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From machine learning to voting, the workings of the world demand randomisation, but true sources of randomness are surprisingly hard to find. Now quantum mechanics has supplied the answer

An exploration of all the scientific possibilities by which ghosts might actually exist in this universe.

Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Mean temperatures this year approached 1.5°C above the preindustrial average, making it the second hottest year after 2024

Astronomers have captured images of two nova explosions only days after they exploded. The detailed images show that these explosions are more complex than thought. There are multiple outflows and, in some cases, delayed ejection of material.

In a new study, sustainability and space scientists discuss how the principles of reducing, reusing, and recycling could be applied to satellites and spacecraft.

Astronomers have acquired evidence that Omega Centauri, the largest-known globular cluster in the Milky Way, hosts an intermediate mass black hole (IMBH). These elusive objects should exist, according to theory, but have been difficult to verify. The IMBH in Omega Centauri is considered a candidate black hole, and new research examined the region with the JWST for any conclusive evidence.

New research and observations with the VLT's ERIS instrument show that some stars are following predictable orbits near Sagitarrius A-star, the Milky Way's supermassive black hole. This goes against the established idea that the black hole's enormous gravity destroys stars and gas clouds. Even a binary star system in the region seems to go about its business unaffected.

Some of the elements used by living systems are far more abundant in Cassiopeia A than we thought, hinting that some parts of our galaxy might be more suitable for life than others

At the Honest Broker website, writer Ted Gioia has an article summarizing his friend’s view of the bet and worst hit songs of the 1960s—perhaps the best decade in the history of pop and rock music. The article is below, and I’ll simply list a few songs from each category selected by his friend Chris Dalla Riva (he has a book on them, too). Dalla Riva also runs his own site, “Can’t get much higher“, which deals with a lot of interesting musical questions like “The greatest two-hit wonders”, e.g., Pink Floyd, Jimmy Buffett, and “Which music stars [of the Sixties] are being forgotten the fastest?” e.g., Peter & Gordon, jan & Dean.

At any rate, here is an excerpt from Gioia’s article and Dalla Riva’s selection of best and worst hits (songs that made #1) of the Sixties.  Quotations are indented, and my own comments are flush left. Click screenshot to read:

Excerpts:

Chris Dalla Riva is a guru of data analytics on popular culture. He’s been a longtime friend to The Honest Broker, and I’ve learned a lot from his work.

And now Chris has released a fun and fascinating book, Uncharted Territory: What Numbers Tell Us about the Biggest Hit Songs and Ourselves. This is the closest music writing gets to the freewheeling conversations ardent fans have among themselves about bands, songs, and rising or falling reputations.

But Uncharted Territory also draws on the scrupulous research that is Chris’s trademark. (You might have seen some of it on his Substack Can’t Get Much Higher.)

With his permission, I’m sharing an extract below on #1 hit songs of the 1960s. The entire book deserves your attention. You can learn more at this link.

This is from Dalla Rivia’s book:

When I decided that I was going to listen to every song to ever get to number one on the Billboard Hot 100, I wasn’t in a great spot. My mental health was suffering greatly, and I was working a job that I hated. Every waking moment outside of my job was spent with my guitar. Some nights I would literally fall asleep playing. Still, I did not feel good. And nothing seemed to help. Therapy. Medications. Exercise. Socializing. It was all a wash.

For some reason, I decided that a musical quest might help. I set out to listen to every number one hit since the Hot 100 was started in August 1958. Why? Again, I was a musician. I thought it might help my songwriting. Maybe I could unlock some secret to writing a hit and use the knowledge to quit my job. At the same time, I thought it might be good for my sanity. I would only listen to one song a day. Listening to one song a day is an easy thing to accomplish. Maybe one little win could right my mind.

And it kind of did. A friend soon joined me on my journey. Each day, I would text him the number one hit. We’d both listen a few times. I’d play along on my guitar. We’d talk about it and rate the song out of ten. I started tracking those ratings in a spreadsheet. Slowly, that spreadsheet began to balloon as I tracked a ton of other facts and figures. Trends began to emerge, and I started to write about them. My musings became Uncharted Territory: What Numbers Tell Us about the Biggest Hit Songs and Ourselves. It’s a data-driven history of popular music that I wrote as I spent all those years listening to every number one song.

That’s an interesting task, and here are the author’s highlights with a few of them giving his comments:

“Georgia on My Mind” by Ray Charles (November 14, 1960)—The reason this song has been recorded hundreds of times is because the melody sounds like it was delivered from the high heavens. That’s not a shock. That melody was written by Hoagy Carmichael, the man behind classics like “Stardust” and “Heart and Soul.” But the reason you know this version of “Georgia on My Mind” rather than any other comes down to a different person: Ray Charles.

To state the obvious, Ray Charles was a talented piano player. You can hear that talent shine on the jazzy fills he sprinkles throughout this song. But his greatest instrument was his voice, a voice whose subtle slides and slurs could make Georgia feel like your home even if you’d never been within a thousand miles of it.

“Runaway” by Del Shannon (April 24, 1961)

“Running Scared” by Roy Orbison (June 5, 1961)

“He’s a Rebel” by The Crystals (November 3, 1962

“My Girl” by The Temptations (March 6, 1965)—When Smokey Robinson wrote “My Guy” for Mary Wells, I imagine he thought he’d never write a better song. “My Guy” is just so expertly crafted that burgeoning songwriters should study it. But then a year later, he decided to write a response to “My Guy” for The Temptations. Response songs were very common during the 1960s. Chubby Checker hits it big with “The Twist.” Joey Dee jumps on the bandwagon with the “Peppermint Twist.” Only one name made sense for Smokey’s response: “My Girl.”

“My Girl” is not just the greatest response song of all time, it might be the greatest song period. I’d go so far as to argue that if a random DJ in the twenty-first century cut off whatever booty-shaking track they were playing at the club on Friday night and put on “My Girl,” nobody would complain. Decades later, the ascending guitar riff and finger-snapping rhythm that drive this track remain as fresh as ever.

“Ticket to Ride” by The Beatles (May 22, 1965)

“You Keep Me Hangin’ On” by The Supremes (November 19, 1966)

“(Sittin’ On) The Dock of The Bay” by Otis Redding (March 16, 1968)

“I Heard It Through the Grapevine” by Marvin Gaye (December 14, 1968)—This song is about humiliating heartache. It’s about finding out your lover is done with you indirectly, through rumors circulating on the streets, rumors you are the last to be privy to.

That rumor starts with the keyboard playing a circular riff in its lower register. Then it moves to the drums, a soft thump, your heartbeat. Then it finds its way to the guitar and strings echoing the initial whisper of the keyboard. With each step, the truth becomes more apparent. Then Marvin Gaye arrives, the pain dripping from his voice, a voice whose range and control are nearly inhuman. He knows the truth, and even if “a man ain’t supposed to cry,” he can’t hide his pain.

Sadly, I don’t have time to look at the #1 songs myself, though I have to say that there are better songs by these groups or singers, but they may not have made #1. For instance, Otis Redding’s “Try a Little Tenderness” is, to me, a lot better than “The dock of the bay,” and “Stop! In the name of love” by the Supremes beats “You keep me hanging on.”  There are others, but let’s go on to the worst songs.

“The Battle of New Orleans” by Johnny Horton (June 1, 1960)

“Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini” by Brian Hyland (August 8, 1960)—This song is about a girl who is embarrassed by the yellow polka dot bikini she is wearing and runs from place to place to stay covered up. She starts in a changing room, then runs to a blanket, and then into the water. While in the water, she’s described as “turning blue” before the final line declares that there isn’t anywhere else for her to go. Call me crazy, but I think this irritating song might have a sinister, deathly undertone that everyone else has missed. And even if I’m imagining it, it still makes me feel sick.

“Moody River” by Pat Boone (June 19, 1961)

“Wooden Heart” by Joe Dowell (August 28, 1961)

“Go Away Little Girl” by Steve Lawrence (January 12, 1963)—My sister Natalie was walking through the room while I was listening to this song. 27-year-old Steve Lawrence crooning the words “Go away, little girl / I’m not supposed to be alone with you” stopped her dead in her tracks. “Is this by a pedophile?” she asked.

Despite how creepy that couplet might sound, the lyrics are not anything criminal. The song was composed by Carole King and Gerry Goffin about a man tempted to cheat on his lover. Albeit patronizing, the term “little girl” was common fare in pop songs at the time. In this era alone, it’s used in five additional songs, including The Beatles’ “I Feel Fine” (e.g., “I’m so glad that she’s my little girl”) and Tommy Roe’s “Sheila” (e.g., “Man this little girl is fine”). But when you need this many words to explain why a creepy-sounding song actually isn’t creepy, you’re probably not going to have people lining up to listen to it.

“Mrs. Brown, You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter” by Herman’s Hermits (May 1, 1965)

These last three are real stinkers, and they’re on my own personal list:

“The Ballad of the Green Berets” by SSgt. Barry Sadler (March 5, 1966)—When looking back at the 1960s, we often remember the scores of artists who wrote songs in protest of the Vietnam War. But there really were people who supported it. “The Ballad of the Green Berets” is proof of that. Topping the charts for five weeks on its way to becoming the tenth best-selling single of 1966, SSgt. Barry Sadler’s military march is an unabashed celebration of the armed forces, the soldier in his song dying with only one final request for his wife, namely that their son also serve. Now knowing about the endless, pointless destruction of the Vietnam War, this musical wish is hard to stomach.

“Honey” by Bobby Goldsboro (April 13, 1968)—Telling the story of a man whose wife died, “Honey” falls within the maudlin tragedy song tradition. But what makes this sappy song stand out is that it’s not clear whether the narrator ever really liked his wife. He describes her as “Kind of dumb and kind of smart,” while also recounting how he laughed himself to tears when she almost hurt herself falling in the snow. With lines like, “She wrecked the car and she was sad / And so afraid that I’d be mad, but what the heck,” the only thing you should feel after “Honey” is hope that you’ll never be in a relationship like this.

“In the Year 2525 (Exordium & Terminus)” by Zagar and Evans (July 12, 1969)—In Dave Barry’s novel Tricky Business, he describes a band that is forced to work the party circuit after they fail to make it big. When the group is asked to play a song that they don’t like, Barry describes how they then perform a retaliation song to punish the audience. “In the Year 2525” is described as the “hydrogen bomb” of retaliation songs. While I don’t know if I’d go that far, it’s a strange song that predicts the future in thousand-year increments. If Zager and Evans are correct, then in the year 4545 you’ll no longer need your teeth because “You won’t find a thing to chew.” Dentists, please beware!

And, just to supplement this list (actually, “Mrs. Brown” isn’t so bad), here’s my own personal list, compiled over decades, of the worst pop/rock songs ever. The “best” list is pages long, so I won’t include it. But if you can find “An open letter to my teenage son, list to it. Remember, many of these songs were after the sixties, so it’s not comparable.

Coyne’s Worst Songs Ever

Green Berets                                       Sgt. Barry Sadler

An Open Letter to My Teenage Son  Victor Lundberg

Spill the Wine (Dig that Girl)             Eric Burdon

I Got a Brand New Pair of Rollerskates         Melanie

I’ve Never Been to Me                                    Charlene

Octopus’ Garden                                 The Beatles

Macarthur Park                                   Richard Harris

Old Rivers                                           Walter Brennan

Take the Money and Run                   Steve Miller

Muskrat Love                                     The Captain and Tenille

The Name Game                                 Shirley Ellis

Drops of Jupiter                                  Train

Oh hell, I’ll also add my BEST list, but only between 1962 and 1969. Surely some of these made #1, but they’re not in the list above. They also don’t include soul music, of which I’ve kept a separate list. And THAT one is awesome (perhaps I’ll put it up some time). I have added “God only knows” by the Beach Boys, which came out in 1966.

Coyne;’s best non-soul songs, 1962-1969

Light My Fire                         The Doors

Nowhere Man                         Beatles

Eleanor Rigby                         Beatles

In My Life                              Beatles

Got to Get You into My Life  Beatles

Please Please Me                    Beatles

A Day in the Life                    Beatles

Louie Louie                            The Kingsmen

Sweet Judy Blue Eyes            Crosby, Stills & Nash

49 Reasons                              Crosby Stills & Nash

Bluebird                                  Buffalo Springfield

Rock & Roll Woman              Buffalo Springfield

On the Way Home                  Buffalo Springfield

Feel a Whole Lot Better         The Byrds

Eight Miles High                    The Byrds

Mr. Tambourine Man             The Byrds

Turn! Turn! Turn!                   The Byrds

Touch Me                               The Doors

Honky Tonk Woman              The Rolling Stones

Venus in Furs                          Velvet Underground

Heroin                                     Velvet Underground

California Dreaming               Mamas & Papas

I Saw Her Again                     Mamas & Papas

Younger Girl                           Lovin’ Spoonful

Summer in the City                Lovin’ Spoonful

Groovin’                                  Young Rascals

Wouldn’t It Be Nice                The Beach Boys

Don’t Worry Baby                  The Beach Boys

God Only Knows                     The Beach Boys

Little Deuce Coupe                 The Beach Boys

Badge                                      Cream

Positively 4th Street               Bob Dylan

Angel                                      Jimi Hendrix

I Only Wanna Be With You   Dusty Springfield

Take Another Little Piece of My Heart          Big Bro. & Holding Co.

Along Comes Mary                The Association

Israelites                                  Desmond Dekker

You Don’t Have to Say you Love Me            Dusty Springfield

I Only Want to be With You  Dusty Springfield

These choices are subjective, of course, so feel free to weigh in on either my choices or Dalla Rivia’s:

h/t Barry

Screen time has been linked to all sorts of problems, from depression and obesity to poor sleep. But how worried should you really be? Jacob Aron sifts through the evidence

A remarkably clean gravitational-wave detection has confirmed long-standing predictions about black holes, including Hawking’s area theorem and Einstein’s ringdown behavior. The findings also provide the strongest support yet that real black holes follow the Kerr model.

A remarkably clean gravitational-wave detection has confirmed long-standing predictions about black holes, including Hawking’s area theorem and Einstein’s ringdown behavior. The findings also provide the strongest support yet that real black holes follow the Kerr model.

A hybrid grolar bear saga is unfolding in the Arctic, and the tale of this strange family has much to tell us about nature on our changing planet

Children regularly exposed to temperatures over 30°C (86°F) have lower scores on literacy and numeracy tests at age 3 to 4, according to UNICEF data from six countries

We have a bunch of kangaroo photos from Scott Ritchie of Cairns, Australia. Scott’s captions are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them. (His Facebook page is here.)

My last report from my Melbourne to Sydney trip. From Depot Beach New South Wales. It was epic. We stayed in a national park cabin that looked out over the ocean. And at 5 o’clock our front lawn became the bar for Eastern Grey Kangaroos [Macropus giganteus]. And in the morning, you could take pictures of the kangaroos watching the sunrise. What could be better for a boy from Iowa?

We had a ringside seat for roos. Would have been over a dozen here, not including joeys in the pouch:

The boys like a bit of rough and tumble:

They are smart to avoid those claws: ..just barely:

Squaring off:

I missed the kick shot. A sudden loud thump. Then the fight was over. One kick!:

I don’t know how this is going work!:

But somehow it does:

White-faced Heron [Egretta novaehollandiae] loves a roo too:

Cute:

Hanging loose:

Just in time for smoko:

I love pan pipes:

It’s a tight fit:

Come on big fella. I’m already familied up:

 

Sunrise at Depot Beach:

Roo at sunrise:

Great way to start the day:

Isn’t it lovely?

A new study reinforces the evidence for the safety and efficacy of the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines. That’s the TLDR, but let’s dive into the details.

Medical evidence is always rolled out in stages. First there is what we would consider preclinical evidence, or basic science. This could be initial uncontrolled clinical observations, or mechanistic animal or in vitro research. At some point we have sufficient evidence to generate a hypothesis that a specific treatment could be effective in treating a specific disease, enough to progress to human research. For FDA qualifying research, there are four specific phases. Phase I trials look at the safety of the intervention in usually healthy controls, while also answering basic questions and mechanism and effects. If there are no safety red-flags then the research progressed to a phase II trial, which look for preliminary evidence of efficacy, and further safety data. Again, if that data continues to look encouraging we can progress to a phase III trial, which is a larger and more rigorous trial designed to be definitive. Usually the FDA requires several phase III trials to grant approval of a drug for a specific indication. Then, once on the market there is phase IV trials, which look at data from more widespread use to confirm safety and effectiveness in the real world.

Looked at another way, we do research in the lab, then on dozens of people, then score to hundreds of people, then hundreds to thousands of people, and then finally on thousands to millions of people. Each step of the way we gain the ability to detect less and less common side effects in a broader set of people. Further, the types of evidence are designed to be complementary. Phase III trials, for example, are rigorously experimental, with highly defined populations with randomization to control as many variables as possible. Phase IV trials, on the other hand, are generally observational, designed to look at very large numbers of people in an uncontrolled setting – to determine how safe and effective the treatment is in real-world conditions.

The mRNA vaccines for COVD all went through phase I-III trials before getting approval. Operation Warp Speed to accelerate the process was not about cutting corners, but about doing the trials more in parallel rather than sequentially (they could at least begin to recruit for the phase III trial while the phase II data was still being analyzed) and streamlining the red tape, but the science still had to get done. Since the vaccine has been in use we have the opportunity to gather phase IV type data. Billions of people have received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine, so that is a lot of data to pour through.

In the recent study:

“This cohort study used data from the French National Health Data System for all individuals in the French population aged 18 to 59 years who were alive on November 1, 2021. Data analysis was conducted from June 2024 to September 2025.”

Some countries have socialized medicine including centralized health data banks, which allows for very convenient sources for such observational research. This study was able to compare 22 ,767, 546 vaccinated and 5, 932, 443 unvaccinated individuals. The strength of this kind of study is that it is very representative, because it is so inclusive, and it is statistically robust. The challenge is that it is uncontrolled, so there is always potential confounding factors – differences between those who choose to get vaccinated or not get vaccinated. So how do the researchers deal with these confounding factors? Through weighting of the evidence.

They looked at sociodemographic characteristics and 41 comorbidities and then weighted the results accordingly. They could still be missing something, but that is a pretty thorough analysis. Their main outcomes were death due to COVID-19 and all-cause mortality over a four year period. They also did a separate analysis for all-cause mortality in the six months following vaccination. For the unvaccinated group, another end-point was getting vaccinated (after which, of course, they were no longer considered vaccinated).

The results are fairly dramatic. The vaccinated group had a 74% lower risk of death from COVID-19, indicating that the vaccine is effective in preventing death from COVID. But also, over the four year period the vaccinated group had a 25% lower risk of all-cause mortality, even when you eliminate death from COVID. Mortality was 29% lower in the first six months after getting vaccinated.

This data pretty clearly reflects that the mRNA vaccines were effective, at least in preventing death from severe COVID. The data is also very reassuring that the vaccines are safe. There could still be extremely rare, one in a million type side effects, but there does not appear to be any significant negative effects from the vaccine that could contribute to the risk of death. Medical interventions are all about risk vs benefit – no intervention is risk free, so having zero risk is not a rational or reasonable criterion. What we like to see is a robust increased benefit vs risk.

The bottom line is that if you chose to get an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine in 2021 you were much less likely to die of either COVID-19 or all-cause mortality. Clearly there is significant benefit in excess of any risk, which all the data indicates is tiny.

The post New Study on the COVID-19 mRNA Vaccines first appeared on NeuroLogica Blog.

Small bursts of mindfulness practices lasting a minute or less can have unexpected benefits for those with busy lives - here’s how

Do I really need to go over the evidence for dark matter again? Okay, fine, for those of you in the back who weren’t paying attention the first time.

Removing, or “scrubbing”, carbon dioxide from the air of confined spaces is a critical component of any life support system on a spacecraft or submarine. However, modern day ones are energy intensive, requiring temperatures of up to 200℃ to operate. So a research lab led by Dr. Hui He at Guangxi University in China has developed what they call “micro/nano reconfigurable robots” (MNRM) to scrub CO2 from the air much more efficiently. Their work is described in a new paper in Nano-Micro Letters.

Researchers have built a fully implantable device that sends light-based messages directly to the brain. Mice learned to interpret these artificial patterns as meaningful signals, even without touch, sight, or sound. The system uses up to 64 micro-LEDs to create complex neural patterns that resemble natural sensory activity. It could pave the way for next-generation prosthetics and new therapies.