I made a thing.

Surprised that Taylor needs to promote her latest with an A4 poster at the Imperial College elevators (lifts).

Last year was a sabbatical, so today I’ve got my first proper teaching in a full year and a half — a two-hour lecture to start my Information Theory course. Feeling a bit nervous!

R.I.P. George Smoot, experimental cosmologist, Nobel prize winner and one of the discoverers of primordial fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background, a colleague and mentor back when I was a postdoc in Berkeley, always curious and enthusiastic.

macOS Tahoe/Safari complaint: in sidebar showing Tab Groups, current group shows tab list as if the disclosure triangle clicked. Bad enough. But worse: old group in the sidebar stays open even when I click to a new one! This seems so wrong that there must be a setting — but I couldn’t find it.

This seems like a whole mess of bugs. (Trying to update to macOS 26 Tahoe. Perhaps this is telling me it’s a bad idea?…) > `PASSWORD_ALERT_TITLE_WITH_USERNAME_OSX_REBRAND_SERVICE_ICLOUD` > `PASSWORD_ALERT_MESSAGE_WITH_USERNAME_OSX_REBRAND` > `FOL... https://andrewjaffe.net/microblog/2025/09/1062/

Yesterday, someone walked into the café I was sitting in wearing a Primitives t-shirt. Today, their wonderful “Crash” came on my random streaming mix, so it seems appropriate to share one of the great pop songs of all time.

The amazing Lisa Lucas’ latest for the NY Times, on hunting the autumn leaves in Japan — 3 Days of ‘Momijigari’: Experiencing Japan’s Fiery Autumnal Foliage.

You can pre-order The Random Universe, get a 7% discount, and support local bookstores, all at the same time.

Back — home — to London after 386 days away.

A highlight of our road trip through Western Europe has been my daughters singing along to Lucinda Williams’ “Car Wheels on a gravel Road”, the Mekons’ version of “Wild and Blue”, and Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire” as well as songs from “Hamilton” (along with, yes, Katy Perry and Ed Sheeran).

Spent the night with the family in the Frassenhütte at the top of an Austrian Alp… … followed by our trek down the mountain in pouring rain, hail, thunder and lightning (and inappropriate clothing).

Spent the night with the family in the Frassenhütte at the top of an Austrian Alp.

Cornhole is “American pétanque”.

We left our home in London exactly a year ago for my sabbatical abroad. After stops in Japan & New York, tomorrow we depart from our last long-term stop — a temporary but already much-loved home — in Leiden, the Netherlands, with still a few weeks to go before our final return.

Congratulations to Imperial’s Professor Michele Dougherty, the UK’s new Astronomer Royal!

15% still seems like a lot.

. @ppfideas.bsky.social Thanks to the Past Present Future podcast episodes on the American Revolution, trial of Charles I & English Revolution, I finally understand the American Revolution against the tyranny of the King despite the British constitution’s weak monarch and strong Parliament.

The latest from Lisa Lucas at the Guardian! Freewheeling family fun in the Netherlands: a cycling and camping trip along the Maas river. With special guests!

U.S. abandons hunt for signal of cosmic inflation | Science | AAAS Now-canceled CMB-S4 project would have searched the afterglow of the Big Bang for signs of cosmic exponential growth spurt.

This is mildly clever, very slimy, and a little bit funny (since it only works against other slimy — or at least lazy — people).

@tedbunn.bsky.social Happy Birthday, Ted!

@scripting.com Just trying to figure out how best to ask about my wordland.social questions/feature requests... (1. getting my posts into wordland when created/edited elsewhere; 2. direct markdown editing.) Are these hopeless?

It seems that olive oil, cheap balsamic vinegar, greek yogurt, miso paste and garlic make a good chicken marinade. (Also, this is a Wordland test.)

Always impressed that Stockholm Arlanda airport has eduroam WiFi.

Very impressed that Apple’s autocorrect knows that it’s apostrophes and not quotes in “rock ’n’ roll”.

Flat tire in the Biesbosch (Holland, near Dordrecht).

From “aether” to “Zwicky, Fritz”, The Random Universe now has an index. yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300...

My morning bicycle commute (Leiden, NL)

I love the Netherlands, and I especially love cycling in the Netherlands. I don’t love the various motorized vehicles that are allowed to share the cycle lanes in the Netherlands.

Well, now I have a story about the time I went to see The Mekons but accidentally saw a very loud hardcore band with two drummers instead. This was not my desired outcome. (The Mekons were upstairs. I am kind of bereft.)

Going to Amsterdam, in the fourth country over 35 years in which I’ve seen The @mekons.bsky.social, a band whose music and shows and philosophy of life, art, and politics have meant more to me than almost any other.

The latest from the amazing Lisa Lucas at the NYT!

Proof! Coming later this year, but you can pre-order from your favourite small bookseller today.

Apparently, my fingerprints are almost worn down (according to biometric scans of the Dutch Immigration and Naturalisation Service (IND).

First Parkrun out of the UK.

My book, The Random Universe, is due out in November. It discusses how we build models of the world, even under conditions of radical uncertainty. (It was finished last year, but it turns out that there is still a lot of work to do even after the text is complete…)

I’m not completely sure this is something to be proud of. For Embattled Starmer, U.S.-U.K. Trade Deal Will Count as a Win

Starting the final leg of my sabbatical — back in Europe for the first time since leaving last July. A quick stop through Madrid and then Leiden through most of the summer.

R.I.P. Dave Thomas of Pere Ubu, crazy pre-, proto-, art-, and somehow even post-punk post-rock band. Only saw them once, in the late 80s, at the beginning of their second phase, but regularly returned to their beautiful noise.

Category error.

At least there’s a new Mekons album to help us confront the Horror.

By the numbers, the tariffs are less an expression of economic theory and more a Dadaist art piece about the meaninglessness of expertise." –There Is Only One Way to Make Sense of the Tariffs – Derek Thompson, The Atlantic (h/t Manton Reece)

If you enjoyed this podcast, you’re going to love my book, The Random Universe, coming in November from @yalebooks.bsky.social @yalepress.bsky.social yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300...