Jacopo Bertolotti
@jacopobertolotti.com
Associated Professor of Physics at the University of Exeter. Maker of typos. Science, scientific visualizations (grouped under the hashtag #PhysicsFactlet), some miniature painting. He/lui/on. All opinions are my own fault.
Dunno… I remember friends telling me there were bodies in the streets. And going into work seeing intensive care wards packed, patients dying at crazy rates, and having pathologists ask me to help them screen tissues for COVID viruses because they were trying to find out what tissues were infected.
Peter@notalawyer.bsky.social · 3d agoit’s pretty obvious that a lot of people remember that COVID lockdowns were unpleasant and from there just extrapolate that they were therefore bad policy
Listen. I work in academia. ADHD is absolutely real.
Eleanor Morton@eleanormorton.bsky.social · 3d agoListen. I work in comedy. ADHD is absolutely real.
On top of everythng Kirsty says, the funding call for the "AI Lab" was launched with such a short deadline as to make the writing of thorough, well-considered proposals virtully impossible....
Kirsty Grainger @kirstygrainger.bsky.social · last wk.Earlier this year UKRI launched a funding call to invest £40M in ONE AI lab. www.ukri.org/opportunity/... For some unknown reason they decided to fund TWO AI labs at the cost of £60M. An extra £20M. Just found. That's the equivalent of 7 more years of Jodrell Bank. www.ukri.org/news/ukri-la...
![Comic. [Person 1 with short hair on stage behind podium reading off paper while addressing audience. People are shown sitting in chairs while Person 2 with ponytail and Person 3 waving are walking toward stage.] PERSON 1: This year’s Nobel Prize in “calibrating your equipment carefully and not embarrassing yourself by publishing spurious results” goes to Dr. Adams and Dr. Smith, who did *not* announce the discovery of microbes on Titan. PERSON 3: Thank you, thank you.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:cz73r7iyiqn26upot4jtjdhk/bafkreihztdrvxjeyzmz6dmz3xb4vi6wiwwtge6fwdoxjcum5aptndv3kfm)
This is like wanting to be the world's best shovel purchaser in a gold rush
Zoë Crowther@zoecrowther.bsky.social · 2w agoThe AI minister thinks the UK should focus on being the world's best AI adopter, not the world's best AI model builder He said Britain can move "further and faster" than the US in applying AI across healthcare, public services and the wider economy (3/6)
Experimenting with a monochromatic colour scheme. As first attempts go, I am quite happy. But it also shows all the skills I need to work on more. #MiniaturePainting #Blue #WH40k
Dear journal editors: there is no practical reason to tightly constrain the amount of time people have to revise a paper. Your journal is just bits on a server anyway. And even if you had to physically print it like it was the XX century, just let it slide to a future issue.
Dr Alex Bond@thelabandfield.bsky.social · 2w agoJournal gives us 3 weeks to revise a paper. We ask for a 1-month extension because a coauthor is away. They said no, the most they can give is 2 weeks. Otherwise it's considered withdrawn. What utter nonsense.
HISTORY OF PHYSICS Duel in the Sun For decades, a dominant historical story asserted that David Hilbert publicly presented the correct field equations of general relativity on November 20, 1915, just five days before Albert Einstein. 1/
As someone working on the optics of disordered media, I am VERY intrigued about the possibility to make an optical version of these.
Philip Ball@philipcball.bsky.social · 3w agoThermodynamic computing seems mind-boggling to me: it works by letting stochastic thermal fluctuations nudge the computer to its solution. Something for nothing? Not quite, as my latest piece for @quantamagazine.bsky.social explains. www.quantamagazine.org/thermodynami...
#PhysicsFactlet "Etendue conservation" is something that, if you have studied #Optics for any amount of time, probably you heard of, but at the same time most optics experts are not very familiar with. ⚛️🧪💡🎢 1/
Can you even call yourself a nerd if reading a detailed description of every single computer visible in #JurassicPark is not the best thing you have done today? 🙃 fabiensanglard.net/jurrasic_par...
Jurassic Park computers in excruciating detail
fabiensanglard.net
"It's a zero-sum game," Wild said. "The bullets we've dodged have hit someone else." www.reviewertoo.com/13-7-2026-bu...
"The bullets we've dodged have hit someone else" — UK science cuts largely spare physics and astro, hit projects and labs
Also: AI conflict of interest disclosures in philosophy, PhD admission down 15% at US universities, an AI "humanizer" tool for science, and more from last week
reviewertoo.com
"Verify your age" Explains how THAC0 worked in AD&D.
John Scalzi@scalzi.com · 3w ago"Verify your age" Produces rotary phone, flawlessly dials a phone number
Your periodic reminder that there is practically no downside to preprints: www.nature.com/articles/d41... 🧪⚛️🎢
Think preprints are unreliable? Analysis of 70,000 studies might change your mind
Central conclusions rarely change when biomedical preprints go on to be published in journals.
nature.com
Disobey God and get drowned immediately is really more of an Abrahamic religion thing. COMIC ◆ www.smbc-comics.com/comic/dadalus PATREON ◆ www.patreon.com/ZachWeinersm... STORE ◆ smbc-store.myshopify.com
Tempted to start making posts about how #Optics, #Light, absorption etc work, aimed at people doing #MiniaturePainting . Mostly I am not doing it because I suspect I would come around as obnoxious instead of useful.
🇪🇺 The European Parliament lets #ChatControl 1.0 go through despite a majority voting against it (314:276) – allowing mass scanning of private chats until 2028. Survivors are warning. My analysis and why this is the wrong approach 👇 […]
Original post on digitalcourage.social
digitalcourage.social
Tl;DR: “The short answer is no, they don’t [work reliably]” Using a LLM to decide whether a text was written by a LLM is largely a fool's errand, and you will have an enormous amount of false positives. www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Universities are relying on AI-detection software to catch cheating. How well do the programs work?
Technology companies say that their services can sniff out AI-generated writing, but their tools vary in technique and quality.
nature.com
I will never be as cool as people studying ball lightning: www.nature.com/articles/s41... #Physics #Lightning
Is ball lightning a relativistic soliton? - Nature Photonics
Ball lightning is not fully understood. It has been proposed that a stable lump of electromagnetic energy, known as a soliton, could be responsible, but such structures are usually microscopic. Now, h...
nature.com
Realizing more and more how modern-day AI taps into some very old urges. So many would like "unsurpassed mastery without any effort", and would gladly summon a demon to get it.
My very first miniature VS the very same miniature painted almost exactly one year later. I can't call myself a good painter, but at least I improved this year 😃 #MiniaturePainting (mini from #HeroQuest )
If you ask a number of smart and well-studied Physicists whether you can write quantum mechanics using only real numbers, they will nicely split 50-50 into a group answering "Obviously yes!" and another answering "Obviously no!". Which is why I love this kind of papers. #QuantumMechanics #Physics
A New Perspective on Real-Valued Quantum Theory
By exploiting a physically motivated principle, rather than a mathematical postulate, researchers offer a new perspective on how a real-valued quantum theory can be constructed.
physics.aps.org
Something deeply troubling & shocking is happening at Exeter University*, where a mass cull of staff is planned, even though it's in surplus. No good justifications given. @jamesgdyke.info provides the details: www.technosphere.earth/the-bonfire-... *Disclosure: I have a Visiting Fellowship here. +🧵
The bonfire of the humanities
150 academic posts at the University of Exeter are to be cut, most in the humanities but also in social sciences, engineering and environmental sciences
technosphere.earth
between this and the ongoing cuts to maths departments across the country it’s really important to remember that it’s not just ‘the humanities’ or ‘the social sciences’ that are being decimated it’s a much broader attack on ‘fundamental’ research (& consequently, teaching)
Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans@astroroyalscot.bsky.social · last mo.At today's UKRI board meeting, the fate of UK particle physics and astronomy will likely be decided. Have we done enough to convince the powers-that-be to halt the proposed funding cuts? 🤞 Read Prof. Hiranya Peiris in Nature today eloquently explaining why these cuts are wrong.🧪🔭⚛️ 📖: rdcu.be/friwM
Following Trump's executive orders, Microsoft news, and announcements of $billions in investment, I wrote about the current state of quantum computing and what we can expect. bit.ly/4v3kedO
What is a quantum computer good for? Absolutely nothing — yet
The Trump administration wants a useful quantum computer in two years. Microsoft wants one in three. Independent researchers cry hype.
bit.ly