Hooper (2026), Rowan, Togetherness: Symbiosis and the Hidden Story of Life's Greatest Collaborations, Fern Press 2025 ' From evolution to capitalism, 'survival of the fittest' has shaped our view of the world. But we got it wrong - and our mistake has brought us to the brink. For the history of life on Earth is much more than a story of competition. The natural world has been forged and sustained by small miracles of co-operation between animals and plants, insects and fungi, fish and bacteria - these partnerships are ubiquitous, lifelong and are an essential guide for a better future. In Togetherness, Rowan Hooper reveals the intimate connectedness of nature through these remarkable stories of symbiosis. From the female wasp venturing deep inside a fig and the intricate relationship between corals and the algae that sustain them to the symbiotic gut microbes that influence our moods, he explores how co-operation is fundamental to life itself and to protecting our shared future.' 
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Nicholls (2025), Jeffrey, Cognitive Cosmogenesis: A systematic unification of physics and theology, Austin Macauley Publishers 12025 ' This book is a personal narrative of those events and a defense of the belief that the universe itself is divine. The central argument is that by embracing this reality and abandoning notions of supernatural deities, humanity can resolve its problems. The universe, it is argued, is self-creating, and a proper understanding of physics leads to a plausible scientific theology. The natural intelligence inherent in the universe, from cellular organization to ecosystems, far surpasses any artificial intelligence. Comprehending this natural order, the author suggests, would make achieving world peace relatively straightforward. The book contends that modern theologians should recognize the physical world, rather than ancient texts, as the foundation for credible theology. It also addresses the historical entanglement of religion and politics, asserting that the model of creation presented herein fundamentally rejects the imperialistic ambitions that have fueled genocidal holy wars.'  
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Wilczek (2008), Frank, The Lightness of Being: Mass, Ether, and the Unification of Forces, Basic Books 2008 ' In this excursion to the outer limits of particle physics, Wilczek explores what quarks and gluons, which compose protons and neutrons, reveal about the manifestation of mass and gravity. A corecipient of the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics, Wilczek knows what he’s writing about; the question is, will general science readers? Happily, they know what the strong interaction is (the forces that bind the nucleus), and in Wilczek, they have a jovial guide who adheres to trade publishing’s belief that a successful physics title will not include too many equations. Despite this injunction (against which he lightly protests), Wilczek delivers an approachable verbal picture of what quarks and gluons are doing inside a proton that gives rise to mass and, hence, gravity. Casting the light-speed lives of quarks against “the Grid,” Wilczek’s term for the vacuum that theoretically seethes with quantum activity, Wilczek exudes a contagious excitement for discovery. A near-obligatory acquisition for circulating physics collections.' --Gilbert Taylor  
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Adam Cruise, Iris Ho, Ole J Liodden, Abraham Joffe (director), Trade Secret: The Polar Bear Market, Director’s Statement:
It was during an Arctic trip in 2013 that I first heard about the legal international trade in polar bear skins. I was shocked - not only that it existed, but that so few people, even within conservation, seemed to know. The polar bear is arguably the most symbolic species of our time - how could their commodification be quietly sanctioned by law?
The idea stuck with me for years. But it wasn’t until I met Ole, Iris, and Adam - each on their own path to protect polar bears - that the story really came into focus. It was no longer just about the existence of the trade - it was about complicity. About systems. About what happens when conservation becomes a cover for commerce.
What began as a quiet investigation grew into a six-year journey across nine countries, uncovering a trade more extensive and protected than I could have imagined. One of the most jarring revelations came when Ole discovered that his own country, Norway - where polar bear hunting has been banned for nearly 50 years - was the second-largest importer of polar bear skins in the world. That contradiction became a turning point, both for him and for the direction of the film.
We worked hard to gain access to closed-door policy summits, trophy hunting conventions, fur auction houses, and hidden salesrooms. What we documented was a world few have ever seen - and one I suspect many will struggle to believe. What we uncovered wasn’t happening in rogue states - it was happening in countries celebrated for their environmental leadership.
It’s this contradiction that sits at the heart of Trade Secret.
At its core, this is not just a film about polar bears. It’s about what happens when trust in environmental institutions begins to erode - when policies are manipulated, and when sustainability becomes a shield for exploitation. It’s about the uneasy truth that the biggest threats to nature don’t always come from poachers or black-market traders - but from those enabling the continuation of so-called “sustainable use.”
We knew the subject would be confronting - but we didn’t set out to make a controversial film. The revelations came slowly, in documents, interviews, and hard-won conversations. From the start, we felt a responsibility to let the evidence guide the film - not the other way around.
I remain in awe of Adam, Iris, and Ole - their clarity, courage, and refusal to look away. My hope is that their determination inspires others to take on missions of their own. Because I think real change rarely starts with institutions - it starts with individuals.
While the polar bear is at the centre of this story, Trade Secret aims to spark urgent conversations about how vulnerable species are being left exposed - at a time when they need every possible protection.
Abraham Joffe Director Trade Secret back

Alex Lo (2026_07_14), Why is a Trump commission attacking Nietzsche, Foucault and Sartre?, ' In May last year, US President Donald Trump established the Religious Liberty Commission. Last month, timed to coincide with the 250th anniversary of the United States’ founding, it released a 224-page draft report titled, “Americans’ First Freedom”.
I gather the current government and its key support base, the religious right, consider American society too secularised – to such an extent that it amounts to systemic religious discrimination.
That’s what the commission is tasked with rectifying. The report advocates a different understanding of the separation of church and state, and it makes various proposals to reverse entrenched secularisation in education, government, the military, employment and public healthcare. It also suggests setting up hotlines to rat out people in positions of authority who “discriminate” against people’s religious liberty.
Whether the US becomes a Christian theocracy, democracy or autocracy is none of my business. But as a lifelong student of philosophy, I do find it intriguing that the commission singles out Friedrich Nietzsche, Michel Foucault and Jean-Paul Sartre to blame for the secular corruption of American society. That’s rich coming from Trump and his allies in the religious right.
On page 41, under “Building Walls of Separation between Church and State”, the report says: “In the 1900s, however, a new philosophy emerged in Europe, which laid the intellectual foundations for threats to American religious liberty which persist even today. Friedrich Nietzsche, Michel Foucault, Jean-Paul Sartre and others famously embraced the belief that ‘God is dead’, rejecting God and dismissing ideals of objective truth and morality as simply pretences used to gain power.” [. . .]
Trump is not so much a liar as he is what the late US philosopher Harry Frankfurt calls a bullsh***er: someone who doesn’t care if what he says is true or not, or what the consequences of his actions are.
“He is not motivated by what motivates other politicians,” said his bestselling biographer Michael Wolff in a recent Daily Beast podcast. “He doesn’t really care about policy. He doesn’t really have an agenda. He doesn’t really think about his legacy. He thinks about whatever random thought comes into his head … He’s always throwing out numbers that have no meaning. He’s always setting deadlines that are subject to extension.”
You can’t get any more post-truth or postmodern than that.' back

Boson - Wikipedia, Boson - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In particle physics, bosons are particles with an integer spin, as opposed to fermions which have half-integer spin. From a behaviour point of view, fermions are particles that obey the Fermi-Dirac statistics while bosons are particles that obey the Bose-Einstein statistics. They may be either elementary, like the photon, or composite, as mesons. All force carrier particles are bosons. They are named after Satyendra Nath Bose. In contrast to fermions, several bosons can occupy the same quantum state. Thus, bosons with the same energy can occupy the same place in space.' back

Christopher Pollard (2026_07_12), Antonio Gramsci: His Philosophy Explained, 'Marxist, journalist, political leader and social theorist Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937) was a small, disabled, chronically ill man from a poverty-stricken Sardinian background. He was also someone about whom the Italian fascist state famously declared: “We must prevent this brain from functioning for twenty years.”
Gramsci was arrested and imprisoned in 1926 at the age of 35, ten years before Benito Mussolini declared his empire in Africa. During concentrated periods, in which he was allowed pen and paper in his cell, he wrote copious notes in 33 school exercise books. Gramsci recorded his thoughts on theory and strategy, ranging across history, politics, philosophy and culture.
These writings would become his major work, the Prison Notebooks (Quaderni del carcere). In the words of political theorist John Schwarzmantel, the “fundamentally political text” of the Prison Notebooks examines “the forces acting to preserve and to change the nature of a political and social order”.[. . .]
The young Gramsci, impressed by the Turin working-class movement, joined the Italian Socialist Party in 1913. After the first world war, he became co‐founder and editor of the influential newspaper L’ordine nuovo (The New Order), where he published polemics urging workers to educate themselves, organise and form an alliance with the peasants.
Over half a million Italians were killed in the brutal combat of the Great War. Deep dismay at these losses and the inspiration of the Russian revolution of October 1917 converged in the view that a “new order” was indeed being born.
Gramsci played a leading role in the wave of strikes and occupations of the Fiat car factories in Turin, which took place during the Biennio Rosso (the “two red years”) of 1919–20. In 1921, a new Italian communist party was formed: the Partito Comunista Italiano. Gramsci became a member of the Central Committee.
Tumultuous political upheaval was followed by fascist reaction. Mussolini seized power in 1922. “The industrialists had lost their faith in the ‘liberal state’ and had become receptive to political expedients of quite a different order,” historian John McKay Cammett observed. “The hour of fascism was at hand. [. . .]
A key innovation was his theory of “hegemony”, described by Marx scholar David McLellan as “one of the most important, if elusive, concepts in contemporary social theory”.
“Hegemony” is derived from the Greek verb meaning “to lead”. Gramsci used it to refer to the way a politically dominant class maintains its ruling position not simply by force, or the threat of force, but also by consent. A class that uses open or veiled coercion through state power to impose its will, he observed, can be said merely to “dominate” other social groups; it becomes “hegemonic” when it also provides “intellectual and moral leadership” over allied groups in civil society.
Gramsci argued that the education system, the news and popular media, literature and the arts, trade unions, churches and intellectuals all play vital roles in shaping people’s perceptions and understanding. Since the battle for power takes place, in part, outside the political system, would-be revolutionary parties needed to overcome the sources of hegemonic power within civil society. ' back

David Remnick, Atul Gawande (2026_07_12), The Human Cost of DOGE’s War on U.S.A.I.D., ' Atul Gawande, who was a leading administrator at U.S.A.I.D. until the Trump Administration’s DOGE initiative, led by Elon Musk, set about defunding and destroying the agency, is a surgeon and a longtime New Yorker contributor. In our latest conversation for The New Yorker Radio Hour, Gawande uses Rhodes’s concept to help describe the colossal human cost that Musk and DOGE have exacted on the world. Gawande, backed up by recent academic studies, says that the decimation of U.S.A.I.D. around the globe has been responsible for some seven hundred thousand deaths, and that number will likely ascend into the seven figures. The policy is not only immeasurably cruel, Gawande argues; it is also stupid, badly undermining what remains of American soft power and prestige, from Africa to Latin America. Our conversation has been edited for clarity and length. back

Dear You (film) - Wikipedia, Dear You (film) - Wikipedia, the free encclopedia, 'Dear You (simplified Chinese: 给阿嬷的情书; traditional Chinese: 給阿嬤的情書) is a 2026 Chinese family drama film directed and co-written by Lan Hongchun. It stars a largely non-professional cast featuring Li Sitong, Wang Yantong, Wu Shaoqing, Zheng Runqi and Wang Xiaohui, alongside Thai actress Usha Seamkhum.
The film is primarily in Teochew, spoken in the Chaoshan region of eastern Guangdong. It also employs qiaopi, specifically the Teochew letters, as a narrative thread to tell the story of a young man who travels to Thailand to track down his long-lost grandfather, only to uncover a decades-old secret involving a stranger.
Dear You premiered in Shantou on April 17, 2026. It was released by Damai Entertainment in select regions of China on April 30, followed by a nationwide theatrical release on May 3. Made on a modest budget of ¥14 million, the film became a massive sleeper hit, grossing over ¥1.9 billion at the domestic box office. The film's Mandarin release in Singapore raised some controversy and sparked a public and parliamentary discussion about the Speak Mandarin Campaign.' back

Elsabeth Pain (2026_07_16), Spain’s largest research body confronts its dark past, 'Spanish National Research Council has published the stories of some 500 staff purged under Francisco Franco’s dictatorship.
In February 1937, evolutionary biologist J.B.S. Haldane published a letter commending his colleagues at the National Museum of Natural Sciences in Madrid for their resilience during the raging civil war. He singled out Antonio de Zulueta y Escolano, the museum’s director and a leading Spanish figure in the nascent field of experimental genetics. “In the intervals of hiding the more precious contents of the biological museum in cellars,” Haldane wrote, Zulueta “was continuing his work on the polymorphic beetle Phytodecta variabilis.”
But, when Francisco Franco took power in 1939, Zulueta’s career was abruptly derailed. His family’s political ties with the defeated Republican government and his translations of books such as Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species probably contributed to him being immediately removed as museum director, says his great-granddaughter, Concepción Cortés Zulueta. “All this knowledge … was considered dangerous and degenerate” under Franco’s fascist government. The scientist recovered his laboratory teaching position 2 years later, but his research career never took off again.
Zulueta is one of hundreds of researchers, professors, and support staff whose tragic stories were released to the public this month by the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), the country’s largest public research institution, under a 2022 law that called for greater recognition of all the victims of the civil war and Francoist dictatorship. All had been affiliated with the Board for the Advancement of Studies and Scientific Research (JAE), CSIC’s precursor. JAE was dissolved by Franco toward the end of the war and replaced with CSIC to promote the new government’s ideologies.' back

Fermion - Wikipedia, Fermion - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In particle physics, fermions are particles with a half-integer spin, such as protons and electrons. They obey the Fermi-Dirac statistics and are named after Enrico Fermi. In the Standard Model there are two types of elementary fermions: quarks and leptons. . . . In contrast to bosons, only one fermion can occupy a quantum state at a given time (they obey the Pauli Exclusion Principle). Thus, if more than one fermion occupies the same place in space, the properties of each fermion (e.g. its spin) must be different from the rest. Therefore fermions are usually related with matter while bosons are related with radiation, though the separation between the two is not clear in quantum physics. back

Gauge theory - Wikipedia, Gauge theory - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' In physics, a gauge theory is a type of field theory in which the Lagrangian does not change (is invariant) under local transformations from certain Lie groups. The term gauge refers to any specific mathematical formalism to regulate redundant degrees of freedom in the Lagrangian. The transformations between possible gauges, called gauge transformations, form a Lie group—referred to as the symmetry group or the gauge group of the theory. Associated with any Lie group is the Lie algebra of group generators. For each group generator there necessarily arises a corresponding field (usually a vector field) called the gauge field. Gauge fields are included in the Lagrangian to ensure its invariance under the local group transformations (called gauge invariance). When such a theory is quantized, the quanta of the gauge fields are called gauge bosons. If the symmetry group is non-commutative, then the gauge theory is referred to as non-abelian gauge theory, the usual example being the Yang–Mills theory.' back

H. Holden Thorp (2026_07_16), AI in scientific publishing: Slower, worse, and more expensive, back

Hannah Ellis-Petersen (2026_07_18), ‘A revolutionary act to watch it’: the film India’s censors do not want you to see, ' Director Honey Trehan decries ‘dystopian’ opposition to his film depicting crackdown on Punjab’s separatist movement.
For as long as he has been a film-maker, there is one story Honey Trehan has wanted to tell above all.
Growing up in the Indian state of Punjab, Trehan saw firsthand the devastation wrought by police who carried out tens of thousands of killings and illegal cremations in the 1990s, as they cracked down on a separatist insurgency. To those in Punjab, the period remains one of the darkest in India’s modern history. Jaswant Singh Khalra, the activist who exposed the crimes and was murdered in the process, is a national hero.
By 2022, Trehan’s movie about Khalra and the crimes of Punjab police was completed under the title Ghallughara – a reference to a historical massacre of Sikhs – but the film would never reach Indian cinemas.
For more than three years, India’s film censorship board, which must approve all cinematic releases, blocked the film from release. When it was finally launched straight to a streaming platform last week, under a new title, Satluj, it was taken down within 48 hours and banned on government orders as a threat to national security.
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Hermitian matrix - Wikipedia, Hermitian matrix - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' In mathematics, a Hermitian matrix (or self-adjoint matrix) is a complex square matrix that is equal to its own conjugate transpose—that is, the element in the i-th row and j-th column is equal to the complex conjugate of the element in the j-th row and i-th column, for all indices i and j . . .. Hermitian matrices can be understood as the complex extension of real symmetric matrices. . .. Hermitian matrices are named after Charles Hermite, who demonstrated in 1855 that matrices of this form share a property with real symmetric matrices of always having real eigenvalues. Other, equivalent notations in common use are A = A^H = A^∗ = A^† although in quantum mechanics A^∗typically means the complex conjugate only, and not the conjugate transpose.' back

Hilbert space - Wikipedia, Hilbert space - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' In mathematics, Hilbert spaces (named after David Hilbert) allow the methods of linear algebra and calculus to be generalized from (finite-dimensional) Euclidean vector spaces to spaces that may be infinite-dimensional. Hilbert spaces arise naturally and frequently in mathematics and physics, typically as function spaces. Formally, a Hilbert space is a vector space equipped with an inner product that induces a distance function for which the space is a complete metric space. A Hilbert space is a special case of a Banach space. ' back

John Brewer, Link Wray: The Rock Prophet, ' The Rock Prophet is the best kept secret of Rock N Roll, and only rock's mighty heroes know about Link Wray and his infamous three chords; an unlikely figure responsible for the birth of Rock N Roll. back

Lie Algebra - Wikipedia, Lie Algebra - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' In more detail: for any Lie group, the multiplication operation near the identity element 1 is commutative to first order. In other words, every Lie group G is (to first order) approximately a real vector space, namely the tangent space g to G at the identity. To second order, the group operation may be non-commutative, and the second-order terms describing the non-commutativity of G near the identity give g the structure of a Lie algebra. It is a remarkable fact that these second-order terms (the Lie algebra) completely determine the group structure of G near the identity. They even determine G globally, up to covering spaces. In physics, Lie groups appear as symmetry groups of physical systems, and their Lie algebras (tangent vectors near the identity) may be thought of as infinitesimal symmetry motions. Thus Lie algebras and their representations are used extensively in physics, notably in quantum mechanics and particle physics. ' back

Link Ray, Rumble, ' Witness the raw power of the single most influential instrumental in rock history! This menacing live performance of "Rumble" by the legendary Link Wray was recorded on November 16, 1974, at the historic Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco, CA.
Originally released in 1958, "Rumble" introduced the world to the distorted, overdriven sound of the power chord, forever changing the DNA of rock and roll. This 1974 performance captures Link Wray decades into his career, still delivering that signature, menacing tone that influenced everyone from The Who to Jimmy Page and Neil Young.
The Performance & Musical Impact: The Tone: Even in 1974, Link Wray’s live setup (often using custom-built amps with holes stabbed in the speaker cones) prioritized distortion, volume, and raw attitude. This performance captures the gritty, rebellious essence that defined the song.
The Revolution: "Rumble" is famous for being one of the only instrumentals ever banned on American radio upon its release, simply because the title and the sound were deemed too threatening and suggestive of juvenile delinquency.
The Legacy: This performance showcases the genesis of garage rock, punk, and hard rock. Link Wray didn’t just play chords; he used feedback and tremolo as aggressive musical tools, a technique perfectly displayed here.
Winterland '78 & Link Wray Facts: The Venue: The Winterland Ballroom was a legendary SF venue operated by promoter Bill Graham. This concert captures the intimate, high-energy atmosphere that made the venue a favorite for capturing definitive live recordings of guitar legends.
The Man: Born in North Carolina, Link Wray (of Shawnee heritage) was a true maverick, continuing to perform with the same fiery, uncompromising spirit displayed in this 1974 footage until his death in 2005.
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Mark A. Gregory (2026_07_14), What is mobile domestic roaming? Here’s why Australia needs this policy, ' Share article Print article Telstra’s national mobile network outage last week was one of the worst incidents of its kind in living memory.
More than 600 calls to Triple Zero were not connected, putting lives at risk. Public transport services in New South Wales and Victoria collapsed, causing commuter chaos. And businesses, especially small to medium ones, may have lost millions in revenue.
Making matters worse, Telstra had been warned about the need to ensure that “single point of failure” problems did not cause cascading core network outages.
Now, the Australian Consumer Communications Action Network (ACCAN) is calling for the federal government to introduce mandatory domestic mobile roaming.
But what exactly is domestic mobile roaming? And could it help prevent some of the problems caused by a major outage like the one Telstra experienced last week?
Domestic mobile roaming is the ability for your mobile phone to automatically connect to mobile infrastructure that provides the strongest connection – no matter which company you pay your bills to.[. . .]
Domestic roaming could reduce the disruption – including to Triple Zero services – caused by an outage on one mobile network. Depending on the implementation strategy, it would enable people’s phones to seamlessly connect to a competitor’s network.
It would also help ensure there is greater visibility and greater scrutiny of telecommunications infrastructure, as it would be shared between competitors.
This could potentially reduce the risk of companies using obsolete or outdated equipment. In turn, this would strengthen the resilience of the broader network and reduce the risk of a major outage.
Mobile domestic roaming could also prompt mobile network providers to focus on other sources of competitive advantage, beyond network coverage. This could include improving their overall performance and offering additional perks such as partnerships with streaming companies. Consumers would be the main beneficiaries of this.
Australia is a large nation that already subsidises the deployment of mobile infrastructure in regional and remote areas.
Any mobile carrier that argues it is entitled to subsidies if domestic mobile roaming is mandated should be reminded of the more than $1 billion in subsidies that have been provided to the carriers over the past couple of decades through the Mobile Black Spot Program and other programs run by the federal and state governments.
All of this shows that the Australian government should act now to mandate domestic roaming.' back

Peter Garrett (2026_06_02), An independent public Inquiry into the AUKUS security partnership, ' The AUKUS deal was conceived in secret and with deception — and continues to be shrouded in secrecy despite the incredibly high stakes and massive cost. Our government has already spent $10 billion of our taxes on US and UK shipyards at a time when much of the world is in conflict and Australians are suffering from a cost-of-living crisis.
A group of former MPs, retired military and naval officers, leading strategists and academics, human rights lawyers and union leaders are committing to an independent Public Inquiry into AUKUS. This Inquiry is coordinated by the Australian Peace and Security Forum (APSF) — ensuring it is grounded in expertise, independence, and a commitment to serious evidence-based examination. back

Peter Greste (2026_07_16), It’s the ABC’s job to be accurate and fair, not to chase the dangerous fallacy of ‘balance’, 'One of the oldest tropes in journalism is that it should be balanced; that journalists have a responsibility to present all sides of a given issue with equal weight. This view also holds that appearing to be critical of one side and sympathetic to another amounts to “bias”.
That notion of balance sounds ideal. After all, journalists should be neutral observers who favour nobody, so if anybody feels as though their side is not presented with equal measure, the journalist has somehow failed.
That failure was what Jillian Segal accused the ABC of in her evidence to the Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion last week. In her evidence, the antisemitism envoy lamented that the ABC’s reporting on Gaza “created an impression of great negativity about Israel”.
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Philip C. Almond (2026_07_15), ‘Philistine’ is a byword for boorish ignorance – but the real Philistines were cultured. Who were they?, ' In modern times, the term “philistine” has generally been used by cultured or elite groups to describe an ignorant or uncultured person.
The Philistines were, in fact, people from the Aegean region, perhaps Crete. They arrived on the shores of the south-eastern Mediterranean around 1200 BC, in an area later to be called Palestine.
A cultured people, they were specialists in iron-making, advanced weaponry, olive oil, beer and wine production and a distinctive style of pottery.
So how did they come to be associated with poor taste and ignorance? In ancient times, Philistia or the Land of the Philistines, extended from the city-state of Ashdod in the north to that of Gaza in the south, but with no fixed border to the east. Within this area were the three other principal cities of the Philistines – Ascalon (Ashkelon), Gath and Ekron. [. . .]
In the Old Testament, the Philistines were depicted as “the other” – the barbarians literally on the border of their Israelite neighbours. Yet the Philistines were the dominant economic, military and political force in the region for most of this time.[. . .]
The term “philistine” became something of a commonplace insult in the 19th century after it was adopted by the English cultural critic Matthew Arnold.
In his 1867 book Culture and Anarchy, Arnold contrasted the elite, cultured few with the consumerist philistines of the middle class:
On the side of beauty and taste, vulgarity; on the side of morals and feeling, coarseness; on the side of mind and spirit, unintelligence, – this is Philistinism.
Arnold’s understanding of the term has flowed into the present day. That said, some people are now questioning its use, given what we now know about the civilisation of the Philistines.
Nevertheless, the dictionary definition of “philistines” as those who neither care about nor understand good art, music, or literature remains predominant.' back

PROPUBLICA, Investigative Journalism in the Public Interest, Thee Mission: To expose abuses of power and betrayals of the public trust by government, business, and other institutions, using the moral force of investigative journalism to spur reform through the sustained spotlighting of wrongdoing.
ProPublica is an independent, nonprofit newsroom that produces investigative journalism with moral force. We dig deep into important issues, shining a light on abuses of power and betrayals of public trust — and we stick with those issues as long as it takes to hold power to account.
With a team of more than 150 dedicated journalists, ProPublica covers a range of topics including government and politics, business, criminal justice, the environment, education, health care, immigration, and technology. We focus on stories with the potential to spur real-world impact. Among other positive changes, our reporting has contributed to the passage of new laws; reversals of harmful policies and practices; and accountability for leaders at local, state and national levels.' back

Richard Behiel, Electromagnetism as a Gauge Theory, ' "Why is electromagnetism a thing?" That's the question. In this video, we explore the answer given by gauge theory. In a nutshell, electromagnetism arises from local phase symmetry. But what does that mean, and how exactly does that work? That's what this video is all about!
This video is quite long and technical. Think of it as a video textbook, so you can skip around to different parts if you’d like. But I wanted to err on the side of rigor and thoroughness, to show comprehensively how local U(1) symmetry blossoms into electromagnetism. So the ideas are all there for you, but you don’t have to watch this in one sitting! ' back

Richard Behiel (2025_08_08), The Strong Nuclear Force as a Gauge Theory, Part 2: Group Theory , ' Hey everyone, today we'll be talking about the group theory involved with quantum chromodynamics, not just SU(3) and su(3), but also U(N) and u(N) in general. This will give us the ideas and vocabulary we'll need, to explore how local SU(3) symmetry blossoms into the strong force. back

Richard Behiel (2025_08_08a), The Strong Nuclear Force as a Gauge Theory, Part 3: The Gluon Fields , ' Hey everyone, today we'll be deriving a gauge field, which will equip our lagrangian with local SU(3) symmetry. We'll go through each of the logical steps to prove that the four spacetime components of the gauge field must live in su(3), the Lie algebra of SU(3). Then, because G_mu lives in su(3), we'll see how we can write it in terms of eight real-valued four-vector fields, the gluon fields! back

Richard Behiel (2025_08_09), The Strong Nuclear Force as a Gauge Theory, Part 4: The Field Strength Tensor, ' In this part, we derive the field strength tensor from scratch, letting it emerge naturally from local SU(3) symmetry. It contains the color-electric and color-magnetic fields, basically eight versions of the electric and magnetic fields. This is the most mathematically intense video in the series, as we dive deep into the algebra. But it's worth it, because you'll see exactly why the field strength tensor takes the form it does, and how it all traces back to symmetry. When you see that for yourself, it gives you a sense of ownership over the subject. You don't have to take anyone's word for it, because you can just see that that's how it is.' back

Richard Behiel (2025_08_21), The Strong Nuclear Force as a Gauge Theory, Part 5: The QCD Lagrangian, ' 0:00 Intro, Field Strength Tensor Review 5:18 The Gluon Part of the QCD Lagrangian 14:43 Summary of the Main QCD Equations 21:21 The Strong CP Problem 26:43 Gluon-Gluon Interactions 32:06 Color Confinement 36:07 Running of the Strong Coupling Constant 41:32 Gauge Theory, Comparison of QED & QCD 46:37 A Surreal Meditation' back

Richard Behiel (2026_07), Complex Numbers in Quantum Mechanics , ' A brief introduction to the use of complex numbers in quantum mechanics. This video is intended mostly for people who are learning quantum mechanics and have some familiarity with things like the quantum harmonic oscillator, or the hydrogen atom, but might have some confusion around what all the complex numbers are all about. I hope this video provides you with an improved sense of familiarity with the complex numbers. These things are cool. They take a bit of getting used to, but they're cool. My main goal in this video is to make the complex numbers feel as natural and accessible as possible, so I emphasize the perspective that the complex phase can be thought of as a generalization of positivity and negativity, and in particular that the phase oscillates between two poles (which I half-jokingly refer to as yin and yang). This approach, though real-part-biased, is motivated by the observation that the interference of two waves of the same frequency (constructive, destructive, and everything in between) provides a natural picture for one of the things the phase of a complex number might mean. I hope that helps to demystify how complex numbers are not an entirely absurd concept, because a stumbling block for many people, myself included for a while, is that the complex numbers seem too unrealistic for human intuition to sincerely glom on to. But, as I hope this video shows, the complex numbers can be made intuitive. It should be noted, however, that the story does not end here. Once you are familiar with the complex numbers, you should stretch your mind out again by regarding the complex numbers as equipping a model with a circular degree of freedom. In particular, you can imagine a wavefunction as a section of a fiber bundle whose base is spacetime, whose fibers are circles of mysterious origin, and whose total space is some fragment of this thing we call reality. That should keep you up at night! I should also add that the "U(1) Symmetry implies Electromagnetism" argument may well be completely backwards. It is true that, if one takes the Dirac field with minimal coupling to the photon field, and imposes local U(1) symmetry by fiat, then all the beauty of classical electromagnetism follows. But one can easily argue that such an imposition is contrived, and more indicative of a redundancy of our model than a genuine symmetry of physics. That argument is strengthened in light of Wigner's classification, pun proudly intended, since if we take the masslessness of the photon as our starting point, then the photon can only have helicity eigenvalues of +-1, not 0 (the photon has no rest frame), and therefore one must remove any physical contributions coming from longitudinal photon modes, since they cannot exist. This fictionalization of the longitudinal modes yields precisely the usual gauge symmetry of the four-potential (or so I am told... still need to work out for myself why this is true), and once you have the gauge symmetry of the four-potential, then your Dirac field better have local U(1) symmetry if you want to preserve minimal coupling! Anyway, whichever direction of the argument is more true, it is still a beautiful idea that local U(1) symmetry of the Dirac field, and the usual gauge symmetry of A, and the masslessness of the photon are, for all intents and purposes, the same thing. It is still an open philosophical question as to whether all this symmetry and gauge freedom is a genuine reflection of natural symmetry, or of mere theoretical redundancy; that question boils down to whether the transformations involved are active or passive, respectively, and that quickly gets into some murky existential territory when you really think about it. Fiery debates are ongoing around these questions. But that's a topic for another time, and not one which is answerable within a YouTube video description back

Roger Waters & Sinead O'Connor, Mother, 'Performing Mother with Sinead O'Connor at the Wall concert in Berlin...' back

The Birthday Party (band) - Wikipedia, The Birthday Party (band) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' The Birthday Party (originally known as the Boys Next Door) were an Australian post-punk band, active from 1977 to 1983. The group's "bleak and noisy soundscapes," which drew irreverently on blues, free jazz, and rockabilly, provided the setting for vocalist Nick Cave's disturbing tales of violence and perversion. Their 1981 single "Release the Bats" was particularly influential on the emerging gothic scene. Despite limited commercial success, the Birthday Party's influence has been far-reaching, and they have been called "one of the darkest and most challenging post-punk groups to emerge in the early '80s."
In 1980, the Birthday Party moved from Melbourne to London, where they were championed by broadcaster John Peel. They subsequently released two albums: Prayers on Fire (1981) and Junkyard (1982). Disillusioned by their stay in London, the band's sound and live shows became increasingly violent. They broke up soon after relocating to West Berlin in 1982. The creative core of the Birthday Party – singer and songwriter Nick Cave, multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Mick Harvey, and singer, songwriter and guitarist Rowland S. Howard – later went on to acclaimed careers.' back

Thomas de Aquino, De ente et essentia (Corpus Thomisticum), 'Prooemium Quia parvus error in principio magnus est in fine, secundum philosophum in I caeli et mundi, ens autem et essentia sunt quae primo intellectu concipiuntur, ut dicit Avicenna in principio suae metaphysicae, ideo ne ex eorum ignorantia errare contingat, ad horum difficultatem aperiendam dicendum est quid nomine essentiae et entis significetur et quomodo in diversis inveniatur et quomodo se habeat ad intentiones logicas, scilicet genus, speciem et differentiam. . . . ' back

Victoria Bela (2026_07_15), China is now world’s No 1 science power, top Russian scientist Artem Oganov says, ' Leading Russian chemist and materials scientist Artem Oganov, who received China’s top international science and technology award, said the honour from the world’s No 1 science power was a sign he was “on the right track”.
Oganov, a distinguished professor at the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology in Moscow and long-time China collaborator, and eight other experts were awarded the International Science and Technology Cooperation Award by Chinese President Xi Jinping during a ceremony in Beijing last week.
After Oganov visited China in 2008, he told colleagues and friends in Europe that the country was “on the way” to being No 1 in both industry and science, but said this was met with scepticism at the time.
He told the South China Morning Post on Monday that, 18 years on, “China is No 1 – in industry, in economy, and indeed also in science.”
Noting that America used to be the top scientific power, he pointed to the fact that China now accounts for a third of global scientific publications, adding that it was not just numbers, but “quality”.
China holds the top spot in the 2026 Nature Index – an analysis of over 125,000 research articles published in 178 leading publications in 2025 – with the US in second place.
“I knew that [China] will rise to the top position, but I did not expect that it will be so fast and so strong,” he said.
“We live now in very dramatic times when politicians, especially Western politicians, burn bridges.
“[The] future belongs to those who build the bridges, not those who burn them. And the most natural bridge between different cultures and nations is science,” he added.' back