Fanfiction is fan-written fiction about existing characters and worlds created by other writers, usually from popular media such as TV, movies, or bestselling books. When did people start writing fanfiction? […]
There are doctors whose daily job, their 9-5, is making the blind to see. There are people whose everyday job at the factory is constructing tiny devices that are implanted […]
The next installment of The Story of Us by the blogger and illustrator Tim Urban of Wait But Why! Building giants was a necessity for ancient humans. A human tribe […]
The more we work with LLMs (Large Language Models, like ChatGPT and Gemini and Claude), and the more we struggle with the stupid mistakes that they make, the more we […]
To be overwhelmed by the greatness of something isn't necessarily pleasant. When we talk about Awe as atheists do we really mean the overwhelmed part? Are we focused on powerfully wonderful experiences that we might describe as AWEsome, or on powerfully negative experiences we might describe as AW(E)ful? How about a nice mild sense of […]
Bayes' Theorem is a formula for calculating probability based on evidence available. It is demonstrably correct (that's what makes it a theorem), and many modern institutions now rely on it: its logic underlies gambling odds, insurance calculations, and robot navigation. But it's results often contradict human intuitions, because human intuitions are really bad with probabilities. […]
The next installment of The Story of Us by the blogger and illustrator Tim Urban of Wait But Why! In the late 1700s, the forefathers of what became the United States were Enlightenment Kids. During the Enlightenment, Higher Minds in parts of Europe started cautiously talking about a new story. The new story talked about […]
Let's plan what we'll be doing for the next quarter! Is there a topic you'd like to give a talk about? Come have a voice in what we do next quarter! Even if you don’t want to volunteer to give a talk, your voice is valuable so that we know which talks to schedule! You […]
Kaizen is the Japanese word for improvement. The word has come to be applied to a specific approach to improvement, originally in industrial and business processes, later expanded to self-improvement. In kaizen, you make small changes while keeping everything else going, rather than stopping what you're doing and starting over. This approach is consistent with […]
This week is our popular Speed Talks event! Three to five speakers get 5-8 minutes each to expound their ideas, followed by our group discussion period where the community react to the ideas presented, discuss their own thoughts on the topic, and ask questions of the presenters. If you have an idea for a talk, […]