risk of ending up in an ICE detention centre. 
• Computer finds flaw in major physics paper for first time (archive link). "A computer language designed to robustly verify mathematical theorems and expose logical flaws has been turned towards a physics paper – and spotted an error. The discovery raises questions about how many other papers may harbour similar issues."
• How to Home. From Recomendo: "a YouTube channel with excellent videos that demonstrate how to complete common household repairs, such as wiring switches, fixing faucet leaks, and threading wire through walls and ceilings. Unlike many DIY videos, these feature high-quality audio, are well-lit, and aren’t blurry."
• How Alberta’s Separatist Movement Could Shake North America. "The resentments, politics, and risks behind their push to leave Canada." The separatists in Alberta are a small minority, but they are very committed and have ties to the US right. 
• The Hunt for Mr. Deepfakes. "A Toronto-area pharmacist is accused of being the internet’s most prolific peddler of deepfake porn. He’s just the beginning."
• This Week’s Small, Furry and Wet Reminder, That Repair is Still Possible. "Some hope for humanity, brought to you by beavers, with no consultants, no ribbon cuttings, just the ancient art of fixing what we keep breaking." Today, the UK. Tomorrow the world!
• Silicon Valley Giants Finally Face the Music. "Is this the Big Tobacco moment for the tech bros?"
• America and Public Disorder. "You can learn more about the U.S. by traveling overseas and comparing, and five years of that has taught me we accept far too much public disorder. We are the world’s richest country, and yet our buses, parking lots, and city streets are filthy, chaotic, and threatening. Antisocial and abnormal behavior, open addiction, and mentally tortured people are common in almost every community regardless of size."
•  The life and times of Grateful Dead icon Bob Weir. "We salute the Grateful Dead original, who – in the last 30 years of his life – stepped out from Jerry Garcia’s considerable shadow to emerge as a guitar hero in his own right."

Featured Links - March 25, 2026

Things I was interested in but didn't want to do a full blog post about.

Bluffer's Park on a cloudy day

• Inside the fiery, deadly crashes involving the Tesla Cybertruck. "Cybertrucks have locked passengers inside and burned so hot they’ve disintegrated drivers’ bones. Victims’ families blame what they say is the faulty design of a truck Elon Musk calls ‘apocalypse-proof’" Just in case you need another reason to not buy a Cybertruck. 
• No Pills or Needles, Just Paper: How Deadly Drugs Are Changing (gift link). "Lab-made drugs soaked into the pages of letters, books and even legal documents are being smuggled behind bars, killing inmates and frustrating investigators."
• Inside the Dirty, Dystopian World of AI Data Centers (archive link). "The race to power AI is already remaking the physical world."
  
• Resisting the superbugs (archive link). "Canadian researcher Gerry Wright is searching for the next generation of life-saving antibiotics." Unfortunately, discovering a new antibiotic is easier than getting it to market. 
  
• Record-torching March heat ‘virtually impossible’ without climate change. "Friday’s spring equinox may seem like a quaint notion to those already enduring furnace-like 90-110°F summer heat." In this part of the country, we've had a cold winter with more snow than usual in recent years.
• The Trap Always Closes. "Donald Trump, Lyndon Johnson, and wars we can’t win." History shows that Trump can't win this war. His only way out is to stop, and he won't.
• Ryugu asteroid samples contain all DNA and RNA building blocks, bolstering origin-of-life theories. "We are stardust, we are golden ...".
• The World Factbook. "The community-maintained successor to the CIA World Factbook. Comprehensive data on 254 countries and territories." The CIA killed the CIA World Factbook in February and that this site is maintaining the information. 
• Canada wants to build up its long-neglected Arctic. The hard question is how. "Ottawa wants to modernize a region in the north that’s about six times the size of Texas, ‘just like in the 1800s’"
• As SpaceX Launches its 10,000th Satellite, A Photographer Captures the Impact on the Night Sky, "This week SpaceX passed an eye-watering milestone: it launched its 10,000th satellite into low-Earth orbit. The sheer scale of the devices whizzing around above humanity is unimaginable, but photographer Joshua Rozells is helping people see. Rozells’ image, Swamped Skies, is a composite of 343 photos that all contain at least one satellite streak. The Australian photographer didn’t set out to make the image; he originally wanted to capture star trails."
• Project Hail Mary is packed with hard science. An astrophysicist breaks it down. '"Project Hail Mary" is more than just an epic adventure film with beautiful visuals. It's a story that reminds us how important our world is—and how vital science is to our continued existence on it.'
• When Hyperglobalization Meets Chaos. "Choke points are everywhere you look." The crisis over the strait of Hormuz is only the beginning. 
• Historians Say They’ve Discovered a Long-Lost Page From the Archimedes Palimpsest, a Treasure Trove of Rare Ancient Mathematical Treatises. "Three leaves had been missing for more than a century. Researchers found one of them when they decided on a whim to check the archives of a French museum."

Featured Links - March 18, 2026

Things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about.

Birds wintering on the Bay

• Please drive carefully: scientists plan to transport volatile antimatter for first time. "Cern researchers are testing traps capable of moving antimatter, which explodes into energy as soon as it comes into contact with regular matter."
• War on Iran may provoke a terrorist attack in US – and that may be the point. "‘Of course there’s going to be retaliation,’ says one expert. ‘It may be that this is what Trump’s interested in’"
• When you’ve been told to find new ways to use AI in technical documentation. "Some Documentation Managers and Technical Authors are now being asked to demonstrate how they are using AI and to quantify the benefits. Here are some suggestions on how to approach that challenge." In this article, I saw several uses for AI that would have potentially improved my productivity in my last job. 
• The man who proved rockets could reach space was mocked in his time. "One hundred years ago, Robert Goddard’s invention of the liquid-fueled rocket changed space exploration." This week was the 100th anniversary of Robert Goddard's first launch of a liquid fueled rocket. We've come a long way in a 100 years. 
• Forget Google Docs, Canadian-made cDox could be your new place to write. "cDox stores your data in Montreal, and promises not to train AI on it." A Canadian alternative to Google Docs.
• Dish drive (gift link). "Hundreds of antennas take root in B.C.’s Okanagan Valley for an ambitious project to monitor signals from space."
• Wireless eye implant helps blind patients read again. "Now researchers have shown that a tiny wireless eye implant may help restore some of that lost central vision. In a clinical study, many blind older adults who received the implant regained enough clarity to recognize letters and short words. While the device does not restore natural sight, it helped several participants read again after years of irreversible vision decline."
• The “dumb” TV pivot: why your next screen shouldn’t be smart. "Reclaim your living room: screens without smart TV bloatware." We have a smart TV but hardly ever use any of the built-in features, preferring to stream through our Chromecast. 

Featured Links - March 11, 2026

Things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about.

Lactose-free cat

• The Corporate Miscreants Driving the Affordability Crisis. "These 20 firms all have something in common: Their CEOs get paid millions, their workers are being pushed onto public assistance, and voters are fed up with them."
• We’re Training Students To Write Worse To Prove They’re Not Robots, And It’s Pushing Them To Use More AI. The irony of being forced to dumb down an essay about a story warning against the forced suppression of excellence was not lost on me. Or on my kid, who spent a frustrating afternoon removing words and testing sentences one at a time, trying to figure out what invisible tripwire the algorithm had set. The lesson the kid absorbed was clear: write less creatively, use simpler vocabulary, and don’t sound too good, because sounding good is now suspicious."
• NASA’s DART Mission Did More Than Just Nudge an Asteroid, Study Says. "With these new findings, researchers are closer than ever to validating a key planetary defense technique."
• Managing phone media. "Dealing with photos, screenshots, and videos created by your phone isn’t simply a matter of deleting them. In this article, I’ll describe how to move media off your phone and onto your computer, remove media from the cloud, and disable automatic synchronization of media (which is usually the default)."
• Whiteouts, Ice Roads, and Wolverines: What Working at a Diamond Mine in the Far North Is Like. "In minus forty, even a twisted ankle can turn deadly if no one knows where to find you."
• The bombshell results that demand a new theory of the universe (archive link). "Last year, our most detailed map of the universe yet suggested our understanding of dark energy has been wrong for decades. The shock result is reigniting the search for a better cosmic story." This is one of the best articles on the subject of dark matter and dark energy that I have read. 
• The Myth That Wind Farms Are a Guillotine for Birds Is Being Debunked by Hard Data. "The harm caused by wind turbines isn't nearly as bad as you think."
  
• Meat Without The Animals. "Meat cultivated from cells — with no need to raise and slaughter an animal — is now a reality. But can it be made cheaply enough to displace animal agriculture?" 
• Mozilla Partners with Anthropic to Better Secure Firefox. "As Mozilla explains, this isn’t a one-off: Unlike the previous AI-assisted bug reports it’s received, which included false positives that required unnecessary work on its part, the Anthropic bug reports were different. They focused on the Firefox JavaScript engine. And each included minimal test cases to help Mozilla quickly verify and reproduce each issue."
• ‘We’re no longer attracting top talent’: the brain drain killing American science. "As Trump slashes science funding, young researchers flee abroad. Without solid innovation, the US could cease to have the largest biomedical ecosystem in the world."

A Cautiously Optimistic Look at the Future

It's easy to get depressed when looking at the news and thinking that everything is getting worse. But there are some trends that provide some hope, at least in the middle and long-term futures. 

Science fiction author and futurist, Karl Schroeder, has published a blog post in which he highlights some things that might lead to cautious optimism about our future prospects. It's long but worth a read.  

Today I’m going to describe some hard, apocalyptic truths about our short-term future. Basically, using fossil fuels for geopolitical extortion is resulting in catastrophe. But then I’m going to make three unapocalyptic claims: first, that fossil fuel coercion is becoming structurally self-defeating; second, that future material scarcities that can be used to coerce weaker nations are shallower and shorter-lived than their predecessors; and third, that the limiting constraint on industrial civilization is ultimately ecological rather than technological or political. Finally, I’ll show how this is cause for a (cautious) optimism about our mid- to long-term future.

Featured Links - February 18, 2026

Personal Note:  My eyes have improved enough that I can read comfortably (most of the  time) so I'm going to tyry to get back to a bit of blogging. 

Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about. 

A foggy February

Medical Fan Fiction, National Consequences, and What Happens When We Lose the Shared Shield. "Measles, declining vaccination rates, and the revival of preventable disease." ... "This is what breaks my heart. We had the answer, we still have the answer, we are watching people try to throw it away and call that freedom. And I simply will not stand by this. I will not be quiet while preventable disease is welcomed back like it deserves a seat at the table. I will make my voice loud and known, and I hope you do the same."

In Cuba, wellies shed light on the island’s hardships as Canada suspends flights. (gift link) It's sad to see what Cuba and Cubans are going through right now, through no fault of their own. "The footwear, it turns out, is a symbol of the island’s hardships. Pandemic-related declines in tourism and six decades of U.S. sanctions – including embargoes tightened by the Trump administration in 2025 – have pushed the island’s economy to collapse. Staples such as clothing are hard to find. These days, rubber boots are cheaper and easier to find than leather shoes or sneakers. Many Cubans pair their wellies with colourful socks, a testament to their resilience and flair."

Is 2026 the year buttons come back to cars? Crash testers say yes.  "The requirements won’t go far enough for many, but it’s a start." It can't come soon enough for me. Putting all controls into a screen interface is a recipe for distracted driving. 

Consumptive Capitalism. "On MAHA and Expensive Suffering -- A Guest Post by Sara Silverstein. An essay exposing the similarities between the MAHA movement and the tuberculosis treatments of the early 20th century. ' MAHA depends on the “again,” the fantasy of a better past. But it also depends on the “America,” the notion that we are in some way exceptional. But we are as vulnerable as everyone else without investment in medical science and public health. Valuing profit above life undermines our progress, and doing so under misleading appeals to myth only makes matters worse.'

Your BMI can't tell you much about your health – here's what can (archive link). 'People classed as “overweight” according to BMI can be perfectly healthy. But there are better measures  of fat, and physicians are finally using them.' 

Inside the quest to build the ultimate nonalcoholic beer. "Scientists in Belgium—that celebrated bastion of ancient beer culture—are harnessing genetic breakthroughs and machine learning to reimagine how great booze gets built. Here’s how their revelations in the lab could transform the global beer industry." As a consumer of regular beer, I found this article quite interesting. A quality non-alcoholic beer would definitely get some of my money.

A Futurist Looks Ahead to 2026

Amy Webb is an American author, futurist, and founder to the Future Today Strategy Group. I read her book, The Genesis Machine, a few years ago and was seriously impressed. 

Every year she publishes a newsletter article looking at what happened during the year and what it portends for the coming year. If you want to get a handle on these topsy turvy times, it's essential reading. 

She starts out by looking at what she expects to be the big themes for 2026. These are the first three. (All are described in detail in the newsletter)

1. Convergences will drive the next wave of disruption and growth. 
2. The post-search internet. 
3. The rise of unlimited labor. 

After that, she looks at some of the signals to watch for in 2026.

At FTSG, we define signals as indicators of emerging change. Longtime readers of this annual letter know that 18 years ago, I created an end-of-year inventory of signals to methodically reflect on the prevailing forces that are likely to influence the world ahead. It proved to be an invaluable catalogue months later for our clients and partners, so I've continued to publish this end-of-year letter with impactful signals for the entire FTSG community.

Cataloging signals is a practice I've refined and honed for two decades. My annual inventory is a way to think about the evolution of technology, science, business, and society as part of a long continuum.

Below is a short list (not hyperbole!) of signals I collected from the past year that are likely to shape the year ahead.

This is a long newsletter article but well worth the time it takes to read through it. A good idea would be to bookmark and look at it again in mid-year.  

Featured Links - November 25, 2025

Things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about.

Lifeguard station at Scarborough Bluffs

Reinventing the Subsistence Economy. "How Energy and Food Decoupling Rewrite the Map of Post-Growth Futures." An optimistic look at a possible future from Karl Schroeder.

The Terminator Future Has Arrived. "Gaza represents a future of warfare that will be repeated elsewhere as the algorithms are proving efficient, merciless and remorseless."

The Worst Part About Publishing a Book in 2025 Is The New Kind of Spam. Authors are getting buried in targetted AI-authored spam. 

Google’s New Gmail Upgrades—Why You Must Choose Carefully. Unless you live in the EU, Google may be opting you in to giving them access to your private data.

Russian Unreality and American Weakness. "Notes from a bizarre moment of diplomatic history." An absolutely devastating take down of the proposed "peace plan" to end the Ukranian war from historian Timothy Synder. 

Open the pod bay doors, HAL (Arguing with A.I.). A detailed post showing how AI can provide misleading results, with examples.

Bitcoin isn't anonymous — investigators can trace every transaction on the blockchain. Just in case you thought all those drug buys were safe. 

An Update on Our LG TV

Two years in on our LG C3 TV and I am finally starting to get comfortable with the native LG interface. We've been using either the Rogers apps or casting from the Chromecast. But the Rogers remote is a bit awkward to use and the Chromecast can be glitchy with some services (Disney+ in particular).

LG recently upgraded their WebOS and it's quite usable, although with my vision I occasionally have to get up to get closer to the TV. My main problem with it is that the remote is not backlit, a major omission for a TV that's likely to be used in a dim room. (It does have voice control, which I have yet to set up, but I will get to it).

There is also an app for Android that can be used in place of the remote and does finally seem to work the way it should. I had tried it when we first got the TV and found it had issues with the earlier version of WebOS.

Now I am in the process of getting the various apps for services that we use to work. More on that another time.

Featured Links - November 4, 2025

Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about.

Autumn Leaves

My Non-Fossil Car Experience. "Very few EV drivers ever go back." Our next car will probably be a hybrid. I don't think we're ready for a full EV yet. 

Photoshop's biggest rival is now free, with one big exception. I'm going to have to download Affinity and have a good, hard look at it. I don't need the (mostly AI) subscription features for the limited editing I do. 

A Review of Grokipedia, Using Myself as Test Subject. John Scalzi explains why you shouldn't trust Grokipedia and LLMs in general. 

Why time feels like it’s speeding up, and how to slow the pace. "You’re not wrong to think time is running away from you. Experts explain the strange phenomenon and what to do about it." 

We’re Number Two! "How Trump ceded the future to China." In less than one year, the Trump regime has set the US into a decline that may take a generation to recover from, if recovery is possible at all. 

Please stop using NotebookLM as a note-taking app. "At its core, NotebookLM is a research assistant. Not a note-taking tool." Here's a contrast POV to the article I linked to last week. 

Can You Use a High-End TV as a Computer Monitor? "A high-end TV can be an affordable way to get more display real estate for your computer setup—but there are some essential considerations before you replace your monitor with a massive OLED or QD OLED TV."

Featured Links - October 14, 2025

Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about.

A grey Lake Ontario

• Toronto vs Chicago: Transit Moving Masses Through The Metropolises. On the map, it looks like Chicago has a more extensive transit network than Toronto, but the reality on the street is very different. 
• A digital dark age? The people rescuing forgotten knowledge trapped on old floppy disks. "From lectures by Stephen Hawking to the letters of British politician Neil Kinnock – it's a race against time to save the historical treasures locked away on old floppy disks." This was a real eye-opener and really interesting. 
• How can a blind photographer take such great photos? Find out here. As a photographer and a person with low vision, I found this both interesting and  inspiring.  
• The Village and the Stars. "Science Fiction, Greenwich Village, and the American Counterculture." An article by Robert Charles Wilson. 
• Regular Expressions, and AI. Using ChatGPT to help construct useful regex expressions is something that would have been a great timesaver in my last job. 
• Engineers create first artificial neurons that could directly communicate with living cells. "A team of engineers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst has announced the creation of an artificial neuron with electrical functions that closely mirror those of biological ones."
• The Destruction in Gaza Is What the Future of AI Warfare Looks Like. "American tech companies have given highly consequential support to Israel's campaign."
• Another mid-M7 earthquake in the Drake Passage. "The third large earthquake to strike between South America and Antarctica this year." 
• Have We Reached a Space-Junk Tipping Point? "In some orbits, the Kessler syndrome is already underway." This is rather disquieting. 

Featured Links - October 6, 2025

Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about. I didn't post last week, so here's a baker's dozen for you. 

GO Train tracks out of Pickering

• Chicago and the Horrors of Carte Blanche. "The Trump regime believes it has all the justification it needs to violate our laws and the Constitution. It is mistaken." I am boggled that this is not front-page news and appalled at the silence of the mainstream media. 
• How China is Powering a Clean Energy Revolution. "And bringing cheap electricity and energy security to poor countries."
  
• When Did the New Global War Begin? "So maybe now I can finally pose the question that has been keeping me up at night: At what point will it become evident that we have entered a global conflict? A third world war?"
• CHORD will be a huge leap forward for Canadian radio astronomy. "The next-generation radio telescope will leverage Canadian astronomical leadership to unveil the mysteries of the cosmos."
• Canada Tables A Bill That Can Net You Life In Prison For Hate Propaganda/Hate Speech. IRL And Online. LFG. "You Might Want To Start Scrubbing Your MAGA Timelines..."
• ALS Breakthrough Shows Fatal Disease Is Driven by Immune Attack. "Researchers have uncovered how the body’s own immune system may be driving the progression of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS — a breakthrough that could reshape treatment of the fatal disease."
• Why a massive Russian plane was moved at Toronto Pearson Airport. The AN-124 has been there since the start of the Ukraine war. 
• Anya Pogharian, Montreal teen inventor, takes portable dialysis machine to the world. "18-year-old tests her invention on real blood during internship at Héma-Québec." I hoipe this works and can be put into wide production. It will change peple's lives.
• Declining American Democracy: Trump is a Symptom, Not the Cause. "The modern GOP is inherently authoritarian." This is one of the more insightful essays I've read recently.
• Rise of the Middle Powers. "Who are the adults in the room, in modern politics? And what if those adults want neither a return to American hegemony, nor a multipolar world order?"
• Scientists uncover how to block pain without side effects. "Current painkillers like ibuprofen and aspirin often come with harmful side effects because they shut down both pain and inflammation. But this new research identified a single “pain switch” receptor that can be turned off without interfering with inflammation, which actually helps the body recover."
• Way past its prime: how did Amazon get so rubbish? "Sick of scrolling through junk results, AI-generated ads and links to lookalike products? The author and activist behind the term ‘enshittification’ explains what’s gone wrong with the internet – and what we can do about it."
• He Created a Spiritual Jazz Masterpiece. He’s Still a Mystery. "Shamek Farrah’s 1974 debut is a highly sought-after rarity, but even his most ardent admirers know little about him. In a rare interview, he tells his story."