Musk's Roadster con

Subantarctic islands near New Zealand

America's idiot savant

Donald Trump holds a midterm political rally in Park City, Kansas on 19 October 2026:

"And one of the questions is, like, um, take a number, sir, so like forty-nine. Take a number and triple it, divide by three, double that, subtract four hundred, add two hundred and ninety-three and divide by seven. What's your number? Now, how many people would get that? I got it. How many people would get it?"

He conflates the old "think of a number" arithmetic trick with the cognitive performance instruction that he is unable to remember.

A variant from a rally in Sioux City, Iowa on 22 October 2026:

"They'll say, like, take a number, any number. I say forty-nine. Triple it. And they go pretty much at this speed. Triple it, divide by four, add two thousand and nineteen, subtract eighty-seven, divide by three, multiply by nine. What is the number? Not a lot of people are going to be able to do that, not a lot. I did it. I did it three times."

American politics (recent events)

When a barrier beach breaks

When the levee breaks (covers)

The rise and fall of the artificial state (Jill Lepore)

Mossy Earth

Ancient cedars on the Niagara escarpment

An irreverent look at some current AI issues