We won!

On the last day of the strike we had our own school of computing picket line

Out in force at the Newcastle Pickets today! Nick rocking the picket sign! 🪧❤️ @ucu.org.uk @quantumchancellor.bsky.social

New paper dance! Excellent work by @jbennett107.bsky.social at @iqoqi.bsky.social with @quantumchancellor.bsky.social and Wolfgang Lechner, showing that the LHZ encoding works with quantum walks, i.e., diabatic driving.

Now over 2200 signatures and still rising.

OK folks, I have now created a google form that allows people to sign to show their support for my open letter to the President of the Royal Society. Please sign and share widely: forms.gle/miDciq35oxyw...

Our members have given a clear message, cuts this way is not the way forward. They want a more democratic governance of their university, reasonable workloads, and most importantly, to stop this devastating approach to HE as a business. oh, and if you want to sign the letter the article refers to:

Not just a comprehensive review of metrics and benchmarking for quantum computing, the launch of a living resource including software for characterising and comparing quantum computing hardware. Led by Ivan Rungger @ NPL (UK National Physical Lab).

I’m proud to have played a (small, I wrote the annealing bits) part in this comprehensive review on benchmarking and metrics for quantum computing arxiv.org/abs/2502.06717

Extremely proud to have played a part in creating this video game to learn about quantum computing store.steampowered.com/app/2802710/... uses full state space representation in an entirely visible way, worth checking out no matter your level of expertise

So I actually am from the same place as the small boulder the size of a small boulder, I drove by there every day going to school

New paper in physical review research (published by @apsphysics.bsky.social) : doi.org/10.1103/Phys... using quantum annealing for load partitioning looking at a different angle to take advantage of quantum optimization. Unfortunately I don’t think any of my coauthors are on Bluesky (yet)

People who haven’t spent much time in the LA area might imagine the surrounding forests are like the ones we have in England, but it’s actually incredibly dense brush growing on very steep slopes with cliffs in places, there isn’t a good way to “just rake up the leaves”

People who haven’t spent much time in the LA area might imagine the surrounding forests are like the ones we have in England, but it’s actually incredibly dense brush growing on very steep slopes with cliffs in places, there isn’t a good way to “just rake up the leaves”

One might think that Nazi crimes and palaeontology never overlapped, and yet... Have you ever wondered what happened to tens of palaeontologists & geologists in the Nazi-occupied Poland? How academics helped to bring down the fascist regime. And a curious story of Schindler-equivalent in geology. 🧵

We waste hundreds of billions a year on health care administrative expenses that make insurance CEOs and wealthy stockholders incredibly rich while 85 million Americans go uninsured or underinsured. Health care is a human right. We need Medicare for All.

I left the US for the UK over a decade ago and over the years I have had some very attractive offers to go back, healthcare is a big part of the reason why (of course I recognise that leaving isn’t a viable option for most people)

I’ve gotten a paper published in Quantum doi.org/10.22331/q-2... it always seemed like a neat journal and I’m glad I finally went for it, the review process was nice and we got some really good feedback which improved the work (co-authored with Jesse Berwald and Raouf Dridi)

I feel sorry for everyone I know back home in the US, but I’m REALLY glad I immigrated to the U.K. it isn’t perfect by any means, but it is a much better place to be 20th my family (it is difficult to describe to someone without US experience how bad/weird US politics and media are)

I wish that places like the UK and Canada would stop trying to shove profit models into healthcare; the US system is really bad, actually!

New paper dance! Comparing quantum walk algorithms with QAOA, collaboration with @quantumchancellor.bsky.social Leonardo Novo, and 4 wonderful students: Lasse Gerblich, Tamanna Dasanjh, Horatio Wong and David Ross

It's Juneteenth. As one possible observation - especially for my fellow white Americans - I suggest reading this. gift link www.nytimes.com/2024/06/19/o...

You don’t call it a “hallucination” when a person just makes stuff up, seems fair to me to assign the same term you would for a person doing it

What's kind of amazing is that we're actually living through a huge technology revolution where our entire power grid is being replaced by solar panels and battery storage and you hear less about it in the press than you did about the totally fake "tech" of NFTs

Idk if any of my followers are in North East England, but for anyone who might be, a quick reminder that today is election day for the regional mayor

New paper published: link.springer.com/article/10.1... showing how much noise reduction is needed in IBM quantum chips to run a simple simulation of a quantum walk. Vivek Wadhia's work with @quantumchancellor.bsky.social and myself.

This, as long as you can explain why a self citation is relevant than it is 100% justified

There is some fantastic art on this thread (or whatever a series of quote posts is called)

picturing this sweet little guy choosing the fonts and a flattering photo, loading the paper in the printer, and then scampering about and posting these all around the neighborhood

A common stereotype is than Jan 6 was done by hicks or poor folks. People traveled there. Money was involved. It was rich people. The car dealership owners or real estate people. The landed gentry of the burbs. This is proven by the many, many arrest records.

the internet, where irony goes to die

These throwable fire extinguishers seem like a real-life example of xkcd.com/937 — they have really good reviews from everyone except the few people who tried using them to put out fires

Welcome to the public domain, STEAMBOAT WILLIE (1928)! archive.org/details/Stea...

As it is a new year, I have updated the subhead for my personal site, and also added a widget to vote.org, which will show up on every page of the site through election day. Because, you know. Kinda important, and it's never too early.

A striking, informative short piece on the state, drivers, and impacts of global migration 🌎

If we collected what is actually owed, we could forgive student loans, invest more in infrastructure and green energy, protect social security and help Ukraine beat Russia. I call that multiple win-wins.

Anyway take this with you into the holiday season

Check out what I think is a liver bolete (Suillellus amygdalinus) I found walking today! Always a thrill to find a bolete, it's been SO uncommon in my life.🤩🥰🥳🌿🍄

The teenage twins of jailed Iranian activist Narges Mohammadi have accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on her behalf. Physicists don't usually get the peace prize ... (link to BBC because that's where I read it just now) www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-m...

Today I learned that carbon footprints were invented by BP and pushed in a mega marketing campaign to shift the conversation from corporations to individuals and I hate everyone. Except NPR, thanks for the reporting.

I’m back in the US visiting family, it’s cool that they have more roundabouts here now, but I wish someone would clue people in to the whole “signalling on and off roundabouts” thing, it just makes life much easier

Cottoneaster has a nice, to scale fungus with it today 🌱🇳🇿 🪴 🌳✂️🌲

…because he doesn’t already have enough 🙃

panel of last three speakers with James Geddes chairing Q&A session - perspectives on portability and incentives to use data infrastructure

Lots of mushrooms out there today, even some purple ones! 🍄📸

#FungiFriends Cauliflower mushroom. Almost as big as a basket ball. Very edible, easy to spot, and hard to mistake.

This is obviously bad, it points to a fairly sinister aspect of how casualisation (assuming the “non-faculty” role was fixed therm) can interfere with academic integrity by making a large portion of staff not “academics”

🍄📷 Another frosty mushroom...

Bragging about being the only one not "bought and paid for" after you drove off all your advertisers is a lot like killing your parents and then calling yourself an orphan.