The connection between me and you While I still need to work on the intricacies of my understanding of string theory (and probably will need to forever), I appreciated this piece which dives into how it has been a "game changer" in the field of physics. It is "a theory of nature able to describe all particles and forces, including gravity, while obeying the strict logical rules of quantum mechanics and relativity".

By "shaking the universe hard enough, we would be able to move from one possible world to another, changing what we consider the immutable laws of nature and the special combination of elementary particles that make up reality". There is something fresh, and hopeful, about understanding this science from a different perch, beyond focussing on the building blocks of particles and forces. In considering landscapes and elements and bigger pictures and the meaning of universes, I took one sentence for myself: "possibly everything is connected – that is, every two models are connected by an unbroken path".

Nabeelah, conversation editor Quanta Magazine: "There are no laws of physics. There’s only the landscape" (reading time: 10 minutes)
How to make sure we spot bias in neuroscience Science, like journalism, is very much determined by the questions you ask. You need to have background theories and assumptions in order to ask a question and come up with results. These background ideas turn out to influence findings much more than we like to admit. When psychologist and writer Cordelia Fine asked why we have two distinctively different reproductive systems, even though female and male behaviour are quite flexible and often quite similar, critics said her work was blinded by “feminist bias”.

Here, Fine explains why her feminist outlook on neuroscience is necessary and why it takes a whole village of disagreeing scientists to overcome any kind of bias and produce better science.

Irene, First 1,000 Days correspondent Psyche: "Sexual dinosaurs" (reading time: 14 minutes)
A visual essay about the cliché descriptions of appearance in literature Erin Davis and her book club noticed how stereotypical the descriptions of physical characteristics of both men and women were in the books they read. To test if men and women are indeed often described in a clichéd manner, Davis wrote a piece of code that analysed 2,000 books. From Pulitzer Prize-winning classics and pulpy bestsellers, she extracted all mentions of body parts, the sex of their owners, and the adjectives used to describe them.

This research resulted in a beautiful visual story, which not only makes clear how widespread the lack of creativity in visual descriptions of characters tends to be, but also shows, by means of a personal story, the importance of realistic characters in our literature.

Heleen, creative developer The Pudding: "The physical traits that define men and women in literature" (reading time: 15 minutes)

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Three illustrated stamps saying Tokyo (with four white flowers), Sao Paolo (with a black and pink pelican) and Cape Town (with a black and white giraffe and purples leaves). These lie against a background image of black squares, representing pixels, with two small purple squares at the top, and in ne of them, the shape of an eye with a virus blob shaped pupil From Japan to Brazil and South Africa: how countries’ ‘data cultures’ shape their response to coronavirus As part of The Correspondent’s Track(ed) Together project, writers from around the world tell us how their countries’ ‘data culture’ affects the local response to surveillance initiatives designed to curb the spread of Covid-19. Read Morgan Meaker’s article here The future is uncertain (and that’s a good thing) Uncertainty is complex. The future isn’t set in stone. Margaret Heffernan’s new book praises people or organisations that admit what they don’t know. Read Sanne Blauw’s article here