Georeactor Blog

History

If the Greeks knew the shape and size of the Earth, the distance to the moon, and so on, why did they never make a globe / solar system model?
It looks like globes only took off in the 1400s, with the oldest existing one from 1490–1492 just in time to be missing the Americas. There is a 2000-year-old Roman sculpture of Atlas with a 'celestial sphere' of the night sky, but not a map of the ground.

Pop Culture

Sarah Wynn-Williams's Facebook exposé Careless People opens with a shark attack. Locals in New Zealand have long believed it was a stingray. Supporters point out that she has at least been consistent with the story, and told it anonymously on This American Life in 2012.

Did Matt Damon invent the now-popular idea that Netflix expects creators to "explain the plot four or five times" for distracted viewers, or was he himself bamboozled? As best I can tell this first floated into public discourse in a PC Mag article in January 2025; it was not so explicit in a linked story from n+1 Magazine. Then Damon discusses it in a Joe Rogan interview in January 2026. I listen to a screenwriting podcast which has (I think?) referenced this a couple of times without critiquing it. It sounds like the sort of complaint you would hear from Damon and (a) not put on the record that it's from a famous actor-director, and (b) not doubt it because he knows the industry, right?
After a bit at the Oscars, Netflix denied it.

In 2016 the New York Times had a longform article about the life of a garment / sweatshop worker in India. A few details of their village culture before migrating to the city were so extreme, people called it out on Hacker News. As far as I know no one identified the culture specifically, so maybe it's a true micro-culture and 'the internet' does not know about it?

Does the decline of Twitter (even pre-Elon) give us any insights into how a longlived platform like YouTube might fail someday?

Does the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy have potential to remain a pop culture fixture, or is it too British? My brother and I got into it just in time for the 2005 movie, but the characters, overall concept, and recognizable jokes (such as "Mostly Harmless") are rarely referenced.

I wonder what it'd be like to re-read October Sky now that I'm an adult? There was a lot going on. Hickam has written more fiction and memoirs. When he posts about politics he is a MAGA guy, which makes sense for a boomer from West Virginia, but I can't follow his Facebook anymore.

Weird to think about

Should we be more worried about parasites? Kristen Bell did a talk show circuit in 2018 where she was open about pinworms. I have traveled a lot and got worried enough to try Combantrin antiparasitic chocolate, but didn't really learn anything.

Our elementary school librarian read to us from A Child Called It about child abuse, They Cage The Animals At Night about a group home, and Ella Enchanted. Maybe this came with good intentions or she was processing things? But this was only a few story times, so we never got any kind of resolution.

In middle school, we saw an anti-drug anthology series where some kids were in a vague grim purgatory afterlife? While doing the write-up I remembered we also saw the Ryan White TV movie, and with that timepoint found: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Nightmare_on_Drug_Street

Super niche

In Romania, I talked myself into ordering a water instead of a Coke, but it was still in my mindspace. The waiter brought me a Coke and a minute later apologized.

Me and my Airbnb host in Bilbao went to Biarritz on the same day without mentioning it or running into each other. I had a burning anxiety about figuring out the return bus, and she and her family actually ended up having problems with their return.

We had an exchange student who had to dump a sweater in the river because it of a curse from a relative? I wasn't there for this.

Solved, I guess

Late at night, I often see a helicopter make a loop around Chicago's Gold Coast and change its tail number. When Trump was in town in September, a helicopter on this route during the day violated the TFR and had to be intercepted. Someone said that these are sightseeing tours.

In summer 2023, I was going to send my mentee a link that I'd seen about a text diffusion model paper, but I never found quite the right paper, and then text diffusion only recently went mainstream.