In this ambitious, myth-busting book, leading scientist and internationally bestselling author Vaclav Smil investigates many of the burning questions facing the world today:
Speed: How It Explains the World - Vaclav Smil
In a world that feels like it’s moving faster than ever, Smil examines how our relentless pursuit of speed – in areas such as production, travel and communication – shapes not only our technological landscape but also our social and environmental realities. And through engaging anecdotes and striking statistics, Smil challenges the assumption that faster is always better.
Vaden Masrani | about
Vaden Masrani's academic website. A place to link to news, recent work, and what's been interesting me of late.
“I Fail Almost Every Day”: An Interview with Samin Nosrat
From 2020: The chef, cookbook author, and star of the Netflix series “Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat” talks about the challenges of writing her next book, her relationship to fame, her attempts at veganism, and more.
Our Changing Climate
Daniel Christian Wahl: “Bioregional Futures: Reconnecting to Place for Planetary Health” - The Great Simplification
In the past century of abundant energy surplus, humanity’s globalized, large-scale approach to problem-solving
The current war on science, and who’s behind it
A vaccine developer and a climate scientist walk into a bar write a book.
Haruki Murakami: ‘You have to go through the darkness before you get to the light’
The books interview: his surreal stories are read by millions but the Japanese novelist is bemused by his celebrity. The eternal Nobel favourite reveals why his books appeal in times of chaos
Publishing your work increases your luck
In 12 months, @aarondfrancis changed his life by bypassing fear and embracing risk. Now, he’s working his dream job @tuple. Get his full story on The ReadME Project:
The long season of langdev
The book The Burning World by J.G. Ballard is a post-apocalyptic science fiction tale about the near complete dissipation of water from the surface of the Earth.
How to Understand the Universe When You’re Stuck Inside of It
Lee Smolin’s radical idea to reimagine how we view the universe.
Upside Down: A Primer for the Looking-Glass World
In a series of mock lesson plans and a "program of study" Galeano provides an eloquent, passionate, funny and shocking exposé of First World privileges and assumptions. From a master class in "The Impunity of Power" to a seminar on "The Sacred Car"—with tips along the way on "How to Resist Useless Vices" and a declaration of the "The Right to Rave"—he surveys a world unevenly divided between abundance and deprivation, carnival and torture, power and helplessness. We have accepted a "reality" we should reject, he writes, one where poverty kills, people are hungry, machines are more precious than humans, and children work from dark to dark. In the North, we are fed on a diet of artificial need and all made the same by things we own; the South is the galley slave enabling our greed.
The Next Decade of Preprints Needs Experiments, Not Opinions
Lately, I have spent a considerable amount of time writing about my concerns regarding the direction of the preprint ecosystem and the behaviour of some of the actors within it. Increasingly, I wor…
Expecting researcher taste and judgement to become increasingly valuable (this is from Anthropic's Opus 5.5 system card) anthropic.com/claude-opus-5-5-system-card
