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Jacopo Bertolotti

@jacopobertolotti.com
2K followers 542 following 2K posts

Associated Professor of Physics at the University of Exeter. Maker of typos. Science, scientific visualizations (grouped under the hashtag #PhysicsFactlet), some miniature painting. He/lui/on. All opinions are my own fault.

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Jacopo Bertolotti @jacopobertolotti.com · 9h
What is with the EU and shooting themselves in the foot? Is that some kind of kink for the EU Commission? youtu.be/mQRcK9nYg9g
youtu.be
This could legitimately end Stop Killing Games.
YouTube video by Stop Killing Games
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hannah @hannahkateboast.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
'The University continues to make a sizeable surplus. What financial pressures exist are significantly due to spiralling depreciation from irresponsible capital spending.' University of Edinburgh Joint Unions Financial Working Group www.ucuedinburgh.org.uk/blog/depreci...
ucuedinburgh.org.uk
Depreciating the University of Edinburgh into the Ground — UCU Edinburgh
The University of Edinburgh has published its annual report for 2024-2025, including the audited financial statement. In this post, we dig deeper into why some of the University’s claims about expen...
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Jacopo Bertolotti @jacopobertolotti.com · 24/09/2026
I envision a near future where kids will just rediscover the ancient art of creating a online forum.
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BWJones @bwjones.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
This is an important point. AI is not going rogue. It is behaving as it was designed to behave. The ones going rogue are the companies themselves who have violated norms, and are committing crimes daily from stealing IP to cybercrime. It did not have to be this way, but... Techbros.
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Tom Gauld @tomgauld.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
My latest @newscientist.com cartoon. many more here: www.newscientist.com/author/tom-gauld/
Image: A graph with lots of red dots clustered together in a curve. The are all looking upwards at a single red dot wearing sunglasses. 

Caption: Mike was an outlier and would probably be excluded from the study, but all the other data points secretly thought he was really cool.
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Sarah Andersen @sarahseeandersen.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
The image is of a four panel comic.
In the first panel we see Sarah, the protagonist, next to a stick figure labeled “AI”. The stick figure says, “my outputs look just like yours now.”
The second panel zooms in on Sarah’s face. Above her we see text reading “I think”.
The third panel zooms in closer on Sarah’s face. Text above her reads “you missed”.
The fourth panel shows Sarah drawing happily in a sunlit room. The text above her reads “the point”.
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Jacopo Bertolotti @jacopobertolotti.com · 21/09/2026
This part is often omitted in popular science discussion of the Higgs field, and I think it should receive more attention.
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EOS - European Optical Society @europeanoptics.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
📢 Make Your Voice Count in the Photonics21 Board of Stakeholders Election! Register as a voter by 21 September. This year, EOS Executive Director Elina Koistinen is a candidate. We encourage the photonics community to take part and help ensure EOS is represented. Learn more: tinyurl.com/mrp7xxt2
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Jacopo Bertolotti @jacopobertolotti.com · 14/09/2026
<Insert here my shocked face> (The moment they go public they need to declare how much money they are burning and how much in debt they are.) www.engadget.com/2256984/sam-...
engadget.com
Sam Altman says OpenAI won't file for IPO this year - Engadget
OpenAI's CEO called it an “ill-advised moment to go public” in an interview with Fortune.
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David Ho @davidho.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
I wrote this quickly at a bus stop and didn't realize it would go viral, or else I would have worded it better. But the point is that the media is too credulous about AI killing everyone in 10 years (how?) when climate change is killing people now and will only get worse (we know exactly how).
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Manlio De Domenico @manlius.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Sorry, but AI did not officially solve Navier–Stokes. Yet. It seems that someone should say that, in this AI madness. This is how rigor gets traded for virality. And it is also how propAIganda works. #ComplexityThoughts 👉 manlius.substack.com/p/no-ai-hasn...
manlius.substack.com
No, AI hasn’t officially solved Navier–Stokes. Yet
PropAIganda, now with a Millennium Prize Problem
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Philip Ball @philipcball.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
AlphaFold did not solve the protein-folding problem, but sidestepped it. So maybe that's good enough - but this was not "one of the greatest unsolved challenges in biology", and it is not "critical for understanding how diseases work and how to treat them".
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Lautaro Vergara-Cofré @vergaralautaro.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
HISTORY OF PHYSICS Yang on Mills. In 1953-1954, I was visiting Brookhaven and Bob was my office mate. We discussed many things in physics, from the experimental results pouring out of the new Cosmotron [a proton synchrotron, at Brookhaven National Laboratory], 1/
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New-Cleckit Dominie @ncdominie.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
I like this piece: it doesn't offer many solutions but it feels like a more generous framing of the problem than we're used to hearing.
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Jacopo Bertolotti @jacopobertolotti.com · 03/09/2026
New paper on #Arxiv and my first foray into the field of #OpticalComputing (and #MachineLearning , the good one, not LLMs&co). A (long-ish) thread 🧵 1/ 💡⚛️🧪 arxiv.org/abs/2609.02733
arxiv.org
Optical Reservoir Computing with Structural Nonlinearity for Forecasting Chaotic Time Series
Optical computing offers a promising route to high-speed, energy-efficient information processing. However, implementing nonlinear operations typically requires strong light-matter interactions. Here,...
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Jacopo Bertolotti @jacopobertolotti.com · 02/09/2026
Post your favourite 40k Warhammer kill team, wrong (right?) answers only.
Image of the Anthill mob from the WB wacky race cartoon
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Jacopo Bertolotti @jacopobertolotti.com · 30/08/2026
Started playing Final Fantasy 7 Remake, and while I can not say it is a bad game, it is surely a frustrating one. The combact is good (although not excellent), but the camera is atrocious, moving around is clunky, the dialogues are extremely cringe, and the whole game feels like padding.
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Jacopo Bertolotti @jacopobertolotti.com · 29/08/2026
Dear postdocs: if your supervisor doesn't want you to be in a union, change supervisor (and get into a union).
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Dundee UCU @ducuuo.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
Some colleagues received 5 minutes notice for their online at risk meeting and had not yet received their letter informing them they were at risk. Executive staff did not bother to turn up to the meeting. This is the true face of executive leadership at the University of Dundee.
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Jacopo Bertolotti @jacopobertolotti.com · 23/08/2026
My trip to #Eosam2026 started with a hour delay, but I am finally on my way, and have some time to read a book I had on my to-read list since a long time.
Photo of the cover of "The joy of abstraction" book by Eugenia Cheng
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Dr Dean Burnett @drdeanburnett.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
Other *relevant* experts have also now contributed to the damning criticisms of 'The Great #ADHD Myth?', with more professionalism than me. But less rage-fuelled snark. Which, let's be fair, is probably helpful www.theguardian.com/commentisfre... www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-react...
theguardian.com
There is nothing scientific about The Great ADHD Myth? ‘documentary’ | Gina Rippon
Channel 4’s programme wastes a chance to ask important questions about how ADHD is diagnosed and treated, instead indulging in unscientific methods and conspiracy theories, says author Gina Rippon
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Jacopo Bertolotti @jacopobertolotti.com · 19/08/2026
tl;dr: If you offload your learning to GenAI, you are not going to learn anything.
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James Kneale @jameskneale.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
I've just heard that the BA/BSc Geography programme is to close at the University of Exeter’s Centre for Geography and Environmental Science (CGES) in Cornwall. This programme was made up of excellent modules with original and content, taught brilliantly—often with real innovation—by extremely 1/9
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James Dyke @jamesgdyke.info · 13/08/2026
It's just been announced that the University of Exeter is scrapping BA/BSc Geography, including BA History & Geography, and BA Politics & Geography programmes and their variants in Penryn campus in Cornwall. There will be no new students starting in September 2026. 1/5
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Jacopo Bertolotti @jacopobertolotti.com · 13/08/2026
Reminder 1: The only reason A-levels are such a big fuss in the UK, is because of the artificial scarcity in University placements. Reminder 2: This artificial scarcity is a precise political choice. It is not inevitable. Reminder 3: The best way to get a highly paid job is to become a plumber.
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Jacopo Bertolotti @jacopobertolotti.com · 12/08/2026
94% #SolarEclipse as seen from #Exeter (UK).
Amateur photo of the solar eclipse. A very thin yellow arc is visible on top of a very dark background.
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Liesbeth Corens @onslies.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
"The claim is not that no university may ever reduce headcount. It is narrower and harder to answer: cutting teaching & research capacity, to close a deficit whose causes lie elsewhere, attacks the recovery rather than the disease." On Dundee, recognisable everywhere www.linkedin.com/pulse/staff-...
Here is what the redundancy narrative leaves out. Falling student numbers played a part, but a small one — international fee income accounts for perhaps £2 million of the early deficit. The Gillies Report found the university spent around £74 million on fixed assets across two years, including some £43 million on capital projects funded directly from cash reserves, without the surpluses to support it. These are decisions taken at the top. Not one is reversed by making a historian or a student-support officer redundant. The cuts do not touch the cause. They fall on the people furthest from it.
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Jacopo Bertolotti @jacopobertolotti.com · 10/08/2026
Today I encountered the word "porosifiable" (meaning: something that can be made porous). Neologisms are weird, fascinating beasts 😉
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Jacopo Bertolotti @jacopobertolotti.com · 06/08/2026
Francesco #Guccini (14 June 1940 – 6 August 2026) Mi piace sempre ricodare i cantanti con canzoni magari meno note ma allegre e buffe.
youtu.be
La Genesi (Live From Italy/1973 / 2007 Digital Remaster)
YouTube video by Francesco Guccini - Topic
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Jacopo Bertolotti @jacopobertolotti.com · 05/08/2026
On August 12 a large chunk of western Europe will experience a solar eclipse. Since I have read the most nonsensical advice on how to watch the eclipse (yes, this is the internet after all) let me try to help. 1/ #Eclipse #Safety
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BWJones @bwjones.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
Dunno… I remember friends telling me there were bodies in the streets. And going into work seeing intensive care wards packed, patients dying at crazy rates, and having pathologists ask me to help them screen tissues for COVID viruses because they were trying to find out what tissues were infected.
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Jacopo Bertolotti @jacopobertolotti.com · 03/08/2026
Every Waaagh must begin somewhere. Mine is beginning here. #MiniaturePainting #WH40k #Orks
Miniature of a WH40k orc painted with green-yellow skin and orange armour. View from the front.Miniature of a WH40k orc painted with green-yellow skin and orange armour. View from the back.
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Jacopo Bertolotti @jacopobertolotti.com · 03/08/2026
Listen. I work in academia. ADHD is absolutely real.
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Prof Rachel Oliver @profrachelgan.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
On top of everythng Kirsty says, the funding call for the "AI Lab" was launched with such a short deadline as to make the writing of thorough, well-considered proposals virtully impossible....
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Randall Munroe @xkcd.com · 24/07/2026
Calibration Nobel xkcd.com/3275/
Comic. [Person 1 with short hair on stage behind podium reading off paper while addressing audience. People are shown sitting in chairs while Person 2 with ponytail and Person 3 waving are walking toward stage.] PERSON 1: This year’s Nobel Prize in “calibrating your equipment carefully and not embarrassing yourself by publishing spurious results” goes to Dr. Adams and Dr. Smith, who did *not* announce the discovery of microbes on Titan. PERSON 3: Thank you, thank you.
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Jacopo Bertolotti @jacopobertolotti.com · 22/07/2026
In the grim darkness of the present, there is only enshittification.
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Jacob Aron @jjaron.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
This is like wanting to be the world's best shovel purchaser in a gold rush
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Jacopo Bertolotti @jacopobertolotti.com · 20/07/2026
Experimenting with a monochromatic colour scheme. As first attempts go, I am quite happy. But it also shows all the skills I need to work on more. #MiniaturePainting #Blue #WH40k
Miniature of a minotaur wielding a rough mace and a gun (possibly from the "Kill Teams" game?) painted only in shades of blue. Except for one red eye.
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Jacopo Bertolotti @jacopobertolotti.com · 20/07/2026
Dear journal editors: there is no practical reason to tightly constrain the amount of time people have to revise a paper. Your journal is just bits on a server anyway. And even if you had to physically print it like it was the XX century, just let it slide to a future issue.
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Lautaro Vergara-Cofré @vergaralautaro.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
HISTORY OF PHYSICS Duel in the Sun For decades, a dominant historical story asserted that David Hilbert publicly presented the correct field equations of general relativity on November 20, 1915, just five days before Albert Einstein. 1/
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Jacopo Bertolotti @jacopobertolotti.com · 16/07/2026
As someone working on the optics of disordered media, I am VERY intrigued about the possibility to make an optical version of these.
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Jacopo Bertolotti @jacopobertolotti.com · 16/07/2026
#PhysicsFactlet "Etendue conservation" is something that, if you have studied #Optics for any amount of time, probably you heard of, but at the same time most optics experts are not very familiar with. ⚛️🧪💡🎢 1/
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Jacopo Bertolotti @jacopobertolotti.com · 16/07/2026
Can you even call yourself a nerd if reading a detailed description of every single computer visible in #JurassicPark is not the best thing you have done today? 🙃 fabiensanglard.net/jurrasic_par...
fabiensanglard.net
Jurassic Park computers in excruciating detail
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Jonathan Pritchard @pritchardjr.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
"It's a zero-sum game," Wild said. "The bullets we've dodged have hit someone else." www.reviewertoo.com/13-7-2026-bu...
reviewertoo.com
"The bullets we've dodged have hit someone else" — UK science cuts largely spare physics and astro, hit projects and labs
Also: AI conflict of interest disclosures in philosophy, PhD admission down 15% at US universities, an AI "humanizer" tool for science, and more from last week
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Jacopo Bertolotti @jacopobertolotti.com · 13/07/2026
"Verify your age" Explains how THAC0 worked in AD&D.
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Jacopo Bertolotti @jacopobertolotti.com · 13/07/2026
Your periodic reminder that there is practically no downside to preprints: www.nature.com/articles/d41... 🧪⚛️🎢
nature.com
Think preprints are unreliable? Analysis of 70,000 studies might change your mind
Central conclusions rarely change when biomedical preprints go on to be published in journals.
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SMBC Comics @smbccomics.bsky.social · 11/07/2026
Disobey God and get drowned immediately is really more of an Abrahamic religion thing. COMIC ◆ www.smbc-comics.com/comic/dadalus PATREON ◆ www.patreon.com/ZachWeinersm... STORE ◆ smbc-store.myshopify.com
4-panel SMBC comic update. The narration in the firs box says "people think the Icarus story was about hubris" as Icarus is shown falling and saying "I flew too high, taking what belongs to the gods, and so must perish!" The narration continues, stating "but actually his father Daedalus also told him not to fly too low" as Daedalus is seen saying to his son "up high: fall.  Down low: drown. Got it?" The narration concludes "Daedalus’ wings worked just fine. He ended the myth by flying to Sicily and getting a good job as an engineer for the king." Daedalus is shown happy at his new job, telling his boss that he got Doom to run on the antikythera mechanism. The final panel cuts to a father reading from a book of Greek myths to his son. The son asks what the moral of the story is, and the father answers "do what dad says, or you will die."
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Jacopo Bertolotti @jacopobertolotti.com · 09/07/2026
Tempted to start making posts about how #Optics, #Light, absorption etc work, aimed at people doing #MiniaturePainting . Mostly I am not doing it because I suspect I would come around as obnoxious instead of useful.
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Patrick Breyer @echo-pbreyer.digitalcourage.social.ap.brid.gy · 09/07/2026
🇪🇺 The European Parliament lets #ChatControl 1.0 go through despite a majority voting against it (314:276) – allowing mass scanning of private chats until 2028. Survivors are warning. My analysis and why this is the wrong approach 👇 […]
digitalcourage.social
Original post on digitalcourage.social
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