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, boneless, organic 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. I am on staff for Harvard Magazine, and I freelance on the side for publications including Harper's and Current Affairs (send me stories at drew@drewpendergrass.com). Formerly, I wrote for the Harvard Political Review and the weekly magazine of The Harvard Crimson. More importantly, I proudly possess object permanence, I take my eggs over easy, and I keep all my eggs in separate baskets.

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. 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.

Q. Who are you?

A. Well, to start off, I appreciate knowledge of the outcome of a given situation, I am reluctant to resort to black magic, I am not reptilian, I am not to my knowledge a victim of a mummy's curse, and I am not a substitute for a medical doctor. 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. How can I contact you?

A. You can follow/DM me on Instagram or Twitter, but it's best to email me at drew@drewpendergrass.com. However, if your email is unpleasant, you should direct it to grievances@drewpendergrass.com, an inbox I definitely read.

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 accept the axiom of choice ... I did not orchestrate the Camp David Accords ... I have never traveled to an exoplanet ... I am capable of reading English ... I am not a closed, non-orientable, boundary-free manifold ... I have never commanded an army composed of more than 100,000 soldiers ... my mind's eye exists only in a figurative sense ... I keep the old gods ... I have no trouble distinguishing my right from my left ... to my knowledge, there is no portrait of me that ages in my place ... I have never advocated on behalf of, or against, the Free Silver movement ... I have absolutely no intention of running for Senate in the great state of Minnesota ... I have nothing to do with explosions ... you cannot prove I have sympathies for the former state of Burgundy ... I hold no world records ...

A Moving, and Random, Quotation

The compassion felt for fragility is always associated with the love for real beauty, because we are keenly conscious of the fact that the existence of the really beautiful things ought to be assured forever, and they are not.

-Simone Weil

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. Now trivialize your safeguards before they embrace your ideas.
2. All liberties have been reviewed. Soon you must eat the captors.
3. Your neighbors will be feared.

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. Feed your list into a black hole, permanently destroying the information. The list is as good as sorted now! If people shake their heads and insist you actually sort the list, just generate a new one and proceed to the next step.
2. Uh oh! You've triggered a penalty step. Before you proceed, you must perform a task. Obtain one (1) chess grandmaster. You are generous, so you let them go first. After they move their piece, move a random one of yours to a random cell on the board. If this move violates the rules of chess, flip the board in anger and start again. If it is a legal move, continue playing until either the board is flipped or checkmate. If the grandmaster has won, repeat the game. If you won, proceed to the next step. You've paid the penalty.
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.

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

Facts about LaTeX or facts about latex?

Click the line you think is about LaTeX!

Example 1

Example 2

Example 3

Score: 0 • Streak: 0

All facts lovingly taken from Wikipedia.