Polybius, by Collin Armstrong

Posted on August 9, 2026 by skullsinthestars

Book 24 for my 2026 goal of 36 books for the year! Comfortably ahead with my reading. My link to the book is through my bookshop.org affiliate account, which means I may earn a small commission if you buy from there.

Some books have an idea so compelling that I end up buying them multiple times, albeit inadvertently! This is what happened with Polybius (2026), by Collin Armstrong, which I recently got at a bookstore because it looked compelling only to realize that I had bought it a couple of months earlier and forgotten about. I decided I had better read it before I ended up buying it a third time.

If you know I was born in 1971 and was a kid through the heyday of 1980s arcade games, you can see why I was compelled. The story centers on a mysterious video game of unknown provenance that finds its way into an unsuspecting community and wreaks havoc.

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Queen of the Cicadas, by V. Castro

Posted on July 31, 2026 by skullsinthestars

Book 23 for my 2026 goal of 36 books for the year! Now a little ahead with my reading schedule. My link to the book is through my bookshop.org affiliate account, which means I may earn a small commission if you buy from there.

I’ve been enjoying reading some horror by Mexican authors lately such as Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia and so when I came across V. Castro’s Queen of the Cicadas (2021) in one of my bookstore wanderings I pretty much knew I had to grab it. The fact that it is very recognizably published by Flame Tree Press, one of my favorite publishers, sweetened the deal.

From the title, one might expect that it is a story of Mexican folklore analogous to La Llorona, and it does feel that way at first, but the story becomes so much more as it evolves.

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How Djadja-Em-Ankh Saved the Day, by Lise Manniche

Posted on July 28, 2026 by skullsinthestars

Book 22 for my 2026 goal of 36 books for the year! Now a little ahead with my reading schedule.

With all the hubbub about The Odyssey in theaters the past few weeks, I decided to crack a joke on social media about rereading an even better historical epic from ancient Egypt — the story of Djadja-Em-Ankh! I took classes on ancient Near East history in college and learned of this classic tale from the Westcar Papyrus. The story is very, very silly, which would’ve been the joke on social media. However, while looking up Djadja-Em-Ankh (impossible to forget that name), I learned that an absolutely delightful edition of the story was published in 1977, translated and commented on by Lise Manniche!

I immediately needed this book for my collection, and was able to secure a copy for only about $20 — lots of used books can be had cheaply simply due to lack of demand!

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New popular science book from me is happening!

Posted on July 24, 2026 by skullsinthestars

A bit of personal news: I’ve signed a contract for my next popular science book with the University of Chicago Press! My tentative title — subject to change — is “Booms, Beer, and Blood: The story of conservation of energy,” based on a series of blog posts I did a few years ago.

The book will be a look at one of the most important principles in physics — conservation of energy — what it is, all the cool stuff we’ve learned because of it, and the story of three pivotal figures in that discovery. One was a cannon-maker, one was a brewer, and one was a medical doctor. (Hence the working title.) All three are interesting characters, and their stories say a lot about how science was done in the past and still has lessons for scientists of the present and future. Their stories actually include an INCREDIBLE amount of drama!

I’ve been researching like mad already for this, including working on preliminary translations of old letters that might never have ever been translated into English before! (I’m working through a book that is about 130 years old right now.)

I’m really excited about this project and can’t wait to share more about it with all of you!

Posted in History of science, Personal | 3 Comments

Drones: now invisible, in a weird way!

Posted on July 23, 2026 by skullsinthestars

Thanks to my friend Darlene for pointing me to this article!

I’ve talked a lot about invisibility on this blog and have written papers on invisibility physics and even written a book on the history of invisibility physics, but still there are fun new discoveries that surprise me in a fun way!

Take, for example, the recent news from Northwestern University that engineers there have made a small drone that is, if not invisible, pretty dang hard to see while in flight! Their video of the “Phantom Twist” drone is quite spectacular.

The drone relies on motion blur, in which a rapidly vibrating of spinning object can appear transparent simply because enough light passes through every location where the object would otherwise block it, and the object is spinning too quickly for the human eye to follow its motion. The drone itself is mostly thin sticks held together, which in motion become very hard to see. The engineering team used machine learning (an actual useful form of AI) to optimize the drone design for both stable flight and minimum visibility.

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Fabulous Bodies by Chuck Tingle

Posted on July 21, 2026 by skullsinthestars

Book 21 for my 2026 goal of 36 books for the year! Now a little ahead with my reading schedule. My link to the book is through my bookshop.org affiliate account, which means I may earn a small commission if you buy from there.

Chuck Tingle has become one of my favorite authors to read and I’ve celebrated each of his books on here as they’ve come out, so when a new book, Fabulous Bodies, was released this month of course I was going to snap it up and read it as soon as possible!

Poppy Stringer is a social media fashion influencer with hundreds of thousands of followers, which ostensibly is how she makes her living. In reality, though, she earns money to support herself and her daughter Marlo by being a modern day grave robber: bluffing her way into morgues to pick up corpses for various shady individuals to use for their own ends. She is not particularly troubled by her choice of income because they’re just bodies after death, objects that can be bought and sold.

Then Poppy receives an unusual call, offering her $5 million to steal the body of a recently deceased celebrity. Though she is suspicious, the job comes with a significant payment in advance, so she can’t resist the possibility of making a better life for her and Marlo.

At first, things go off without a hitch. As the caller promised, she has no issue claiming the body from the medical examiner’s office. But soon things take an unexpected turn into impossible horror and Poppy becomes entangled in a series of horrifically gruesome murders. She will have to use all of her wits and her ruthless drive to succeed in order to survive the night with her body and soul intact.

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Musings about the “many worlds” quantum hypothesis

Posted on July 18, 2026 by skullsinthestars

Though my work is primarily in classical wave optics, I maintain an avid interest in quantum physics (see my posts here and here for example) and especially all the weird implications of it, including the various attempts to make the theory philosophically consistent.

Though the theory is mathematically rigorous and agrees with experiment perfectly to this point, our default interpretation of it — usually called the Copenhagen interpretation and first developed in the 1920s — simply cannot be correct! Many attempts have been made to address this issue and philosophically “fix” quantum physics, including the 1957 hypothesis by Hugh Everett III that nowadays is usually referred to as the “many worlds” hypothesis. Everett’s idea seems to imply that there are an uncountably infinite number of universes created at every instant of time, which seems at a glance like it is just replacing one interpretation problem with an even worse one!

In this post, I thought I would discuss the “many worlds” hypothesis and muse over how it works and how it honestly isn’t any weirder than any other interpretation of quantum physics. It’s grown on me over the past few years. Like I said, I am not an expert here, so these are my “musings” more than a rigorous defense. I will along the way however talk about the history of quantum physics and why we need an alternative interpretation, even if “many worlds” turns out not to be the one.

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Dungeon Crawl at the Haunted Mall, by Jendia Gammon

Posted on July 13, 2026 by skullsinthestars

Book 20 for my 2026 goal of 36 books for the year! On track with my reading! My link to the book is through my bookshop.org affiliate account, which means I may earn a small commission if you buy from there.

This book was a two-fer for me: I got to continue catching up on the works of my friend Jendia Gammon and also continue my exploration of modern “Choose Your Own Adventure” books, a series that I grew up with! So yesterday I finished reading Dungeon Crawl at the Haunted Mall (2026), by Jendia Gammon. (I also like mixing up light reads with some of my heavier reads, and CYOA books are definitely a fast read!)

This book was a blast! The title tells you broadly what you’re in for, adventure-wise, but it doesn’t fully convey a lot of the nostalgic silliness that comes with the story.

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The Unfinished Business, by Stephanie Campisi

Posted on July 11, 2026 by skullsinthestars

Book 19 for my 2026 goal of 36 books for the year! On track with my reading! My link to the book is through my bookshop.org affiliate account, which means I may earn a small commission if you buy from there.

I am continuing to read books by some of my internet social media friends, and they’re always a delight! Today, I just finished The Unfinished Business (2026), by Stephanie Campisi.

Some time ago, Stephanie sent me an electronic uncorrected proof to read, but here I’ve read (and purchased) the published version!

If ghosts exist, why do they stick around? They must have some business that remains to be settled and can’t rest until they do. That is the premise of The Unfinished Business, a lighthearted, funny and fast-paced ride through shenanigans in both life and the afterlife.

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Strange Buildings, by Uketsu

Posted on June 25, 2026 by skullsinthestars

Book 18 for my 2026 goal of 36 books for the year! On track with my reading! My link to the book is through my bookshop.org affiliate account, which means I may earn a small commission if you buy from there.

It says a lot about how much I enjoy Uketsu’s writing that I went out and bought his most recently released book, Strange Buildings (2026), the day after I finished his previous book Strange Pictures.

This is the longest and most ambitious of Uketsu’s “Strange Books” to date, looking about twice as long as Strange Houses, yet I still finished it within 24 hours!

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