genomes, microbes, and surveillance cameras

Wednesday, September 9, 2026

I carried Zeus’s thunderbolts up from the earth to Olympus.

1. Google DeepMind maps every possible single-letter mutation in the human genome
2. Microbes that eat plastic and detect landmines — why can’t we release them?
3. Scott Alexander on mechanistic interpretability — reading an AI’s mind
4. 89.6% of European companies with a CDN use Cloudflare — one point of failure for the web
5. The two Christian saints canonized by both Rome and the Orthodox church who are secretly the Buddha
6. Zoos giving animals puzzle feeders, bubble machines, and mirror cabinets — does it work?