Robert McCall’s artwork depicting Ed White’s historic Gemini 4 spacewalk.

Almost every real number is transcendental. This sounds surprising because the numbers we meet most often, such as √2, ∛5 or solutions of polynomial equations, are algebraic. But there are only countably many algebraic numbers, while the real numbers are uncountable. Therefore the transcendental numbers are not rare exceptions. In the precise sense of cardinality, they overwhelmingly dominate the real line. The irony is that proving a specific number transcendental can be extremely difficult. We can show that almost all real numbers are transcendental without being able to explicitly describe most of them.

This is INSANE. My former colleagues, who are ideologically possessed lunatics, relentlessly harassed and tormented @BruceDGilley. Behold these documents, and remember that tax dollars fund this asylum that masquerades as a university.

Turbulence is all around us: bumping our planes, shaping our waves, swirling milk into our coffee. While these systems can begin simply, they quickly become extremely chaotic and complex. quantamagazine.org/sea-monke…

Islam and Pseudoscience: Close Encounters in the Classroom (and How to Deal with Them) By Stefano Bigliardi for Skeptic skeptic.com/article/islam-an…

Theorem of the Day (October 6, 2026) : The Power of a Point Theorem Source : Theorem of the Day / Robin Whitty pdf : theoremoftheday.org/Geometry… notes : theoremoftheday.org/Resource… #mathematics #maths #math #theorem

If you grew up in my era, you didn’t skip the HBO movie opener. You watched that little neighborhood come alive, blasted into space, and somehow knew whatever came next was going to be GOOD. That music still hits.

Most nations, historically, would have annihilated Gaza after 10/7 - slaughtered every fighting man, destroyed every base of support for them, and pointed the broken survivors west to try to find mercy in Egypt. Today, we are expected to take media from the literal terror state which launched the war at face value, and blame the VICTIMS for a response which killed 2% of the aggressor's population. It almost cannot be over-stated how absurd this is. Prey morality, socialism, and similar philosophies are cancers based upon the exploitation of empathy - which spread through society like gray-green mold through bread, and occasionally must be cut out in the same way.

This is a reminder that more than 95% of the plastic in the world’s seas and oceans comes from ten rivers in Africa and Asia. “Environmentalists” say nothing about this because “environmentalism” isn’t about the environment, in case you hadn’t noticed.

Most revolutionaries are sadistic, egomaniacal psychos who always think they know better than everyone else

Re-upping my piece for @Quillette on the women who died on 7 October. May their memories be a blessing. quillette.com/2024/10/07/the…

“It didn’t start on the 7th of October 2023” 1. Jerusalem Nebi Musa Riots 1920 2. Jaffa Riots 1921 3. Hebron Massacre 1929 4. Motza Massacre 1929 5. Safed Massacre 1929 6. Jaffa Riots 1936 7. Tiberias Massacre 1938 8. Farhud Massacre, Baghdad 1941 9. Tripoli Pogrom 1945 10. Jerusalem Commercial Centre Riots 1947 11. Aleppo Pogrom 1947 12. Aden Riots 1947 13. Haifa Oil Refinery Massacre 1947 14. Convoy of 35 Ambush 1948 15. Ben Yehuda Street Bombing 1948 16. Jewish Agency Bombing 1948 17. Hadassah Convoy Massacre 1948 18. Kfar Etzion Massacre 1948 19. Oujda and Jerada Pogrom 1948 20. Tripoli Pogrom 1948 21. Cairo Jewish Quarter Bombings 1948 22. Expulsion of 850,000 Jews from Arab Countries 1948–1970s 23. Ma'ale Akrabim Bus Massacre 1954 24. Kfar Chabad School Attack 1956 25. Libya Pogrom 1967 26. Baghdad Public Hangings of Jews 1969 27. Avivim School Bus Massacre 1970 28. Lod Airport Massacre 1972 29. Munich Olympics Massacre 1972 30. Kiryat Shmona Massacre 1974 31. Ma'alot School Massacre 1974 32. Savoy Hotel Attack 1975 33. Zion Square Bombing 1975 34. Coastal Road Massacre 1978 35. Nahariya Attack 1979 36. Beit Hadassah Hebron Attack 1980 37. Vienna Synagogue Attack 1981 38. Rue des Rosiers Attack, Paris 1982 39. Rome Great Synagogue Attack 1982 40. Achille Lauro Hijacking 1985 41. Neve Shalom Synagogue Massacre, Istanbul 1986 42. Israeli Embassy Bombing, Buenos Aires 1992 43. AMIA Bombing, Buenos Aires 1994 44. Jerusalem Bus 18 Bombings 1996 45. Mahane Yehuda Market Bombing 1997 46. Other Second Intifada Bombings 2000–2005 47. Dolphinarium Massacre 2001 48. Sbarro Massacre 2001 49. Beit Yisrael Bombing 2002 50. Park Hotel Passover Massacre 2002 51. El Ghriba Synagogue Bombing, Djerba 2002 52. Hebrew University Cafeteria Bombing 2002 53. Jerusalem Bus 2 Massacre 2003 54. Maxim Restaurant Massacre, Haifa 2003 55. Istanbul Synagogue Bombings 2003 56. Ilan Halimi Murder, Paris 2006 57. Mercaz HaRav Yeshiva Massacre 2008 58. Mumbai Chabad House Massacre 2008 59. Itamar Massacre 2011 60. Toulouse Jewish School Massacre 2012 61. Burgas Bus Bombing 2012 62. Brussels Jewish Museum Attack 2014 63. Three Teens Kidnapping and Murder 2014 64. Har Nof Synagogue Massacre 2014 65. Hyper Cacher Attack, Paris 2015 66. Sarona Market Attack 2016 67. Sarah Halimi Murder, Paris 2017 68. Mireille Knoll Murder, Paris 2018 69. Tree of Life Synagogue Massacre, Pittsburgh 2018 70. Jersey City Kosher Market Attack 2019 71. Beersheba, Bnei Brak and Elad Attacks 2022 72. Neve Yaakov Synagogue Attack 2023 73. El Ghriba Synagogue Shooting, Djerba 2023 74. October 7 Massacre 2023 75. Jaffa Light Rail Attack 2024 76. Capital Jewish Museum Attack, Washington 2025 77. Ramot Junction Shooting 2025 78. Heaton Park Synagogue Attack, Manchester 2025 79. Bondi Beach Hanukkah Massacre, Sydney 2025

Scott Alexander has replied to Steven Pinker. He makes some good point as you'd expect, especially on the capability of the models. I was less convinced when he tried to explain why LLMs would become power seeking. He also calls me a 'culture warrior' & 'lowest quality voice' in the debate. astralcodexten.com/p/an-open…

OMG 🤣

I had a great chat with @sapinker this afternoon.

Incredible. The former chief of Germany's Federal Intelligence Service has been arrested for treason. Presumably he was selling state secrets to Russia? nytimes.com/2026/10/06/world…

"humanities departments are imploding due to rapidly shrinking enrollments, while reading itself is in sharp decline among the general public...only 16 percent of Americans still read for pleasure as of 2023, compared with a high of 28 percent in 2004" city-journal.org/article/nat…

Pure sulfur discovered on Mars, making Martian concrete possible 10 years ago, the recipe for making effective concrete with Martian sand was discovered. The key ingredient: molten elemental sulfur. Guess what the Curiosity rover just found? bigthink.com/starts-with-a-b…

Why men -- especially conservative men -- won't go to therapy: The weird thing about the American Psychological Association (APA) is that every objective observer has known that it's been ideologically captured by the Left since the 1970s. That's the main reason why the Association for Psychological Science split off back in 1988, to form a more-scientific, less-politicized version of APA. Yet, here we are, 40 years later -- with APA still the main accrediting body that gives its seal of approval to PhD programs that train the vast majority of licensed clinical psychologists in America. APA sets the agenda. It determines what gets covered in graduate courses. It runs the most influential journals and conferences. It sets the whole political and ideological tone for psychological research. For decades, it has pushed political correctness, 'affirmative action', wokeness, DEI, and Leftist political causes. APA also ignores, censors, and/or demonizes the psychological research areas that are politically incorrect, but that replicate well (e.g. intelligence research, behavior genetics, evolutionary psychology, sex differences). There are alternatives. For example, the Psychological Clinical Science Accreditation System (PCSAS) focuses more on the real science -- evidence-based treatments and interventions -- rather than on the Leftist activism of APA. But, for the moment, the APA's ideological agenda still dominates American clinical psychology. This partly explains the feedback loop between clinical psychology becoming so feminized (with women getting about 80% of clinical psychology PhDs), and clinical psychology becoming so radical-Leftist in its politics. And it explains why it's pretty difficult to find licensed clinical psychologists who are actually sympathetic to men, conservatives, and/or Christians. This is one big reason why men won't go to therapy -- they don't want to deal with a (probably female, probably liberal) therapist who has been indoctrinated into wokeness for 5-6 years throughout her graduate training.

On the subject of "Anglo culture doesn't prize hard work" (I can't believe we're having this argument!), here are some 1715 children's poems from an enormously popular didactic book for kiddoes mrsmuellersworld.com/uploads…