Monotropism: The Theory of the Single Beam of Attention
Wendy Lawson described a bird flying past and everything else dropping away. The 2005 theory of monotropism, a gorilla in a basketball game, and what is still unproven.
Latest
Indigenous Ways of Knowing: Knowledge Held in Land, Story and Relationship
Dyslexic in the Woods
Time Blindness and Body Clocks: The Chronobiology of Neurodivergent Sleep
Tricksters, Seers and Holy Fools: The Archetypes That Look Like Us
What Is the Social Model of Disability?
Neuroqueer: Nick Walker's Big Idea
science
Dyslexic in the Woods
Astrophysicists with dyslexia beat their colleagues at spotting a simulated black hole in noise. What the research says about seeing the whole pattern, and how thin it is.
Time Blindness and Body Clocks: The Chronobiology of Neurodivergent Sleep
How Do Homing Pigeons Find Their Way Home?
Brain Cells in a Dish Learned to Play Pong. What That Says About Sensory Overload
Synthesis: Free Energy as the Logic of Becoming
Membrane Potential: Gibbs Free Energy Across Barriers
Diamonds and Graphite: Thermodynamics vs Kinetics
human-meaning
Synthesis: What Our Fiction Says About Our Science
Synthesis: What Our Fiction Says About Our Science
We've traveled from clockwork universes to quantum branches, from Dune's attractor basins to Black Mirror's feedback traps. The journey reveals a single through-line: science fiction is the imagination processing what science means.
Not the technical
Black Mirror and Feedback Loops: Tech as Trap
Lem and Solaris: The Unknowable Other
Asimov's Psychohistory: Statistics as Prophecy
The MCU and Quantum Branching: Maximum Optionality
The Matrix and Wormholes: Neo Had More Choices
Dune and Attractor Basins: Paul Had to Do Jihad
biology
The CRISPR Babies: When He Jiankui Edited the Human Germline
The CRISPR Babies: When He Jiankui Edited the Human Germline
On November 25, 2018, a scientist named He Jiankui uploaded a series of videos to YouTube. He stood in what looked like a hotel conference room, speaking to the camera in careful English. He wore a blue button-down shirt.
Base Editing and Prime Editing: Beyond Cut and Paste
CRISPR: The Gene Editing Revolution
The CRISPR Revolution
Off-Target Effects: When CRISPR Cuts in the Wrong Place
Sickle Cell Cured: The First CRISPR Miracle
