Sponsored by
Summer starts here (free gummies!)
The sun is here and we're back outside!
Longer days, lighter hangs, and THC gummies that fit the vibe. Grab a free pack of gummies from Cycling Frog! Just cover $4.99 shipping. Fruity, perfectly dosed, and made for campfires, park days, and whatever summer turns into.
Must be 21+ and only valid on 10ct bags of gummies.
NOT VALID IN OH, CA, CO, AL, LA AND NJ.
A WORD FROM OUR SPONSOR, MASTERS OF TRIVIA
Trivia is more than a game; it’s a global tradition of knowledge and competition. Masters of Trivia’s tournaments have gone live, with 30 fast, multiple-choice questions. Most correct wins. Speed breaks ties. Compete worldwide for a $MOT token prize purse, plus valuable in-kind prizes.
Get the entry link and reminders by email — subscribe free at PlayMOT.
—— ON THIS DAY ——
JUNE 7, 1912
Maida Vale, London, England
113 years ago
Alan Turing in the 1930s — the mathematician who would go on to break the Enigma cipher at Bletchley Park, shorten the Second World War by an estimated two years, and lay the theoretical foundations for every computer ever built.
Alan Mathison Turing was born on June 7, 1912, in Maida Vale, London. He showed mathematical ability from an early age that was obvious to everyone around him and incomprehensible to the school system that tried to teach him. He studied mathematics at King's College, Cambridge, published a paper at twenty-three that established the theoretical foundations of modern computing (the Turing machine, 1936), and spent the Second World War at Bletchley Park, where he was the central figure in the effort to break the German Enigma cipher.
The Enigma machine — used by the German military and naval forces to encrypt communications — had been broken in its earlier versions by Polish mathematicians who passed their work to Britain before the fall of Poland. Turing and his colleagues at Bletchley took the Polish foundations and developed the Bombe, an electromechanical machine that could systematically test Enigma settings to find the daily key. The breaking of Enigma — particularly the naval Enigma that was guiding German submarines — is estimated to have shortened the war by two to four years and saved millions of lives. The full extent of what Bletchley had achieved was kept secret until the 1970s.
—— MARQUEE EVENT ——
A reconstructed Bombe machine at Bletchley Park — the electromechanical device Turing designed to decode Enigma-encrypted messages, which at its peak was decrypting up to 84,000 German messages per month.
In 1950, Turing published 'Computing Machinery and Intelligence,' which opened with the question 'Can machines think?' and proposed a test — now called the Turing Test — to assess machine intelligence: if a machine could converse with a human in a way indistinguishable from another human, it could be considered intelligent. The paper is the founding document of artificial intelligence as a field and is still cited in virtually every discussion of machine consciousness. The 'Turing Test' has become part of popular culture in ways that its author never anticipated.
In 1952, Turing reported a burglary to the police. In the course of the investigation, he disclosed that he had had a sexual relationship with another man — then illegal in Britain under laws against 'gross indecency.' He was charged, convicted, and offered a choice: imprisonment or chemical castration through hormonal treatment. He chose the latter. He was stripped of his security clearance, barred from further government work, and placed under surveillance.
He died on June 7, 1954 — his forty-second birthday — from cyanide poisoning. A half-eaten apple was found beside his body. The inquest recorded a verdict of suicide; his mother maintained it was accidental. The exact circumstances of his death have never been definitively established. In 2013, Queen Elizabeth II granted him a posthumous royal pardon — sixty years after his death. In 2021, his face appeared on the British £50 note. The computer on which this newsletter was written exists because of his work.
—— WHY THIS MATTERS ——
Turing's theoretical work on computation is the foundation of the entire field of computer science. The 'Turing machine' — a theoretical model of computation published in 1936 — defined what it means for a problem to be computable. Everything from your smartphone to the largest supercomputer is, at the theoretical level, an implementation of ideas Turing articulated in a twenty-three-year-old's paper.
His prosecution and chemical castration are among the most shameful institutional acts in twentieth-century British history. The man who had done more than almost any other individual to save Britain from Nazi Germany was destroyed by his own government for being gay. The contrast between what he gave and what he received is stark enough that the phrase 'how Alan Turing was treated' has become a shorthand for institutional ingratitude and cruelty.
The Turing Test remains the most influential thought experiment in artificial intelligence, still actively debated. The question of whether a machine can think — and whether the Turing Test is the right way to assess this — is more alive in 2025 than it was in 1950. Every discussion of large language models, consciousness, and machine intelligence begins with Turing.
—— THE TAKEAWAY ——
On June 7, 1912, a man was born who would invent theoretical computing, break the code that was sinking Allied ships in the Atlantic, and help win the Second World War. His government chemically castrated him for being gay and drove him to his death at forty-one. He was pardoned six decades later.
—— QUOTE OF THE DAY ——
"We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done."
— Alan Turing, 'Computing Machinery and Intelligence,' 1950
—— OUR QUIZ OF THE DAY ——
How much do you know about Alan Turing's mathematical innovations, the breaking of Enigma at Bletchley Park, the Turing Test, his prosecution and death, and the belated recognition that came far too late?
