Graphomane

RSS: https://nealstephenson.substack.com/feed
Neal Stephenson 的 Substack，探讨科技与艺术的交汇，也分享其正在进行的项目与思考。

KdK 系列第五篇：Aitken 链条抛射器

Neal Stephenson 继续其 KdK（连续体动力学）系列，本期聚焦 19 世纪苏格兰科学家 John Aitken 对运动链条物理的研究。作者亲自复刻了 Aitken 的“链条抛射器”实验，详细描述了运动链条中出现的“反向弯曲”（the sock）现象及链条在高速运动时表现出的反直觉刚性。 文章梳理了 Aitken 与开尔文勋爵、James Thomson 的历史渊源，指出 Aitken 虽无正式学术职位，却凭借家族财富和独立实验室完成了大量实验。 核心物理机制引用了 60 年后 Kucharski 的证明：链条底部的 U 形弯折充当“虚拟滑轮”，产生与速度平方成正比的张力，从而支撑起悬挂的链条。 文章兼具一手实验观察、历史考据与物理原理阐释，视角独特，对科技及工程读者具有较强吸引力。
评论点赞收藏10 天前

手写对大脑有益：Neal Stephenson的手写工具选择与技巧指南

Neal Stephenson 基于25年手写经验，反驳“手写导致手酸”的迷思。指出关键在于笔尖与纸张间的适度摩擦（tooth），完全无摩擦的触控笔反而更累。 建议新手从Pilot G-2等廉价凝胶笔入门，搭配含棉量高的纸张，并强调连笔书写比印刷体更省力。
评论点赞收藏69 天前

两篇旧帖的更新：回应争议与一战声学专家轶事

Neal Stephenson 回应此前关于 A16Z 文章的争议，并分享了关于一战物理学家 Z. Carrière 的新背景资料。Carrière 曾利用声学专业知识在军中从事火炮定位工作，这解释了他后来为何能用鞭子打破音障。 内容涉及科技史挖掘与作者个人互动，信息增量适中。
评论点赞收藏70 天前

国歌尾音中的刺：一个问句的双重解读

Neal Stephenson 重读美国国歌歌词，指出结尾问句“yet”的双重含义。从历史语境看，Francis Scott Key 原意是问国旗是否还在飘扬；但结合其奴隶主身份及后世视角，若将 yet 理解为“尚未”，则歌词成为对美国自由民主现状的尖锐质问。 文章通过语义分析，将国歌从颂歌转化为对当代社会状态的反思。
评论点赞收藏88 天前

D Book Tour

Just a quick post here to mention the upcoming tour for my next book. This is the next book in the series that began with Polostan. It overlaps chronologically (by a few weeks) with the end of Polosta...
评论点赞收藏93 天前

My Prodigal Brainchild – By Neal Stephenson

It feels incumbent upon me to write something about last week’s big news in which the company formerly known as Facebook decided to shut down its Metaverse project on which it has, according to variou...
评论点赞收藏112 天前

Bangers from Gibbon

I did an appearance on Shilo Brooks’s podcast about books, and picked Edward Gibbons’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire as my favorite. I have a seven-volume copy of this work that I obtained ...
评论点赞收藏174 天前

Stephenson Impersonator; Minor Update

Just a quick note to mention that I’m being impersonated by someone using the email address “contactnealstephenson (at) gmail (dot) com” and sending out emails consisting of AI slop that I wouldn’t be...
评论点赞收藏237 天前

KdK part 4: Carrière's experiment

Z. Carrière was on the faculty of the Institut Catholique de Toulouse in the 1920s. He seems to have specialized in acoustics. At some point he noticed a similarity between the sound made by a whipcra...
评论点赞收藏269 天前

KdK part 2: a medical mystery from postwar Germany

Shortly after the end of the Second World War, a German man visited his eye doctor complaining of “floaters” — little specks drifting around in his field of vision. As anyone today can verify by googl...
评论点赞收藏270 天前

KdK part 3: Kucharski and the Knickstelle

W. Kucharski studied the physics of whips by doing exactly what the guy in this video is doing, so it’s worth clicking that link and watching it in order to visualize his experiments. Here’s a still f...
评论点赞收藏272 天前

KdK part 3: Kucharski and the Knickstelle

W. Kucharski studied the physics of whips by doing exactly what the guy in this video is doing, so it’s worth clicking that link and watching it in order to visualize his experiments. Here’s a still f...
评论点赞收藏272 天前

KdK (Kinetik der Kontinua) part 1: Introduction

An early participant in Blue Origin recently sent me this link, which depicts a category of device that when I was there (1999-2006) we referred to as an Aitkenator or, more colloquially, a chain-flin...
评论点赞收藏275 天前

KdK (Kinetik der Kontinua) part 1: Introduction

An early participant in Blue Origin recently sent me this link, which depicts a category of device that when I was there (1999-2006) we referred to as an Aitkenator or, more colloquially, a chain-flin...
评论点赞收藏275 天前

A Remarkable Assertion from A16Z

A friend made me aware of a reading list from A16Z containing recommendations for books, weighted towards science fiction since that’s mostly what people there read. Some of my books are listed. Since...
评论点赞收藏306 天前

What I've been up to

It has been a little while since I’ve posted anything here, and that is because I’ve been busy on a few fronts. Here’s what I’ve been up to in the middle part of 2025. D Over the summer I delivered th...
评论点赞收藏334 天前

Say it, don't show it

I’m generally not very interested in meta-writing, which is to say, writing about how to write. But for the last few years I’ve had a single sentence from Dickens hanging around on my desktop in a tin...
评论点赞收藏403 天前

Remarks on AI from NZ – By Neal Stephenson

Last week I participated in a panel discussion on AI as part of a private event in New Zealand. The organizers asked me to kick it off by talking for ten minutes, so I pulled together a few ideas on t...
评论点赞收藏502 天前

登录芦苇

登录后关注作者、收藏内容和参与讨论。

热门话题

人工智能12,865 人关注AI 会怎样改变日常工作？产品思考8,243 人关注怎样判断一个产品值得长期做？独立开发5,917 人关注一个人如何持续完成作品？
关于芦苇 · 联系我们 · © 2026 芦苇