aliveordread

Piet Mondrian’s works have long been celebrated as pioneering exercises in abstraction, distilling the world into grids and primary colours. But what if these seemingly minimalist compositions are, in fact, intricate codes—blueprints for metaphysical realities? Looking at Mondrian through the same lens as Malevich and Rothko, we begin to see that his geometric precision wasn’t … Read more

The Smoking Gun We’ve Been Ignoring? Picture this. The world is emerging from an ice age. Gigantic glaciers dominate the northern continents, early humans are thriving, and mammoths still roam the earth. Then, in an instant, the temperature plummets, megafauna vanish, and entire human cultures disappear without a trace. Conventional history chalks it up to natural … Read more

In the vast landscape of modern art, few pieces provoke as much debate, interpretation, and outright existential puzzlement as Kazimir Malevich’s Black Square. It is the kind of artwork that appears to say nothing and yet might say everything. But what if Black Square is more than an exercise in abstraction? What if its purpose was not only … Read more

Conversation with Chat GPT Can you interpret this real life scenario in the form of Calculus. We are on the pavement of a street in Cambridge, England, the year is 1666, there is a lady in a white dress thinking about crossing the road. The road is cobbled but there is a thick layer of … Read more

So in today’s edition of WTF I’ve just seen that there is a Russian ship with 20,000 tonnes of explosives (ammonium nitrate) at anchor off the Kent coast. Remembering that there is a World War 2 US munitions ship, SS Montgomery, sunk just off Sheerness and Southend I thought I’d investigate blast radii. Turns out that … Read more

Whilst fiddling about trying to work out why a small group of men are being allowed to bring us to the brink of World War 3, I thought I’d look into the origins of the atom bomb and came upon this fascinating vignette. I was surprised that an acutely aware scientist such as Einstein would … Read more