Your daily dose of nerd.

Most sites in this space pick a single niche and go deep. We went the other way. Science, culture, and tech turn out to share an audience — the kind of person who wants to know why something works, whether it's a jet engine, a 1949 noir thriller, a novelty record, or the first computer mouse. The best stories happen where the three meet, which is what our Nerdy Connections are about. Depth without a narrow lane is the whole bet.

How it's written

Every post here is written specifically for this site — researched, drafted, and fact-checked before it's published, not pulled wholesale from somewhere else. Where a post references outside work — a film, a paper, a video — you'll find a link to it, not a copy of it.

The Nerd Net is a human–AI collaboration. AI helps with research, drafting and building the site; a person checks every claim against its sources and signs off before anything is published. The sources are listed at the foot of each post.

Radio Theatre

Some articles come with a short radio play: the Nerd Net Radio Theatre, two minutes or so in the style of an old 1950s broadcast. The characters are imaginary; the facts are the ones in the article, and you can read the full script beside the player. The voices are synthetic.

Daily trivia

One new trivia question a day, pulled from the same three subjects. Answer streaks are tracked locally in your browser and aren't tied to an account; we only keep anonymous totals of how many people answered, and which answers they picked.

Games

When you need a break, the Procrastination Station has daily puzzles and retro arcade games, all free and playable in the browser, with no sign-up. Your scores and streaks stay in your own browser; we only keep anonymous counts of how often each game is played. And the circuit board behind every page is a game too: Squasher. Click the nodes while they glow, or play a 30-second round from the Procrastination Station.

Screensaver

There's a screensaver built in: a 3D starfield, falling digital rain, a game of paddle ball that plays itself (or play it yourself with W/S and P/L), a synthwave sunset, bouncing Mystify lines, a nixie tube clock or Maxwell's equations chalked on a blackboard, with famous quotes drifting by (you can switch those off). Start it from the Screensaver link in the footer of any page, or open the screensaver page directly — it looks great on a second monitor or the TV. Move the mouse to pick a screensaver or go full screen, and press Esc to close it. You can also have it start by itself after five idle minutes; that's off unless you switch it on, and the setting only lives in your browser.

Desk Pals

We also make Desk Pals: tiny pixel friends that walk along a web page, hop between its headings and cards, say funny things about what they find, and can be picked up and dropped. They are free, the pals themselves collect nothing from you, and you can add them to your own site with one line of code.

Say hello

Found a mistake, or have something we should cover? Get in touch.