Here are the gems the AI picked: 1. Sperm whales may have collectively learned how to evade whalers. Within a few years, the success rate of…

Here are the gems the AI picked: 1. Sperm whales may have collectively learned how to evade whalers. Within a few years, the success rate of whalers’ harpoons reportedly fell by 58%, suggesting that information about the attacks was being shared among whales. An astonishing example of nonhuman culture adapting under pressure. https://x.com/SteveStuWill/status/1475711589374377985 2. A 500,000–300,000-year-old handaxe was deliberately crafted around a fossil shell. The shell sits near the center of the tool, raising the possibility that its maker noticed and intentionally incorporated it. It may represent a startlingly early form of aesthetic intention. https://x.com/AlisonFisk/status/1776921375980024090 3. Intelligence may be far more distributed throughout biology than we generally recognize. This thread explores Michael Levin’s work on the underappreciated collective intelligence of cells and biological systems—and the perspective shifts that follow if we stop treating intelligence as something that happens only inside brains. https://x.com/kasratweets/status/1783217644897984636 4. Wikipedia succeeded while seven similar online encyclopedia projects failed. They appeared at roughly the same time and pursued similar goals, but only one became a foundational part of the internet. This paper looks for the institutional and organizational reasons why. https://x.com/OwainEvans_UK/status/1329892507325509640 5. Beautiful data visualizations are more likely to be trusted. Across four studies, people placed more trust in more aesthetically pleasing graphs—even when beauty shouldn’t have affected the credibility of the underlying information. A useful warning for anyone who creates or consumes research. https://x.com/Mark_A_Thornton/status/1478057342088495112 6. Choosing the right problem may be the highest-leverage skill in research. This long thread and accompanying Cell article examine how scientists and engineers select problems, including practical decision trees for deciding what is actually worth pursuing. https://x.com/mfgrp/status/1778440273988812835 7. One man spent five years recreating all 107 recipes in the Alinea cookbook. What begins as a story of culinary obsession becomes a lesson about mastery, deliberate practice, and the strange process by which a consumer becomes a creator. https://x.com/kevinleeme/status/1284184707110809600 8. Shortly after World War I began, the Financial Times asked readers to predict how the war would change the map of Europe. It was presented as a game. There were cash prizes. It is a deeply strange and revealing artifact of how people perceived a catastrophe before its true scale was understood. https://x.com/khalafroula/status/2022949964234535159 9. Charles Darwin once received a scientific critique of On the Origin of Species—and wrote a remarkable reply. Julia Galef explains why it may be her favorite letter in the history of science and what it reveals about Darwin’s intellectual character. https://x.com/juliagalef/status/1341058267175378950 10. Dungeons & Dragons contains technical debt inherited from its earliest origins. Its time and distance scales never quite synchronized because of rules inherited from the miniature-wargame Chainmail. That mismatch may also help explain why modern D&D characters feel like superheroes. https://x.com/mikemearls/status/1878466880098242688 11. Avant-garde perfume is an accessible form of experimental art. There is an entire world of strange, conceptual, independently produced perfume—and samples are inexpensive enough that it may be one of the easiest ways to explore a completely unfamiliar aesthetic medium. https://x.com/add_hawk/status/1357071738731814912 12. ShadeMap simulates every mountain, building, and tree shadow in the world. You can choose any location, date, and time and see how sunlight and shadow move across the landscape. It is both practically useful and oddly mesmerizing. https://x.com/shademap/status/1796244182417424670 13. The Whole Earth Index is a nearly complete, freely accessible archive of Whole Earth publications. The Whole Earth Catalog was one of the most influential documents of the counterculture and early technological imagination. Now much of that world is searchable online. https://x.com/longnow/status/1712877725353234442 14. One project explored all 54 African countries through 54 works of architecture. Each project was intended to reflect the cultural identity and history of a different nation, creating an unusually ambitious visual survey of African architecture and design. https://x.com/omar_degan/status/1347485800062201858 15. Infinite Craft is an endless game of combinatorial discovery. You begin with a few basic elements and combine them to create new concepts, which can then be combined again. It is a wonderfully compact demonstration of how generative systems can produce genuine exploration and surprise. https://x.com/nealagarwal/status/1752716375255101440 The first version of Infinite Craft, an endless crafting game, is out now! > https://neal.fun/infinite-craft/

Source: Ethan Mollick (X) | 2026-08-16