It’s hard to believe that the launch of @Planck from ESA’s Kourou Spaceport was 14 years ago. Good luck @ESA_JUICE!
RIP Harry Lorayne, expert at magic & memory. In my sordid youth as an aficionado of magic (Magic Camp!) Lorayne’s sleight-of-hand was my favorite. Best was “Triumph!” involving shuffling cards upside-down & rightside-up & yet pulling order (& the chosen card) out of chaos.
Sunak: Northern Ireland is ‘world’s most exciting economic zone’ by being in EU and UK.
Imagine what it would be like if the whole of the UK could have the benefits of being in the EU!
Among the skills I have failed to learn in my 20+ years living in the UK is washing the dishes with one of those little plastic basins sitting in the sink.
macOS question: is there an app which automatically rearranges desktop icons when I switch resolutions and/or displays? (I am aware of SwitchResX but it’s pretty heavyweight for this one use-case.)
I currently have a 2019 15″ MacBook Pro, and am upgrading from Intel to M2. Should I move up to 16″ or “down” to 14″ (which is smaller but still has more pixels than my current model, right?)?
My New Year’s resolution is to finish my book by October. There is also a contract which is somewhat more legally binding. Send encouragement.
Working title: “The Random Universe” — Cosmology. The scientific method. Probability. Epistemology.
If the US were a parliamentary democracy the government would be collapsing. (And the head of state might have to intervene.)
And we’re off. Tube conductor: “when things go up the creek they really go up the creek.”
“Corn meal and gunpowder, ham hocks and guitar strings…”
Spent a wonderful morning talking about “space” to three classes full of reception (kindergarten) kids. They are much less anxious about asking — and answering — questions than most of my university students.
Three hours until my first proper teaching lecture in almost three years.
Obscure macOS Ventura Q:
Is anyone else seeing the cryptic message
The extension com.apple.tips.TipsAppQuicklook-macOS does not implement file previews
when attempting to get a quicklook preview of some text files? For me, it happens with .tex and .css, among other types.
Update: (Slightly brittle?) fix!
The publishers who extort us for gold #openaccess fees (and the governments & funders who require it) know that we are posting our work on arxiv.org despite any supposed embargo, right?
I have the bad habit of ending conversations with students by asking “does that make sense?”
Only the best students are smart enough to answer “no”.
I voted!
(In San Francisco, by Fax.)
Yes, really, Fax! There are essentially no fax machines anywhere in London, but luckily there are PDF to fax gateways.
Not the most useful place for my voting residence, but happy to vote for democracy where (& while I still) can.
I made a thread over at @CompactCollab about the search for cosmic topology.
Announcing Almanac, a Bayesian hierarchical model for astrophysical and cosmological power spectra on the sphere.
Am I the only one who accidentally hits ”return” instead of the space bar about 30% of the time on the iPhone keyboard (or sometimes it’s “.” or “@“ — whatever is just to the right of the space)? Or do I have an especially clumsy right thumb?
Why do UK newspapers all feature these not particularly well written, not particularly insightful or funny, slice-of-my-life weekend columns? As much as I loathe their ideas and politics, I’d rather read Ross Douthat or David Brooks than (names removed to avoid too much snark).
Watching the Queue.
I guess the postwar period really is over.
Of the 5 (of ~100 who took the exam) students to give “free text comments” on our astrophysics course this year, one was very positive, two were equivocal, one complained about our email response times, and one was “delete this module”.
There is a scary & common misconception in physics that students work better if… supervisors & … senior group members pressure them with negative, condescending language.
—Physics World, July ’22. Print only?
WTF. Does anyone really believe this?
I ordered a Mac Studio Display through an Apple Educational reseller in the UK around 1 April. It hasn’t arrived yet. Has anyone had any similar (or otherwise) experience of such lengthy delays (~16 weeks)?
If the ROI from programs like this is so good for businesses, why not make them pay for it themselves instead of funnelling so much money to private industry (and let government invest in more blue-skies research instead)?
Yes, I know, I am biased, and it’s not zero-sum.
For generations, homes in Britain were designed to retain heat, to make cold winters bearable.
Clearly the author has never actually lived in Britain, where we spend the winters stoically wearing extra jumpers to keep warm in our inadequately-heated and poorly-insulated homes.