Disclaimer: this website is composed of symbols and images that do not in themselves carry meaning outside of a total social situation which none of us choose.

Hi, I'm Drew Pendergrass. My low-sodium, organic, artisanally-crafted website is lovingly built from whatever I decide to post online. It hosts a variety of projects, resources, and ephemera made over the years, including experimental music, my writing, a video game, a fake startup that sells logs on wheels, a stupid Chrome extension, and esoteric sorting algorithms, as well as my research papers and conference presentations in atmospheric science and related fields.

Currently, I am a doctoral student in Environmental Engineering at Harvard University, studying under Daniel Jacob, and I freelance on the side for publications including Harper's and The Guardian (send me stories at drew@drewpendergrass.com). More importantly, I have never advocated on behalf of, or against, the Free Silver movement, I have no trouble distinguishing my right from my left, and my mind's eye exists only in a figurative sense.

My newsletter on writing/science/etc:

Spotlight

My feature on dirt, and the scientists who study it, for the June 2020 issue of Harper's Magazine: "Ground Control."

A Brief Q&A

Q. How can I contact you?

A. You can follow/DM me on Twitter, but I'm trying to stop using it so much, so it's best to email me at drew [at] drewpendergrass [dot] com (or the academic address in my CV). However, if your email is unpleasant, you should direct it to grievances@drewpendergrass.com, an inbox I definitely read.

Q. Who are you?

A. Well, to start off, I proudly possess object permanence, I am not reptilian, I have absolutely no intention of running for Senate in the great state of Minnesota, I have never traveled to an exoplanet, and I accept the axiom of choice. If you for some strange reason would like to know something substantial about me, you can check out my projects page or my CV.

Q. Why does this page keep changing?

A. This page is randomly generated by the server on each load. Most of the page's contents are not displayed on one particular load, so for the full experience reload a bunch of times.

Q. Why don't you just host this crap on Github like a normal person?

A. Github only allows static websites. I wanted my website to be different for every visitor. DrewPendergrass.com, like life itself, must always be in flux. You could say I'm an artist.

This website proudly supports Otto Neurath and the ISOTYPE picture language

Please represent all social facts pictorially in your correspondence with the owner and proprietor of this website. Do your part to help build a pluralistic and anti-metaphysical theory of knowledge.

Some true statements

I appreciate knowledge of the outcome of a given situation ... I am not a substitute for a medical doctor ... I take my eggs over easy ... I keep all my eggs in separate baskets ... I am not a closed, non-orientable, boundary-free manifold ... I have nothing to do with explosions ... to my knowledge, there is no portrait of me that ages in my place ... I did not orchestrate the Camp David Accords ... I keep the old gods ... I hold no world records ... I am capable of reading English ... I am not to my knowledge a victim of a mummy's curse ... I am reluctant to resort to black magic ... I have never commanded an army composed of more than 100,000 soldiers ... you cannot prove I have sympathies for the former state of Burgundy ...

A Moving, and Random, Quotation

Instructions for living a life. Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.

-Mary Oliver

Read more here.

Play Alchemy!

"So fun you won't even need friends!"

Bonus Content Zone!

Three Cryptic Messages Regarding Matters of Supreme Importance

1. You must eat your neighbors before they embrace your gods.
2. The slogans have been watched. Soon you must imperil the safeguards.
3. All dreams will be vandalized.

One randomly-generated sorting algorithm, please!

Do you have an unsorted list of N natural numbers? Do you just hate it when programs are guaranteed to terminate? Do you get angry when algorithms do better than factorial time? Then you're in luck! The following algorithm has been generated just for you:

1. Begin with a gaslighting strategy. Insist to everyone that the list is already in order, even if it is not. If they give up arguing with you, terminate the program. If they insist that you actually sort the list, proceed to the next step.
2. Uh oh! You've triggered a penalty step. Before you proceed, you must perform a task. Andrew Wiles's proof of Fermat's Last Theorem is 109 pages long. Assuming each page contains roughly 2000 characters, the text can be encoded in order 1,000,000 bits. Generate this number of bits and check to see if they prove Fermat's Last Theorem. If they do not, repeat this step. If they do, proceed! You've paid the penalty. (This step was defined in collaboration with Mirac Suzgun).
3. You turn to mathematical ecology for inspiration. For each number in your list, generate a population of rabbits proportional to the number and a population of wolves inversely proportional to the number. Wait for each system to equilibrate. Read off the equilibrium population of rabbits in order of population size, printing the number corresponding to each. (My lab partner Jackson Wagner points out that this is not a true sorting algorithm, since you still have to sort the population sizes. To Jackson, I reply that this is the least of our worries.)

Congratulations! Your list is now sorted. You can find a permalink to this particular algorithm here.

Facts about Robert Bork or facts about Björk?

Click the line you think is about Robert Bork!

Example 1

Example 2

Example 3

Score: 0 • Streak: 0

All facts lovingly taken from Wikipedia.