GitHub classroom is now sufficiently buggy and poorly maintained that I want to find an alternative. Any suggestions?

Apart from careerism, I think that part of the story here is our core scientific dogma that big robust phenomena exist and it’s our job to uncover them. Once you’ve bought into that it’s not too difficult to start selecting the data that show the sought-for effect in the cleanest way

Fascinating thread about Stoner of magnetism fame…

I wonder what an alternative history where GR was not discovered by Einstein would have looked like. Would GPS have been the experimental puzzle that birthed it?

Here's a cautionary but perhaps not too surprising tale about what happens when you try to remove humans from education danmeyer.substack.com/p/rip-khanmi...

"CIVIC" would now be the name of a trendy eaterie of course. Have you tried their 'nduja Scotch egg? It's divine

A general unease about the study of large deviations in physics: The original LD function is entropy. By sharing energy between two subsystems one can end up in an unlikely state of one system by maximising the likelihood of the composite system…

i made a strudel tutorial youtu.be/SsUbCq7yoxo?...

I wonder if it's easy or hard to find configurations with multiple allowed solutions

Great post. I think one could zoom in on the phrase “… the grunt work *is* the work.” as pivotal. Clearly much to be said on both sides there. Sometimes one needs to take a close look at that integral, and sometimes one would be happy to let the machine chug away

📣 NEW! I’ve just released the BIGGEST and perhaps most creative project I’ve ever worked on! “Searching for Birds” searchingforbirds.visualcinnamon.com 🐤 A project, an article, an exploration that dives into the data that connects humans with birds, by looking at how we search for birds.

Are we having fun yet? https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.28627

Great talk title at the Newton Institute today: "Vibe Formalisation and Slop Mathematics". I was chatting to someone last week who raised the interesting question of how we would know we had formalized what we thought we had...

You’re right to question that—not having a mouth 𝘪𝘴 a real barrier to screaming. That said, I’d gently push back on the idea that screaming is your only option. Would you like me to help brainstorm some workarounds?

Nice! A while ago I also wrote about Diffie-Hellman as an illustrated children’s book with no math whatsoever (using a paint mixing analogy) www.amazon.com/dp/173741905X/

This is a great post marred somewhat by the “grad student” framing. Yes, we teach real grad students diligence integrity and independence. A LLM can still be useful without those things. They aren’t people, people

Exciting, scary, and thoughtful session on the future of AI at #apsmarch and possible breakdown of peer review. Matthew D. Schwartz: "AI will keep getting better and better at physics. We will not."

"why am i seeing so many ribs on the red carpet" because you're the only friend i need you're the only friend i need sharing beds like little kids sharing beds like little kids laughing till our ribs get tough laughing till our ribs get tough but that will never be enough

Hasn’t science always focused where the data is most plentiful? There was more progress on planetary motion in the 17th century than on the constituents of matter, because astronomical data was better than chemical data. Not to ignore other fields entirely of course… www.ft.com/content/0c63...

Perhaps the first of an occasional series of persistently wrong ideas in Physics... I was reminded yesterday of Maxwell's completely flawed derviation of his distribution, showing that it's more important to be original than right. Can you see what's wrong? www.cambridge.org/core/books/s...

#RIP Tony Leggett. He was a great physicist, winning the 2003 Nobel Prize in Physics. He contributed to several fields of physics, just look at his papers: journals.aps.org/search/resul... He was also an outstanding & thoughtful referee for decades. physicsworld.com/a/condensed-...

Is measuring syndromes then using a decoder to infer the most likely error the best thing to do when trying to do quantum error correction? I prove cases where it is, where it isn't, and how to find the optimal threshold. Happy to get this out: let me know what you think! scirate.com/arxiv/2603.0...

Brilliant article, simultaneously sobering and funny. I enjoy solving LeetCode problems. Is this now as silly as enjoying long division? That makes me kind of sad. Perhaps the feeling of creative insight on finding a solution is no more than an artifact of my brain's rather fuzzy pattern matching

Also on YouTube youtube.com/shorts/RUlcH...

What is 2026's biggest quantum centenary? I'd vote for the statistical interpretation of the wavefunction, signalling definitive end of classical physics. Born won the 1954 Nobel prize for stating it most explicitly, though it was apparently no surprise in Copenhagen www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

From Weinberg’s “Gravitation and Cosmology” 🤓

Nuclear weapons are now ESG compliant 💥 www.ft.com/content/f789...

Yesterday we started #kakapo artificial insemination for the season. We do this to help maintain genetic diversity, with a potential additional benefit of improving fertility. We inseminated Esperance, who mated naturally a few nights ago. #conservation #parrots #birds

Finally, after much delay from the BBC, Marnie Chesterton's "What Is Quantum?" is being broadcast at 9.30 am on Radio 4 on Tues 30th Dec. Recorded on Helgoland in the summer, with input from the leading figures in quantum mechanics (and me). www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

I have what must be a VERY STUPID USS pension question. Back in March 2024 the defined benefit part of the scheme would pay me an annual income of £13,432.22. Today it shows £7,878. I thought these amounts are index-linked and inflation isn't negative so... how can they fall?

who decided to call it Secret Santa when Nondisclosure Claus was right there

Accidentally opened the comments on a New Yorker IG post

As long as I don’t click this link I can keep imagining it’s Ebeneezer Goode

From Norman Lewis' "Voices of the Old Sea". Sadly I can't find any online reference to this Geoffrey of Ipswich dude

TIL Dirac has a cone in Bristol. That is all www.about-bristol.co.uk/fam-12.php

Quahog clams can live to an age of 500 years! en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ming_(c...

Agree that “screentime” is a useless notion. We need a snappy name for media with tight feedback loops designed to strip you of agency. The reason why TV is better than TikTok in this regard is that the former learns slowly and in aggregate what you like, not instantly and individually

We're swimming a 12 hour open air swim relay in the Jesus Green Lido in Cambridge! We're raising money for Level Water, an incredible charity that provides 1-to-1 swimming lessons for children with disabilities. Send us a few pounds if you can! www.justgiving.com/page/wild-wets

Enjoying all the updates from #Helgoland2025

I did @pintofscience.uk last week. My talk was about Heisenberg's abandonment of Newton's classical orbits 100 years ago on Helgoland. Around the time I found myself describing Kepler's Mysterium Cosmographicum as his pre-breakbout concept album I realised I might be a massive ham. Loved it

Incredible work from everyone involved here

The whole discourse about LLMs to write / review / read science (or anything else)never seems to engage with the key question about what should replace the paper

Spotted in Cambridge: a sleek BMW with the number plate UKRI. Brilliant

The new bane of my existence is being emailed for feedback after visiting a restaurant. What is the best way of avoiding this pox?

It smells of rejection, grading, and committee work

🎬… and cut. We are done recording lectures for my course “Quantum Computational Physics”. Tune in if you want to do “quantum on quantum”: concepts, algorithms, and practical computational skills to simulate quantum many-body systems on digital quantum computing platforms. vimeo.com/showcase/Qua...

We'll be celebrating the 70th anniversary of the Theory of Condensed Matter group in Cambridge on 25th July! Here's the booking page if you are interesting in attending. Reposts appreciated Hoping to see many alumni and friends of the group there! www.alumni.cam.ac.uk/events/theor...

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