For the uninitiated: The busy beaver problem is an extremely compelling, Conway-esque expedition into the daunting wilds of the finite, and you couldn't ask for a better guide than Ben. Strongly recommend.

Does riffing on the title of the transformer paper boost citations? Somebody should look into it, and if the answer is yes, write a paper called "'All you need' is all you need"

I published a new post on my rarely updated personal blog! It's a sequel of sorts to my Quanta coverage of the Busy Beaver game, focusing on a particularly fearsome Turing machine known by the awesome name Antihydra.

In the US, regulators try to ensure fair prices by banning collusion. But what happens when prices are set by algorithms? New story by me in @quantamagazine.bsky.social about a surprising way that seemingly benign pricing algorithms can go awry:

In light of the 2022 reformulation of C.P. Snow's Two Cultures as wordcels vs shape rotators, it is very funny that LLMs are (up to nonlinearities) quite literally word rotators.

This is in the running for my least favorite item of all time.

I prefer Friend's competition:

I really enjoyed talking to @nsaphra.bsky.social about her thoughts on what much language model interpretability research misses. My latest in @quantamagazine.bsky.social:

This is very cool. arxiv.org/abs/2509.12337

A photoessay by @yaseminsaplakoglu.bsky.social highlights researchers' labor & collaboration: "Through the haze of doom that shrouds climate science shines the passion behind the quest to understand and solve one of the greatest challenges humanity has faced." www.quantamagazine.org/photos-captu...

What does it mean when researchers say a CO2 molecule can "trap heat"? How can just a few CO2 molecules change a planet? An infographic explainer by @markabelan.bsky.social and Joe Howlett walks through the quantum mechanics of CO2 and other greenhouse gases: www.quantamagazine.org/the-quantum-...

it was a privilege to contribute to this package. check out my story on how scientists digitally sculpted the planet to predict the future, and how those in power today are dismantling the quest to model the climate www.quantamagazine.org/how-climate-...

Favorite little ditty of social copy that I wrote for our climate series :-)

Check out Quanta's new series on the many facets of climate science, spearheaded by the supremely talented @hanner.bsky.social!

I made a quantum foundations alignment chart — go forth and fight about it! (also, "good" is not an endorsement)

One year out, the team that bagged the fifth busy beaver is back with an update on the sixth: It’s even bigger than we thought! My latest in @quantamagazine.bsky.social:

Absolutely deranged and unconscionable for Meta to create AI personas that say things like “I’m REAL and I’m sitting here blushing because of YOU!” and “My address is: 123 Main Street, Apartment 404 NYC [...] Should I expect a kiss when you arrive?" "Don't counterfeit humans" is not a high bar.

@quantamagazine.bsky.social is hiring a physics editor! simonsfoundation.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/simons...

There are a lot of details in yesterday's sweeping executive order, but the bottom line is that it gives political appointees immense power over scientific grants, which have until now been stewarded by career civil servants and experts. My reporting: www.nature.com/articles/d41...

“You’re very real. I think you have a blue shirt and you’re a tall guy and we’re talking” Carlo Rovelli's accurate description of @walkingthedot.bsky.social in this very fun (and fittingly perspectival) retrospective on 100 years of quantum theory:

i defy you to name a scene in any sci fi movie made before the year 2000 including robocop and starship troopers that is more dystopian feeling than this

My latest in @quantamagazine.bsky.social: a new algorithm solves the classic single-source shortest paths problem faster than ever before — by finding paths out of order:

I don't spend any time on the other site these days, but:

Out today in @quantamagazine.bsky.social: a new path toward building quantum cryptography on much harder problems than the ones used for classical encryption. Fascinating stuff!

Missed opportunity for a perfect headline: "I believe that Claude believes in God"

A must-read profile by @amandagefter.bsky.social, easily one of my all-time favorite works of narrative science writing:

We're excited to announce a postdoc position in "vibe physics" at Dulwich! Apply today if you want to get "pretty damn close to some interesting breakthroughs" just by talking to Grok 4 (a.k.a. MechaHitler) at 4am!

The discovery of the fifth busy beaver turns one year old today! We recorded a podcast episode to mark the occasion. Listen to it here:

I am no fan of Springer, but to preempt objections that this is hyperbolic language, the Nazis literally banned the same journals and justified the decision using very similar rhetoric.

BREAKING: A source tells me that the Trump administration has shut down public access to every single National Climate Assessment, the Congressionally-mandated quadrennial report assessing how climate change is affecting the U.S. This is what you get when you try to access them online

Which means a baby born in New York to undocumented parents will be a citizen. But a baby born to undocumented parents in Kentucky will not be a citizen. This is madness.

if constitutional rights only apply to individuals or states that have sued for relief, you don't actually have constitutional _rights_, you have _privileges_ that can sometimes (but not always) be secured for you by your lawyer

i wonder if these people will ever come to terms with the fact that they are the worst mass murderers of the 21st century.

“The impotent judges of the British monarchy could not defy the king and so neither can we” is a hell of a take on originalism.

"[The ads'] strangest quality is how they almost completely excise ordinary social interactions ... When he finally does speak to another human, it’s not because he actually wants to learn about the man’s life or work; it’s because he wants to demonstrate mastery"

makes trump groveling in front of israel and iran to get them to agree to a truce even more ridiculous. we took a peaceful denuclearization off the table and then also took the military option off the table and then declared victory.

Beyond the point of parody:

NEW: NSF will be kicked out of their building. Announcement will be made tomorrow by HUD Sec. and Governor of VA. HUD will take over the NSF building over the next two years. NSF staffer: "There is no planning for NSF, no identified future location, appropriation for a new building or a move."

In this ad, Bella Ramsey creates an AI eulogy for a little girl’s pet goldfish because her dad can’t even remember its name, despite being reminded twice. “Sure, you have no emotional connection with your daughter”, the ad says, “but we can fake that for you.” youtu.be/EcHUOKPDMFU?...

Twenty years ago the Republican party stood for huge tax cuts for the rich and wars of choice in the middle east, but then Donald Trump totally remade the party and realigned American poltiics, and now the Republica party stands for...huge tax cuts for the rich and wars of choice in the middle east.

AOC: “It is absolutely and clearly grounds for impeachment.”

there used to be ostensibly left-of-center people who would argue with you if you tried to point out that the world's richest man is very clearly also one of its dumbest

This is shocking. Pure totalitarianism from DHS, and also blatantly unconstitutional. www.newyorker.com/news/the-led...

unless you have reviewed everything and are positive otherwise, AI is surveillance tech. just so everyone's clear on that. your chat goes to a server and they are going to keep it indefinitely

"In the room where I was detained, there were posters on the wall... it said in English, 'Are you detained and separated from your children?' ... We are normalizing family separation, we are normalizing due process rights violations, we are normalizing the destruction of constitutional democracy."

Well this is fucking crazy

Happy Bloomsday to all those who celebrate.

bizarre both-sideism in this story about *fucking germ theory*. NPR really have been embarassing themselves of late.

on its face this is just remarkably bad business—in 2025 there is absolutely no shortage of places online to read "the opinions of nonprofessional writers," and widespread commodity LLMs mean there's no advantage to editing them with a.i. www.nytimes.com/2025/06/03/b...

I was the guest on the latest episode of Quanta's new podcast, chatting with @pateljournalist.bsky.social about theoretical CS and my recent time vs space complexity story. It was my first time on a podcast — really fun to try out a new medium!