Having a somewhat odd realization about phase vs group velocities for quantum wave packets and the sign difference between the Hamiltonian and the Lagrangian

It is a, let's say, interesting fact that "academic integrity" is discussed here primarily not as a question of, say, honesty or disclosure of conflicts but as one of "respect for differences" and "balanced treatment of disputed issues"

Fancy

Dunno why the Schengen exit procedures at GVA have been incredibly slow the last few months, but it's pretty ridiculous

Need more ATLAS shift music. The L1Calo Receiver Blues. The LUCID Calibration Boogaloo. It's A Fast-Driving Rave-Up With The Pixel Warm Start Sixteen Minutes

Congrats to the authors, I cannot stress how annoying this process is to measure

The production of top quark pairs together with a W boson is a great way to test the quality of standard model predictions. This #CMSPaper measures provides boundaries on things like the difference between ttW+/- production, a very sensitive quantity to test the predictions arxiv.org/abs/2509.13512

One of CERN's resident magpies

If the Hamiltonian flow of everyone in your neighborhood has brought them to bigotry, well...

"The cultivated mind is the guardian genius of democracy" is a quote that pretty clearly terrifies certain people

The thing about her list of complaints about academia (protests! chronicling Western oppression! research with no practical benefit! the CDC for some reason!) is that they can only be addressed by reducing the scope of things people do in universities, which doesn't sound like "viewpoint diversity"

brb expressing the size of the Argentina bailout in FCC-ee units

I'm always vaguely astonished at how cartoonish these people wind up being. If the school leadership is so certain it's doing the right thing, why the fear of student journalists?

Thank you, see you next year #AustinFC (Sadly I probably can't make the playoff game)

Discovering French conjugations I never knew existed. "Je me souvinsse"?

One's complement-ass elevator

Which is, perhaps, the point

✴️For the first time since 1945, UT does not have a representative faculty council. Our press release on the replacement of an elected Faculty Council with faculty advisory bodies composed entirely of appointees of President Davis. docs.google.com/document/d/1...

SPEAKING FOR MYSELF (because apparently it needs to be said) the regents and administration might want to ask themselves if this is really a precedent they want to set

Nigeria 65 🇳🇬

It's always fascinating which things are assumed to be common knowledge in different eras. "... the well-known result that the phase of the wave function corresponds to Hamilton's principle [sic] function in classical theory" oh is it well known?

"Well, how did I get here?" - David Byrne on determining trajectories via least action

Yeah I read theory

Apparently "Bashfest 2025" is some astronomy thing and not a celebration of shell scripting?

A certain irony to this www.ft.com/content/4501...

“It’s such a blatant violation of First Amendment and academic freedom rights,” said Brian Evans, president of the Texas Conference of the American Association of University Professors. “There was no process. This just happened out of nowhere.” apple.news/AOJ7as67dS46...

When I am informed of the name of Bradford City's captain

Skyrmions are not made of skyr. Wasted opportunity

Nuclear energy enthusiasts are so cute

YOU'RE GONNA BE THE ONE THAT SAAAAAVES MEEEE

So I confidently predicted a goal in the 120', I just got the team wrong #AustinFC

When we talk about "difficult speakers" or "challenging discussions" what is almost always going on is just an argument about values, where we are all supposed to pro forma act like it's not.

"If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein." Justice Robert Jackson, 1943

Q. Who aligns the aligners? A. alignmentalignment.ai Today I’m humbled to announce an epoch-defining event: the launch of the 𝗖𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗔𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗼𝗳 𝗔𝗜 𝗔𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗖𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘀.

From Prof. Leonard Bright: “In light of the recent controversy at Texas A&M, I wanted to share this video featuring an excellent defense of academic freedom by our own Texas A&M President, Mark Welsh, back in 2023….” 👇👇 www.linkedin.com/posts/dr-leo...

In case you're wondering: I'm not familiar with Texas State's rules but the language used by their president ("serious personal and professional misconduct") parallels that which for us is supposed to be the tenure escape clause for if a professor commits sexual assault or fabricates data

🚨 Stephen Hawking was right: when two black holes collide, the resulting black hole has a bigger surface area than the originals. Amazing finding on the 10th anniversary of gravitational wave astronomy!

Looking forward to someone insisting that I can't talk about the Big Bang in the Modern Physics class because it's not in the course description

www.chronicle.com/article/a-cl... The Chronicle of Higher Education offers some background on the academic freedom crisis at Texas A&M. Note that by the end of yesterday the professor was fired, raising due process as well as academic freedom concerns.

Oh, you can't provide details at this time, how convenient

In one of the more hilariously-timed things they've done, FIRE releases a report ranking Texas A&M far above, say, Cornell for free speech on the day we find out TAMU fires deans because of one (1) student complaining about the content of a class

Kind of feel bad for Texas public university administrators, who are being held responsible for things that in many cases they can't legally control. Essentially, if they haven't created enough of a climate of fear to encourage compliance, they've failed

I'm sure the Civitas Institute is about to propose a required undergrad course where they explain that the president does not make laws? No? Oh, they're doing this instead www.civitasinstitute.org/research/do-...

One of the interesting things is how they're training students to be informers, complete with secret video recordings. I guess those are the A&M System values Glenn Hegar speaks of

ME, IN TEARS: you can't just say every single part of a computer system is a file UNIX, POINTING AT THE MOUSE: file

An embarrassment to Nigerians

The one thing I'll give the city is that Baltimore Penn Station is very cute

Despite earlier denials on my part, it seems I will be teaching Quantum I in the spring

If you think your project is just so old that you'll never finish it, take heart from Peter Gabriel's i/o