Beyond all the grant chasing, bitching and annoying hype merchants, every now and then, I just sit back and smile at scientific discovery— the automated escalator that turns out new knowledge. This is from the ever excellent Fermat’s Library.

This week’s paper is “Age of Meteorites and the Earth” (1956) by Clair Patterson.For most of history, no one knew how old the Earth was – estimates ranged from a few thousand years to a few billion, with no reliable way to choose between them. Then a 34-year-old Caltech geochemist settled it in eight pages. Rather than date the Earth directly, Patterson dated five meteorites and showed our planet belonged to the same family.

The number he got, 4.55 billion years, has barely moved in seventy years.

(The paper is here: https://fermatslibrary.com/s/age-of-meteorites-and-the-earth)

from The Economist

What do you do with your past? She was only 17 when the war ended but she already had so much past; she had already seen so much. Like that boy in the camp. He had been tied to a tree then SS soldiers had shot at him. They shot his foot, his arm, his hands, an ear. A little boy, used as target practice. Then there was the girl who tried to escape. The soldiers had shot her then hung her body in the middle of the camp as an example. And there was the pregnant woman: when she went into labour, the SS tied her legs together. She had never seen agony like hers.

The dangerous delusion of modern warfare

The Economist

Entrepreneurs weave FPV-derived [first party view] video depicting the terrified or resigned faces of cornered Russian and Ukrainian soldiers into snuff movies set to heavy metal. Combat increasingly resembles bespoke remote-controlled execution. In one FPV video highlighted by the US Army’s Training and Doctrine Command, a Russian soldier approached by a Ukrainian drone gestures towards his nearby comrade lying in a ditch: kill him instead. The drone pauses imperiously. It drops a grenade on the second soldier, decapitating him. Then it returns to the first soldier and does the same to him.

A few lines later we read …

The age of nuclear-arms-control agreements has come to an end.

Do most baristas in Norway have a master’s degree? | May 23rd 2026 Edition

Nice letter from ROLAND DEHOUSSE in Brussels in this week’s Economist.

Being myself on the verge of retiring from the European civil service, I felt a deep connection to Charlemagne’s column on federalists’ nostalgia for a Europe that never was (May 9th). I especially enjoyed the analogy between the pioneers of European integration and the builders of medieval cathedrals. Indeed I count myself as one of the “still many in Brussels who get teary-eyed as they describe their humble role in…this continental peace project, as worthy of admiration in their eyes as any cathedral”. But alas, I can’t help thinking that my late father, himself an MEP, was right when he used to fume: “They promised us a cathedral and built a supermarket instead.”

With a parking lot, too, I suggest— a la Joni Mitchell

Bezos, Backlash and Zombies – Paul Krugman

But [Jeff] Bezos obviously suffers from billionaire brain, which I defined last year as that special blend of ignorance and arrogance that occurs all too frequently in men who believe that their success in accumulating personal wealth means that they understand everything, no need to do any homework.

A review in the New Statesman ( 1-7 May 2026, p53, Kate Mossman) of Ringo Starr’s most recent album (and long career).

“The instrumentation is predictably perfect, with fluttery guitar from the appropriately named musician Billy Strings.”

Len Deighton’s Action Cook Book – Wikipedia

I have been re-reading some Len Deighton (who died recently). The quote below is from his Action Cookbook where he offers advice on keeping the party ticking over until is doesn’t..

The cookbook was mentioned in an episode of The Supersizers [ a BBC series on food and drink] focusing on the extremely high quantities of alcohol required for a 1970s cocktail party. It recommends half a 70 cl bottle (35 cl) of spirit (e.g. rum, vodka, etc.) per person every two hours of a party, increasing to three-quarters (52.5 cl) of a bottle per person after 2 hours “since drinking will increase if they haven’t gone home by then” (p126). This equates to 87.5 cl of spirits per person for a four-hour party.

Farage’s Reform UK still has electoral obstacles ahead

Deform is a better name for the Farage cult as, that’s exactly what he intends to do to the country before popping smoke and heading off to Florida with his ill gotten gains.

Xi Jinping wants China to read more—as long as it’s the right books

The Economist

The BINHAI library, often called China’s most beautiful, is breathtaking. Swirling shelves of books rise in gravity-defying stacks to a high ceiling in a light-dappled room: a modern cathedral to learning. No wonder the library, in Tianjin, an eastern city, has become a favourite photo stop for glammed-up young folk posting to social media. But it does not take long in the library to see that there is less to it than meets the eye. Most of the books are just pictures of spines glued to the wall. And most of the visitors are glued to their phones, not perusing books.

Tim Cook wrote a winning recipe for Apple. From The Economist

Apple’s market value has grown 11-fold on Mr Cook’s watch as, counting everything including dividends, he has stuffed some $4.6trn into the pockets of Apple’s shareholders. That is over $850m for every day of his long tenure.