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The Last Word On Nothing

lastwordonnothing.com

"Science says the first word on everything, and the last word on nothing" - Victor Hugo

ScienceEssays / personal

’10’15’20’25
Posts
3,866 from 20 May 2010 to 30 Oct 2026
Posting
about daily (153 in the last year)
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magazine
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Latest

October 2026

  1. Osettai
  2. Ewers for Heifer & Heifer
  3. Sounding It Out
  4. Life Keeps Walking
  5. A Sestina for Songbirds
  6. My Neighbor, Me, and a Grand Principle
  7. She began to dream again
  8. A Village to Feed a Fawn
  9. Unsound Minds in Charge
  10. Jumping Spider Courtship Is Dazzling, Dangerous Business
  11. Tale of the Tape
  12. Is It Grief? It Feels Like Grief. Still.
  13. Go Ahead! Drink the ’61 Cheval Blanc From a Paper Cup

September 2026

  1. Snapshot: Glorious lichen
  2. The Frog and the Fly
  3. Make Prayers to the Sky
  4. Golden Boy
  5. Nobody Was Here
  6. Make Me Like a Tree, and Leave Me
  7. A taxonomy of toddler jokes
  8. Will the real women in science please stand up
  9. Rail Trails, Towpaths, and Other Great Trails Along Failed Transportation Routes
  10. Every Map Starts with a Lie
  11. A Little Night Music (Revisited)
  12. A baleful tale of the snails in Hayle
  13. Snapshot: The best bug, August edition

August 2026

  1. Songs of Home
  2. Fear of Mountain Lions
  3. Are Jumping Spiders Capable of Innovation?
  4. Baltimore in August
  5. Summer skies
  6. Tremors
  7. Debunking Hollywood: Human Hibernation
  8. Categorically Yes … and No
  9. Perfect Things
  10. Happy Final Weeks of Summer Camp (to all who celebrate)
  11. The Mountains that Matter Most
  12. Look up
  13. Birds of the District of Columbia

July 2026

  1. The Round of Introductions You Didn’t Ask For
  2. One Damn Thing After Another
  3. In Search of Low Carbon Joy
  4. On Boundary Conditions
  5. Consent & the Afterlife
  6. Lost in Curiosity
  7. TIL, for Today I Learned, Is the Best Acronym. What Have You Learned Lately?
  8. Crouching Spider, Hidden Tiger
  9. Coffeeshop Science
  10. Ode to the Brown-Headed Cowbird, Again
  11. Go Sit in a Forlorn Chair
  12. Spiders, far away and at home
  13. This Post is About Porcupines…Again

June 2026

  1. Sleeping in Space
  2. Sounds of Silence
  3. Storia 2
  4. The wisdom of a summer afternoon
  5. Trump Meets an Indigenous Movement
  6. Motherhood: Two for One
  7. The HPV Vaccine Is 20 Years Old. Let’s Celebrate! With Glitter.
  8. I’m Off to Thrillsville
  9. Leading the Bedtime Rebellion
  10. Everything Is Bad, But There Are Baby Deer
  11. Voice Mails from the Great Beyond
  12. Bringing that spirit home
  13. Home/Not Home

May 2026

  1. Submission
  2. Branching
  3. Uncle Bundy and the Technically Sweet
  4. Leaving / Imprints
  5. Haircare in the Viking Age
  6. Written in the Stars
  7. What’s Truly Beautiful
  8. Why Do People Hate Spiders?
  9. Loving Explosions
  10. Too Little, Too Late, But Better Late Than Never?
  11. Hello Birdie
  12. Snapshot: Funny little ferns
  13. Standing at the Shoreline

April 2026

  1. Guest Post: Chemistry & the Students from Elsewhere
  2. Passion Fruit Diplomacy
  3. Low Info
  4. Watch the grass grow
  5. Migrations
  6. A Baffling Curio
  7. Messy Hospitality, Party Ideas, and Icebreakers
  8. What a spectacular worm
  9. The tiniest frogs . . . eeee!
  10. To the Moon, Our Moon, and Back
  11. Birthday Celebrations
  12. So many wonderful plants!
  13. Mind the Gap

March 2026

  1. Wanting to Be a Bird
  2. Snail Season
  3. I Don’t Know What the Crows Are Saying
  4. The Harrier
  5. Nobody’s Thing
  6. Echoes of an Unbroken Voice
  7. In Praise of Secular Saints
  8. Auklets and Islands
  9. The Stone Collector
  10. Redux: The Molt
  11. Let It Snow — Please, For the Love of All That Is Good
  12. Ice Skating: an Overanalysis
  13. Listening to My Surroundings

February 2026

  1. Snapshot: Interpreter of America
  2. The Warmth of Frostlines: A Chat with Author Neil Shea
  3. Arroyo Acoustics
  4. I Can See Clearly Now/The Rain
  5. And Now It’s February, Same Same
  6. Passages from unknowable stories
  7. Storyteller’s Remorse
  8. Write like you’re in the 1500s
  9. Five Pieces of Work Advice from an Agony Aunt
  10. Lunch with a Jumping Spider
  11. Redux: The Once Soft World
  12. Snapshots

January 2026

  1. I Have a Cold
  2. Why I’m so excited about the weight loss drugs I’ll never take
  3. Lessons From Mr. Nobody Against Putin
  4. I like stuff
  5. They’ll Be Back
  6. Life and Death by Mountain Lion
  7. Stuck in the Middle with Oystercatchers and You
  8. It’s Still January
  9. what else is love but
  10. Ice Dreams
  11. After the Gold Rush
  12. Bad Things Are Fast, Good Things Are Slow
  13. Redux: Remnant of Eden

December 2025

  1. On Short Break – Be Back Soon
  2. The Gifts That Keep on Giving
  3. Saint Rock
  4. Redux: Trip Schooling
  5. Immersion Research, Central Pennsylvania
  6. My Favorite Books of 2025
  7. Along the River
  8. Watch, Rinse, Repeat
  9. A Note on the Type: WTF
  10. Redux: Of Heisenbergs and Beethovens
  11. Why Cats Are the Way They Are
  12. Wind/Break

November 2025

  1. Autumn Woods
  2. Notes from a Workmanlike, Highly Consequential Life
  3. How to Say Thank You
  4. Guest Post: Silicon Valley’s Monstrous Quest for Immortality
  5. Buried Treasure
  6. Redux: Star Party
  7. Singletrack Is Awesome. Why?
  8. Why Science’s press team won’t be using AI to write releases anytime soon
  9. AI is Full of Bullshit. Now It’s Faking Science

Every year

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