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Who Can Name the Bigger Number? -- Scott Aaronson

You have fifteen seconds. Using standard math notation, English words, or both, name a single whole number—not an infinity—on a blank index card. Be precise enough for any reasonable modern mathematician to determine exactly what number you’ve named, by consulting only your card and, if necessary, the published literature.

12407

Gravitational Fire Drills: the story of the LIGO signal injection team -- Nautilus

I had helped build the first quick-response alert software pipeline for two gravitational-wave observatories, called LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory) and Virgo. This system was designed to search for astrophysical signals in data as it arrived, to alert people who could check if a signal seemed valid, and share the message with astronomers around the world if needed. Every alert carried the possibility of a positive detection—humanity’s first direct observation of waves traveling through the fabric of spacetime, predicted by Einstein in 1916.

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The Print Apocalypse and How to Survive it -- The Atlantic

The opposite of a sudden and shocking calamity exhaustively covered by every media organization, it is, rather, a thousand local disappearances, with nobody left to report on what has gone away.

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Write Like You Talk -- Paul Graham

The last straw for me was a sentence I read a couple days ago:

    The mercurial Spaniard himself declared: "After Altamira, all is decadence." 

Funnies

Today's Electoral Map -- Scott Bateman, The Nib

Pssst

Interesting Number Paradox - Wikipedia