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George Musser

@georgemusser.com
5.7K followers 2.6K following 281 posts

contributing editor, Scientific American, Nautilus; contributing writer, Quanta; author, Putting Ourselves Back in the Equation, Spooky Action at a Distance, Complete Idiot’s Guide to String Theory; planetary scientist, local historian, bassist, salsero

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George Musser @georgemusser.com · 30/08/2026
By the logic Google is using to justify going along with the Lake Ontario mislabeling, Trump could with the stroke of a pen change the standards the U.S. has adopted for physical constants.
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George Musser @georgemusser.com · 30/08/2026
Google’s excuse for kowtowing to Trump on Lake Ontario is that it’s just following the Geographic Names Information System. Does that mean Trump could sign an executive order redefining the North Pole to be in Kansas? Why stop there? Rename the constellations? Switch east and west? Up and down?
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George Musser @georgemusser.com · 30/08/2026
TomTom has caved on iOS, too, but is still fine on Android. I suspect Apple is acting as enforcer on its platform.
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George Musser @georgemusser.com · 29/08/2026
I see that on iOS but the Android maps are correct (for now).
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George Musser @georgemusser.com · 31/07/2026
The good news is that it's safe for humans to use m-dashes again without being taken for a machine. The bad is that LLMs have moved on to "not only... but also." www.economist.com/culture/2026...
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George Musser @georgemusser.com · 13/04/2026
With one change, it's more theologically accurate.
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George Musser @georgemusser.com · 02/03/2026
Fox News isn't bothering to report that a U.S. or Israeli airstrike killed over a hundred kids.
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George Musser @georgemusser.com · 13/12/2025
"While elites of both parties have polarized ideologically... this process has been more precipitous for Republicans." Interesting analysis by @anastasiabzv.bsky.social and colleagues in @pnas.org. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
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George Musser @georgemusser.com · 11/10/2025
Swipe up to try a new variant on Conway's Game of Life. And another. And another. This is how artificial-life researchers spread the joy after the #ALIFE2025 conference! They say it's like TikTok, but I wouldn't know.... ⚙️🧫 rulehunt.org?rulesetHex=7... #cellularautomata #gameoflife
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George Musser @georgemusser.com · 09/10/2025
Tech is depleting not only material resources but also intellectual resources, especially common knowledge. Political polarization erodes agreement on the most basic facts and concepts. "It's almost like seeing the ozone layer deplete before our eyes," said @audreyt.org at #ALIFE2025. ⚙️🧫
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George Musser @georgemusser.com · 09/10/2025
Evolution has an arrow of time toward greater complexity. It's driven neither by mutation nor by crossover/sex but by symbiogenesis, argued @blaiseaguera.bsky.social (following Lynn Margulis) at #ALIFE2025. He showed lots of cool CoreWar-like competing programs. whatisintelligence.antikythera.org ⚙️🧫
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George Musser @georgemusser.com · 08/10/2025
Richard Löffler creates lifelike oil droplets during the public event at #ALIFE2025. ⚙️🧫
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George Musser @georgemusser.com · 08/10/2025
Another mirroring illusion for your puzzling pleasure, created by @eijiwatanabe.bsky.social, demonstrated by @sinalana.bsky.social at #ALIFE2025. ⚙️🧫
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George Musser @georgemusser.com · 07/10/2025
Here's a depressing solution to the Fermi Paradox: In a hostile Galaxy, we won't ever see aliens because, if we did, we'd be dead already, mused Georgii Karelin of @oistedu.bsky.social at #ALIFE2025. ⚙️🧫
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George Musser @georgemusser.com · 07/10/2025
The usual explanation for great music is that it's predictable but not too predictable. But there's more to it, said @frosas.bsky.social at #ALIFE2025. We prefer music when we perceive agency behind it. Improvisation trumps a prepared performance. See paper at www.frontiersin.org/journals/psy.... ⚙️🧫
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George Musser @georgemusser.com · 07/10/2025
Monkeys on typewriters would take eons to generate π, but much MUCH less time to generate a program that would generate π, said @hectorzenil.bsky.social at #ALIFE2025. He has a cool applet to prove the point at demonstrations.wolfram.com/InfiniteMonk.... ⚙️🧫
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George Musser @georgemusser.com · 07/10/2025
For A.I. to feel empathy, it has to be able to feel pain, argued roboticist Minoru Asada in a provocative talk at #ALIFE2025. He has built a pain signal into his robots. I hope it doesn’t inure them to others’ misery, as we see all too often in people. www.er.ams.eng.osaka-u.ac.jp/asadalab/?pa... ⚙️🧫
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George Musser @georgemusser.com · 03/10/2025
In this bizarre #opticalillusion, an object seems to switch direction when viewed in a mirror. Mathematician and puzzle-maker Kokichi Sugihara wrote it up for the @euromathsoc.bsky.social magazine at euromathsoc.org/magazine/art... and created a very helpful video at youtu.be/vGxTKpOt6xU?....
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George Musser @georgemusser.com · 15/09/2025
As if to confirm my feelings of alienation from a world going mad, the German trains booked me onto car 24, but there is no car 24.
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George Musser @georgemusser.com · 25/07/2025
Columbia says it hired an expert on negotiation. Must be the same one who advised Neville Chamberlain.
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George Musser @georgemusser.com · 31/03/2025
On a whim, I asked Amazon Alexa about flying saucers and was troubled to hear that most scientists deem them extraterrestrial in origin. What other misconceptions and conspiracies do these smart speakers promulgate? 🧪
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George Musser @georgemusser.com · 27/02/2025
Wait, Bozos is celebrating freedom by saying you're not free? He wants to minimize coercion by coercing? I think high-school English teachers discussing Orwell now have a new example of doublethink.
Jeff Bezos, the owner of The Washington Post, announced a major shift to the newspaper’s opinion section on Wednesday, saying it would now advocate “personal liberties and free markets” and not publish opposing viewpoints on those topics.

Mr. Bezos said the section’s editor, David Shipley, was leaving the paper in response to the change.

“I am of America and for America, and proud to be so,” Mr. Bezos said. “Our country did not get here by being typical. And a big part of America’s success has been freedom in the economic realm and everywhere else. Freedom is ethical — it minimizes coercion — and practical; it drives creativity, invention and prosperity.”
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George Musser @georgemusser.com · 11/02/2025
Google Maps caved. I am deleting the app and, if I have to use paper maps from here on, so be it.
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George Musser @georgemusser.com · 20/11/2024
Great story by @nadiadrake.bsky.social for @sciam.bsky.social on how her father designed and transmitted the famous Arecibo interstellar message to M13. 🧪 www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-...
Folded sheet of gridded paper on which Frank Drake penciled in the Arecibo message, showing the stick human, schematic of DNA, and other visual information.
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George Musser @georgemusser.com · 09/09/2024
The heavier your car, the safer you are in a collision, but the more damage you do to the other car. There’s an optimal weight that minimizes total fatalities: ~4000 lbs., the Economist estimates from police reports from 14 U.S. states. (Curb weight, I think.) 🧪 www.economist.com/interactive/...
Graph of fatality rate in car collisions vs. weight of one of the cars. Fatality rate for that car drops with weight, almost plateauing above 4000 lbs. Fatality rate for the other car steadily rises.
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George Musser @georgemusser.com · 08/09/2024
The answer seems to be yes.
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George Musser @georgemusser.com · 08/09/2024
Here's a Google Maps fail I've never seen before: It puts me in Amman even though I'm in Larnaca. Could IDF spoofing be messing with GPS positioning this far out?
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George Musser @georgemusser.com · 01/02/2024
You are 3.8 billion years old, says @saraimari.bsky.social at #MindFest2024. You can trace parts of your body all the way back to the origins of life. 🧪
Photograph of physicist/astrobiologist Sara Walker giving a talk on Assembly Theory
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George Musser @georgemusser.com · 05/08/2023
OK, this pushes me over the edge. The arrogance of the NYT is breathtaking. I will cancel presently.
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George Musser @georgemusser.com · 02/07/2023
@wayt.bsky.social had a very nice highly graphical explainer in Scientific American many years ago... I myself wrote a short news story on pulsar timing arrays in 2006
PDF of Scientific American article on pulsar timing arrays
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George Musser @georgemusser.com · 24/06/2023
Isn't this typical of the New York Times: give wall-to-wall coverage to a story I couldn't care less about, then wonder why everyone is so obsessed about that story. Why doesn't the NYT ever question itself? They still owe the world a huge apology for the 2016 election.
Screenshot from New York Times mobile app, showing headline "5 Deaths at Sea Gripped the World. Hundreds of Others Got a Shrug."
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