Rorotoko: scholars, artists and thinkers on their own work, in their own words

Once the pollinators go, we'll all go with them

A rewilder who supercharges nature and the dairy farmer next door who cannot see the point. Why humor, not finger-pointing, is the way to move people with fixed opinions.

Derek vs Derek

As degrees proliferate and intelligence cheapens, students must recognize merit alongside increasingly influential nonmeritocratic factors.

A degree no longer guarantees a good job as higher education expands and automation reshapes work. Schools teach only part of the rules, and students may need a dual awareness: valuing effort while seeing the forces that shape their chances.

Disillusionment With Meritocracy During the Transition to Adulthood: Longitudinal Change in Belief Systems and Depression in China

The more we learn about amoebas, the smarter they seem.

On the deep seafloor sit single-celled organisms the size of cauliflowers that fall apart when you dredge them up. In ponds, shelled amoebas sort sand grains and broken diatom husks by size and shape, glue them into a gapless mosaic, and finish in under an hour — with no nervous system, by means nobody can explain. Software, liquid metal robots and analog computers have all tried to imitate the trick and none come close.

A Is for Amoeba: The Story of Life in a Single Cell

Plants are intelligent beings that sense, remember, and communicate.

The scientists at the heart of the film have reached a wide public with the idea that plants cooperate and recognize kin. That reach has drawn fierce pushback from peers, from calls to defund the research to attacks that drove one of them from the field.

Understory

Intertidal oyster reefs live for millennia and prevent shoreline erosion but not climate change.

Reefs have no growth rings. A pair of shell valves still joined at the hinge is how researchers date a reef's foundation, and the oldest living ones turn out to be nearly two thousand years old.

Sea level-induced oyster reef accretion causes minimal net carbon burial change

Listening works with the opposing forces of attention and receptivity.

Listening understood as a relation that technology mediates, and what social media does to it: scrolling, amplifying, confirming. The practice began with a lockdown New Year's challenge in January 2021 and led to deep listening sessions, singing bowls, sound recordings and long conversations.

Listening

The most sophisticated robots are often the ones that do more with less.

On a reservoir, a small robotic sailboat has to read a shifting wind before it can reach its mark. Instead of carrying a dedicated wind sensor, it lets the sail itself report where the wind is coming from.

ALBATROSS: A Bioinspired, Aerially Deployable, Autonomous Sailing Sensor Platform

The phenomenon of people dressing up as Frida, the lookalikes, is absolutely extraordinary.

Hairless xolo dogs wandering a garden at dusk, women in line dressed as Frida, the largest gathering of lookalikes ever recorded. In the costume, a declaration: I am here, and this is who I am.

Frida: The Girl Just Doesn't Go Away