Science
Every Science story we have explained, newest first — 9 stories so far.
Via mayerowitz.io · source Mario Kart Shows Why the Fastest Driver Is Not the Best
A Mario Kart explainer shows how the Pareto frontier separates objectively bad choices from merely personal ones — and where the method runs out.
Three Million Amazonians Lived on Three Percent of the Forest
Archaeologists estimate three million people lived in the pre-Columbian Amazon, concentrated in about 3% of the forest. Why the clustering matters more.
Photo: (c) Fyn Kynd, some rights reserved (CC BY-SA) / CC BY-SA 4.0 · source Norway built the world's salmon habit. Its fjords are paying
Norway invented global demand for farmed salmon. Now its fjords are losing oxygen — and the industry is too valuable to slow down.
Photo: myllissa / CC BY 2.0 · source Newfoundland Is Hauling Away Two Decades of Abandoned Fish Sauce
Crews in St. Mary's, Newfoundland are removing 900,000 litres of fish sauce abandoned in 2001 — and with it, an accidental chemistry experiment.
Photo: User:Waldyrious / CC BY-SA 4.0 · source Taylor Farms Rewrote Its Outbreak Statement Five Times in 16 Days
Why 2,000 negative cyclospora tests cannot clear a recalled lettuce product, and what Taylor Farms has left out of five rewritten statements.
Photo: LA2 / CC BY-SA 3.0 · source Essential English Vocabulary Dropped Flour and Added Mortgage
A 1953 list of essential English words and its 2023 replacement differ by 1,700 entries. The change tracks a shift from manual work to institutions.
Photo: Kristoferb / CC BY-SA 3.0 · source Battery Makers Are Betting Billions on a Solid Electrolyte
Why CATL, BYD, Samsung and $4bn of startups are chasing solid-state batteries — and why the technology keeps failing to arrive.
Photo: International Mathematical Olympiad / Public domain · source AI Reasoning Works Even When Its Written Steps Are Meaningless
AI models now solve open maths problems, but research shows the reasoning they display is often unfaithful to what happens inside them.
Photo: Vmenkov / CC BY-SA 3.0 · source Most of AI's Billion-Dollar Startups Publish Almost No Research
A study of AI's billion-dollar startups found only about half publish research. Why the rest stay quiet, and what the secrecy costs everyone else.