The new book "The Big One" describes lessons learned from past pandemics and how they might be applied to mitigate the dangers of future outbreaks.

"Unfortunately, the goal of creating artificial general intelligence isn’t just a project that lives as a hypothetical in scientific papers. There’s real money invested in this work, much of it coming from venture capitalists."

"What are sometimes called superbugs — microbes resistant to every available drug — are not merely the stuff of nightmares. They are taking lives right now."

"The 2010 cold snap may have created a subset of pythons better able to survive cold temperatures — and thus better adapted to spread beyond the northern boundaries of its current range."

"What will be new about heat deaths is the extent to which the lived environment will become physically uninhabitable for everyone, old and young, middle-aged, healthy and ill."

"When a dragonfly hunts, it hovers perfectly still and positions itself between its prey and a shadow cast behind it by, say, a tree, concealing its position. It's a bit like creeping up on someone in a forest hiding behind branches."

"Today, Texarkana's unusual geographic and political arrangement continues to instruct us about the deeply intertwined nature of politics and health."

"This line of attack in the War on Cancer has had few meaningful outcomes for cancer patients."

Looking at AI art shows that machines may never truly understand the human mind, as there are states of mind that can never be automated.