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Charles Day

@csrday.bsky.social
371 followers 264 following 412 posts

Anglo-American astrophysicist turned writer and editor who likes reading, cooking and listening to music.

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Reposted by Charles Day
Emily Conover @econover.bsky.social · 17/09/2025
I had fun speaking today at the Quantum World Congress panel on Demystifying Quantum: How to Communicate Cutting Edge Science to Diverse Audiences. Alongside the fantastic moderator @csrday.bsky.social and esteemed panelists @nicoleyh11.bsky.social and Ben Stein #QWC2025
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Charles Day @csrday.bsky.social · 15/08/2025
According to a study by the New York Fed, physics majors had the second highest unemployment rate, 7.8%, among college graduates in 2023. What's going on? www.newyorkfed.org/research/col...
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Charles Day @csrday.bsky.social · 29/07/2025
Are the gravitational anomalies attributed to dark matter due to WIMPs, axions, primordial black holes, modified gravity or something else? Take Physics Magazine's survey for a chance weigh in on this and other big questions.
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Charles Day @csrday.bsky.social · 27/06/2025
I think of JWST whenever I play this card in Terraforming Mars.
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Charles Day @csrday.bsky.social · 05/05/2025
Homemade garganelli pasta with chicken gizzard sauce.
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Charles Day @csrday.bsky.social · 17/04/2025
I was sorry to hear of the death of Mario Vargas Llosa. Two weeks before, I bought a copy of his 2001 novel The Feast of the Goat at my local second-hand bookshop. The book was misfiled in the cookery section. I like to think Mario would be amused.
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Charles Day @csrday.bsky.social · 08/04/2025
My go-to brand for one of my favorite foods. Unlike anchovies canned in olive oil, the ones packed in salt need to be filleted. But the effort is worth it for the fishier flavor.
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Charles Day @csrday.bsky.social · 29/03/2025
"This new knowledge has all to do with honor and country but it has nothing to do directly with defending our country except to help make it worth defending" - Robert Wilson explaining to Congress why the US should fund an expensive and powerful particle accelerator and, by my extension, science.
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Charles Day @csrday.bsky.social · 18/03/2025
The conclusions of this article hinge on a distinction between programmer and developer. But how clear is that distinction?
washingtonpost.com
Column | More than a quarter of computer-programming jobs just vanished. What happened?
Learning to code was supposedly the salvation of millions of liberal art majors. But now programming jobs are plummeting. The Post’s Department of Data tries to figure out what’s going on.
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Charles Day @csrday.bsky.social · 14/03/2025
“If we are lucky, some new ideas will emerge that are really valid. Ponder why the successful flavors do work; use that understanding to choose new possibilities” — Giuliano Bugialli.
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Charles Day @csrday.bsky.social · 02/03/2025
"There is now a vast variety of erotica available, including cosy erotica (knitwear is torn off), Austen erotica . . . There is even erotica featuring—readers may wish to brace themselves—physicists."
economist.com
Erotic writing is becoming more explicit
Gardening metaphors are out. Other things are very much in
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Charles Day @csrday.bsky.social · 16/02/2025
So happy to be reading again one of my favorite novelists of my teens and twenties: Honoré de Balzac. The pic is from the cover of Lost Illusions (1837-43).
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Charles Day @csrday.bsky.social · 28/01/2025
Favorite clue in today’s FT Xword: Knight crossing an eastern river (6). Knight, DUB, crosses an, AN, to give DANUB followed by eastern, E.
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Charles Day @csrday.bsky.social · 18/01/2025
The track that closes side 1 of David Bowie's album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars is a cover. I've finally sought and listened to the original version, and it's good.
youtube.com
Ron Davies - It Ain't Easy (1970)
YouTube video by vertigo60
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Charles Day @csrday.bsky.social · 16/01/2025
Christopher Priest's 1998 novel The Extremes is like one long creepy and riveting episode of Black Mirror.
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Reposted by Charles Day
John Preskill @preskill.bsky.social · 14/01/2025
Useful perspective, clearly written and well-reasoned. arxiv.org/abs/2501.05694
arxiv.org
Myths around quantum computation before full fault tolerance: What no-go theorems rule out and what they don't
In this perspective article, we revisit and critically evaluate prevailing viewpoints on the capabilities and limitations of near-term quantum computing and its potential transition toward fully fault...
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Charles Day @csrday.bsky.social · 12/01/2025
For yesterday's dinner I made offelle alla triestine. They're like ravioli but with potato gnocchi dough as the pasta covering. These are stuffed with mushroom, tomato and cheese.
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Charles Day @csrday.bsky.social · 22/12/2024
'Tis the year's midnight and time for my annual reading of John Donne's poem about deep grief.
poetryfoundation.org
A Nocturnal upon St. Lucy's Day
'Tis the year's midnight, and it is the day's, Lucy's, who scarce seven hours herself unmasks; The sun is spent, and now his flasks Send forth light squibs, no constant rays; The world's whole sap is ...
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Charles Day @csrday.bsky.social · 19/12/2024
My favorite pasta dish combines two of my favorite ingredients: onions and anchovies.
en.wikipedia.org
Bigoli in salsa - Wikipedia
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Charles Day @csrday.bsky.social · 16/12/2024
This wine from Whole Foods is classified as Vin de France, so I checked out the label to get a sense of where it's from and what's in it. The bottler (see under the QR code) is LCDM -- evidently, someone who favors the prevailing cosmological model.
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Charles Day @csrday.bsky.social · 14/12/2024
I'm relieved to be resupplied with one of my favorite ingredients.
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Charles Day @csrday.bsky.social · 13/12/2024
My Airedale terrier Allie in a limb configuration I haven't seen before.
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Charles Day @csrday.bsky.social · 12/12/2024
This week's issue of Science magazine includes a review of six of the 70 exhibits that make up "Art & Science Collide."
science.org
The two cultures meet again
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Charles Day @csrday.bsky.social · 07/12/2024
When I was out walking my dog this morning, I spotted this flag flying outside a house in DC's Capitol Hill neighborhood. It's the flag of the Canton of Geneva.
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Charles Day @csrday.bsky.social · 07/12/2024
Today I picked up the most surprising book I've ever found in a little free library in my Capitol Hill neighborhood: Saunders Lewis's 1930 novel Monica in the original Welsh.
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Charles Day @csrday.bsky.social · 24/11/2024
From one of my favorite cookery books I made spaghetti al finocchio. Bugialli observes that "recipes for fennel bulbs with pasta are very rare" -- and then he describes one from Sicily in which braised fennel is pureed. Delish!
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Charles Day @csrday.bsky.social · 23/11/2024
A misdirected cake won in a raffle in wartime London triggers a chain of events that leads to . . . I don't know yet but I'm engrossed by this 1943 novel.
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Reposted by Charles Day
Heather Goss @heathermg.bsky.social · 15/11/2024
NASA Hyperwalls are incredible—and now you can visit one in a new exhibit at Smithsonian’s Natural History museum. “That one visual tells an enormous part of the story of life on Earth.” eos.org/articles/smi...
eos.org
Smithsonian Exhibit Connects Sky-High Views with Down-Home Impacts - Eos
“Preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”
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Charles Day @csrday.bsky.social · 14/11/2024
My latest kitchen tool: an aluminium salta pasta pan from Italy.
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Charles Day @csrday.bsky.social · 11/11/2024
It has finally rained in DC after 35 days. So I'm listening to this.
youtube.com
Rain Dances (Remastered 2023)
YouTube video by Camel - Topic
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Charles Day @csrday.bsky.social · 28/10/2024
"Vintage flavoured swimmers that don't bar the style - bulk-free to keep your office style afloat" is a teaser that appears in today's NYT special advertising supplement on high-end watches. I've no idea what it means but I'm oddly reassured that NYT copyeditors did not intervene to make it clearer.
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Charles Day @csrday.bsky.social · 22/10/2024
Allie is relaxing after spending today at doggie daycare.
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Charles Day @csrday.bsky.social · 26/09/2024
I've just discovered that Thomas Mann's principal English translator, Helen Tracy Lowe-Porter (shown here) was the great grandmother of disgraced British PM Boris Johnson.
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Charles Day @csrday.bsky.social · 18/09/2024
Wonderful title!
science.org
Yes, cats are liquids—but only in one dimension
Pet felines seem much less aware of their bodies when it comes to vertical squeezes
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Charles Day @csrday.bsky.social · 13/09/2024
This morning I dropped off my Airedale at the groomer and picked up this book from a little free library.
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Charles Day @csrday.bsky.social · 02/09/2024
I've just started reading Per Petterson's Out Stealing Horses. Keen to discover where the novel takes places, I went to Norwegian Wikipedia. Here's how Chrome/Google Translate renders some of the names of towns in Akershus County.
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Charles Day @csrday.bsky.social · 24/08/2024
I continue to enjoy and be edified by Alasdair Gray's quirky, principled novels. Lanark and Poor Things are his best, I think. But this novella, which I've just finished, perhaps best encapsulates his diagnosis of what it means to be a Scot in late 20th century Britain.
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Charles Day @csrday.bsky.social · 22/08/2024
Nina Allan's The Rift is among the best novels I've read this year. And it reminds me why I love speculative fiction: The perturbations that animate the plot and challenge the characters are unconstrained by earthly reality.
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Charles Day @csrday.bsky.social · 02/08/2024
What I like about the Financial Times cryptic crossword is that I can solve it completely about half the time. Today I was victorious.
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Charles Day @csrday.bsky.social · 03/05/2024
Freshly made pesto di noci. Don't tell the Italian recipe police I used pecans instead of walnuts.
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Charles Day @csrday.bsky.social · 18/04/2024
The different title that appears in the online TOC caught my eye and induced me to click through, "Native lizards taught to avoid toxic toads by released toadlets." Actually, it was just the word "toadlets."
science.org
Young toads are teaching Australian lizards to avoid deadly snacks
Massive trial shows monitor lizards will learn to avoid toxic and invasive adult toads after tasting less dangerous juveniles
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Charles Day @csrday.bsky.social · 17/04/2024
This is an interesting analysis. And it's great to see the valuable work of copyeditors acknowledged.
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Charles Day @csrday.bsky.social · 16/04/2024
My new favorite YouTube channel is about Italian food.
youtube.com
Lasagne: Bolognese vs. Napoletana con Patrizia Nanni e Antonio Sorrentino
Tra le innumerevoli varianti delle lasagne, due sono le ricette che si possono definire classiche. La più essenziale ed elegante lasagna alla bolognese e la ...
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Charles Day @csrday.bsky.social · 27/03/2024
Thank you to everyone who solicits, writes and edits obituaries! Because of this obituary in the New York Times, I became acquainted with one of my (now) favorite novelists, Javier Marías.
nytimes.com
Javier Marías, to Many the Greatest Living Spanish Novelist, Dies at 70 (Published 2022)
A regular nominee for the Nobel, his books were as popular as they were lauded, filled with themes of mystery, betrayal and the moral weight of the past.
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Charles Day @csrday.bsky.social · 25/03/2024
Just read @cathleenogrady.bsky.social's in-depth report of ethical failings at a prominent French research hospital. I'm impressed that she consulted two sociologists of science. Sociologists, economists and historians can enrich science reporting.
science.org
‘Failure at every level’: How science sleuths exposed massive ethics violations at a famed French institute
A group of agitators has spent years pushing for action against Didier Raoult and his collaborators. Now they’re wondering whether anyone will be fully held to account
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Charles Day @csrday.bsky.social · 08/03/2024
A benefit of watching period dramas is that they help you picture novels from that period. I'm reading John Dickson Carr's 1931 whodunnit, Castle Skull, which is set in Weimar Germany. I'm picturing Babylon Berlin.
youtube.com
BABYLON BERLIN | OFFICIAL TRAILER | ENGLISH SUBS | LUMIÈRE SERIES
BABYLON BERLIN binnenkort beschikbaar via LUMIERESERIES.COMBerlijn in de Roaring Twenties: een metropool voor mensen met talent en ambitie, in een drukte van...
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Charles Day @csrday.bsky.social · 07/03/2024
I keep hoping that the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences will recognize the importance of cosmic chemistry with a Nobel. This story provides a taste of this vibrant field.
physics.aps.org
Cold Chemistry is Different
Experiments demonstrate some of the unusual features of molecular reactions that occur in the deep cold of interstellar space.
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Charles Day @csrday.bsky.social · 03/03/2024
Nice update from Nature's Davide Castelvecchi on efforts to determine one of the most consequential values in physics: the mass of the neutrino.
nature.com
How heavy is a neutrino? Race to weigh mysterious particle heats up
Physicists discuss experiments that could improve laboratory measurements of the super-light particle’s mass. Physicists discuss experiments that could improve laboratory measurements of the super-lig...
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Charles Day @csrday.bsky.social · 02/03/2024
I'm enjoying the Ian Rankin novel, Let it Bleed, which I picked up from a little free library. I can't help observing that Rankin's Scottish police detective, John Rebus, is just like Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö's Swedish detective, Martin Beck, from two decades earlier. Plus ca change.
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Reposted by Charles Day
Jason Wright @astrowright.bsky.social · 29/02/2024
Oof. Power went out this morning and I heard a bang in the house. Turns out our car charger in the garage blew out! Shattered case on the ground, burn marks in the charger. Those are not cheap. Word to the wise: get a whole-house surge protector!
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