Making life harder sounds deeply unfun, but it might be good for your cognitive function.

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I'll be honest—friction is pretty complicated. Imagine that I have a block of wood sliding on a table. In some way, the atoms on the surface of the wood block are interacting with the surface atoms on ...

When tectonic plates move, they rarely do so smoothly. Sometimes they slide almost imperceptibly; at other times, stress is ...

The machine doesn’t care what it’s making—only that it’s making it fast. Frictionless systems optimize output. But meaning, memory, and margin live in the mess it leaves behind. The great smoothing is ...

The familiar heat, wear and general grinding to a halt of friction are all caused by what's going on at the microscopic level when two things rub. And down there, even the smoothest surfaces usually ...