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Aatish Bhatia

@aatishb.com
1.1K followers 904 following 292 posts

I'm a science writer and journalist. I make articles and interactive graphics. Previously: NYT, Princeton, Rutgers Physics Ph.D. aatishb.com

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Reposted by Aatish Bhatia
Paul Byrne @theplanetaryguy.com · 14h
This is a photograph of the edge of one of Saturn's rings, looking down from above. Those spiky dark shapes are shadows. Shadows of giant towers of ice and dust grains clumped together that rise up to three *kilometres* above the 10-m thick rings.
A series of bands cross the image from left to right, brighter at the bottom and darkening towards the top. A band of empty space is at the top of the image. About a quarter down from the top is a complex pattern of jagged, spiky shadows cast onto the rings. The icy towers casting the shadows are seen here at a highly oblique angle.
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Aatish Bhatia @aatishb.com · 28/09/2026
"If mathematics is genuinely about understanding rather than output, then this principle should appear not merely in declarations about AI but in hiring criteria, the evaluation process and journal practices. It is imperative to start changing the system now." proofsandprompts.com/2026/09/18/t...
proofsandprompts.com
Two responses to “A Severe Misalignment of AI in Mathematics”
Note from P&P: On 11 September 2026, 25 Fields Medallists co-authored the declaration “A Severe Misalignment of AI in Mathematics”, which at the time of posting has over 7000 signat…
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Aatish Bhatia @aatishb.com · 27/09/2026
"But A.I. is a different kind of technology, because it can deliver an end result before creative thinking has happened at all." www.nytimes.com/interactive/...
nytimes.com
Opinion | A.I. Shortcuts Are Ruining How We Think
Anything worth remembering came from a person who did not know where she or he was going until arriving.
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Arkarup Banerjee @arkarupbanerjee.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Really interesting article by @aatishb.com on how LLMs work!
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Mar Hicks @histoftech.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
As of today, the CDC has changed (reverted) their Covid guidance to make the vaccine recommended for all people over 18. In addition to being a smart public health move, this recommendation also means insurance must cover it. Read more here: www.cdc.gov/covid/hcp/va... Listen to a breakdown here:
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Tim Gaedke @timgaedke.com · 26/09/2026
talent is a lie
a cartoon picture of a frog throwing a crooked looking clay vase with the words “talent is a lie, just do it anyway”
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Aatish Bhatia @aatishb.com · 23/09/2026
NEW blog post about AI’s ‘jagged intelligence’: I trained an AI model from scratch to play a simple children’s puzzle. Unlike a human player, it can solve the hardest puzzles, but it fails to solve the easiest ones. aatishb.com/blog/2026/ai...
aatishb.com
How a Simple Puzzle Reveals the Jagged Edge of AI’s Abilities
An interactive explanation of how AI can fail in surprising ways.
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Bart⚓️ @bartgonnissen.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
The Facial Expressions of Tethys by artist Julius von Bismarck. A suspended high-sea buoy that moves in real time. Sensors on a twin buoy out in the Atlantic Ocean send live satellite data to motors inside the museum. This makes the indoor buoy copy the exact, real-time movements of the ocean waves.
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Aatish Bhatia @aatishb.com · 23/09/2026
In other news, I started a new blog. Living my best internet life like it's 2015 :)
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Aatish Bhatia @aatishb.com · 23/09/2026
NEW blog post about AI’s ‘jagged intelligence’: I trained an AI model from scratch to play a simple children’s puzzle. Unlike a human player, it can solve the hardest puzzles, but it fails to solve the easiest ones. aatishb.com/blog/2026/ai...
aatishb.com
How a Simple Puzzle Reveals the Jagged Edge of AI’s Abilities
An interactive explanation of how AI can fail in surprising ways.
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Michael Friendly @datavisfriendly.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
#TodayinHistory #dataviz #OTD 📊 🎂Sep 22, 1791 Michael Faraday born in Newington Butts, Surrey, England 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 1820-1835: Graphical analysis applied to natural phenomena (electric and magnetic lines of force, weather, tides) Made these invisible constructs open to inspection 👓
Diagram of magnetic fields surrounding one or two magnets in various positionsDiagram illustrating magnetic induction fields around + and - polesEngraved portrait of Michael Faraday, holding a cigar? No -- a magnet
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Robert Simmon @rsimmon.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Happy fall (or spring, depending)!
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Kate Evans @kategevans.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
So chilling - but thanks @elisecutts.bsky.social for the roundup and thoughtful commentary. "If AI scams — and even just lazy AI pitches that flood inboxes — force us to rely on relationship networks to establish trust, science journalism is going to close up." www.reviewertoo.com/2026-09-21-s...
reviewertoo.com
A scammer impersonated a science journalist. It worked.
AI fraud is going to make it harder for new voices to break into science journalism
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Aatish Bhatia @aatishb.com · 16/09/2026
Love this idea, a great way to visualize how far we scroll
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Terence Tao @teorth.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
A group of 25 Fields Medalists, including myself, have made a joint declaration on Math and AI: mathandai.org . We welcome additional signatories. See also this article in the Economist announcing the declaration: www.economist.com/science-and-...
mathandai.org
Declaration — Math and AI
Read the declaration and add your name.
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Aatish Bhatia @aatishb.com · 11/09/2026
Really clear piece by @melaniemitchell.bsky.social that explains why OpenAI's systems hacked Hugging Face, and how metaphors can mislead us about what really happened aiguide.substack.com/p/misleading...
aiguide.substack.com
Misleading Metaphors, Real Risks
What To Fear from AI Agents and How to Reclaim Our Human Agency
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Lee Billings @leebillings.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
Everything you need to know about today’s wild “AI solves $1M math problem” news, via @sciam.bsky.social: www.scientificamerican.com/article/ai-m...
scientificamerican.com
AI may have just solved a million-dollar math problem. The field will never be the same
A mathematician compared the feat to IBM's history-making Deep Blue computer beating Gary Kasporov at chess in 1977
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Aatish Bhatia @aatishb.com · 03/09/2026
Fascinating interview with Terry Tao about the value of mathematical thinking m.youtube.com/watch?v=OOMx...
m.youtube.com
One of the world's greatest mathematicians explains 6 essential concepts of math | Terence Tao
YouTube video by Big Think
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Sean Carroll @seanmcarroll.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
LLMs are going to fundamentally change what scholarship is. Pumping out true propositions used to be a viable career. Now much of that can be offloaded, leaving scholars the tasks of understanding, synthesizing, and deciding what is valuable. Goes for math, philosophy, parts of physics.
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Aatish Bhatia @aatishb.com · 03/09/2026
Fascinating interview with Terry Tao about the value of mathematical thinking m.youtube.com/watch?v=OOMx...
m.youtube.com
One of the world's greatest mathematicians explains 6 essential concepts of math | Terence Tao
YouTube video by Big Think
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Katrina Miller @katrinamillerphd.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
Dark matter has eluded capture for decades. Did it just leave a trace? www.nytimes.com/2026/09/01/s...
nytimes.com
Scientists Hunting Dark Matter Found Something Strange (Gift Article)
A lone signal from an experiment in South Dakota doesn’t fit the profile of any other known particles, physicists say.
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Aatish Bhatia @aatishb.com · 01/09/2026
Thoughtful piece: "Upon reflection, I've come to believe that quality software is not about how many features something has or how quickly it is built but rather how cared for it is by the designers, developers, and product people who work on it."
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Matt Henderson @matthen.com · 30/08/2026
Reaction Diffusion in Photoshop- Blur, Sharpen, Posterize, repeat
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Matt Henderson @matthen.com · 26/08/2026
To tell if a maze is solvable, just hang it by its corners If it tears into pieces, you’ve found a solution
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Aatish Bhatia @aatishb.com · 27/08/2026
Devastating to see the scale of destruction in Nepal's flash floods www.nytimes.com/interactive/...
nytimes.com
See How Nepal’s Flash Floods Caused Widespread Destruction
Floodwaters swept away villages near the border between Nepal and the Tibet region of China.
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Reposted by Aatish Bhatia
Andrew Rumbach @andrewrumbach.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
There is a lot we don't know about the Nepal Tibet flood. Here are some things I suspect, as someone who studies risk just a couple hundred miles away: andrewrumbach.substack.com/p/seven-expe...
andrewrumbach.substack.com
Seven expectations about the Nepal & Tibet flood, from a long-time student of disaster risk in the region
Like many of you, I’ve been watching in horror as video clips of the disaster unfolding along the Nepal and Tibet border have gone viral.
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Dr. Fim @fim.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
Ansel Adams on assignment for IBM - one of my favourite shots. Not the usual landscape but the skill of a woman weaving magnetic core memory. The beat up nails captures total “woman in STEM” vibes.
A woman with extremely short painted nails weaving magnetic core memory. A series of rows and columns of wires in a grid.
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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
Terry Tap as always with the most careful and gentle analysis of ai and its effect on mathematics: arxiv.org/abs/2608.16753
arxiv.org
Mathematics in the age of AI
An essay, based on a public lecture delivered at the 2026 International Congress of Mathematicians, on how the mathematical community might respond to the arrival of artificial intelligence tools that...
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Mira Rojanasakul @rjnskl.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
Come work with my team on the very best beat: the Economics of Climate Change!!! Excited to make many beautiful charts with whoever gets this gig :) job-boards.greenhouse.io/thenewyorkti...
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Joseph Cox @josephcox.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
New from 404 Media: we solved which AI company is buying massive shipments of rare books, scanning and destroying them to train AI. We put an Apple AirTag in a rare book, followed it. It ended up at an Amazon facility. Its logo is a dinosaur ripping through a book www.404media.co/we-tracked-a...
404media.co
We Tracked a Shipment of Rare Books. It Ended at an Amazon AI Training Facility
We placed a tracking device in a shipment of rare books to see which AI company was buying it, and found an Amazon facility where Amazon scans and destroys books.
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Aatish Bhatia @aatishb.com · 14/08/2026
It's happening. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonp...
A notebook with a handwritten label: commonplace book
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Alvin Chang @alv9n.com · 05/08/2026
This piece is so cool. pudding.cool/2026/06/mow/
pudding.cool
Why some people mow a lawn better than others
We analyzed 132,003 attempts to mow a virtual lawn efficiently.
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Aatish Bhatia @aatishb.com · 04/08/2026
This is a fun album to work to: patrickbelaga2.bandcamp.com/album/solar-... Feels like the sounds of neurons firing.
patrickbelaga2.bandcamp.com
Solar Calf, by Patrick Belaga
9 track album
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Brooke Jarvis @brookejarvis.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
Striking before/afters showing what the heat waves did to UK vegetation www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
bbc.co.uk
UK heatwaves: Satellite images show how UK landscape has changed
BBC Verify's analysis indicates “vegetation stress” in many areas, which may affect wildlife and farming.
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Damon Young @damonyoung.com.au · 24/07/2026
Medical scientist 1: so how's the research going? Medical scientist 2: we're just titling our paper Medical scientist 1: it's not another pop culture thing is it? Medical scientist 2:
Crouching Zookeeper, Hidden Dragon: A Case of a Komodo Dragon Bite.
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Friedman NA, Seltzer JA, Winkler GA, Noste E, Montilla H, Clark RF.
Cite
J Emerg Med. 2023 Feb;64(2):186-189. doi: 10.1016/j.jemermed.2022.12.001. Epub 2023 Feb 21.
PMID: 36813645
BACKGROUND: The Komodo dragon (Varanus komodoensis) is the world's largest living lizard and exists in private captivity worldwide. .Komodo dragon bites may produce not only superficial lacerations but also deep tissue injury, bu ...
• How not to train your dragon: a case of a Komodo dragon bite.
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Borek HA, Charlton NP.
Cite
Wilderness Environ Med. 2015 Jun;26(2):196-9. doi: 10.1016/j.wem.2014.12.014. Epub 2015 Mar 12.
PMID: 25772822
Komodo dragons (Varanus komodoensis) are the world's largest lizards, known for killing prey that exceed their body mass. ...We describe the case of a zookeeper who was bitten by a Komodo dragon, with a resultant mallet finger. We further discuss the V ...
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Phil Lewis @phillewis.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
ATLANTA (AP) — US surpasses 2025’s record-breaking tally for measles cases, with 2,318 cases and 5 more months left in the year.
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Alariko @alariko.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
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TAKAO★WATANABE🌿10/23-28Exhibition @watanabetakao.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
My new piece is finished! I'm really happy with how the artwork turned out. I'd love to hear your thoughts on it! 😉 #Illustration #CommentPls #RTpls
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Joey Politano🏳️‍🌈 @josephpolitano.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
Solar power made up 12.9% of US electricity this May, a new record high that's up from 11% last year Over the last twelve months, solar has made up 9% of US electricity, another record high!
a graph of solar's share of US electricity
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Joey Politano🏳️‍🌈 @josephpolitano.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
Official monthly data is in today, and US solar power generation hit a new record high, up 21% compared to this time last year!
A graph of US monthly solar generation
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Aatish Bhatia @aatishb.com · 20/07/2026
I really want to go looking for four leaf clovers now. 🍀 Another delightful rabbit hole video. m.youtube.com/watch?v=XfUF...
m.youtube.com
How rare is a four-leaf clover, really?
YouTube video by Rabbit Hole
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Costa Samaras @costasamaras.com · 19/07/2026
Could Excel be conscious? We surveyed more than Jan 1 1900 people to find out.
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Caitlin Gilbert @caitlingilbert.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
very very excited to be launching Wrong Number with my buds @christinezhang.bsky.social and @jdharden.bsky.social! It’s a newsletter dedicated to all of our weird data obsessions: our first posts cover Law & Order, trees, and theme park accidents wrongnumber.beehiiv.com/p/about-wron...
wrongnumber.beehiiv.com
About ‘Wrong Number’
What this newsletter is, who we are, and why we named it that.
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Aaron Reichlin-Melnick @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
NEW: The Trump admin finalized a regulation which makes the largest changes to the student visa process in 50 years, along with changes to rules for exchange visitors and international journalists. 🧵on some of the most consequential changes set to go into effect in September.
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Randall Munroe @xkcd.com · 16/07/2026
Time Change xkcd.com/3272/
3-panel comic. (1) PERSON 1 behind podium on stage: We all hate springing forward. But we love falling back. (2) [Audience pictured listening] PERSON 1: Therefore, we are abolishing the *spring* time change *only*. We’ll gain an hour every year, but never lose one. (3) PERSON OFF-PANEL: Won’t that cause the clocks to spiral out of sync with the sun? PERSON 1 holding up a fist: *Then we will meet the chaos clear-eyed and well-rested!*
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Atul Gawande @agawande.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
More signs of resurging HIV after USAID’s closure. African Neonatal Network reported at IMNCH (a global health conference): HIV+ pregnant women ↑50% & those not on antiretrovirals ↑>300%, year-on-year, across 22 hospitals in 5 nations. @vtoxfordnetwork.bsky.social
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Rachel Holliday Smith @rachelholliday.bsky.social · 09/07/2026
I'm been wondering if it would come to this and apparently it has. huge move from cloudflare, which hosts a fifth of all websites on earth.
adweek.com
Publishers Are Preparing to Opt Out of Google Search
The nuclear option is gaining traction as web traffic collapses and Google refuses to negotiate with content creators
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Sean Carroll @seanmcarroll.bsky.social · 08/07/2026
Students have long been given the idea that the goal of taking classes is to get good grades, learning is just a side effect. Now it’s not even a side effect.
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Flora Graham @floragraham.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
GET HEARING AIDS ❤️ stop worrying if they're cool they're like glasses just get them and wear them this one's for the dads out there (except my dad, he's cool and wears his aids)
Hearing loss is a significant risk factor for dementia
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Thomas Lin @7homaslin.com · 07/07/2026
"Our real duty as teachers has always been challenging students to think. The task now is finding ways to engage them in the painful, essential work of critical thinking in a world where machines are willing to do it for them." www.science.org/content/arti...
science.org
Instead of banning AI, I made a classroom contract with my students
“I used AI daily—how could I expect my students to avoid it entirely?” this computer scientist writes
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