In other news, I'm watching baseball, and there was just now a commercial for magnetic necklaces. Shoulda known that the common thing I have been seeing on athletes for years is that sort of junk. I had just assumed it was some brand.

Oh, lordy, Sabine Honssenfelder is at it again. There is a LOT wrong, including simple factual matters, in her newest anti-quantum computing video. In the comments someone points out Amdahl's Law to her. She says she's never heard of it. I told her about it on Twitter in 2019.

It's an important day in my diet: ramen and ice cream. ...did I mention the 80km on the bike? (This is the plan, will report back later.)

You can tell it's a fake profile because there's no ORCID ID...

Miles, gone 34 years ago this weekend. “People talk about ‘cool,’” he said, “but for us it wasn’t about being cool — it was about trying to find a different sound. The critics called it ‘cool.’ We just called it music.” #RIP

Routed West exhibit of African American quilts at BAMPFA. Go see it!!!

Given the bravery of MSF and their willingness to endure almost any hardships, this is telling.

In discussion with a computer scientist from the University of Cambridge last night: Me: "you've described some of the things that AI is good at. How would you describe the category of things it's not good at? **pause** Him: "Anything where it has to be right".

Uh-oh

job alert: My department is now running a search to fill a newly inaugurated endowed chair in the History of Technology. Please consider applying/share widely. I'm not on the committee, but happy to answer questions or connect you with those who are. Details here: recruit.ap.uci.edu/JPF09897

The administration's canceling of foreign aid is heartless and evil. www.science.org/content/arti...

Today was a hard day for Ph.D. students who found out that they can no longer apply for NSF's prestigious Graduate Research Fellowship Program. "Devastating“ was how one student described it to me. #GradSchool #NSFGRFP www.science.org/content/arti...

every restaurant should have gravy on the menu. gravy you can order by itself

My wife is eating seaweed and rotten soybeans. Well, fermented, anyway.

HBD to the paper that launched a million angry emails from retired engineers who say they used high-school algebra to prove the author wrong (spoiler: they didn't)

“Fish” can refer to a single individual, or multiple individuals from the same species. “Fishes” refers to multiple species. 🐠 Fish 🐠🐠🐠 Fish 🐠🐟🐡 Fishes

There is so much in the news cycle these days that the complete dismantling of the Forest Service -- so *our* forests can be auctioned off to Big TImber -- is unfortunately getting little air play. But if this happens, US landscapes may be almost unrecognizable in a decade, and never coming back. 🌍

While the "City of Five Smells" is mostly associated with the awful odors from its local industries, I will forever remember fondly two days of every month: Cinnamon Toash Crunch Day and Crunch Berries Day. Sweetly sublime.

I am trying to buy a new pair of bibs biking pants for a ride this weekend. The 2XL is for men with 28" (71cm) waist. The 4XL is for people with a 32" waist. And are 6'3"-6'5".

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Auric Goldfinger IS Donald Trump. The face, the dress sense, the vulgarity, the infantile love of gold, cheating at golf - EVERYTHING matches. Fleming and Broccoli had a Nostradamus moment.

My daughter's phone died overnight, but I served as her alarm clock by sneezing. What's unusual about this is not that I can sneeze loud enough to wake the dead, it's that it woke her up. Even from the time she was a baby, she learned to just live with (and sleep through) my sneezes.

Good for Tylenol.

Trump switches gears on Ukraine war as fears of disengagement rise www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2025/09...

This year’s brief autumn will give way to an early winter, with temperatures staying unseasonably high through October before plunging in late November, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency. www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2025/09...

Happy 100th anniversary to Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin’s extraordinary thesis!

I'm with Toad.

This will need a click on your phone! The Heart and Soul nebulae. A full framed widescale image as captured in a single session last night by the Dwarf3! 180 minutes of 60 second exposures (the best 132 of which were stacked) #astrophotography #astronomy @stormhour.com @photohour.bsky.social

Happy Birthday NFS!

The federal government has censored the work of dozens of scientists, including work by my lab, on the impacts of climate change on Acadia National Park. Signs have been removed from Cadillac and Great Meadow. They’re also removing signs about the Wabanaki’s sacred connections to Cadillac.

very excited to share this update about bringing AT to the IETF! last week we uploaded two drafts to the IETF datatracker and today we heard that we’re approved to host a Birds of a Feather at IETF 124 (the formal meeting towards establishing a working group)

NBC News interviewed six professors who were added between 2016 and 2023 on Turning Point USA's 'Professor Watchlist' — a project that highlights what it sees as left-leaning bias in higher education. Once added, they received negative messages and comments; two said it escalated to death threats.

On Rosh Hashanah at synagogue yesterday, I found myself praying for Mariam Abu Dagga, a 33 year old AP reporter killed in August while working in Gaza. Dagga, a mother of a 12 year old boy, has evacuated her son to the UAE, but Dagga stayed behind in Gaza doing her job as a reporter for AP.

President Trump is directing the Justice Department to prosecute his perceived political enemies, upending the career ranks and raising questions about selective prosecution.

This ought to be engraved somewhere.

It's time to tell your department head that quantum computing has always been a subfield of computer science or mathematics.

Billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie Scott has donated $70 million to the UNCF, as the nation’s largest private provider of scholarships to minority students works to raise $1 billion to strengthen all 37 of its historically Black colleges and universities. cnn.it/3IzW9Jf

Another fantastic paper by Noédyn Baspin on arxiv today. Introducing the free energy barrier for quantum codes and using it to destroy our dreams of a self-correcting quantum memory in 3D based on existing codes. scirate.com/arxiv/2509.1...

Wonder if this is available in Japan. I need a new phone... www.idquantique.com/random-numbe...

At this exact time and date — 14:19 Eastern US time on September 22, 2025 — the center of the Sun is directly over Earth's equator (in technical terms, it has a declination of 0°), marking the moment of the September equinox. Happy equinox!

Trump has signed an executive order designating Antifa as a domestic terrorist organisation.

new from @kylietcheung.bsky.social in @teenvogue.com: recently, men have impersonated plainclothes ICE agents to assault women—only possible, she argues, because state agents commit violence with impunity. "To be clear, men wouldn’t be posing as ICE agents and assaulting women if ICE didn’t exist."

If you, like me, are the parent of a neuro-atypical child dreading this autism press conference, please remember: These are the people hurting our kids. Not us. They are the ones stigmatizing and pathologizing them. They are the ones peddling untested science. And we should be very, very angry.

my favorite subgenre of Halloween decoration is “skeleton of things that absolutely do not have skeletons”

If you're not in Okinawa for the summer school in quantum communications, we miss you!

Earlier this year, ProPublica found that the sepsis rate in second-trimester pregnancy loss hospitalizations increased by more than 50% under Texas’ abortion ban. Here’s how we did our analysis. (Published Feb. 2025)

I didn't keep a screen shot and the second time the answer was different, but Google's AI just told me ANA 471 includes lunch because it's a flight to San Francisco. I'm going to Okinawa.

White House border czar Tom Homan was investigated by federal law enforcement last year and was caught on camera accepting $50,000 in cash from agents who were posing as business executives seeking government contracts. Trump administration officials now decry the probe as “politically motivated.”