Sublime

An inspiration engine for ideas

AllPeopleCollectionsArticlesAudioBooksFilesHighlightsImagesLinksNotesTextTweetsVideosSocial

The Haber–Bosch process is the most important chemical discovery of the twentieth century. By doubling the amount of disposable nitrogen, it provoked the demographic explosion that took the human population from 1.6 to 7 billion in fewer than one hundred years.

Benjamín Labatut • When We Cease to Understand the World: Shortlisted for the 2021 International Booker Prize

If not things like money, awards, honors, prizes, and medals—what should we strive for? “When we were writing Good Will Hunting ,” Matt Damon said, “Ben [Affleck] and I always talked about just wanting to love it. We would say, ‘If it’s just a tape on our mantel that no one ever watches, we want to love it.’ We kind of stumbled into a very wise str... See more

Billy Oppenheimer • SIX at 6: Pacific Salmon, a Heartbreaking Thought, the .01%, the Pinnacle, the Nobel Prize, and the Work Itself

In 1909 Carl Bosch perfected a process invented by Fritz Haber which used methane and steam to pull nitrogen out of the air and turn it into fertilizer on an industrial scale, replacing the massive quantities of bird poop that had previously been needed to return nitrogen to depleted soils. Those two chemists top the list of the 20th-century scient

Steven Pinker • Enlightenment Now

Quand on proposa à Sartre la Légion d’honneur pour ses activités de résistance en 1945 et le prix Nobel de littérature en 1964, il refusa les deux, invoquant la nécessité pour un écrivain de rester indépendant des intérêts et des influences.

Aude de Saint-Loup • Au café existentialiste : La liberté l être & le cocktail à l abricot (French Edition)

ordre. À vrai dire, dans les faits, il l'avait déjà plus ou moins accomplie. Dans les premiers mois suivant son accession à la notoriété internationale, il avait accepté de participer à des biennales, d'assister à des vernissages, de donner de nombreuses interviews – et même, une fois, de prononcer une conférence, dont il ne conservait d'ailleurs a

Michel Houellebecq • La carte et le territoire (French Edition)

This year marks a century since Payne, an English woman at Harvard university, submitted the most important astrophysics PhD of the 20th century. Her conclusion that the Sun – and by inference, the stars – is 98 per cent hydrogen and helium, two elements virtually non-existent in their free form on Earth, was initially dismissed by the most importa... See more

The greatest astronomy PhD ever written

That morning at the lab, Karikó’s old boss had come to see her off. She did not tell him what a terrible mistake he was making in letting her leave. She didn’t gloat about her future at BioNTech, a pharmaceuticals firm that millions now associate with lifesaving vaccines but was then a relative upstart in the field. Instead the woman who had bounce... See more

Mattie Kahn • The Scientist Who Saved the World

Post-it notes—were discovered by accident. Consider how many innovations that might have changed the world have been lost because someone was so focused on their goal, they missed the revelation right in front of them. The heart of experiment is mystery.

Rick Rubin • The Creative Act: A Way of Being

este principio se le suele llamar «la ley de Price», en honor a Derek J. de Solla Price,