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Essays

Ensemble

When two instruments in an orchestra play simultaneous pure tones at sufficient intensity, a third tone nobody is playing emerges.

Essays

Boomerang

Empires have a way of seeding their own destruction.

  • “A Terrific Boomerang Effect”: On Wifredo Lam’s “Rumblings of the Earth”

    Student Zach Ngin investigates artist Wifredo Lam’s representation of the effects of colonialism. https://www.guggenheim.org/articles/checklist/a-terrific-boomerang-effect-on-wifredo-lams-rumblings-of-the-earth more ›

  • SpaceX’s Starship lifts off in make-or-break orbital test flight

    The world’s largest rocket successfully entered orbit for the first time—a milestone for SpaceX and a relief for future NASA moon missions https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/spacexs-starship-lifts-off-in-make-or-break-orbital-test-flight/?utm_source=semafor more ›

  • WWC26-NA – 2026 in LLMs (so far)

    2026 has been a wild year for LLMs. The OpenClaw craze kicked things off in January, then we had tokenmaxxing, then the death of tokenmaxxing, US export controls on frontier models, open weight models that compete with that frontier, accidental… more ›

  • 2026 in LLMs (so far)

    On Friday I gave the closing keynote at the WeAreDevelopers World Congress North America in San Jose. I tied together the key trends from the past year into a chronological … https://simonwillison.net/2026/sep/27/2026-in-llms-so-far/ more ›

  • Decoder: Ad-Free Edition: Can Cloudflare save the web from AI?

    Listen: https://ift.tt/Ze4p5fm Cloudflare discovered in June that bots already make up more than half of internet traffic — and CEO Matthew Prince says that bots could outnumber humans a thousand to one within five years. That's a huge change to… more ›

  • DARK CAIRO NOIR ✦ 70s Egyptian Crime Jazz & Desert Espionage Grooves [2 Hours Mix]

    🌌 Welcome to Afterhours Club ’70. Tonight, step into the shadowy, lantern-lit alleys and smoke-filled lounges of 1970s Cairo. This 2-hour continuous mix delves into the rare, cinematic world of vintage Egyptian espionage jazz, dark Arabic film noir soundtracks, phaser-drenched… more ›

  • Talk Africa: ECOWAS’ road to single currency

    West Africa’s push for a single regional currency is back on the agenda. At its latest summit, ECOWAS reaffirmed plans to launch the Eco in 2027, calling it a key step toward deeper regional integration and easier cross-border trade. But… more ›

  • ECOWAS Reaffirms Plan to Rollout ECO Single Currency in 2027

    ECOWAS reaffirms its commitment to launching the ECO single currency in 2027, aiming for deeper economic integration and sustainable growth in West Africa. https://share.google/idoJHzbd0qwCyare9 more ›

  • The perilous journey to a West African single currency

    As the CFA Franc countries debate why and how to change their currency, can Nigeria be brought on board to form a genuine West African project? https://www.theafricareport.com/in-depth/the-perilous-journey-to-a-west-african-single-currency/ more ›

  • Ghana joins push for West African currency

    Ghana wants to ditch its currency, the Cedi,  in favour of adopting the Eco. Eight other countries in the region — Benin, Burkina Faso, Guinea-Bissau, Cote https://www.theafricareport.com/21756/ghana-joins-push-for-west-african-currency/ more ›