We need a ‘Great Simplification’ to avoid catastrophe, and in doing so, we will unwittingly answer one of the most interesting questions in modern science.

The Fermi Paradox is a fundamental problem in astrobiology that asks a hauntingly simple question: ‘If intelligent life in the universe is likely to exist, why do we see literally no evidence of their existence?’

There is a myriad of possible solutions to this question, everything from ‘We are all alone’ to ‘We are too stupid to see them yet,’ but perhaps the scariest answer is that of the ‘Great Filter,’ the idea that all industrial, spacefaring civilizations like our own cannot overcome a certain unknown obstacle (the filter) to further development and either go extinct or de-industrialize and fade away. …

Marketing companies would like you to believe that it is worth selling your own data for a bit of beer money.

You probably already know that companies spy on us. This is made painfully clear to us every single time hackers steal and leak vast quantities of user data, giving us a tiny glimpse into just how much information these companies keep on us, much of it information we didn’t know the companies had in the first place, and just how poorly protected that data is. …

You can pick your toys but you can never choose your masters.

Anyone who visits the capital of the small contested island nation of Taiwan will notice a few things. First might be the humidity, the crazy traffic, or perhaps the distinctive smell of stinky tofu, a local delicacy. After more time, however, one might begin to believe that the Taiwanese really love claw machines. This is because almost every busy street will have at least one, if not more, shops containing many claw machines. These shops are akin to arcades, except they contain only claw machines filled with various prizes. …

The frustrations of being mentally ill in cold and callous times.

It was after a short meeting last week that my life really started feeling like it was crashing down. The current pandemic has turned my life into a special disaster (just as it has done to everyone else) but I’ve been extremely lucky to be able to sequester myself away from the world, for the most part, in my home with my wife and avoid exposure to 2020 as much as possible.

As a lifelong OCD patient health issues strike especially close to the heart. I’ve been an obsessive hand-washer for as long as I can remember and nothing scares me more than the sound of a cough on a busy subway; I often joke that I was built to survive a pandemic. …

It’s an eerie anti-mask propaganda piece sponsored by conservative timber companies.

The last years festivities have included all kinds of things I had never expected — masking up, avoiding my family (like I don’t do that already), and gun-toting idiots wandering my town screaming about pedophiles. What I didn’t expect was to have to spend time arguing with people about whether wearing a mask during a pandemic was a good idea or tyranny. I guess I’m an optimist.

Based on how different the realities we live in have become, it is now obvious that the American people have been what essentially opening their ears to what is a figurative firehose of misinformation. For all the the right loves to scream about censorship and liberal manipulation of media, the proprietors of this crime are almost entirely conservative. In fact, even those who do not consume conservative media might be susceptible. …

And it may have taken COVID to expose them.

Public transit seems to be a magic bullet for a lot of our transit-related environmental concerns. The emissions per person are smaller, the pollution it generates per capita is tiny, and less cars on the road means that roads can be smaller and public space can be reclaimed for walking and biking. Public transit can and should be a part of any plan to reduce our overall impact on the planet.

I have some serious reservations about blindly championing public transit as the only green option for transportation, though. The biggest is that I can’t use it anymore, for mental health reasons (COVID aside, of course). After spending a few years in a big, big Asian city I found myself having severe anxiety, and sometimes panic attacks, every time I stepped into a subway or bus. …

The collective societal engine of environmental destruction runs off of our labor.

I spent 5 years working as a software tester in one of those fun contractor positions — more taxes, no insurance or any other benefits, just decent pay. It was a family company, which translates to me not being able to complain about much. One of the benefits seemed to be that I able to get away with doing the bare minimum, which I thought was due to nepotism. Turns out, it wasn’t. …

It’s hard to talk about reality when nobody can agree what reality really is.

Morgellons disease is one of those things that you generally don’t hear about unless you know somebody who has it or suffer from it yourself. That, or if you continuously receive packages of lint and bodily excretions from people who want you to identify the parasites they are convinced inhabit their body.

This last part is something only entomologists, parasitologists, and a smattering of other sciencey types get the pleasure of experiencing. Though I’ve left their ranks behind, the stories of neatly ordered vials of fecal matter and Ziploc bags of carpet fuzz left a deep impression on me. A normal young and cocky undergrad might have written them off as lunatics. …