Above, a roughly 125-micrometer (1/8 mm)-wide image of the Mona Lisa projected by a new MEMS array designed to steer lasers for a quantum computer.
The MEMS array (below)
is a 1-square-millimeter photonic chip.
Full IEEE Spectrum story here.
Friday, May 1, 2026
BeyondTheMedspeak: Why your joints sound like Rice Krispies
"The human body's 'joint music' is a natural, normal thing."
So says Susan Saliba, a professor in the University of Virginia's School of Education and Human Development and co-director of the Exercise and Sports Injury Laboratory.
More:
Q. What makes your joints crackle, crinkle, and clatter?
A. There are two causes of snapping and popping.
One is like cracking your knuckles. There are microscopic gas bubbles within the synovial/joint fluid, and when the joint is 'distracted,' the suction creates a negative pressure, and the gas bubbles consolidate and 'pop.'"
Lots of joints pop. Often, it relieves pain and pressure around a joint temporarily. If you've ever baked a cake, you gently slam the pan to consolidate and pop the gas bubbles to make the cake smooth, a process called cavitation. Cavitation in the joint takes pressure away from joint receptors, and almost immediately there is a sense of relief.
The second cause of joint noise is friction. We're designed to have bursae — synovial fluid-filled sacs — over bony projections to allow gliding and sliding. But just like a blister, frictional overuse makes the structure produce more fluid, and sprains and strains make tendons and bursae swell.
We may feel the friction but we keep going, and the bursa swells, and now there's limited space. It may not hurt after it heals, but the clicking and popping often remain.
Q. If you have osteoarthritis, should you keep exercising?
A. Osteoarthritis is not a reason to stop moving. It's a reason to get moving, or keep moving, so that overall health is maintained and the joint fluid can do its job to reduce friction and provide nutrition to the surfaces.
Often, we're told to pay attention to pain and avoid it, so many people just shut down. This approach can result in a devastating loss of motion, pain, less mobility, worsening strength, poorer health as a result of decreased mobility, and weight gain. Millions of people are in this situation, and general health decline is often associated with this cascade of events.
Q. Are there specific exercises or programs that help keep joint flexible?
A. Anything you like. Yoga, walking, hiking, swimming: movement is fundamental.
Specific directed exercise, biomechanical evaluation, and coaching help guide a person through recovery from an injury. Athletic trainers and physical therapists are skilled at this and can suggest modifications that are well tolerated and will help restore joint fluid.
Even if movement doesn't prolong your life, it will definitely improve its quality.
Strangeness — John Koethe
...........................................................
Constant readers will recall last month's appearance of Elizabeth Jacobson's 2025 poem "Quantum Foam."
I knew I'd seen a poem by John Koethe also invoking that foam but couldn't think of the title, so I had my Crack Research Team©®™ (I know I haven't referred to them in a while but I'll save that back story for another post) drill down.
Above, their excellent find.
Koethe's poem originally appeared in the May 8, 2000 issue of the New Yorker.
Thursday, April 30, 2026
Amazon Reviews FTW!
Since forever I've read Amazon reviews of products I'm thinking of buying.
They can be very amusing, surprising, and/or informative.
The ones with photos submitted by the reviewer are the most entertaining.
Usually they're variations on a FAIL! theme.
Then there are those mildly critical, like the one pictured up top.
Full disclosure: I bought one of these jar openers from Amazon in 2022 — a month before Jay published his review — and it's fo shizzle, works great, besides being a beautiful piece of industrial design which is said by the manufacturer to have "... not changed in 75 years."
The diameter of mine is 4-7/8", exactly that of reviewer Jay's.
You can too!
More?
Your wish is my demand.
View the original 1941 patent and learn more on the company website.
The Accursèd Alphabetical Clock
"This clock displays the current time alphabetically."
 |
I'm reminded of one of my favorite sayings, to wit:
"A man with one watch always knows what time it; A man with two is never sure."
Wednesday, April 29, 2026
Chinese Robots Are Flooding America. I Brought One Home.
One of my favorite tech writers on the planet, the great Joanna Stern, formerly of the Wall Street Journal and now on her own with a weekly newsletter, "New Things With Joanna Stern," earlier today posted this video about her experience with a Chinese robot she brought home to test out.
Buy Bodum Double-Wall Mugs from Bodum — NOT Amazon!
Long story short: I ordered 2 Bodum 15-oz double wall glass mugs from Amazon last Thursday (above).
They arrived later that same day but that was the only good thing about my order.
When I opened the paper bag — not box! — containing the mugs, which were in their usual store shelf display package with a very thin layer of bubble wrap around each one, with the bubbles on the outside rather than the inside against the glass, which placement has been discussed previously here — to my dismay but not great surprise one of the mugs was no longer a mug but rather a collection of many sharp shards of broken glass.
Only the handle was intact.
Note also that the outer paper bag had on it a boastful declaration that this packaging used less material than the standard delivery enclosure.
I recall in the past ordering from the Bodum website when Amazon was out of these mugs: they came in a seriously padded hard box with molded styrofoam, as one would expect with such delicate glassware.
Two of these mugs from Bodum, now on sale, cost $29.99, same price as at Amazon.
Leaf Sheep Slug
The leaf sheep slug gets its energy from photosynthesis, taking chloroplasts from algae and storing them, and is thus able to survive on solar power.
More here.
Tuesday, April 28, 2026
THEY SEE YOUR PHOTOS
From the website: "Your photos reveal a lot of private information. In this experiment, we use the Google Vision API to see how much can be inferred about you from a single photo. See what they see."
Up top, what the website gleaned from the picture I use for my YouTube channel etc.
I'm impressed!
That red marker pinpoints my home, where I'm sitting right now typing these words.
And you thought nobody knew....
Wait a sec — what's that song I'm hearing?
Tilting Cake Turntable
Finally.
I've never baked a cake but you don't have to be a rocket scientist or a near-brain-dead anesthesiologist who inhaled too much unscavenged waste gas over many decades to know that this is one cool toy for people who practice the fine art of cake baking.
To a serious pastry chef this device has to be catnip.
From the website:
- Professional decorating is easy with the Tilting Turntable.
Secure soft non-slip grip design on top plate.
Positions any cake at just the right angle for easy decorating.
Tilting mechanism provides 18 secure plate positions controlled by large push button.
Dual rotation: turntable rotates in either direction, enabling right- or left-handed use.
Base has a balanced weight and non-slip feet to keep turntable in place.
12"Ø x 7"H.
********************
18 positions?
Push button control?
Non–slip grip design?
Duel directional rotation?
Wait a minute — I thought this was a cake platform, not a new Lexus.
Be still, my heart.
And if not, why, get out the defibrillator.
Tickets to Ride
Designer and art director Daniel Benneworth-Gray's
"compendium of transit tickets" from around the world.
Wait a sec — what's that song I'm hearing?
Monday, April 27, 2026
Solve the Problem With What's in Your Head
Perhaps my favorite quote of all time is a variation of the headline above, to wit:
"Solve the problem with what's in the room." — Edwin H. Land
Since I stumbled on that line in a biography of Land (full disclosure: I've read several; he's one of my favorite people ever) decades ago I've applied it countless times and in nearly every instance it's resulted in both a working solution and a wonderful feeling of satisfaction at having figured it out.
Applying the dictum forces you to find an alternative to solutions that either require something that's not in the room (a part, a person, whatever) or simply giving up.
Whenever I get a new device with a Quick Start Guide I ignore the printed instructions in favor of getting it working on my own.
Once I succeed (90% of the time, roughly) I open the Quick Start Guide and frequently discover features that I didn't know existed, often because they're hidden from view.
What's Old is New Again: Custom Wax Letter Seal
Here's a blast from the past: Wax Letter will create a custom logo or design and then use it to seal letters you send to whomever is deserving.
Apply within.
And who's the idiot who posed for the exemplar above?
Wait a sec — what's that song I'm hearing?
Sunday, April 26, 2026
The People's Clock — Maarten Baas
YouTube description:
...............................................
Maarten Baas and Schiphol Airport present "The People's Clock."
Using almost 1,000 volunteers — most of them Schiphol employees — people literally came time.
In a 12-hour-long recording, participants formed the hands of the clock.
If you look closely, a runner in orange marks the seconds, completing one lap every minute.
This permanent art installation can be seen in Lounge 1, the departure hall for Schengen destinations.
[via dezeen]
'The Last Question' — Isaac Asimov (1956)
Many people consider this the best short story they've ever read.
Asimov wrote, "This is by far my favorite story* of all those I have written. It is a curious fact that innumerable readers have asked me if I wrote this story."
I don't consider it "the best" — but that's only because I've read so many fantastic short stories I find it impossible to choose just one as ruling them all.
Nevertheless, I reread this one every ten years or so and have since I first encountered it when I was a kid in Milwaukee in the late 50s/early 60s.
nuf sed**
Next: 2036.
*Asimov is estimated to have written some 380 short stories.
**My rap name, invented in the early 21st century by me. I've been waiting patiently for some rapper to adopt it but so far nada.
Saturday, April 25, 2026
Holding Hands Is Like Holding the Whole Body — Elizabeth Jacobson
Ice hangs off the roof like a bear claw.
Single drops of defrosted water
melt down long icicles which you catch
in a cup and drink with quick
licks of your tongue, pretending the taste of sugar.
You say: holding hands is like holding the whole body,
and you touch each one of my fingers,
naming it a leg or an arm.
You give each nail a part of my face.
I watch your small face at night,
green in the glow of the night-light.
It never stops moving.
Even the faint hairs on your forehead
seem to breathe as you dream you are
racing toward a gate swinging open.
In the morning you are up first,
going through the drawers in your bathroom
for a cloth to cover the doll house.
You rush into my room with your old baby bath towel,
the one with the turquoise trim,
and the little Carter's bow.
You say you remember this bow.
You remember that you used to try to pull it off,
that you wanted to tell me that you wanted to pull it off,
but you couldn't because you didn't have the words.
There is snow melting on the window frame behind you.
Drops fill in the tiny squares of the screen
magnifying what's beyond into oblivion.
I cannot see past you. It is you who delivered
solitude's ending.
The Most Googled Birds in the U.S.
I can't speak for you but me, I lose sleep wondering about this.
Not any more.
Data visualization artist Nadieh Bremer created Searching For Birds, a website which turns Google Trends data into a wonderfully scrollable exploration of which birds Americans search for — and why the rarest ones barely register at all.
Wrote Bremer, "As you scroll through through the following interactive graphics, you'll get a glimpse at roughly 700 North American and Hawaiian species and learn about why some of them make us fall in love."
Fair warning: there goes the day.
Wait a sec — what's that song I'm hearing?
Friday, April 24, 2026
A letter to the future
Okjökull is the name of a former glacier in Iceland, the first one to disappear.
In 2019 a plaque (above and below)
was installed where it once was.
More here.
Thursday, April 23, 2026
I wonder if Richard Hughes' and Hugh Everett III's paths ever crossed IRL
"
"That was the last news they could expect for many months.... But she argued, logically enough, that the time must come to an end, all time does; there is nothing so inexorable as a ship, plodding away, plodding away, all over the place, till at last it quite certainly reaches that small speck on the map which all the time it had intended to reach. Philosophically speaking, a ship in its port of departure is just as much in its port of arrival: two point-events differing in time and place, but not in degree of reality. Ergo, that first letter from England was as good as written, only not quite... legible yet."
Above, a short excerpt from Richard Hughes' 1929 best-seller, "A High Wind in Jamaica," the 29-year-old Hughes' first novel.
That paragraph stopped me cold when I read it the other night.
I wonder how I reacted to it when I first read this wonderful book perhaps 30-40 years ago, or if it even struck me as worth stopping and thinking about.
This time around I made sure to make note of it because as a result of my enchantment in recent years with Hugh Everett III's 1957 Princeton University doctoral dissertation —"'Relative State' Formulation of Quantum Mechanics" — Hughes' musings on the simultaneous existence of two locations "in time and place" of a single ship clearly anticipate Everett's "many worlds."
FunFact: Everett was born in 1930, the year after publication of Hughes' epic.
Songs That Always Make Me Smile When I Hear Them
These are the musical expressions of the late, great Kinky Friedman's remark to a Washington Post reporter in the early 1980s, to wit: "I'm in search of a lifestyle that does not require my presence."
Just so.
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