That’s beautifully written. I like the idea that I receive cute lil interstellar photons. The stochastic nature of the universe means I am being irradiated by an interstellar object thousands of years away. They started a journey from a star thousands of years ago, crossed the vast expanse of space without hitting anything, pierced our planet’s atmosphere as our planet and system hurtle through space, and was then absorbed by a single cone cell in my eye. It almost feels unbelievable.

You activated ARCHIMEDES?! What the hell are you thinking?!

Great comment!

I’m optimistic in the space of biology and biotechnology though. People are doing actual SciFi shit right now. We’ve got CAR-T tech, CRISPR that’s trivial to deploy, monoclonal antibodies, mRNA tech, microbiome science, DNA sequencing that is mind-blowingly good, large scale computational analysis and machine learning that’s decoding the noise of our genomes, rapid detection of pathogens with a MALDI-TOF, to just name a few.

It’s an insane time in biology right now, and it’s the current frontier along with computer science/ML.

This was my favourite chapter of Orb: On the Movements of the Eartlh. 10% goes to Potocki

There’s only one country that uses nukes to destroy civilisation.

You can’t make a tomelette without breaking some gregs