The good stuff keeps

Every edition.

Today and earlier editions, with their original dates and sources.

Oct 30, 2026 edition

DelightIn use

AI read about 100,000 pages of handwritten port books, giving everyone a free map of Britain’s sea trade from Elizabeth I to George III

University of Southampton historians trained AI to read about 100,000 pages of handwritten port books held at the National Archives, an unbroken customs record of voyages from 1565. The result is a free interactive map and database of hundreds of thousands of voyages. It shows coal topped the cargo lists and Europe made up about 80 percent of England’s overseas trade in 1696–97.

Primary sourceSource · Oct 19, 2026The story + sources

Oct 17, 2026 edition

DelightThey wrote backTesting

A hobbyist and his AI helpers spotted a possible super-Earth. NASA’s planet hunter takes a closer look Oct. 31

Pavel Rabtsevich, a product manager in Spain with no astronomy training, had AI coding agents search public TESS data on 126,246 stars. One star dims for about two hours every 3.18 days, a hint of a planet about 1.4 times Earth’s width. The TESS team approved a closer two-minute watch starting October 31, and he posted his predicted dimming times first. It is still a candidate.

Primary sourceSource · Sep 25, 2026The story + sources

Oct 7, 2026 edition

Science & NaturePromising

AI shortlist led Cornell biologists to a protein that switches off part of cell transport

Cornell researchers used AlphaFold to shortlist likely partners of Arf1, a protein that directs cargo inside cells, then confirmed in lab experiments that the little-studied Avl9 switches Arf1 off. Related DENN-domain proteins may do the same. It's basic cell biology with no treatment yet, and it isn't a cancer switch.

Source · Sep 9, 2026The story + sources