The Future of Fiction: Satire and Automation in “The Silver Eggheads” | July 20 2026, 16:48

I came across the book “The Silver Eggheads” (1961) by Fritz Leiber—a satirical novel about the future of literature, featuring “wordmills” and, darn it, so many parallels with what is being done now.

In the novel, wordmills are enormous machines that have completely replaced writers in the production of fiction. They mechanically “grind” words, producing an endless stream of novels—a so-called “wordwooze”, a product perfectly tailored to the tastes of the mass reader. It causes almost narcotic pleasure: the reader swallows the book and immediately forgets its content, remaining hungry for the next one.

Human writers in the novel still exist, but purely decoratively. They don’t write a single line—they only “service” the wordmills (by pressing buttons) and maintain a public image: they wear bohemian outfits, live in attics, stir up scandals, start affairs—all that the public expects from a “real writer.” Writing has turned into show business and cosplay, while creativity itself is left to machines.

Writers, imagining that they truly can write, rise up and destroy the wordmills. And then a catastrophe is revealed: none of them can compose anything readable—the skill has been lost for generations. The publishing industry panics, searching for a solution.

That’s when the titular Silver Eggheads come into play—preserved human brains in egg-shaped metal containers, brains of writers and thinkers of the past, stored for decades in the “Wisdom of Ages.” The publishers hope that these brains will be able to write books again. The Eggheads, however, having become rather snide and peculiar entities over years of pure contemplation, don’t rush to cooperate.

The plot then turns into a whirlpool of intrigues around these thirty brains—they suddenly become the only “productive asset” in the entire publishing industry.

Meanwhile, the main trouble becomes clear: the Eggheads do not want to write. Two hundred years of pure thought have turned them into haughty contemplators—to them, human novels are trivial and petty. The first attempts to make them write yield either mockeries or texts so strange that they are unsellable. The characters eventually realize that the Eggheads need not orders but motivation: experiences, sensations, participation in life.

Funny book, I should read it sometime.

Exploring the Scorching, Solid Ice of Alien Worlds | July 17 2026, 14:56

There exists ice that does not melt even at hundreds of degrees, and it seems that entire planets stand on it. Under normal pressure, ice has to be cold. But if you compress water tens of thousands of times stronger than atmospheric pressure, the molecules have nowhere to go, and the pressure itself compresses them into a crystalline lattice, causing the water to “freeze,” even while being scalding hot. Not supercooled, not tricky—just simultaneously solid and hot. It’s called “Ice VII”. At a pressure of about 10 GPa, it remains a crystal at temperatures above +300°C.

This type of ice has been found in nature. In 2017, its tiny crystals were discovered locked inside diamonds that had been lifted from the depths of the Earth’s mantle—the water was sealed in there under monstrous residual pressure. And if you compress and heat water even more—to hundreds of GPa and thousands of degrees—it transitions into an even more bizarre phase: superionic ice. Oxygen atoms sit in a rigid lattice while protons flow freely through it like a fluid. This ice conducts electricity and, according to calculations, appears black and incandescent. It was momentarily produced in the laboratory with laser shock waves, and models suggest that significant portions of the interiors of Uranus, Neptune, and many “water” exoplanets are composed of it—this particularly explains their strange, skewed magnetic fields.

Our domestic experience of “ice = cold” is a narrow special case at one atmosphere of pressure. Science already knows about twenty crystalline forms of ice, and in the interiors of planets, water can easily be both solid and hot at the same time.

Yuka App Reveals Surprising Health Scores: The Uncommon Bread That Scores Perfectly | July 14 2026, 19:18

There’s an app called Yuka, and it shows how healthy food is based on its barcode from 0 to 100. You’ll never guess what scored a 100 out of 100 from the photo. It’s not berries and not salmon. It is – bread.

Ezekiel 4:9. It’s truly not ordinary bread. There’s no flour in it. It’s made entirely of sprouted grains, seeds (like flax, sunflower, and chia) and psyllium as a binding agent. Sprouted Grain Bread. Well, in terms of texture, it’s bread as usual. Speaking of which, the regular white and yellow sandwich bread from the same store scored a 4 out of 100.

How Yuka evaluates products. Three criteria – nutritional value according to the Nutri-score system (60%), presence of additives (30%), organic status (10%). The algorithm adores products high in fiber and protein but severely penalizes for caloric content, saturated fats, sugar, and salt. Salmon, due to fats and high caloric content, scores 78/100. Meanwhile, ready-to-eat French fries score 66/100, and BBQ chips – 4/100.

Engineering Zen: Mind-Bending Science and History Revealed | July 13 2026, 16:16

Reminding you that I have an Engineering Zen group on Facebook and Telegram. Recently, there have been posts about:

– The British plan to build an aircraft carrier… out of ice. Measuring 600 meters in length — the largest ship in history. Material scientists found an additive that makes ice as strong as concrete. A prototype was actually built — its remnants still lie at the bottom of a Canadian lake.

– The fact that no one really knows why a bicycle doesn’t fall over. For a century and a half, textbooks offered two beautiful explanations — until in 2011 they built a bicycle that disabled both effects. By all laws, it should fall over. Yet, it rides.

– How the military communicates with submarines through the depth of salty water, where radio waves cannot penetrate. The Americans nearly turned 40% of the state of Wisconsin into an antenna, while the Soviet system used the Earth’s crust itself as an antenna. Efficiency — megawatts in, a couple of watts out. And that’s enough for almost the entire globe.

– That very rotor with blades behind glass, which has been explained incorrectly for 150 years. Maxwell was initially pleased — but then they noticed it spins the wrong direction. The correct answer is much trickier, and it specifically requires a “non-ideal” vacuum.

– Why a fridge magnet sticks only on one side, and barely on the other. It turns out, it’s the same trick used to focus beams in particle accelerators. And it has a very non-obvious “flip side.”

– The “Silicon Lottery”: chips from the same production line turn out different, and your processor might just be a flawed model of a higher-end version with blocks disabled. And in the 90s, there was a coprocessor that, upon installation, simply switched off the main processor and worked instead.

– Undersea cables that carry the entire internet: as thick as a garden hose, under 20 kilovolts, amplifying light directly with light — no electricity involved. And why traders are willing to pay for the fact that light in fiber is “too slow.”

– The Hoover Dam, inside which nearly 1000 km of piping is hidden — otherwise, the concrete would have taken 125 years to set and it would have cracked from tension. It was cooled with an on-site ice plant.

– And for dessert — the fact that trolleybuses, electric cars, faxes, drones, video calls, and even humanoid robots are much older than you think. One of the robots walked, talked 700 words, counted with his fingers, and smoked. In 1939. Seems we’re just dusting off the past.

Join us to not miss much more interesting stuff.

“Engineering Zen”, Engineering Zen and on Telegram t.me/engineersdzen

Parking Woes at Cocoa Beach: A Costly Oversight | July 12 2026, 13:09

Florida, Cocoa Beach. Parked the car not far from a roadside restaurant. The sign says paid parking, here’s the parking number, here’s a QR code to download the app. Took photos of the QR code, my car’s number, and the parking spot number and thought as I walked the hundred meters to the restaurant, I’d install the app and pay then. Installed it, entered the parking number, and now it’s asking for the parking spot number! Darn, have to go back. And there I was, already greeted by a parking ticket… Talk about efficiency

Protected Sea Turtle Nesting Grounds in Florida | July 12 2026, 03:47

How sweet. On a Florida beach, a square meter is surrounded with ribbons and there’s a sign that reads:

DO NOT DISTURB! SEA TURTLE NEST HERE. VIOLATORS SUBJECT TO FINES AND IMPRISONMENT!

Florida Statute

Chapter 379.2431(1)

No person may take, possess, disturb, mutilate, destroy, cause to be destroyed, sell, offer for sale, transfer, harm, or harass any sea turtle, its nest, or eggs at any time.

Upon conviction, an individual may be incarcerated for up to 60 days or fined up to $500, or subject to both penalties simultaneously, plus an additional fine of $100 for each sea turtle egg destroyed or taken.

The US Endangered Species Act of 1973

No person may take, harass, harm, pursue, hunt, shoot, wound, kill, trap, capture, or collect any sea turtle, its nest, and/or eggs, or attempt such conduct.

Any person who knowingly violates any provision of this Act may be subjected to a civil penalty of up to $25,000 or a criminal penalty of up to $100,000 and imprisonment for up to one year.

If you witness a violation, see an injured or stranded turtle or disoriented hatchlings, please contact the FWC (Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission) at 888-404-FWCC (3922), *FWC or #FWC.

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Next to this site, some Mexicans were sitting and talking loudly. I jokingly asked if they were disturbing the eggs. It seems they didn’t understand English, but they moved away just in case.