Patterns without Desires
The art market thrives on the certainty of attributions, yet values hinge on fragile expert consensus. High‑profile disputes—like Leonardo’s *Salvator Mundi* potentially dropping from $450 million to $450 thousand—show how a name can swing millions. New AI image‑analysis tools, exemplified by Art Recognition’s work on Caravaggio and Vermeer, promise statistical probability scores that complement traditional connoisseurship. While AI cannot replace human judgment, it introduces an evidence layer immune to reputation and market pressure, reshaping how authenticity is verified.
Travelling at the Speed of Light
ScienceClic released a 15‑minute YouTube video titled “Travelling at the speed of light,” directed by French visual artist Alessandro Roussel. The piece uses polished 3D graphics to illustrate how relativistic physics would appear to passengers on a near‑light‑speed craft, covering time...
Living without My Self
The author describes a personal sense of lacking a stable, narrative self and finds validation in Robert Musil’s unfinished novel *The Man Without Qualities*. By connecting Musil’s fiction to Buddhist anattā, Hume’s bundle theory, Ernst Mach’s functionalism and recent neuroscience, the...
The Antibiotic Trap
India’s antibiotics are cheap, ubiquitous and often sold in half‑doses by street‑side pharmacies to workers who cannot afford missed wages. Weak regulatory oversight, rampant use in livestock and massive pharmaceutical‑plant waste have created a perfect storm for antimicrobial resistance (AMR)....
When Trauma Becomes Trope
The essay critiques humanitarian journalism, tracing its origins from 19th‑century war reporting to today’s crisis coverage. It argues that media narratives often serve political convenience, reinforcing colonial power dynamics and generating compassion fatigue. The piece highlights how NGO funding blurs...
The Hypercurious Mind
A cognitive neuroscientist proposes "hypercuriosity" as a unifying lens for ADHD, describing how heightened sensitivity to novelty and informational reward drives both intense focus and distractibility. The article reviews neuroimaging and behavioral evidence that people with ADHD allocate attention toward...
Abandoning Ourselves
The article explores existential regret, linking it to anxiety and guilt, and argues that authentic decision‑making can mitigate its pain. Drawing on philosophers like Kierkegaard, Sartre, and Nietzsche, it shows how confronting mortality and freedom leads to more purposeful lives....
Unbounded
Emmy Noether, a pioneering early‑20th‑century mathematician, formulated two groundbreaking theorems linking continuous symmetries to conservation laws, providing the missing mathematical foundation for energy conservation in Einstein’s relativity. Despite lacking a formal position and facing gender discrimination, she taught unofficially, built...
A Duty to Oneself
The essay interrogates whether genuine duties to oneself exist, contrasting Kantian claims of rational autonomy with sceptical views that self‑obligations merely serve personal happiness. It introduces African philosophical concepts—harmony (ubuntu) and vitality—as alternative foundations that treat self‑respect as a form...
What Is Electronic Music?
An archival BBC video from 1969 revisits the birth of electronic music at the Radiophonic Workshop, the unit established in 1958 to produce sound effects and experimental compositions. The footage features interviews with pioneers like Daphne Oram, who demonstrate the hands‑on...
On Her Own Terms
The piece revisits Doris Lessing’s unconventional career, from her colonial upbringing and communist activism to her 2007 Nobel Prize, emphasizing how works like “The Golden Notebook” and “The Summer Before the Dark” challenged literary norms and feminist discourse. It intertwines...