The 2026 MacArthur Fellows have been announced, and this year’s class is an interesting mix. From climate scientists to fiction writers, historians to chemists and more, the list provides a window into just some of the work being done by smart, enthusiastic, and creative people today.
These Fellows have found ways to capture some of the most important issues of our time, and it’s great to see such varied examples of constructive creativity, and to think of all the other people out there doing good work. Let’s hear it for flashes of genius!
Future space cowboys and girls, stick this on your wall as you beat a path to the stars. This poster is a snapshot of humanity’s loftiest enterprise so far: making it off-planet. It maps Earth’s main spaceports, the landing sites on the Moon, the highest and farthest orbits traveled by us humans, and the spectacular array of suits and vehicles that got us there.
This poster is a thing that the site sells, but I’m not promoting it as such and you don’t have to buy it to get a look. If you click through to the article above, you’ll see something that I found pretty dramatic: every crewed space mission fits in one little graphic.
There’s a lot going on in this one image, but compared to any other form of human transportation, it really brings home how different space is.
“Public education does not exist for the benefit of students or the benefit of their parents. It exists for the benefit of the social order.
We have discovered as a species that it is useful to have an educated population. You do not need to be a student or have a child who is a student to benefit from public education. Every second of every day of your life, you benefit from public education.
So let me explain why I like to pay taxes for schools, even though I don’t personally have a kid in school: It’s because I don’t like living in a country with a bunch of stupid people.”
― John Green
Here’s to public schools, teachers, and the futures they help us all build.
For dinner-related reasons, Mr Man and I were recently discussing the humble fish finger. What were they like in childhood, which were the best now, and how does a “fish finger” get made, anyway? Imagine my surprise when I ran across this article on that exact topic. It’s interesting and full of supply-chain related surprises (that “30,000 mile” bit isn’t a typo!).
This journey, a journey about which most people tucking into their fish fingers today are almost completely oblivious, tells you rather a lot about the way the modern world – what I like to call the Trade World – really works.
I find stories like this fascinating, and they’re also an interesting window into ideas for fictional worlds. If your fantasy kingdom has been around for a couple of centuries, it’s probably part of an international trading network. And that network would be rife with all kinds of history and conflict, complications and opportunities, legal and otherwise.
Much like self-driving cars on Earth, Perseverance has sophisticated onboard cameras that image the surrounding terrain, and these images are then processed algorithmically by an onboard computer to calculate the safest route. Terrestrial vehicles have some advantages of course, like clearly defined maps, street signs, lanes, and more. Additionally there are plenty of “road” hazards on Mars, from large boulders to sandy slopes. But at least Perseverance does not have to contend with other traffic and bad drivers.
Scroll and pan around this map to see the rover’s latest location and traverse path, as it seeks signs of ancient life and collects samples of Mars rock and regolith (broken rock and dust) for potential future return to Earth.
Books are just one of the many ways to interpret and record history. The 11th-century Bayeux tapestry is going on display to the public today in the UK. The tapestry has more than 220 feet of embroidery detailing the events leading up to the Norman conquest of England in 1066. And the public is loving it.
Inside the exhibition on Thursday morning, the first visitors made their way along the tapestry, snapping photos as they went. They were all quiet until one — Cheryl Prax, 71, a retired property manager — spotted some of the nude figures in the tapestry’s borders and laughed loudly. “I love quirky historical things like that,” Prax said afterward.
“Because nerds like us are allowed to be unironically enthusiastic about stuff… Nerds are allowed to love stuff, like jump-up-and-down-in-the-chair-can’t-control-yourself love it. Hank, when people call people nerds, mostly what they’re saying is ‘you like stuff.’ Which is just not a good insult at all. Like, ‘you are too enthusiastic about the miracle of human consciousness’.” ― John Green
It’s end-of-summer, change-of-season, back-to-school time, and for me that means taking a moment for a little reflection and reassessment. I also like to use this time as an opportunity to clear the decks.
I don’t know about you, but I tend to accumulate mental notes to myself, project plans, ideas that have persisted over the course of the year. Now is a great time to cross those items off my list. Maybe an idea is so small that it seems not worth doing, but it’s been taking up space in my mind. Time to get it done. Maybe it’s so big that I’ve been avoiding it. Time to decide if it’s worth tackling or if it should be deliberately shelved in favor of other projects. Either way, I get it off my list and out of my head.
And once the decks are cleared? I can look forward to a new season and new ideas.
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