Done with 3+5 hours of @ImperialPhysics tutorials in 1+1 days. Fun, but exhausting.
Author: defjaf
Today is my first day no longer the head of the @ImperialAstro group after 5.75 years — finally time to rest. Best of luck, and commiserations, to new head @AlanHeavens…
I liked Coach Beard’s Scorsese “After Hours” London escapades, but I really loved the Declan Patrick Aloysius McManus pseudonym and “Nightclub Jitters” by the Replacements. #TedLasso
I have now been living, working, teaching, writing, and researching in the UK for twenty years, from just pre-9/11 to post-Brexit and mid-pandemic.
It’s home, though I’d describe myself as a Londoner, rather than British. And I’m still a foreigner (though my kids aren’t).
If you have the right connections, someone will transport xiao long bao across London from Din Tai Fung to a supermarket parking lot for you.
It turns out the end of the rainbow has been in Richmond Park all along.
I get much more nervous when I have to talk about management and admin than science.
It is the summer solstice so time for my annual reminiscence of seeing Sun Ra and Don Cherry celebrate the rising sun from Battery Park in Manhattan with @disquiet in 1989.
I am pretty sure I (we?) then stayed up to see Tito Puente and Koko Taylor at Summerstage in Central Park that night.
I still remember dancing in the stands to “Oye cómo va”.
RIP George Stranahan, founder and benefactor of the Aspen Center for Physics, and owner of Hunter Thompson’s favourite bar (both of which I’ve had the pleasure of visiting a few times). h/t Will Kinney @WKCosmo.
The local pigeons seem to be addicted to these berries growing on the tree in our garden.
The only even remotely legitimate argument for keeping the filibuster is that we might need it in two years.
Every time I listen to, say, “Here Comes The Sun”, or “Something”, I think how maddening it must have been for George Harrison to know that he was only the third best songwriter in the Beatles.
Unpacking my library, 16 months after moving in.
Bonus points if you can recognise any books.
Projects.
Took advantage of the first truly beautiful Spring day to wander down to Canbury Gardens for lunch — and found them filming #TedLasso (one of our favorites, and not just because they make it in the neighborhood).
I admit I’ve mostly been trashing the emails from the Democratic National Committee — but the one from Bowzer, I read.
To slightly misappropriate an excellent phrase from politics here in the UK, McConnell’s appalling, unsurprising and self-serving near-simultaneous acquittal and condemnation of Trump is the purest example of cakeism — and it will probably work.
RIP Arianna Rosenbluth, the programmer of the first implementation of the Metropolis algorithm, the forerunner to and basis of now-ubquitous Monte-Carlo simulation algorithms (a history the details of which I didn’t know). H/T Andrew Gelman @statmodeling.
Hey, parents: I was surprised that “er”, “ar”, “or”, &c are so-called digraphs here in the UK. With my American accent, those seem like they ought to be two separate sounds. Here, there isn’t an explicit “r” sound at the end. Or have I been speaking wrong forever?
Snow in London
Ahhhh. From carnage to unity and soul.
Of course we’ll accept McConnell’s support, but let’s not mistake political expediency for even an iota of principle.
Maybe John King on CNN calling them
“knuckleheads” is all the respect they deserve.
Shame on Trump and his enablers. Shame on Cruz and Hawley. Shame on the house Republicans. Shame on the mob at the capitol. I feel little but shame, myself, that we’ve let this happen, despite our history, and our victories in November and today.
Closing all London primarily schools is absolutely the right thing to do (& an expected u-turn from this omnishambolic gov’t) but my own work/research/teaching effectiveness is going to plummet. Apologies to my colleagues/students/collaborators.
Gove: reopening England’s schools will involve ‘trade-offs’.
As a country we have decided… that we prioritise children returning to school. But… we have also had…Christmas mixing.
So we haven’t really prioritised schools, have we?
Latkes, cooked in Vegetable oil, not schmaltz, but served with applesauce (pink, of course, in honour of my grandmother)
We organised our wedding in two hours to beat tier 4
Call me a curmudgeon, but this shouldn’t be presented as a couple heroically working to save their wedding at the last minute, but rather as selfishly endangering people when they already have the information to know better.
I’ve eaten pork and shellfish my whole life without any guilt, but this feels really transgressive.
