Feynman (1965), Richard, The Character of Physical Law, Penguin Press 1992 ' Collecting legendary lectures from freewheeling scientific genius Richard P. Feynman, The Character of Physical Law is the perfect example of Feynman's gift for making complex subjects accessible and entertaining. Here Richard Feynman gives his own unique take on the puzzles and problems that lie at the heart of physics, from Newton's Law of Gravitation to mathematics as the supreme language of nature, from the mind-boggling question of whether time can go backwards to the exciting search for new scientific laws.'  
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Feynman (2002), Richard, Feynman Lectures on Gravitation, Westview Press 2002 ' The Feynman Lectures on Gravitation are based on notes prepared during a course on gravitational physics that Richard Feynman taught at Caltech during the 1962-63 academic year. For several years prior to these lectures, Feynman thought long and hard about the fundamental problems in gravitational physics, yet he published very little. These lectures represent a useful record of his viewpoints and some of his insights into gravity and its application to cosmology, superstars, wormholes, and gravitational waves at that particular time. The lectures also contain a number of fascinating digressions and asides on the foundations of physics and other issues. ' 
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Nielsen (2016), Michael A., and Isaac L Chuang, Quantum Computation and Quantum Information, Cambridge University Press 2016 Review: A rigorous, comprehensive text on quantum information is timely. The study of quantum information and computation represents a particularly direct route to understanding quantum mechanics. Unlike the traditional route to quantum mechanics via Schroedinger's equation and the hydrogen atom, the study of quantum information requires no calculus, merely a knowledge of complex numbers and matrix multiplication. In addition, quantum information processing gives direct access to the traditionally advanced topics of measurement of quantum systems and decoherence.' Seth Lloyd, Department of Quantum Mechanical Engineering, MIT, Nature 6876: vol 416 page 19, 7 March 2002. 
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Stubb (2026), Alexander, The Triangle of Power: Rebalancing the New World Order, Biteback Publishing, 2026 ' How the world broke and how can we save it?
The liberal world order that emerged after World War II — and expanded triumphantly after the end of the Cold War — is unravelling. Multilateral cooperation is giving way to multipolar rivalry and conflict. Global norms are eroding What comes next will define thr rest of the century so the search is on for a new global framework — a rebalancing of power.'  
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Andy Xie (2026_05_22), Not even a quick end to Iran war can save AI stock bubble now, ' The Iran war has baked in stagflation and starvation through big reductions in the supply of oil and fertilisers. This inflationary pressure will only increase. As inflation sucks liquidity out of financial markets and into the real economy, bond yields are being pushed up across the world. If bond yields rise by more than a percentage point, a likely scenario before the year’s end, the liquidity diversion could be big enough to pop the AI bubble.
The US-Israeli war on Iran has disrupted the global oil supply, cutting it by as much as a billion barrels. The impact has so far been offset mostly by running down supply already in floating storage. Releases of strategic reserves have also helped. When these two sources are exhausted, oil prices will spike.
Compared with the oil shock of 2007-8, which sent prices towards US$150 per barrel, the shock this time could be of a greater magnitude.
Having significantly depleted its missile stocks, the US is keeping up pressure on Iran by blocking its ports. But Iran borders seven countries: the sea blockade is unlikely to make life impossible; Iran can hold on for years. The fact the US has the option to continue the war is due to financial markets’ mild reaction. If petrol prices reach US$10 a gallon or the US stock market falls by 20 per cent, America would have to fold its hand.
[. . .] The AI bubble is only the latest financial bubble since Alan Greenspan took over the US Federal Reserve in 1987. He made it his job to prop up stressed financial markets with liquidity. It biased US monetary policy towards inflating asset markets.
When the Greenspan bubble popped in 2008, his successor Ben Bernanke introduced US$4 trillion worth of quantitative easing. In 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic threatened the Bernanke bubble, Fed chairman Jerome Powell introduced US$4 trillion more in quantitative easing, paving the way for the AI bubble.
But with inflation now threatening to pop the Powell bubble, incoming Fed chair Kevin Warsh may not be able to save it. If he introduces a new round of quantitative easing, the ensuing hyperinflation would take everyone down.' back

Anisah Bagasra (2026_05_20), San Diego mosque shooting reflects how online rhetoric, media depictions and political discourse contribute to increased Islamophobia, ' Many Muslim Americans are fearful following a shooting at the Islamic Center of San Diego that left three worshipers dead. Investigators reportedly found hate speech and anti-Islamic writing inside the vehicle of the suspected shooters, who killed themselves soon after the attack.
The director of the Islamic Center, Taha Hassane, condemned the attack while also encouraging individuals to respond with tolerance and love. “All of us are responsible for spreading the culture of tolerance, the culture of love,” he said, while lamenting the conditions that had led to such violence.
The attack comes just one week before the celebration of Eid al-Adha, an annual festival celebrating the Prophet Abraham’s – Ibrahim in Arabic – willingness to sacrifice his son in obedience to God, and the conclusion of the annual Hajj – the pilgrimage to Mecca, one of the five pillars of Islam.
It also comes on the heels of ongoing tensions in the Middle East and increasing political rhetoric in the United States. Republicans in Congress held hearings during the week of May 13, 2026 titled “Sharia-Free America.” This reflects a long-standing anti-Muslim trope that portrays Muslims as invaders who want to impose sharia – Islamic religious law – on all Americans. Many Muslim Americans are concerned because the rise of anti-Muslim bigotry among politicians has been mostly met with silence.
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Aquinas, Summa I, 25, 3, Is God omnipotent?, '. . . God is called omnipotent because He can do all things that are possible absolutely; which is the second way of saying a thing is possible. For a thing is said to be possible or impossible absolutely, according to the relation in which the very terms stand to one another, possible if the predicate is not incompatible with the subject, as that Socrates sits; and absolutely impossible when the predicate is altogether incompatible with the subject, as, for instance, that a man is a donkey.' back

Beta decay - Wikipedia, Beta decay - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' In nuclear physics, beta decay (β-decay) is a type of radioactive decay in which a beta particle (fast energetic electron or positron) is emitted from an atomic nucleus, transforming the original nuclide to an isobar of that nuclide. For example, beta decay of a neutron transforms it into a proton by the emission of an electron accompanied by an antineutrino; or, conversely a proton is converted into a neutron by the emission of a positron with a neutrino in so-called positron emission. Neither the beta particle nor its associated (anti-)neutrino exist within the nucleus prior to beta decay, but are created in the decay process.
[. . .] Beta decay is a consequence of the weak force, which is characterized by relatively long decay times. Nucleons are composed of up quarks and down quarks,[2] and the weak force allows a quark to change its flavour by means of a virtual W boson leading to creation of an electron/antineutrino or positron/neutrino pair. For example, a neutron, composed of two down quarks and an up quark, decays to a proton composed of a down quark and two up quarks.' back

Cheryl Hall (2019_11_09), The lawyers who took on the Catholic Church over Gerald Ridsdale's abuse — and won, ' It was a legal case that opened up one of the nation's most powerful institutions to a wave of damages claims from survivors of child sexual abuse.
But Judy Courtin's legal war with the Catholic Church began on a more personal level, with a devastating revelation from a nephew that he had been abused as a child by two Christian Brothers.
"He disclosed to me about the tragic, horrific crimes that were committed against him when he was 11 years of age," she said.
She was outraged he could not sue the Catholic Church for the crimes of its clergy, but a decade and a royal commission later, her small law firm took on another victim's case.v And she won that David and Goliath battle, getting the Catholic Church to admit that it was legally responsible for the crimes of notorious paedophile priest Gerald Ridsdale.
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David Gibson (2026_05_22), Pope Leo Chooses Social Justice Over Pelvic Theology, ' Pope Leo XIV’s first landmark teaching document, to be published on Monday, is expected to explore a theme he has emphasized since beginning his papacy a year ago: social disruption in the digital age, in particular the dangers that A.I. poses for human flourishing. Titled “Magnifica Humanitas,” or “Magnificent Humanity,” the document is inspired by the teachings of Leo’s eponymous predecessor, Leo XIII, whose 1891 encyclical “Rerum Novarum” responded to the plight of exploited workers in the Industrial Revolution. It is considered the modern foundation of Catholic social teaching.
“In our own day,” Leo told the College of Cardinals two days after his election, “the church offers to everyone the treasury of her social teaching in response to another industrial revolution and to developments in the field of artificial intelligence that pose new challenges for the defense of human dignity, justice and labor.” As a sign of the subject’s importance, the pope plans to make an unprecedented appearance at the news conference presenting the encyclical.
Most popes since Leo XIII have published encyclicals about social teaching. But the subject has remained overshadowed by the absolute moral law regarding sins of the flesh.
Dedicating his first encyclical to social justice would show how much Leo, like his predecessor Pope Francis, is trying to shift Catholicism away from the near fixation on “pelvic theology,” or sexual morality, that has come to define Catholicism, especially in Leo’s home country, the United States. The concern is that decades of focusing on “sins below the waist,” as Pope Francis memorably put it, has fueled the church’s culture war agenda and driven many people away from the central teachings of the Gospels. It has also left workers and the marginalized with a weakened moral voice against the predations of powerful financial interests.' back

Edward Liu (2026_05_20), How war-risk marine insurance can set Hong Kong apart, ' As conflict in the Middle East sends marine insurance costs surging, Hong Kong has an opening to prove that it is more than a port city by becoming a trusted centre for risk pricing, legal certainty and maritime resilience.
When tensions rise in the Middle East, the first signs of trouble in global shipping do not always appear at sea. Often, they appear in the insurance market. Premiums jump. Underwriters retreat. Shipowners rethink routes. Long before a vessel is struck, the cost of moving goods already changes.
That is why Hong Kong’s efforts to build a war-risk insurance mechanism for shipping deserve more attention than they have received. On the surface, this looks like a specialist insurance story. In reality, it points to a larger question: who has the institutional capacity to keep trade moving when private markets turn defensive?
That question matters especially for China, the world’s largest trading nation, and for Hong Kong, which has spent years trying to define what remains distinctive about its role as an international shipping centre.
For a long time, shipping competition was understood mainly in physical terms: bigger ports, larger fleets, faster turnaround, more efficient logistics. Those things still matter, but they are no longer enough. In an age of geopolitical shocks, shipping is also a business of risk pricing, legal certainty, dispute resolution and market trust. The places that matter most are not just those that can move cargo, but those that can keep cargo moving when the political climate worsens.
Marine insurance is easy to ignore in calm periods because it works quietly in the background. In moments of crisis, its importance becomes impossible to miss. If cover becomes unavailable, unaffordable or unreliable, the effects spread quickly. Shipping rarely stops all at once. More often, it begins to seize up.' back

Formalism (philosophy of mathematics) - Wikipedia, Formalism (philosophy of mathematics) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In foundations of mathematics, philosophy of mathematics, and philosophy of logic, formalism is a theory that holds that statements of mathematics and logic can be considered to be statements about the consequences of certain string manipulation rules. . . . Formalism stresses axiomatic proofs using theorems, specifically associated with David Hilbert. A formalist is an individual who belongs to the school of formalism, which is a certain mathematical-philosophical doctrine descending from Hilbert.' back

Ilya Azar (2026_05_21), We want to make the Invisible Visible, 'PEN Languages of Russia, a new initiative co-founded by Russian writer Sergey Lebedev, aims to support "independent, anti-authoritarian, anti-war literary figures" writing in the many languages indigenous to Russia — from Avar to Chuvash to Tatar. An official member of the PEN network, the organisation hopes to build infrastructure for literature in Russia's minority languages and, in so doing, "break the singular dominance of Russian language and Russian culture". Journalist Ilya Azar spoke to Lebedev and the organisation's head, Tatar writer Dinara Rasuleva, about the origins and ambitions of the new initiative. Below is an abridged translation of their conversation. back

Joan Baez: I Am a Noise - Wikipedia, Joan Baez: I Am a Noise - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' Joan Baez: I Am a Noise is a 2023 American documentary film about singer-songwriter and activist Joan Baez. Directed by Miri Navasky, Karen O'Connor, and Maeve O'Boyle, the film utilizes previously unreleased home movies, artwork, diaries, therapy tapes, and audio recordings related to Baez.
Joan Baez: I Am a Noise had its world premiere at the 73rd Berlin International Film Festival on February 17, 2023. It received a theatrical release in the United States on October 6, 2023, by Magnolia Pictures. On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 94% based on 52 reviews, with an average rating of 7.6/10. The critics' consensus reads: "Absorbing purely as a chronicle of her remarkable career, Joan Baez: I Am a Noise is also moving as a depiction of one woman's personal journey from pain to peace and forgiveness." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 75 out of 100, based on 8 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.' back

John L Bell (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy), Continuity and Infinitesimals, 'The usual meaning of the word continuous is “unbroken” or “uninterrupted”: thus a continuous entity—a continuum—has no “gaps.” We commonly suppose that space and time are continuous, and certain philosophers have maintained that all natural processes occur continuously: witness, for example, Leibniz's famous apothegm natura non facit saltus—“nature makes no jump.” In mathematics the word is used in the same general sense, but has had to be furnished with increasingly precise definitions. So, for instance, in the later 18th century continuity of a function was taken to mean that infinitesimal changes in the value of the argument induced infinitesimal changes in the value of the function. With the abandonment of infinitesimals in the 19th century this definition came to be replaced by one employing the more precise concept of limit.' back

Krista Fisher et al. (2026-05_21), We analysed the TikTok history of 142 men. Here’s what it taught us about the manosphere, ' Interest in the manosphere has recently surged yet again, with the recent Louis Theroux documentary catapulting the term “manosphere” back to the forefront of our cultural psyche.
The term has become a catchall for the most inflammatory content and communities in young men’s digital worlds. Alarm bells are ringing, but our understanding of what the manosphere actually is – where it begins and ends – has more questions than answers.
As concern grows, so does the ambiguity around how to define the manosphere and how young men actually experience it. Our policy responses, interventions and public discourse assume it’s one thing, one ideology, populated by one type of young man: a singular algorithmic journey from loneliness to radicalisation. It isn’t, and overlooking the complexity and nuance misses large parts of the problem.
So what is it instead? Our new research answers this question.
[. . .] Previous research has included the use of dummy accounts to simulate internet use. These have been criticised by social media companies, who say the simulations don’t reflect the real experiences of users on their apps. In response, our new research looked at the real TikTok viewing histories of 142 young men across Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom. We watched what they watched, 2,000 videos over the past month, and built a framework to map the full spectrum of masculinity content that young men encounter online. It’s the first time academic research has used real user data in this space. It means we can respond to what young men and boys are actually seeing, rather than simulations of user experiences and what we think they’re seeing.
[. . .] The manosphere has spent years speaking directly to young men’s fears and insecurities, building narratives that are fluent, persuasive and hard to counter. We need to be just as fluent, delivering effective responses and alternative narratives grounded in what young men actually see, watch and feel.
This research is the first attempt to do that. Now we need to use these insights to expand our evidence on the manosphere’s harm, develop tailored solutions, call for platform reform and develop community resources to help protect the men and boys exposed to this content online.' back

Maxwell Lechte & Leigh Anne Riedman (2026_05_21), Tiny fossils found in 1.7 billion‑year‑old mud yield clues to the evolution of complex life, ' Stored in an open-air warehouse in tropical Darwin, Australia, are dozens of trays containing cylindrical cores of rock. They are from drill holes bored hundreds of metres below the surface by mineral exploration companies decades ago.
Some of these cores at the Northern Territory Geological Survey are mudstone – a type of sedimentary rock formed from hardened seafloor mud. The companies that drilled these cores were largely unaware that within these mudstones were fossils of microscopic organisms buried on the seafloor of an ancient inland sea that covered much of northern Australia over 1.5 billion years ago.
As our new study, published today in Nature, shows, these fossils are crucial for addressing a longstanding puzzle about the major evolutionary leap that led to all complex life on Earth: the origin of eukaryotes.
[. . .] Our results show that eukaryote fossils were found in environments ranging from coastal mudflats to the open sea. But they were present only in samples deposited in oxygenated settings. Samples from oxygen-free environments contained only simple, prokaryotic forms.
This suggests that even the oldest known eukaryotes that lived on Earth 1.7 to 1.4 billion years ago were dependent on oxygen. These data lend support to a long-held hypothesis that oxygen played a key role in driving the evolution of early eukaryotes' Resolving the drivers and context of the major evolutionary leap represented by early eukaryotes is one of the major outstanding questions in the life sciences. Ongoing studies of these enigmatic, ancient microfossils will no doubt tell us more about our own origins – and our place in the cosmos. back

McQueen (film) - Wikipedia, McQueen (film) - Wikipedia, the fre ncyclopdia, ' McQueen is a 2018 biographical documentary film, directed by Ian Bonhôte, written and co-directed by Peter Ettedgui, and produced by Ian Bonhôte, Andee Ryder, Nick Taussig, and Paul Van Carter under the banner of Misfits Entertainment, and Salon Pictures. The documentary is based on the life and career of British fashion designer Alexander McQueen.
Film director Ian Bonhôte, and producer Peter Ettedgui approached Alexander McQueen's family to make a documentary film about McQueen; the family declined the request. In February 2017 Bonhôte, and Ettedgui proposed their idea to several film distributors. The film was financed within three days, and director Ian Bonhôte added, "We wanted to make a really respectful cinematic version of Lee’s story".
The production team took the project, with "zero access and zero original archive at our fingertips", and worked 18-20 hour days for a year to finish the project.' back

Peter Harcher (2026_05_19), One key takeaway from Trump’s China visit should worry Australia, ' In the world’s most important power equation, China on the weekend advanced further at America’s expense.
US President Donald Trump went to Beijing in a weakened state. China’s President Xi Jinping took advantage. That’s the verdict of one of America’s most experienced Asia policy experts, Kurt Campbell.
[. . .] If Trump hoped for any help from Xi in dealing with Iran, he was disappointed. Beijing, a friend of Iran’s, surreptitiously has been helping it in targeting US forces with missiles and drones.
Trump seemed desperate for a trade deal in Beijing. Xi agreed to buy a figurative handful of beans and Boeings from the US. In return, the US president broke historical precedent to hand over to the Chinese Communist Party concessions on the only subject Xi really cared about – the security of Taiwan.
Xi was strident in dictating China’s red line to Trump. In his opening remarks, Taiwan, he said, was the “most important” issue in dealing with the US, according to the party-owned news service Xinhua.
[. . .] “It’s definitely a violation of Reagan’s 1982 Six Assurances,” says Campbell, the US deputy secretary of state under Joe Biden and variously a senior figure in the Pentagon, State Department and White House under Democrat administrations for the past 30 years.
“A Democrat president would have been savaged for that. President Trump doesn’t care. I felt an unmistakable waft of Russia and Ukraine.”
Meaning? In his treatment of China and Taiwan, Trump is replicating his conduct with Moscow and Kyiv; favouring a larger authoritarian power over a smaller democratic one. Refusing to help US allies in the region while going easy on traditional US rivals.
“Half the time, the way that President Trump talks about Ukraine, it’s almost as if the war is Ukraine’s fault. I got a sense of that”, Campbell says of Trump’s weekend visit to Beijing, “that this is Taiwan being ‘provocative’ ".' back

Proton decay - Wikipedia, Proton decay - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' In particle physics, proton decay is a hypothetical form of particle decay in which the proton decays into lighter subatomic particles, such as a neutral pion and a positron. The proton decay hypothesis was first formulated by Andrei Sakharov in 1967. Despite significant experimental effort, proton decay has never been observed. If it does decay via a positron, the proton's half-life is constrained to be at least 1.67×10³⁴ years.' 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 Stone (2026_05_21), Brothers in Arms: Key human defenses against pathogens were forged billions of years ago in microbial battles with viruses , ' When Philip Kranzusch puzzled out the structure of an enzyme from the cholera bacterium in 2013, the biochemist got a jolt. The folds, the active site, the overall architecture were unmistakable: This was a bacterial cousin of a human protein that acts as a sentry for invading viruses.
“A lightning bolt ran through my mind,” says Kranzusch, then a young postdoc in the laboratory of structural biologist Jennifer Doudna at the University of California (UC), Berkeley. “Immune proteins in human cells could be far more ancient than we’d thought.”
[. . .] “It was natural to assume that immune defenses across kingdoms of life would be unique,” says Kranzusch, now at Harvard Medical School. But over years of follow-up work, Kranzusch and Sorek showed the enzyme that surprised Kranzusch in 2013 is part of a phage defense system that mirrors key features of human immune antiviral signaling.
“It was a startling discovery,” says Aaron Whiteley, a bacteriologist at the University of Colorado Boulder, and it marked a major paradigm shift. “We convinced the field,” Kranzusch says, “that the rules of engagement in this arms race have been the same since the dawn of life.”
Around that time, researchers were uncovering a vast arsenal of immune systems in bacteria and archaea, a distinct domain of microbes. Nearly 300 systems are now known, up from just a handful a decade ago, with roles that include detecting viral infection, transmitting alarm signals, and sacrificing infected cells to save the population. “These systems do anything you can imagine … and things you cannot imagine,” says Eugene Koonin, an evolutionary biologist at the U.S. National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI). “Nature has essentially explored every logically possible way to cope with infection"., back

Samantha Bee (, What It's REALLY Like Working In Late Night , 15,305 views 1 Jul 2022 #FFSB #SamanthaBee #FullFrontalSamB From meeting strangers on the street to buying dozens of dildos, working in late night comedy is never boring. Here are some of our staff's funniest stories of their time in the industry! back

Sheldon Axler (2026_05_09), Linear Algebra Done Right (4th Edition), ' You are probably about to begin your second exposure to linear algebra. Unlike your first brush with the subject, which probably emphasized Euclidean spaces and matrices, this encounter will focus on abstract vector spaces and linear maps. These terms will be defined later, so don’t worry if you do not know what they mean. This book starts from the beginning of the subject, assuming no knowledge of linear algebra. The key point is that you are about to immerse yourself in serious mathematics, with an emphasis on attaining a deep understanding of the definitions, theorems, and proofs. back

Spotlight (film) - Wikipedia, Spotlight (film) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Spotlight is a 2015 American biographical drama film directed by Tom McCarthy and written by McCarthy and Josh Singer. The film follows The Boston Globe's "Spotlight" team, the oldest continuously operating newspaper investigative journalist unit in the United States, and its investigation into cases of widespread and systemic child sex abuse in the Boston area by numerous Roman Catholic priests.' back

Triple-alpha process - Wikipedia, Triple-alpha process - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The triple-alpha process is a set of nuclear fusion reactions by which three helium-4 nuclei (alpha particles) are transformed into carbon.' back

Yonas Shimron (2026_05_14), It's been called the Ellis Island of the South. Now residents worry about ICE., back