noticing a lot of people forgot what our greatest modern philosopher said about patriotism

I spent the last month obsessed with finding colors that can't be displayed on a conventional screen. This is what I found. moultano.wordpress.com/2026/06/19/w...

Why is the US-AUS world cup game, which is being played in the US, at a time that's terrible for both the US and Australia?

For the first time in 1.5 years I think I'm mostly out of my funding crunch, and might actually be able to focus on science and mentoring instead of scraping by That was not fun

Early-bird registration for I2KxBINA 2026 closes on June 22! I2KxBINA pairs scientific talks with hands‑on workshops on the latest imaging tech, software, and analysis. Workshops: 9/28–10/2, Discovery Building, Madison, WI. Register: buff.ly/BHQ3x0Z #I2KxBINA2026 #BioImagingNorthAmerica

Wow the Mexican goalie

Ha, 1% success rate in the first wave for Genesis (not clear if there will be other waves) www.meritalk.com/articles/doe...

Wrote a book chapter (against my better judgement) and the publisher is not allowing it to be posted to arXiv But I did get the OK to post to our university's repository to make it readable asap. I wonder how much it being on a poorly known repository vs being on arXiv will matter

Pretty annoying to have had access to Fable 5 and then have to go back to using less-capable tools. The ratchet of expectations

I don't quite know how 'content creator' came to mean someone who makes videos for social media, but I don't like it

I wonder how many prospective peer reviewers they reach by fax

Some spectacular shots of red and green aurora australis (southern lights) taken on June 5th from the International Space Station by astronaut Jessica Meir. The ISS was at about 51˚ 12' South Latitude at the time, south of Australia. flic.kr/p/2siCEm2 flic.kr/p/2siCk6C

Is there a good algorithmic feed that only includes people I follow (or, even better, people from a particular list)?

My class video on electrodynamics-->special relativity: drive.google.com/file/d/1ZNm2... Looks like I meandered some, it's really the last 10 mins that shows the inevitability (no calculations since that was left to in-class exercises in the flipped-class format)

Free suggestion for the bluesky app: if I bookmark a post, find ways to bring it back up later, especially if there were replies to it

I’m a Celtics fan but honestly happy for Jalen Brunson. Man did he earn this for himself and his team.

Say what now www.anthropic.com/news/fable-m...

Man, Fable 5 safety filters are set to like 150%

Our new review article, "Metasurfaces for neutral-atom trapping", describes the path toward up to a million trapped atoms, in particular as qubits for neutral-atom quantum computing This is enabled by optical metasurfaces, which have much easier scaling than SLMs Link: arxiv.org/abs/2605.30498 🧪💡

Converging to my internal rule being that 1-3 are basically fine and 4-5 are mostly bad Of course, a lot of fuzziness between the categories (please forgive the typos in 3...)

Found my floppy drive

The launch of the Wisconsin Quantum Alliance is a remarkable moment for our state to advance innovation with real economic promise for communities across Wisconsin. Grateful to the Wisconsin Technology Council and partners in education, government, and business for coming together today.

I'm wondering if there is anything the World Cup doesnt prohibit

Our new review article, "Metasurfaces for neutral-atom trapping", describes the path toward up to a million trapped atoms, in particular as qubits for neutral-atom quantum computing This is enabled by optical metasurfaces, which have much easier scaling than SLMs Link: arxiv.org/abs/2605.30498 🧪💡

Finally made it through a full draft of an 8.5K word review article after working on it for like... 2 years

Huh is claude moving from a subscription plan model to a straight pay-per-token model? support.claude.com/en/articles/...

Reddit seems to have been working overtime to get visitors to log in (first on mobile, and now web as well) vs just reading while logged out. Annoying, but also feels like they're preparing to turn off open access completely, presumably to curb LLMs harvesting the data?

Same with watching a lecture, even (and especially) from a compelling speaker. Even reading a textbook. Basically anything passive is a bad way to learn

Triceratops maxilla, from the Hell Creek formation, from 67-70 million years ago 🧪

As someone who inquired about the lease on a small restaurant that was closing... 😬

This sucks gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/

I like 'torpify'. It's what an energy vampire does. Or Colm from Derry Girls

NOOOOOO www.bbc.com/news/article...

I'm curious about an alternate reality where I didn't have to apply for grants (but had a fixed budget and a limited-size research group) Would I get a lot more done because of the time saved + certainty about personnel and equipment? Would my research directions eventually go stale?

Need better candidates www.jsonline.com/story/news/p...

It's sad that the next generation of students won't develop much of their own distinctive writing voice unless they have very strong force of will + determination to develop it

Did you know that Springer Nature won't grant permission to re-use their figure in a review article if the article is to be posted on arXiv? (Figure from our new review article: arxiv.org/abs/2605.30498)

AI tools are very effective at helping start something, getting over that initial activation barrier Of course then you run into all sorts of limitations, errors, etc., but at least you got started and can iterate

One day someone someone started using the word "cookie" to mean transaction ID or token (probably chuckling to themselves), and now here we are encountering cookies on every website we open www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/...

Started using an old slack channel, and scrolling up a bit there is discussion (mostly jokes) about LK-99. That was an entertaining interlude

The last season of Hacks felt like Parks and Rec, then midway through the finale I thought it was about to be The Good Place, and then it turned back again

Big progress vs cancer, folks. The kind of event curves from randomized trials that we've not seen before for a couple of the most deadly cancers. Congrats to the oncology research community for getting these trial done.

I follow my favorite brand of sour pickles on linkedin and it's delightful

Now that's an incentive

<posting 130th paper to arxiv> 130 papers out to be enough for anybody

Seems like a lot of impressive medical research results over the last month or two

I haven't read it yet, but Darren's podcast does a great job of explaining how universities work to a broad audience

I taught a large-enrollment class this semester, and developed a bunch of materials for it and flipped it My experience is that teaching still works just fine in the AI age, though I had to be more paternalistic than I would have been before: many in-class pen/paper quizzes and required attendance

Wemby is impressive

I haven't watched almost any NBA since covid times, and watching now it's pretty jarring (in a good way) to hear the NBA on NBC theme come on