iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

gravity-levity.bsky.social @gravity-levity.bsky.social · 20/05/2026

This might be the most impressive thing I've ever seen a robot do. Just a flawless slapstick routine

Reposted by @gravity-levity.bsky.social

Nature @nature.com · 18/05/2026

The backlash against artificial intelligence is growing. What do you think about its impact on science? go.nature.com/4tJWk6t

go.nature.com

Do you hate or love AI? Take Nature's poll

The backlash against artificial intelligence is growing. Nature wants to know what its readers think about the impact on science.

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gravity-levity.bsky.social @gravity-levity.bsky.social · 11/05/2026

Penn State is hosting a summer school this July on "Quantum Simulation of Strongly Correlated Quantum Matter". Consider applying if you want to hear me give lectures about strongly correlated matter while ignoring the "quantum simulation" part. sites.psu.edu/cteq/cteqss2...

sites.psu.edu

CTEQ SUMMER SCHOOL 2026 | CTEQ

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gravity-levity.bsky.social @gravity-levity.bsky.social · 17/12/2025

I admit I'm a bit outnerded by this one. "log-normalized aspect ratio" means log(aspect ratio of this thing) / log(aspect ratio of the thing defined to have LAR = 1) ? What is "assume spherical everything" doing?

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gravity-levity.bsky.social @gravity-levity.bsky.social · 04/12/2025

McCarthy never would have used that comma though

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gravity-levity.bsky.social @gravity-levity.bsky.social · 30/11/2025

Taking long walks around Baltimore and admiring all the elaborate and unusual fire escapes on the sides of old buildings

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Mike McMahan @mikemcmahan.bsky.social · 18/11/2025

MAGRERR CHRISMACKS

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gravity-levity.bsky.social @gravity-levity.bsky.social · 25/10/2025

This animation alone should win a science journalism award

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gravity-levity.bsky.social @gravity-levity.bsky.social · 18/10/2025

my local library is pushing pro-AI propaganda at children smh

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Dulwich Quantum Computing @dulwichquantum.bsky.social · 07/10/2025

Live footage of Nobel committee giving the Physics prize to quantum computing.

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gravity-levity.bsky.social @gravity-levity.bsky.social · 06/10/2025

It's because we're all sick of Trump and immediately scroll away whenever his face appears

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gravity-levity.bsky.social @gravity-levity.bsky.social · 04/10/2025

Measurement is a classical process by definition (even in quantum mechanics), so I can only conclude that a "quantum measurement" is a normal measurement that has gone through a marketing transformation

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gravity-levity.bsky.social @gravity-levity.bsky.social · 29/09/2025

They'll sing a different tune when I've published my brilliant and deeply moving debut novel: Bill Dung's Roman Adventure

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gravity-levity.bsky.social @gravity-levity.bsky.social · 29/09/2025

It was like getting a preview of what the adult mind must be like, and I wasn't sure I liked it but I couldn't look away.

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gravity-levity.bsky.social @gravity-levity.bsky.social · 29/09/2025

My parents had a bunch of these collections, and as a kid in the early 90s I read them with a kind of perverse fascination. There were clearly points of appeal to kids, but the focus was squarely on "adult themes" (risque, political, banal).

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Dulwich Quantum Computing @dulwichquantum.bsky.social · 27/09/2025

Promo video for the recent HSBC and IBM Quantum breakthrough in finance, if it was directed by Scott Aaronson. scottaaronson.blog?p=9170

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McSweeney's @mcsweeneys.net · 24/09/2025

"Just as Jay Gatsby is an enigmatic larger-than-life figure driven to accumulate wealth at all costs in a futile bid for the love of Daisy Buchanan, the Xerox 914 beats on ceaselessly, printing page after page, for reasons that readers cannot fully comprehend."

buff.ly

Book Review: The Great Gatsby by the Xerox 914 Photocopier

Amid the rise of artificial intelligence, technophobes and Luddites have continued to insist that machines “can’t really write”—at least not the wa...

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gravity-levity.bsky.social @gravity-levity.bsky.social · 09/09/2025

I've been doing some percolation calculations lately, and I decided that I was tired of letting my computer have all the fun

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gravity-levity.bsky.social @gravity-levity.bsky.social · 08/09/2025

Good correction, which shows that I misremembered / omitted some context in my summary. Weiss came up with the idea of an optical interferometric gravitational wave detector, which eventually became LIGO. Much better to read his summary of what happened than mine: www.kavliprize.org/rainer-weiss...

kavliprize.org

Rainer Weiss life story

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gravity-levity.bsky.social @gravity-levity.bsky.social · 08/09/2025

As someone who is never able to maintain focus on a single problem for more than a year or so, I'm so glad there are people like this in science. (And of course I worry that the modern culture and pace of science is pushing them out)

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gravity-levity.bsky.social @gravity-levity.bsky.social · 08/09/2025

Just found this longer, and much better telling of the story: www.kavliprize.org/rainer-weiss... Looks like I mostly remembered things correctly, but the full story is much better than my telling.

kavliprize.org

Rainer Weiss life story

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gravity-levity.bsky.social @gravity-levity.bsky.social · 08/09/2025

10/10 "Wait, could you actually detect a relative change in distance of order one part in 10^20?" He spent all summer thinking about it. And that was the beginning of his obsession. It took 48 years from that moment to the first actual detection of a gravitational wave.

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gravity-levity.bsky.social @gravity-levity.bsky.social · 08/09/2025

9/ The point of the problem was to show that there is a relative change in distance between the masses less than one part in 10^20, and you go "ahh, got it, the effect is negligible" and you move on. But during the summer after the class ended, the problem stuck with him and kept bothering him.

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gravity-levity.bsky.social @gravity-levity.bsky.social · 08/09/2025

8/ It was a simple homework exercise, and he showed it as part of the colloquium: the solution takes less than a page, and he claims that everyone in the class was able to solve it correctly.

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gravity-levity.bsky.social @gravity-levity.bsky.social · 08/09/2025

7/ At one point he conceived of a homework problem that would make the point to his students that dynamical effects in GR are extremely weak. So he designed a little problem where you imagine two free masses passing light back and forth to each other as a gravitational wave passes by.

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gravity-levity.bsky.social @gravity-levity.bsky.social · 08/09/2025

6/ He was assigned to teach the General Relativity course, which at the time was in the Engineering department because no one in Physics wanted to teach it. But Waiss (in his description) didn't know any relativity. So he struggled all semester to stay "at best one day ahead of my students".

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gravity-levity.bsky.social @gravity-levity.bsky.social · 08/09/2025

5/ Weiss finished his PhD, bounced around as an instructor a bit, and eventually managed to get a junior faculty position at MIT's Research Laboratory for Electronics.

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gravity-levity.bsky.social @gravity-levity.bsky.social · 08/09/2025

4/ Shortly thereafter he convinced an MIT professor (Zacharias) to let him work as a lab tech. After a couple years in his lab, Prof. Zacharias managed to successfully lobby to get him accepted into the PhD program.

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gravity-levity.bsky.social @gravity-levity.bsky.social · 08/09/2025

3/ So he went to MIT to study electrical engineering. Along the way he got a girlfriend at the University of Chicago. He figured that he could live in Chicago with her and return to MIT only when he needed to take exams. This plan didn't go well, he failed his classes, and he dropped out of college

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gravity-levity.bsky.social @gravity-levity.bsky.social · 08/09/2025

2/ He told the story of how he came to be obsessed with gravitational waves. I'll do my best to recap that story, as best I can recall. It started with him getting obsessed with radios in high school. The fact that invisible waves could carry beautiful music through the air was captivating.

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gravity-levity.bsky.social @gravity-levity.bsky.social · 08/09/2025

1/ Rainer Weiss, who conceived of the idea of a gravitational wave detector (which eventually became LIGO), has died. I was at MIT when the first gravitational wave detection was announced, and he gave perhaps the most inspiring colloquium I have ever heard. news.mit.edu/2025/profess...

news.mit.edu

Professor Emeritus Rainer Weiss, influential physicist who forged new paths to understanding the universe, dies at 92

MIT Professor Emeritus Rainer Weiss, a renowned experimental physicist and Nobel laureate whose groundbreaking work on the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) confirmed a longst...

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Rabih Alameddine @rabihalameddine.bsky.social · 02/08/2025

The Mask of Sorrow is a monument located on a hill above Magadan, Russia, commemorating the many prisoners who suffered and died in the Gulag prison camps in the Kolyma region of the Soviet Union during the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s.

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derek van vliet @derek.bike · 31/08/2025

here’s a version where the POV is blacked out whenever the driver takes their eyes off the road

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gravity-levity.bsky.social @gravity-levity.bsky.social · 28/08/2025

It seems like this lawsuit is for books only? I don't think I even own the copyright to my published academic papers.

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gravity-levity.bsky.social @gravity-levity.bsky.social · 27/08/2025

The important question is where I can get a t-shirt like that one

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Nigel Goldenfeld @nigelgoldenfeld.bsky.social · 20/08/2025

🧪⚛️ A great opportunity to contribute to the phenomenal science reporting by @quantamagazine.bsky.social

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gravity-levity.bsky.social @gravity-levity.bsky.social · 18/08/2025

lol, I don't think I've ever created anything for which I said "I think it will be very beautiful" during the process, so you must be doing something right. As someone who loved the first book, I'm (patiently) excited to see what develops.

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gravity-levity.bsky.social @gravity-levity.bsky.social · 18/08/2025

!! Did not realize that a sequel was coming!

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Rabih Alameddine @rabihalameddine.bsky.social · 11/08/2025

It's a Rothko night

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