iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Nicolai Friis @improbabilitydrive.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

One thing that I really have a hard time understanding is why it seems to be so difficult for researchers (at least in my field/experience) to get one of the most basic things in scientific writing correctly: references. So here is my (unsolicited) advice on how to sort out your references: (1/16)

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Nicolai Friis @improbabilitydrive.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

Yesterday someone called me out for only having joined Instagram to drop the occasional Pratchett quote without explanation. I mean, it isn't not true. But: It's not worth doing something unless someone, somewhere, would much rather you weren't doing it.

Nicolai Friis @improbabilitydrive.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

Bear with me, this will end on a high note. At times I feel that the workload and responsibility that comes along with supervision can be a lot, often because besides the actual work, academia as well as life outside of academia can be challenging emotionally, both for mentors and mentees. (1/8)

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Nicolai Friis @improbabilitydrive.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

Wait a second ... ISTA's lecture hall is called the "Raiffeisen Lecture Hall"? Since when is it good practice to name lecture halls at universities after sponsors? In particular, sponsors still in business w. countries starting wars of aggression, committing war crimes & political assassinations?

Nicolai Friis @improbabilitydrive.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

What a brilliant day, three consecutive defenses: It was an honor to serve on the PhD committee of Philipp Sohr (middle), and then very proud to see my student Nicky Kai Hong Li (second from right) defend valiantly, before leaning back as Marcus' (left) student Iraj (second from left) took the stage

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Nicolai Friis @improbabilitydrive.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

I am receiving invitations to predatory/fake conferences every day, but this one feels like a personal burn 😅🔥

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Nicolai Friis @improbabilitydrive.bsky.social · 23/02/2026

10 years after its founding, driven by the energy, enthusiasm, & dedication of the community @quantum-journal.bsky.social quietly published paper #2000 some days ago. At least I think this is a big deal, big shout out to the founders & all authors, reviewers, editors, board members & contributors!

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Nicolai Friis @improbabilitydrive.bsky.social · 22/02/2026

Some quantum info researchers are reluctant to learn about non-CPTP maps, but are ultimately left with no Chois.

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Nicolai Friis @improbabilitydrive.bsky.social · 19/12/2025

Over on LinkedIn the spirit of the season is spreading with a joyous round of pre-holiday bragging about publication metrics 🎄

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Nicolai Friis @improbabilitydrive.bsky.social · 14/12/2025

Was an honor and pleasure to serve as handling editor for this paper, not just because it was a very nice piece of work, but also bc I enjoy good puns and pop- (or in that case, rock-)culture references (admittedly, also the bad ones), not sure if the authors noticed mine in the decision letter

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Nicolai Friis @improbabilitydrive.bsky.social · 27/10/2025

Social(-media) experiment: I posted the same blurb on our new research paper on Bluesky and on LinkedIn. Apparently many more people from the quantum bubble on LinkedIn (~5 times as many reactions), but actual responses there mostly nonsense and people trying to plug their business

Nicolai Friis @improbabilitydrive.bsky.social · 24/10/2025

Quantum networks might one day enable more secure options for communication and distributed computation and are therefore currently a hot research topic, one which presents many challenges: One is the on-demand distribution of quantum systems that feature genuine multipartite entanglement (GME). 1/8

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Nicolai Friis @improbabilitydrive.bsky.social · 16/10/2025

Is it just me that finds it weird how ingrained it is in science that research groups identify as "The PI's-last-name group" as if their research & research interests were entirely determined by the PI? To me this feels unnecessarily adhering to authority and fostering cults centered around PIs.

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Reposted by Nicolai Friis

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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Nicolai Friis @improbabilitydrive.bsky.social · 26/09/2025

You want to submit/have submitted your paper to Quantum and would like to speed the editorial process along? Suggest reviewers! You know the field and who has the expertise. But keep in mind who is likely to have time. Famous senior profs are not likely to reply to review requests.

Nicolai Friis @improbabilitydrive.bsky.social · 09/09/2025

Serious conclusion of yesterday's 1-hour research meeting: we might need anti-banana masks

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Nicolai Friis @improbabilitydrive.bsky.social · 02/09/2025

I might have to reference this excellent blog post in my next QC class...

Nicolai Friis @improbabilitydrive.bsky.social · 20/08/2025

Glad someone took the time to debunk the (obviously nonsensical) claim that Bell inequalities could be violated w/o entanglement. It is astonishing (to say the least) that this claim was made by experienced authors & that it passed peer review in the first place, does not reflect well on the journal

arxiv.org

Bell Inequality Violations Without Entanglement? It's Just Postselection

Recently Wang et al. have reported a violation of a Bell inequality without entanglement [arXiv:2507.07756]. We show that their result is an artifact of postselection. It is well known that postselect...

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Reposted by Nicolai Friis

Nanebe 🇪🇺 @nanebe.bsky.social · 20/07/2025

DEN Artikel muss ich teilen, weil ich ihn wirklich sehr gelungen finde. ☝🏼 taz.de/Felix-Baumga...

„Viel war die Rede vom „tragischen Tod" des Extremsportlers Felix Baumgartner, der mit seinem Paraglider in den Tod stürzte. Wie üblich verblasst jede Kritik an Haltung und Wirken eines prominenten Sportlers hinter einer sich pietätvoll gebenden zugewandten Haltung. Und so heißen dann auch die Nachrufe „Der Grenzüberschreiter", so in der Süddeutschen Zeitung, „Ein Leben in Extremen", im Stern, oder aber, in der Zeit: „Geboren, um zu fliegen."
Einige Medien erwähnen zwar, dass Baumgartner bei seinem Absturz eine Hotelangestellte schwer verletzte.
Die Frau wurde von einem Holzsplitter am Hals getroffen. Bekannt ist, dass sie inzwischen wieder stabil sein soll. Mehr weiß man allerdings nicht. Es passt ganz gut zum öffentlichen Wirken Baumgartners, dass besagte Hotelangestellte nur als Randnotiz auftaucht.
Thomas Ebermann hat diese grundsätzliche Haltung einmal die „Ideologie des Kollateralschadens" genannt.
Sie fügt sich nahtlos ein in die öffentlichen Äußerungen Baumgartners, der Fan von Viktor Orbán war und in Osterreich gern eine „gemäßigte Diktatur" gesehen hätte.
Natürlich leugnete Baumgartner den Klimawandel, und natürlich war er während der Pandemie für eine Durchseuchung. Sein Standpunkt ist in jeder Frage der gewesen, dass alles, was ihn einschränkt, rigoros bekämpft gehört; auch um den Preis der Unversehrtheit anderer. Er war die größte aller Ich-Hupen.
Der allgemeinen Betroffenheit angesichts des Tods von Felix Baumgartner skeptisch gegenüberzustehen, richtet sich nicht gegen den Menschen Felix Baumgartner; es richtet sich gegen die Galionsfigur einer Ideologie, die Rücksichtslosigkeit und Selbstüberschätzung idealisiert und feiert. Dass der Extremsportler schlussendlich selbst Opfer der von ihm verkörperten Ideologie wurde, ist zwar auch bitter. Worin aber unterscheidet sich Baumgartner von einem jugendlichen Raser in der Innenstadt, der in einem egomanen Rausch Passant*innen in den Tod reißt? Der maßgebliche Unterschied ist, dass der jugendliche Raser nich…

Die größte aller Ich-Hupen
Kommentar von Frederic Valin
Q=
Dass bei dem tödlichen Unfall Baumgartners auch eine Frau verletzt wurde, wird kaum berichtet. Der Extremsportler sorgte sich wenig um andere.
20.7.2025 16:25 Uhr

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Nicolai Friis @improbabilitydrive.bsky.social · 16/06/2025

The calm before the storm, Benasque Quantum Information 2025 @ccbpp.bsky.social

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Nicolai Friis @improbabilitydrive.bsky.social · 22/05/2025

Given that I recently saw an advert like that, I wonder, are students really interested in starting a PhD under the premise that they work in one country while the supervisor quite obviously works in another? Is the supervisor going back&forth? At least my students want to meet at least once a week

Äpplesche 💚 @aepplesche.bsky.social · 11/05/2025

Reposted by Nicolai Friis

Christoph Sieber gibt Geschichtsnachhilfe 👇

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Nicolai Friis @improbabilitydrive.bsky.social · 07/05/2025

Dass die neue deutsche Bundesministerin für Wirtschaft "Reiche" heißt, ist mindestens so lustig, wie der Umstand, dass der ehemalige österreichische Bundesminister für Gesundheit "Rauch" heißt.

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Nicolai Friis @improbabilitydrive.bsky.social · 06/05/2025

After many years in academia I might have become a bit cynical about certain structural problems and I have found myself disappointed by colleagues and their behaviour on many occasions, but today a colleague managed to show me that decency, honesty, and integrity are not dead yet in academia

Nicolai Friis @improbabilitydrive.bsky.social · 05/05/2025

Ziemlich erschütternd, was es 2025 noch für Männerbünde mit elitären Fantasien gibt. Gibt es eine öffentlich zugängliche Liste der Mitglieder?

Nicolai Friis @improbabilitydrive.bsky.social · 01/05/2025

Genuine multipartite entanglement—GME for short—is a type of entanglement that—much like a certain Lovecraftian cosmic entity that took a break from napping at the House of R'lyeh to make a guest appearance in our paper arxiv.org/abs/2504.21076 —is even weirder than regular entanglement: GME … (1/6)

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Nicolai Friis @improbabilitydrive.bsky.social · 10/04/2025

Am very happy to see this paper by the power duo Klára and Olga out in Quantum: We set out to study the activation of genuine multipartite entanglement (GME) in the continuous-variable setting. On the way, we discovered a treasure trove of results... (1/3)

quantum-journal.org

Multi-copy activation of genuine multipartite entanglement in continuous-variable systems

Klára Baksová, Olga Leskovjanová, Ladislav Mišta Jr., Elizabeth Agudelo, and Nicolai Friis, Quantum 9, 1699 (2025). Multi-copy activation of genuine multipartite entanglement (GME) is a phenomenon whe...

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Nicolai Friis @improbabilitydrive.bsky.social · 19/03/2025

Entanglement is a form of correlation that is "stronger" than classical correlations in the sense that correlations are equally strong in infinitely many pairs of bases. But how strong do correlations have to be in any arbitrary pair of bases to conclude that the system is entangled? (1/3)

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Nicolai Friis @improbabilitydrive.bsky.social · 20/02/2025

Pleasure was all ours, Phil, pleasure was all ours!

Nicolai Friis @improbabilitydrive.bsky.social · 11/02/2025

Maybe it's just me, but I find it difficult to take an "international" conference seriously if some of the organizers and/or members of the scientific committee are also "invited" speakers, and, independently of that, if all of these three groups exclusively consist of men.

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Nicolai Friis @improbabilitydrive.bsky.social · 25/11/2024

Been here 5 minutes and nobody posted a screenshot of their google scholar, so far, so good.

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Nicolai Friis @improbabilitydrive.bsky.social · 25/11/2024

Hello quantum blue-sky, hope this will be(come) the experience that quantum twitter once was!

Nicolai Friis @improbabilitydrive.bsky.social · 13/11/2023

Kind (3): "Papa, zu Halloween war mein Bruder ein Papier."