Given how well astrophysicists understand the evolution of stars, I wonder if anyone has counted white dwarfs to see if there’s the expected number? It might be lower if there’s a lot of life out there.

So maybe we don’t need to try to spot a Type II exocivilisation directly, with our big telescopes. Instead we could detect their presence statistically.

What do you think Reddit co-founder Aaron Swartz would say about this if he were still alive?

Because of this article I went ahead and ordered some Intelligentsia Black Cat instant espresso to hopefully make some quick iced lattes this summer. Vanilla for Amanda, iced mint mojito from Philz for me.

Jean-Louis Gassée, who used to run Apple France, describes this situation as the choice of the two tokens. When you deal with people who have trouble, you can either choose to taken the token that says “it’s no big deal” or the token that says “it’s the end of the world”. Whichever token you pick, they’ll take the other.

Overall, the West is kind of interesting to me, and I think it shows up in this record — the idea that you might find some peace in these wide open spaces, but you usually end up bringing your own problems with you.

Craig Finn

Cool USDA Forest Service ax manual. h/t Cool Tools

I like this in the sense that I appreciate Ryan writing about it, and I love Bridgy. I don’t like this in the sense that Twitter’s API changes are a shitshow.

I don’t often stop and say “Woah” when I see WordPress demos, but I did with this one. I can’t wait to use something like this at work.

“natural” vs “artificial” meat and how it compares to freezer-made ice vs pond ice