Frank Swain
@frank-swain
Freelance science writer | frankswain.com
JG Ballard was of the same mind as you (from his short story Chronopolis):
A while back I plotted all the fires recorded in Iberia in 2025 using data from EFFIS / Copernicus, might have to do the same again
Last week the wildfire below that left my house smelling like a BBQ, I saw two more on the weekend and three yesterday 😬 Memry'd of that quote about the climate crisis getting closer and closer until you can see it out your window www.theguardian.com/world/2026/j...
every AI midwit: my son, born six months ago at 3.5kg, is now 9 kg. were he able to feed himself, we could see a closed-loop recursive self-growth effect, resulting in a 300 million kg baby within the decade humanity desperately needs a strategy to navigate the existential risks of babies
This is an example of frictional pricing - basically making it inconvenient to pay less - and if there's one good thing about AI it's that more and more people will realise they can get an agent to make the call, negating it as a strategy
Everyone knows him for triffids, but Wyndham’s The Trouble With Lichen - about a miraculous longevity medicine, exploitation, sustainability and smashing the patriarchy - is the book we need to have to hand these days.
It's probably time European journalists wrapped their heads around Heat Index (temp + relative humidity). In high humidity, sweating is less efficient, making heat worse, e.g.: Experiencing 35°C in London UK (70% RH) is more dangerous than 50°C in Phoenix Arizona (15% RH)
Offering ✨ 𝑒𝓍𝓅𝑜𝓈𝓊𝓇𝑒 ✨ instead of payment, and then getting mad that people are submitting robot-written articles, is a heck of a take
Revisiting Walter Benjamin's 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘞𝘰𝘳𝘬 𝘰𝘧 𝘈𝘳𝘵 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘈𝘨𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘔𝘦𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘭 𝘙𝘦𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘥𝘶𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 (1936) and I wonder what he would make of generative AI. His essay opens with this prophetic quote by Paul Valéry
The overarching structure of the questions also makes it clear there is no appetite to address the root issue by building better online spaces. Just look at these options!
bruh what is this??? do Telegraph readers still go online using AOL cds or something?
This is neat: by cutting notches in a metal washer, researchers created a tiny cymbal that resonates at a unique ultrasonic frequency detectable by smartphone, making a low-cost passive tag dl.acm.org/doi/epdf/10....
my latest obsession are these ants, which can locate any food I put down in minutes. They “smell” the food, but not like me - they don’t breathe it in, can’t sniff deep some nice scent, or hold their breath against bad odours. They must experience it like I do sound, ever-present, the good and bad
This excoriating piece was written by @tristandross.bsky.social almost decade ago and is still true, and a perfect distillation of the average millennial experience www.huckmag.com/article/ther...
This chart offers compelling narratives but comes with important caveats (modelled aggregate data, several key assumptions, low turnout in 2024, local v national elections & author warns firm conclusions aren’t possible). oskanberg.github.io/2026-voter-f...
While getting robots to do dirty dangerous work is a good thing, hard not to wonder if the real issue here is the naked contempt for human workers. www.bbc.com/news/article...
Incredible Sights: Top 10 Real Ghosts Caught on Camera You Won’t Believe Your Eyes (credit Doug Mills/NYT)
Painting eggs with my nephews last week was one of the most quietly joyful things I’ve done in a long time