One Hundred Beats a Minute
A reality TV table flip, and the exact heart-rate threshold at which the part of the brain running self-presentation goes offline, camera or no camera.
Essays
Prompted by the need to clear my head, I write in brain dumps, then publish them to leave a trail and test whether I know what I thought I knew.
The Mask Does Not Wear Me
A king and his identical twin, one crowned and one masked, and one fixed human need read into five different frameworks across a century.
Gifts to a Future Self
A mathematician too weak for real work after brain surgery, dealing himself hand after hand of solitaire, and a why-ladder that keeps closing on the same two answers.
What It Would Take, In Cups
An afternoon at an English research station, a story statisticians have retold for a century, and the woman most versions of it never bother to name.
One Napkin, Two Fires
The Mona Lisa burning in Glass Onion's finale, the napkin burned just before it, and why four witnesses were never enough to overturn Miles's story.
The Seam Does Not Show Anymore
Taft weeping over his closest friend in 1912, a friendship breaking apart at the Royal Statistical Society in 1935, and two statisticians whose falling out never got the ending anyone expects.