In the autumn of 2011, I was invited to guest post for a week on AIGA’s now-defunct “Design Envy” blog. I closed out the week on Friday, November 11th with what I thought was a banger: A short article on how the ability to read and broadcast visual thoughts was not only inevitable, it would favor skilled typographers. (I still believe in the premise, but also admit I thought this would be catnip to an audience of typography-loving graphic designers.) And now, exactly fifteen years and one day later, the New York Times has published an opinion piece by artist Trevor Paglen titled “I Saw the Future of Mind-Reading”—or as it appears on the article’s dedicated page: “When Your Inner Thoughts Are No Longer Just Yours.”

The common advice for minimizing jet lag on east-bound transatlantic flights is to sleep as much as you can on an overnight haul, then be sure to stay up all day after landing in the accelerated timezone. But I’m terrible at sleeping on flights, so I’m about to try something new: I’m departing New York early in the morning to arrive during evening in London (five time zones ahead). This removes any penalty for not sleeping during the flight. All I have to do is go to bed on London time and all’s well… Right? Time will tell.

While this Moth Hack was physically anchored in London—complete with a two-day, in-person popup event—it was also conducted virtually and open to participants across the globe. Project submissions took all forms, with quantum novices and experts alike striving to climb to the top of each challenge category. And the winners are…

My certification arrives seven years after I created Quantum JavaScript as a means to teach myself the basics of quantum computing. I’m finally making my knowledge “official”—qubit by qubit. Thanks to Advanced Projects Group for funding my enrollment. And thank you, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Advanced Projects Group—led by myself (Stewart Smith) and Robert Gerard Pietrusko—worked directly with Pi co-founder Blaise Agüera y Arcas, Pi Senior Director Travis Beals, and their incredibly talented colleagues to create materials for pitching “Suncatcher” to Google / Alphabet executives—including Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Google co-founder Sergey Brin. Our effort was a success.

Grandaddy’s performance consisted of three sets: Every single track off The Sophtware Slump in order, followed by a first encore heavy with Sumday (2003) tunes, and a second encore closing with the raucous career-early hit A.M. 180. After the show I headed backstage to say hello to the band. (It’d been several years since last chatting with them in person as part of an impromptu interview for my music and politics rag, Tweed Magazine.) I sheepishly passed Jason a little handwritten “thank you” note for all the countless hours of enjoyment his music has given me—and for not suing me when I made my fan video for Jed’s Other Poem.

From the the Nobel Foundation’s official announcement: The Nobel Prize in Physics 2025 was awarded jointly to John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret and John M. “for the discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunnelling and energy quantisation in an electric circuit.” The photo above was snapped by Dr. Florian Carle, Managing Director of Yale University’s Quantum Institute (YQI), during my 2022–2023 artist residency at YQI. Dr. Devoret (on the left) was patiently explaining to me (on the right, back to camera) the graphical power of Feynman diagrams as a logical reasoning device. I am not a physicist, and had little business receiving such focussed attention—exactly one of the joys of participating in Florian’s residency program.

For the second year in a row I’m participating as a Webbys judge—and I’m excited to boost the latest and greatest creative uses of the Web in particular. Our celebrity judge this year is actor Walton Goggins. He wants to see the cool things you’ve made, so submit your work ASAP.

It feels like a lifetime ago; an entirely different online landscape. Before smart phones existed. Before social media took over. In honor of the anniversary I spruced up my old description of the project with more photos, screen grabs, and personal anecdotes. I’ve even caved and added the Jed source code to GitHub. Also timely: Grandaddy is currently on tour in the US in celebration of the 25th anniversary of their breakthrough album, The Sophtware Slump. Catch ’em while you can!

With less than ten minutes until our scheduled group appearance, our gang of four huddled in a corner of Microsoft’s Soho office “garage” to introduce ourselves to one another. Our panel consisted of Amy Peck (Founder & CEO, EndeavorXR), Sam Hunter Magee (Director on Creativity and Entrepreneurship for the Lemann Program at Harvard), Tiya Gordon (Co-founder & COO, It’s Electric), and myself. I was happily outclassed. I had a good feeling about our panel.

Peter Galison, Robert Gerard Pietrusko, and myself have collaborated on a short film specifically for the Venice Biennale that meditates on the coordination of multiple radio telescopes around the world to create an Earth-sized “camera”—a transformation of our planet into an instrument for “seeing” far beyond our own Milky Way galaxy. Our film serves as a preview for our entry in the inaugural edition of the interactive Antikythera journal, an MIT Press publication.