ACAA* my latest for @newscientist.com *a cartoon about abbreviations

Your periodic reminder that just because a company got a ton of VC funds, it doesn't mean their idea is not stupid. arstechnica.com/science/2026...

Quote with pink art...

Drop some teeth!

You know AI is evil when it has me rooting for elsevier

Frustrated with the election pundits talking as if votes only 'swing' from one party to another. I did some analysis of the results, and my modelling (based on votes only, not polls) suggests that the largest movement since 2024 local elections (by a long way) is from 'Did Not Vote' -> Reform

Has anyone told him about Ceres?

With all the criticisms I have for Firefox, using Chrome is just a liability nowadays.

I really wish an Italian developer would make a action game based on Etrurian mythos. Don't get me wrong, Greek/Norse/Japanese/Chinese/etc mythologies are great and all, but they have also been milked for decades.

Dear hive mind, I need advice on audio drama to listen to. I greatly enjoy @midstpodcast.bsky.social and @midnightburger.bsky.social , and I am looking for something similar to add to my playlist. #AudioDrama

🚨 Final Call: Last Chance to Submit for EOSAM 2026! 🚨 #EOSAM2026 will feature top experts in the field, with more tutorial speakers to be announced! 📅 Extended submission deadline: 28 April 📝 Submit now: tinyurl.com/ytjnvj4t Registration is open: tinyurl.com/4vr75az4 #Submit #Optics #Photonics

One of the big advantages of buying the physical book of a webcomic is that you already know you like it, but now you can have it in a nice and convenient format! #SideQuested bt @alepresser.com and @kbspangler.com, and #Aurora by Red of @overlysarcastic.bsky.social

Yes, Swiss scientist Fritz Zwicky coined the term “dark matter” which is impressive, but he also coined the term “spherical bastard” to describe people who are bastards no matter which way you look at them, and I think that should be celebrated more.

I am somehow running for the board of #EOS. If you think that having me there trying to expose more people to the beauty of optics is a good idea, you might vote for me. On the other hand there are a lot of excellent candidates on the list, so you should probably vote for one of them 🙂

Brought to you by Zach hasn't studied physics in years and is trying to read through the famous Mike and Ike quantum computing textbook. COMIC ◆ www.smbc-comics.com/comic/easier PATREON ◆ www.patreon.com/ZachWeinersm... STORE ◆ smbc-store.myshopify.com

📢 At #EOSAM2026, Jacopo Bertolotti will present the tutorial “Scientific Visualizations: Animating Physics for Science Communication.” 🔗 More information: tinyurl.com/mt9rrhtn 🗓️ Submission deadline: April 14 🔗 Submit now: www.conftool.com/eosam2026 #ScientificVisualization @jacopobertolotti.com

Good article, worth reading.

One more finished model, a million new things I tried for the first time. The most notable were blending contrast paints, and the crackling on the base. Biggest mistake was not to undershade enough before applying the contrast paints. #MiniaturePainting #WH40k #Warhammer

If I were on a mission whose computer system required me to deal with Microsoft Outlook in space, I’d give up and go back to the slide rule

⏳ Less than two weeks left to submit your abstract for #EOSAM2026! Join us in Tampere for a dynamic week of cutting-edge research, industry insights, and networking with a global community of experts. Submit & register here: tinyurl.com/yty3nt78 More info: tinyurl.com/3y98bxay #Photonics #Optics

Part of me wants this to be the best April's Fool in history. Part of me wants it to be real. #Warhammer #WH40k

This is the original sin of higher education. (So many) students see University as a away to access better paid jobs. Universities see students as income. (So many) professors see teaching as the price they have to pay to be allowed to do research. Learning is almost never discussed.

Literature Only

Big win of the week: I had @gevero.bsky.social try out the traditional Florentine #Lampredotto 🤤 (The stand in Porta Romana changed owner some time back, but the new guys tuned out to be good.)

Tough questions being asked and sad truths being revealed by @jacopobertolotti.com at #PlasmonicaSchool2026 👹

Do I know anyone here with experience in laser ablation? I have a VERY stupid question to ask 🙂 💡

@jacopobertolotti.com decided it is time to justify our presence at the Galileo Galilei Institute for Theoretical Physics! Flexing classical field theory with Feynman diagrams 😵‍💫 at #PlasmonicaSchool2026!

#PLASMONICAschool2026 has started today in Arcetri! This morning we had 👨‍🏫 Francesco Monticone (@cornelluniversity.bsky.social) delving deep into the subtleties of light-matter interaction fundamentals and @jacopobertolotti.com (@exeter.ac.uk) guiding us through the intricacies of optical scattering.

I haven't been here in 20 years. When I was a student, Physics at the University of Florence was in this old, beautiful villa on the hill of Arcetri (not far away from Galileo's villa). 1/2 #UniversityOfFlorence #PlasmonicaSchool

#PhysicsFactlet Scattering VS Extinction In #Optics, the concepts of scattering and extinction are closely related. So closely related that many people tend to confuse them. 1/ 💡 ⚛️ 🧪 🎢

Did you know that ⍼ is the symbol for "azimuth"? I didn't. ionathan.ch/2026/02/16/a... via @xmau.bsky.social

∃ Maths joke.

🚨Save Languages at the University of Essex 🚨 #langsky #linguistics UoE plans to cut German, Italian, Portuguese and Chinese + all evening classes and merge Language and Linguistics with a larger unit. Only 2 languages will remain next October. Please sign our letter: tinyurl.com/SaveLingLang...

in 10 years age verification will be so entrenched as the status quo that saying age verification is bad and ineffective will get responses like "well what do you propose, *not* have age verification?" like it's a foregone conclusion and was always there mark my words

BREAKING: For the first time in 35 years the Ig Nobel ceremony will move to Europe. "There are no immediate plans to return the ceremony to the US." www.theguardian.com/science/2026... Food for thought for conference steering committees.

#PhysicsFactlet While electrodynamics is well understood, there aren't many scattering problems we can actually solve. A plane wave scattering from a uniform dielectric sphere is one of those few, and the solution was originally found by Gustav Mie in 1908. 1/ 💡 ⚛️ 🧪 🎢

Thoughts & prayers to the EPA :(

#PhysicsFactlet A simple finite element simulation of a pulse scattering on a small (but not point-like) dielectric obstacle. The scatterer behaves approximately as a re is a very faint halo of light going everywhere, but most light gets diffracted into something similar to a Airy Disk. 1/2 💡 ⚛️ 🎢

Do not speak to me of the old magic

Diana's back! 🎢 youtu.be/B3m3AMRlYfc?...

The Voyageurs Wolf Project of Northern Minnesota tags & documents grey wolf ecology & behavior: www.voyageurswolfproject.org The video you see here is confirmatory proof: Wolves. Love. Blueberries. As much as 83% of a wolf's calories in summer months comes from eating berries.

I find myself slightly suprised to be recommending a video from the Norwegian Consumer Council, but it's bloody good. www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4Up...

HISTORY OF PHYSICS Norman F. Ramsey was an American physicist who received the 1989 Nobel Prize in Physics “for the invention of the separated oscillatory fields method and its use in the hydrogen maser and other atomic clocks.” He was part of the Manhattan project, too. 1/

I'm constantly trying (/failing) to get this point across. If you're a trained expert in a field, then it may be worthwhile to question the scientific consensus of your peers. If you're not, the scientific consensus is absolutely the best you can do and it's arbitrary foolishness to disregard it.

Datacenters in space are a terrible, horrible, no good idea. taranis.ie/datacenters-... (love the allusion to the kids’ story)

It's out! 🥳 pubs.aip.org/aip/app/arti...

Carbon Dating xkcd.com/3205/

It is now 26 hours after I was supposed to arrive, and we are still not there. (I am just a bit furious at #KLM).

I've been thinking a bunch about photons for class, so a passing comment about them on the Bird Site triggered a response that's lengthy but hopefully amusing/informative: open.substack.com/pub/chadorze...