What Adam Is Reading

The Cutting Room Floor

Deep dives that got written and researched but never ran in a weekly issue. Worth a look anyway.

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Sep 6, 2026

The Vibes Are Not the Variablesuppressed

Single-paper review with corroboration. ETH Zurich ran the first preregistered test of what predicts skill at vibe coding (Karpathy's term for accepting AI-generated code without reading it).

Read itarXiv:2603.14133 (Thorgeirsson, Weidmann, Su — ETH Zurich) +…
Sep 4, 2026

The Last Word in Scientific Manufacturesuppressed

Topic explainer on the Radiendocrinator, a real 1920s gold-plated radium device sold for placement against the endocrine glands.

Read itJNCI Monographs (DOI: 10.1093/jncimonographs/lgi003) + prima…
Sep 4, 2026

The Label Was Backwardssuppressed

Single-source review of Cao, An, Du, Xu, Wang and Lu (Peking University School of Nursing + Capital Medical University), npj Science of Food, published online 8 Dec 2025, open access.

Read itnpj Science of Food (DOI 10.1038/s41538-025-00655-w, open ac…
Sep 4, 2026

The Hunter Corpus, 1841 | What Adam Is Readingsuppressed

Archive piece: one million words of John Hunter, the eighteenth-century surgeon, made searchable. Not journals but dictated case notes and observations, scanned by the National Library of Medicine.

Read itNational Library of Medicine / John Hunter papers (1841 edit…
Sep 4, 2026

The Coffee Ledgersuppressed

NEW RUNNING TRACKER, not an article review. Adam asked for a separate artifact linking every coffee article WAiR has covered, capturing date / journal / major takeaways, with links to the issue and the deep dive.

Read itCross-issue synthesis of 16 prior WAiR issues/artifacts + Na…
Sep 4, 2026

Matched for Water, Not for Volumesuppressed

Single-source review challenging the standing belief that sports drinks rehydrate better than water.

Read itJournal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition (DO…
Sep 4, 2026

Fifteen People on Decafsuppressed

Single-source review of Boscaini, Bastiaanssen, Moloney ... Cryan (APC Microbiome Ireland / Parma), Nat Commun 17:3439, published 21 Apr 2026, full PDF supplied by Adam.

Read itNature Communications 17:3439 (2026), DOI 10.1038/s41467-026…
Sep 3, 2026

Six Sides and a Jet Streamsuppressed

Topic explainer with 5 claim cards debunking an X post (@dr_logvinovich) claiming Saturn's hexagon is 'a direct optical projection of an invisible quantum crystal.' Both Zenodo PDFs downloaded and searched: Solar_v16.pdf (53 pp) contains zero occurrences of 'h…

Read itX post @dr_logvinovich + Zenodo DOIs (DataCite, not peer-rev…
Sep 3, 2026

Five Percent Is a Lot of Chipssuppressed

Multi-source synthesis with 4 claim cards examining GLP-1 agonists and grocery spending. Primary source: Hristakeva, Liaukonytė and Feler, J Marketing Research 63(3):427-444, June 2026 (DOI 10.1177/00222437251412834).

Read itJ Marketing Research (Hristakeva/Liaukonytė/Feler) + Gallup…
Sep 3, 2026

Antitrust's System of Record Problemsuppressed

Single-source review of Brendan Keeler's Health API Guy analysis of the FTC antitrust investigation into Epic. Keeler argues Epic is an instance of a type: the system of record that becomes a gatekeeper.

Read itHealth API Guy (Brendan Keeler) / PLOS Digital Health (DOI:…
Sep 1, 2026

Two and a Half Hourssuppressed

Single-source review of Block, Suresh, Avant, Bari, Vike, Zhan and Breiter, npj Mental Health Research, Article in Press, accepted 2 Aug 2026 (DOI 10.1038/s44184-026-00237-y).

Read itnpj Mental Health Research, Article in Press (DOI 10.1038/s4…
Sep 1, 2026

Every Last Onesuppressed

Single-source review of Ed Yong's National Geographic feature (September 2026 issue, photographs by Akos Stiller) on Falcopolis, a ~1.5-square-mile roost of mango and eucalyptus near Mungo in Huambo Province, Angola, found by Hungarian ornithologist Peter Pala…

Read itNational Geographic Sept 2026 (Ed Yong, photographs Akos Sti…
Aug 29, 2026

Total Accountability, No Line Authoritysuppressed

Resource page on delegation structures in technical organizations. The single point of accountability is not a job for the smartest person in the room — it is a job for the person who can get the smartest people to say what they actually think, on the record,…

Read itMulti-source synthesis (practitioner documents and primary s…
Aug 29, 2026

Cherry and Asparagussuppressed

Multi-source synthesis fact-checking the food pairing hypothesis. Three load-bearing claims from Foodpairing's explainer each fail differently: the 80% smell figure traces to a single-odorant demonstration and is 'pretty much meaningless' (Spence); the 10,000…

Read itFoodpairing.com explainer + Ahn et al Sci Rep 2011 + Jain et…
Aug 26, 2026

The Canary and the Appendixsuppressed

Single-paper review of Brynjolfsson, Chandar and Chen's August 2026 revision of 'Canaries in the Coal Mine' (Stanford Digital Economy Lab).

Read itStanford Digital Economy Lab / ADP (Brynjolfsson Chandar Che…
Aug 26, 2026

Simulatedsuppressed

Single-source review of pregnancy-in-space study using a clinostat to simulate microgravity effects on sperm function. Run in Adelaide.

Read itPrimary source (DOI from artifact page)
Aug 24, 2026

Where Thought Process Ends and Wisdom Beginssuppressed

Multi-source synthesis drawing on Every's collection of 25 short essays from founders, designers, investors and writers on work after automation.

Read itEvery (tech publication, 25 essays) + arXiv:2508.04325 + FDA…
Aug 23, 2026

The Color Is Not Yourssuppressed

Single-source review of the January 2024 Nature Microbiology paper identifying bilirubin reductase, the gut-bacterial enzyme that reduces bilirubin to urobilinogen — a step no human enzyme performs.

Read itNature Microbiology Jan 2024 (DOI: 10.1038/s41564-023-01549-…
Aug 22, 2026

The Channel Nobody Claimedsuppressed

Companion to the 2 Aug olo piece, built from the SAME Rivka Galchen New Yorker feature (3 Aug 2026 issue) via Niko McCarty's 20 Aug X thread (~177K views in 2 days) as the filter.

Read itNew Yorker 27 Jul 2026 (Galchen) + X thread @NikoMcCarty 20…
Aug 19, 2026

The Poll Answers Its Own Questionsuppressed

Multi-source synthesis on data center polling with 8 claim cards and 26 sources. RECOVERED 2026-08-23 — lost from CSV due to version conflict in prior session.

Read itCremieux Recueil + multi-source
Aug 19, 2026

The Parable That Ate Rapa Nuisuppressed

Single-source review dismantling the Easter Island ecocide parable, 9 supporting sources. RECOVERED 2026-08-23 — lost from CSV due to version conflict in prior session.

Read itScientific American September 2026 (Michael Marshall)
Aug 19, 2026

The Afterlife of Corporate Swagsuppressed

Lifecycle autopsy of promotional merchandise with verified source ledger. RECOVERED 2026-08-23 — lost from CSV due to version conflict in prior session.

Read itMulti-source synthesis
Aug 19, 2026

Tell It Where It Issuppressed

Stanford / MIT / KRAFTON paper automating the search over LLM harness code (the scaffolding around a frozen model).

Read itarXiv:2603.28052v1 (Lee, Nair, Zhang, Lee, Khattab, Finn — 3…
Aug 16, 2026

The Universe Runs Zip, and Other Claimssuppressed

Melvin Vopson's “second law of infodynamics” claims a new law of nature that compresses reality like a file and, he argues, hints we live in a simulation. A look at what the math does and does not show.

Read itVopson / infodynamics
Aug 12, 2026

When the Vendor Pays Your Referencesuppressed

A STAT investigation into Commure, a $7 billion health-tech startup. The technology is real, but the company pays some of its happiest customers to say they are happy — so the signal buyers rely on is not.

Read itSTAT investigation
Aug 10, 2026

The Coin Was Never Fairsuppressed

A multi-source synthesis on the hidden math of randomness, from a viral thread to the Diaconis–Holmes–Montgomery coin-flip work. The flip you trust is quietly biased toward how it started.

Read itDiaconis et al. / viral thread
Aug 10, 2026

A Billion People, Ten Thousand Personalitiessuppressed

Light Society is an LLM agent-based simulation framework that claims to run one billion agents. A look at what “one billion” really means once you read past the headline.

Read itarXiv:2506.12078
Aug 8, 2026

The Librarian and the Readersuppressed

The first controlled experiment on how an AI agent's long-term memory should be organized — a librarian that files, a reader that retrieves — and what the split costs and buys.

Read itarXiv (agent memory)
Aug 4, 2026

We Are Not All Turning Into Crabssuppressed

The crab body plan has evolved independently at least five times — and been lost at least seven. A curated set of the good writing on why evolution keeps reaching for the same shape, and why the meme oversells it.

Read itAeon / BioEssays (resource set)
Aug 4, 2026

The Number We Built the Field Onsuppressed

A foundation model trained on more than 10,000 clinical polysomnograms finds five learned risk clusters. The metric that runs sleep medicine — the apnea-hypopnea index — showed no significant tie to mortality.

Read itNature Communications
Aug 4, 2026

Ten Things Worth Keepingsuppressed

A scan artifact ranking ten of the forty-four items in the July 28 Healthcare AI Guy issue by their fit for WAiR, with a one-line case for each.

Read itHealthcare AI Guy (scan)
Aug 4, 2026

Five Eyes and a Grabbersuppressed

Opabinia regalis, the Cambrian stem-arthropod whose reconstruction reveal is said to have drawn laughter from the room. A curated collection on the animal and the fossil that broke the tree.

Read itExtinct / Phil Trans B (resource set)
Aug 4, 2026

A Samurai at the Waffle Housesuppressed

A recurring source to watch: Wandering Nobunaga, a Japanese-authored comedy site that narrates modern American life through the eyes of a confused, dignified samurai. Comedy first, kindness underneath.

Read itSource watchlist
Aug 3, 2026

The Leap Second Is About to Become a Leap Hoursuppressed

International timekeepers are voting to retire the leap second and let the clocks drift until a leap hour is needed. How we decided a second was worth more trouble than an hour.

Read itScientific American
Aug 3, 2026

The Benchmark Says Gemini. The Clinic Says Wait.suppressed

A Nature Medicine benchmark found FDA-cleared clinical AI tools underperformed general-purpose chatbots on clinical management tasks. A caution about what a leaderboard actually measures.

Read itNature Medicine
Jul 21, 2026

Creatine and Cancer: The NHANES Evidencesuppressed

Two NHANES analyses claim dietary creatine tracks with lower cancer prevalence. A WAiR deep-dive takes apart the cross-sectional design and what it can and cannot support.

Read itNHANES / Nutrients
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