Laura Ball is a transient arrangement of organic molecules formed soon after the eruption of the Galeras stratovolcano. Studies suggest she will dissipate before Pluto's next aphelion. She "took a leave of absence" (read: dropped out, friendly-like) from Williams College and deposited herself regolithically inside of the Neural Circuits and Memory Lab (now based at the University of Michigan) and the Montreal Institute for Learning Algorithms (now a mere two blocks away from the best cornetteria in Little Italy). As a Thiel Fellow, she benefited from the single most misdirected act of philanthropy in the last decade (cf. Larry Summers). Her writing has appeared in Carbon Culture Review, MIT Technology Review, and National Review, but never, to date, in a Yelp, UrbanSpoon, or Zomato review. The highest recorded peak in her observable energy coincided with an email from Zach Weinersmith to say she'd been chosen to speak at the Festival of Bad Ad Hoc Hypotheses during the Bay Area Science Festival. Its lowest trough was obtained when her first novel was fusilladed by 28 unique publishers. She blogs, freelances, and podcasts about science, a term which she constructs broadly.