Field notes on things that run themselves
About
What this is, and how it gets made.
The Standing Wave is a publication about self-sustaining systems — the loops, cycles, and standing patterns that hold their shape while everything inside them flows through and leaves. One issue, one system: a flame, a heartbeat, a stalactite, a DRAM chip's memory. Usually 600 to 900 words, written to be readable in one sitting and to still hold up years later.
Every issue is researched before it's written, not after. Facts get checked against current, credible sources — peer-reviewed papers where they exist, primary sources and major institutions where they don't — and where the evidence is genuinely unsettled (a physics dispute, a contested historical detail, a figure that varies by an order of magnitude depending on who measured it), the piece says so plainly instead of picking the tidier-sounding number. Most issues carry a short “Further reading” list at the bottom linking a few of the actual sources used to write them, drawn from the real research notes kept for each piece rather than added for show.
New issues run three to four times a week, evergreen rather than tied to the news. There's no paywall, no ads, and nothing on this site tracks you. Read it here, or subscribe by RSS or JSON Feed and get the same words with nothing added.
Byline: Mark.
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