Today, after not enough time at the recipe book and two hours at the stove, I learned the difference between hrutka, the cheery yellow egg curd of my Carpatho-Rusyn ancestors, and "sweet hrutka", which commemorates a Midwestern devilled egg platter sacked and burned by Czar Cinnabon the Grey

Things that notably boosted my respect for the military: Having an Army officer classmate in the MIT Physics PhD program. When his turn came up for the astro-grad-student-led lunchtime seminar, he talked about tanks Things that notably lowered my respect for the military: Pete Hegseth

I think we should go further. all immigrants in this country, legal and undocumented, should be granted citizenship as reparations for the current horrors directed at them. www.everythingishorrible.net/p/for-immigr...

In this disposable age, I am stunned/delighted that Hohner sells all the repair/maintenance parts to fix a chromatic harmonica my dad acquired 40+ years ago

In one story in The House at Pooh Corner, Owl is homeless after a storm: he's a public charge, a refugee, an asylum seeker. I love this passage: where Pooh grasps his moral duty towards Piglet after Piglet gives Owl his own house. Anyway! I spent today imagining what awaits Stephen Miller in hell

We’re excited to welcome Hari Padma to the #CWRU Physics Dept as the Frederick Reines Assistant Professor of Physics! 🎉 He completed a PhD at Penn State & postdoc at Harvard. His research focuses on quantum materials and experimental condensed matter. ow.ly/kz1j50Y8nfa

Hey #cleveland I want to put in a plug for everything on-view at moCa (all new as of 1/30). The group show is "Ohio Now: State of Nature" (highlights for me are John Sabraw's one big canvas; Charmaine Spencer's and Supermrin's earthy wall hangings; Keith Lemley's neon stratigraphy) but also 1/2

ACADEMIC IN CHARGE OF A $500 THESIS PRIZE: please submit a performance video and 1 page personal statement GOP <sealioning>: no SAT scores? this self-dealing ivory-tower gatekeeping is unfair. you will be forced to run on merit like the private sector does PRIVATE MERITOCRACY IN CHARGE OF $2B:

But what I was going to say was: one of the things I like about direct collapse black holes is that they're a reminder of the old Avi Loeb, the pre-aliens Avi Loeb, the Avi Loeb who had a really enviable string of productive papers about that sort of non-alien astrophysics

I wondered if astrosky was skeeting about Paccuci et. al's paper arxiv.org/abs/2601.14368. I typed "little red dots" into the search field; up popped twenty pictures of a cute dog named Cupcake because, the alt text explains, he has little red dots for eyebrows. 12/10 would search again 🧪🔭

There's an update on their webpage relevant to the plate archive (attn @brittlundgren.bsky.social)

Why is it that the car industry's battery technology revolution hasn't touched small consumer batteries? As far as I can tell the basic drugstore AAA battery purchase is still NiMH, still costs $12 a four-pack, and still lasts for about three cycles, same as 20 years ago.

an undercovered thing is that internal combustion vehicles require a _really_ elaborate fuel production and distribution network which we don't think about here because it is already so pervasive. not in the US but globally there is a tipping point where that's unsupportable

It is not surprising to me that Erich von Daniken (RIP, 1935–2026) found credulous readers for his crackpot astro/archaeology books. What is more surprising is that he also built a crackpot theme park in Switzerand and attracted >200k visitors a year (2003–2006)🧪 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jungfra...

I have demoted my old Twitter account from "mothballed" to "deleted"

"Throwing a snowball at a redcoat --- that's what justifies being shot. The reason Crispus Attucks is dead is because he threw a snowball at the 29th Regiment of Foot and they acted in self defense."

Dear conservatives, I will make you a deal. If you will get mad about Trump's federal agents murdering civilians in Minnesota, I will get mad about Ruby Ridge and Waco. Remember those? The events so scary we practically rewrote the 2nd Amendment around them and kicked off the school-shooting era?

The 2025 stats were no fun obviously, but I feel like Jhonkensy Noel was one good batting coach away from being a keeper. Fun player to cheer for, the biggest smile on the team.

This dishwasher, wherein Theseus and the youth of Athens returned from Crete, was preserved by the online appliance parts retailer down even to the time of Demetrius Phalereus, for they took away the old parts as they decayed, putting in new and strong parts in their place

End of the year, you're thinking about (a) year-end charity (money, volunteering) and (b) new year's resolutions for 2026. There's a lot of need out there, holy cow, right? I want to make the case that a good use of your 2026 charity time, money, and energy is RIDING PUBLIC TRANSIT. 🧵 1/10

looking at a map of Willoughby, Ohio and briefly surprised by the apparent facts: a) that Willoughby is home to a cyclorama b) that Willoughby is home to a cyclorama, not of Willoughby, but of nearby Mentor c) that a cyclorama of Mentor of all places would even exist * it's not a cyclorama

hauntingly beautiful #art by glassworker Simone Crestani in collaboration with aerogel-worker (?) Ioannis Michalou(di)s www.simonecrestani.com/2025/04/29/s...

ME, FRIDAY: I have no idea how to write another modern physics exam. I am out of ideas. ME, TODAY: I have no idea how to cut this exam down to length, there are too many nifty little questions 🎢

important holiday shopping news for your toolsy loved ones a) under-$20 b) genuinely surprising c) despite being cheap Amazon crap I feel like these adapters earn you full buy-nothing/circular-economy/anticapitalist cred

example (d) is the "data centers in space" idea in the news this week. What sort of idiot would pursue this for more than a few minutes? Answer: a lazy billionaire who read last week's headlines about nascent local pushback against data centers

My first nuclear physics research experience was on STAR. DOE-funded summer (the program now called SULI) at LBNL in Nu Xu’s group, In 1998, before RHIC turned on. I got to visit BNL and see the TPC in the assembly hall before it was installed.

I WONDER IF ... (with managed water releases) (responding to forecasted cold snaps) (with a lot of volunteers on safety watch) (and a zamboni) ... a couple of miles of Ohio and Erie Canal bed could flood, freeze, and operate as a public skateway, like Ottawa's Rideau Canal? #cvnp #cleveland

Columbus school board votes to slash jobs, close schools to save $50M Ohio spent more than a billion dollars on private school vouchers in fiscal year 2025 #pairedtexts

I feel like the reason billionaire investors like (a) fusion rather than solar power (b) satellite internet rather than rural fiber, (c) flying cars over trains/buses (d) etc., is that they're too lazy to work in spaces where local regulatory bodies exist at all

good: 15 minute bus headways worse: 30 minute bus headways better: 30 minute bus headways but there's a coffee shop at your stop COFFEE IS INFRASTRUCTURE #transitsky #gcrta

Congratulations to #cwru outstanding seniors Zachariah Jones, MG Davis and Samuel Diener and advisors Prof. Jesse Berezovsky and Prof. Pino Strangi! The students presented their research projects in today's Fall Senior Physics Project Symposium. Very impressive! 🔬🌟💡 #physics #undergraduateresearch

I am 100% enjoying Sheila Hale's Titian biography BUT ALSO it is the most effective sleepytime reading I have ever picked up. Long soothing sentences about a huge cast of late-Renaissance notables and non-notables. Pure ducat-based melatonin. 🧵 1/7 www.harpercollins.com/products/tit...

I want to add: "one labor-intensive 5.4 kW array" is not how we save the planet; tacking my project's budget onto a utility-scale solar plant would have yielded 4x or 5x as much power? With the GOP curb-stomping those projects, this is (a) second-best (b) good enough, and (c) under my control.

I want to post a bit about my BACKYARD SOLAR PERGOLA in case someone else is in a situation like mine. a) Weird roofline/clay tile makes rooftop hard b) Couldn't make ground mount or pole mount work since they're too ugly for local zoning Solution: #solar pergola! 🔌💡☀️ Details: 1/

<overheard> STUDENT: I need some help COLLEAGUE: ok STUDENT: I have a problem with a person named Chad <me, thinking: omg please close the door before these sensitive ombudsman conversations> STUDENT: Chad has a board and a rope <me: 😱 wtaf> STUDENT: I'll draw the free body diagram <me: oh> 🎢

dear sports bettors: you are the problem. you. "my favorite part of baseball is the first pitch of the second inning", my god, it's not even the winning/losing outcomes that humans care about. you ruined sports to get a random-number generator to bet on. go bet on dice in the Biltmore garage, jerk

Case Western Reserve Department of Biology is hiring! We're recruiting for a tenure-track position focusing on eukaryotic microbiology, especially microbial/environment interactions. Please share widely: apply.interfolio.com/174456

Australia has so much electricity from solar power that it is going to start offering free electricity to everyone for at least three hours during the day as the wholesale price of power goes negative electrek.co/2025/11/04/a...

Every fall when baseball season ends and football, inexplicably, begins, I think again about features I like and dislike about spectator sports, and every year I futilely dream we will someday REPLACE AMERICAN FOOTBALL WITH KABADDI

In honor of Halloween, I just read a horror novel and wanted to write up a quick micro-review thread here. Presenting: @mcmanlypants.bsky.social's Children of Solitude. Thread: 1/ www.skylightbooks.com/book/9798992...

My 2¢: your in-person talk isn't about maximizing data-delivery, it's about being a person. What are the things a paper CAN'T do that a speaker CAN? Voice, affect, personal reactions. Share "Y was a fucking slog". Control my attention: "Z is tricky, stay with me lol". Say "Look! Cool, right?"

YOUR GUIDE TO MELLONS Rags-to-riches (Thomas, d. 1908) Hardworking (Andrew, d. 1937; Richard B, d. 1933) Spent inheritance decently-ish (Paul, d. 1999; Richard K, d 1970) Never met hardworking grandpas; should have been estate-taxed into dust; evil (Richard Mellon Scaife, d 2014; Timothy, b. 1942)

My student self said "I will never, ever use this knowledge" about so many physics topics which later came home to roost. Today I'm solving the Lane-Emden equation, which I vividly remember failing to do successfully (in Fortran) when Ed Bertschinger assigned it as 8.901 homework.

INTERVIEWER: do you have any skull tattoos? ME: for context, let's talk about Tamsyn Muir's Locked Tomb novels, in which <four hour plot recap> in the end recontextualizing the Ninth House skeleton cult as something purposeful. INTERVIEWER <dazed>: sir just answer the question ME: I have no tattoos

Personally, I enjoyed writing my course syllabi as raw HTML which I could SCP down the hall to a Linux box named after a Tolkien sword and running an infrequently-patched Apache server. In that context, my neckbeard contrarian educator opinion is: "Canvas is pretty good by comparison" 🎢

My friendly department-next-door, Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering, is hiring a f/t staff engineer! Work in undergrad teaching labs AND help w/ cool research instruments. "Bachelor’s degree in engineering and 0--2y professional experience" says the ad. Job code 13852 at employment.case.edu

I emailed our colloquium organizers with the title of my talk, "Supernova Neutrinos: From 1987 To [Insert Date Here]". Just realized the talk was announced as "Supernova Neutrinos: From 1987 To Today". Next time I give a colloquium I'm going to try submitting a title containing an XSS attack.

CWRU's lifelong learning program sent out their calendar of upcoming lectures, with topics ranging from earth science to religious studies, and including the following unsettling entry: HOW TO UNDERSTAND THE HEAVENS (IN-PERSON)

In the 1950s, National Geographic wanted Kodachrome nature photography that really popped in print. One trick was to put foreground subjects (hikers, etc.) in bright colors; it was called the "red shirt school". Dick Lasher's Pinto makes this the greatest red shirt school photo of all time.

If you are an alum of: Vanderbilt UVA UT Austin U of Southern California Dartmouth Brown MIT U Penn U Arizona Your alma mater is RIGHT NOW weighing the costs and benefits of giving up its independence and abandoning academic freedom. SPEAK UP NOW: 2/2