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Marco Piani

@marcopiani.bsky.social
2.7K followers 350 following 207 posts

Physicist by training, silly by choice. Views my own.

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Reposted by Marco Piani
Marco Piani @marcopiani.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
Fun fact: a presidential order alone cannot change something like the name of the “Lake Ontario National Marine Sanctuary” sanctuaries.noaa.gov/lake-ontario/
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Marco Piani @marcopiani.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
Fun fact: a presidential order alone cannot change something like the name of the “Lake Ontario National Marine Sanctuary” sanctuaries.noaa.gov/lake-ontario/
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Marco Piani @marcopiani.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
Experiencing Die Kaffeebohnenfehlkaufmorgenverzweiflung
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Marco Piani @marcopiani.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
All the top papers on Scirate saw AI play some role, in some cases a major one. These screenshots are from the top 4 papers, in order. A major role played by AI in at least three of them.
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Marco Piani @marcopiani.bsky.social · 04/07/2026
Filed under “Correlation is not causation”
Cell towers dominate over a cemetery
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Marco Piani @marcopiani.bsky.social · 02/06/2026
How sudden&extreme is exponential growth, you ask? This is an equal-aspect plot of exp(x), with limits -1000 and 1000 for both the x and y axes. Fun fact: this graph was generated from the browser bar, by just asking for it
equal-aspect plot of exp(x), with limits -1000 and 1000 for both the x and y axes
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Marco Piani @marcopiani.bsky.social · 27/03/2026
Watched “Project Hail Mary” I enjoyed it and I would recommend it. I have a few issues here and there. A big one (SPOILER ALERT): . . . . . . . . If you have redundant probe ships to send back messages to Earth to save humanity, you use them even if you think…
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Margaret Harris @drmlharris.bsky.social · 19/03/2026
For John Preskill, #quantum computing is part of the "complexity frontier" within physics, comparable to the "short distance frontier" exemplified by particle physics and the "long distance frontier" that cosmologists and astronomers are exploring. #APSSummit26 ⚛️🧪
John Preskill standing on a conference stage in front of a slide reading "Frontiers of Physics" and containing information about the short distance, long distance and complexity frontiers. There's a sign-language interpreter visible off the stage to the right
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Marco Piani @marcopiani.bsky.social · 20/03/2026
Chuck Norris didn’t die. He roundhouse kicked all of us to an alternative reality, so that he could enjoy some quiet me-time in the reality we previously shared. RIP
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John Preskill @preskill.bsky.social · 18/03/2026
I'm thrilled that Charlie Bennett and Gilles Brassard have received the A. M. Turing Award for “their essential role in establishing the foundations of quantum information science and transforming secure communication and computing.” Congratulations! www.quantamagazine.org/quantum-cryp...
quantamagazine.org
Quantum Cryptography Pioneers Win Turing Award | Quanta Magazine
Charles Bennett and Gilles Brassard were recognized for their foundational work in quantum information science.
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Association for Computing Machinery @acm.org · 18/03/2026
Congratulations to Charles H. Bennett and Gilles Brassard on receiving the 2025 ACM A.M. Turing Award! They are recognized for their essential role in establishing the foundations of quantum information science and transforming secure communication and computing. awards.acm.org/turing @umontreal
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Jonathan Oppenheim @postquantum.bsky.social · 18/03/2026
Congratulations to Charlie Bennett and Gilles Brassard for winning the 2026 Turing Award (akin to the Nobel Prize for Computer Science)! They invented quantum cryptography and quantum teleportation. awards.acm.org/turing 🧪 ⚛️ 1/
awards.acm.org
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Quanta Magazine @quantamagazine.org · 18/03/2026
Charles Bennett and Gilles Brassard have been named the winners of the A.M. Turing Award, one of the highest honors in computing, for their work establishing the foundations of quantum information theory. The award comes with a $1 million prize. www.quantamagazine.org/quantum-cryp...
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Marco Piani @marcopiani.bsky.social · 26/02/2026
The water was spilled, and it panicked: "Oh no, I am gonna dry!"
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Marco Piani @marcopiani.bsky.social · 05/02/2026
"The NEW Bitcoin Rainbow2023 Chart" confidently suggests that now is the time to "BUY!" 👀
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Adam Kucharski @adamjkucharski.bsky.social · 25/01/2026
Quickly telling someone you’ve liked something they’ve done (e.g. telling a writer you like their writing, or a researcher you like their research, or a teacher you like their teaching) has a phenomenally high effort-to-impact ratio.
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Marco Piani @marcopiani.bsky.social · 26/01/2026
I miss the good old times when the worst that happened was renaming the Gulf of Mexico.
Tin Tin meme

“What a presidency it has been, huh?”
“This was just the 1st year, captain.”
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Marco Piani @marcopiani.bsky.social · 26/01/2026
Immigration is the issue on which Trump had the best approval ratings but is currently dragging his polls down
Net approval of Trump on various issues, by Silver
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Marco Piani @marcopiani.bsky.social · 21/01/2026
How are things going one year after, you ask? They are in the clear. Meaning, in the ratings graph there is a white gap between the disapproval band and the approval band.
Approval (42.0%) and disapproval (55.1%) of Donald Trump, from Silver BulletinNet approval (-13.1%) of Donald Trump, from Silver Bulletin
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Marco Piani @marcopiani.bsky.social · 18/08/2025
Physicists: we should counter the impression that quantum mechanics is weird and inaccessible to ordinary people; anybody with sufficient interest and ready to put in the effort can learn quantum mechanics Also physicists:
PRX Quantum social media post, saying

“A new Monte Carlo method computes stabilizer Rényi entropy and reveals nontrivial magic behavior at quantum criticality.”
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Quantum Info at UAB @giq-bcn.bsky.social · 08/08/2025
We are organizing a short course on Quantum Foundations at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona funded by Catalonia Quantum Academy (CQA). Few spaces left! Apply before 20 August, 2025.
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Marco Piani @marcopiani.bsky.social · 08/08/2025
😅
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Nicole Yunger Halpern @nicoleyh11.bsky.social · 28/07/2025
"I can hear his French-Canadian accent in my memory, but not without hearing him smile at the ends of most sentences." A blog post for Ray Laflamme. @quantumiqc.bsky.social @perimeterinstitute.ca @majidy.bsky.social quantumfrontiers.com/2025/07/27/l...
quantumfrontiers.com
Little ray of sunshine
A common saying goes, you should never meet your heroes, because they’ll disappoint you. But you shouldn’t trust every common saying; some heroes impress you more, the better you know them. Ray Laf…
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Valerio Scarani @valerioscarani.bsky.social · 01/07/2025
Postdoc opening in my group: careers.nus.edu.sg/job/Research...
careers.nus.edu.sg
Research Fellow in Quantum Information Theory
Research Fellow in Quantum Information Theory
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Marco Piani @marcopiani.bsky.social · 16/06/2025
It turns out that the solution to the Fermi paradox is stupid. Pardon, it’s “stupid”. Meaning, the so-called Great Filter is the plain stupidity that even relatively advanced civilizations, say, humanity as a whole, can still display. The solution was in front of us all this time.
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Marco Piani @marcopiani.bsky.social · 09/05/2025
Chuckling at this breakdown of the Vatican City resident population
Breakdown of the resident population of the Vatican City from Wiipedia
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Marco Piani @marcopiani.bsky.social · 08/05/2025
BREAKING An immigrant becomes the head of state of the Vatican. Again. But this time he is American.
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Marco Piani @marcopiani.bsky.social · 05/05/2025
The way Trump declares that there are National Security threats to invoke emergency powers for tariffs reminds me of one of the early South Park episodes, where hunters shout they are being attacked by protected animals, to shoot them unpunished.
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Marco Piani @marcopiani.bsky.social · 29/04/2025
If you are saying that the Canadian election was rigged at whatever local level, be aware you sound like a child having a tantrum after dropping on the ground your fresh ice cream cone OTOH you would be entitled to complain against the old man in a blue suit that bumped into you
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Marco Piani @marcopiani.bsky.social · 25/04/2025
Trump’s appeal to Putin sounds very similar to me turning off a ringing Alexa alarm.
Donald J. Trump Posts Fr... &
@TrumpDailyPosts
Follow
I am not happy with the Russian strikes on KYIV. Not necessary, and very bad timing. Vladimir, STOP!
5000 soldiers a week are dying. Lets get the Peace
Deal DONE!
From Donald Trump Truth Social 04/24/25 08:24
AM
8:26 AM • Apr 24, 2025 • 3.4M Views
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Marco Piani @marcopiani.bsky.social · 24/04/2025
There is a lesson here: if you Putin the effort, you can achieve a lot - like almost flipping the approval ratings - in a short time.
Nate Silver’s charts about the approval / disapproval ratings for Donald TrumpNate Silver’s chart about the net approval rating for Donald Trump
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Marco Piani @marcopiani.bsky.social · 23/04/2025
When was the last time Trump mentioned Fentanyl as rationale for tariffs against Canada, China, and Mexico?
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Philip Taranto 🍋 @tarantophilip.eurosky.social · 14/03/2025
Wrote up a little tutorial + review on higher-order quantum operations. If you love quantum channels, you can think of these as linear maps that act on channels themselves in manner fully consistent with quantum theory! I hope it helps future students / researchers! 🤗 arxiv.org/abs/2503.09693
arxiv.org
Higher-Order Quantum Operations
An operational description of quantum phenomena concerns developing models that describe experimentally observed behaviour. $\textit{Higher-order quantum operations}\unicode{x2014}$quantum operations ...
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Marco Piani @marcopiani.bsky.social · 21/04/2025
Correlation is not causation but…
Fox News headline:

BREAKING
1936-2025
Vatican says Pope Francis has passed away the day after meeting VP Vance on
Easter
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Adam Kucharski @adamjkucharski.bsky.social · 19/04/2025
There are many aspects of the COVID pandemic the US needs to learn from, not least given the >1 million deaths it suffered and the current threat of viruses like H5N1. But the misleading, politically-charged content at covid.gov is not a route to the constructive or evidence-based debate we need.
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Marco Piani @marcopiani.bsky.social · 14/04/2025
Happy World Quantum Day in the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology! It does not get more quantum than this - unless you are Ant-Man. Then you can celebrate while in the Quantum Realm.
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matplotlib @matplotlib.org · 08/04/2025
Stare at it a bit!
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Marco Piani @marcopiani.bsky.social · 10/04/2025
What some people do not seem to understand is that the U.S. under Trump has lost the trust of other countries and (further) damaged the status of leader of the Western World. It does not matter whether tariffs go / stay down. This is particularly true for Canada.
Isle in a Canadian grocery store, with many Canadian flag tags
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Paul Mainwood @paulmainwood.bsky.social · 02/04/2025
Perhaps the funniest bit was when the S&P popped by +1.2% for a couple of minutes, all the traders earned their "Fell for it again" awards... and then the country-by-country tariff slide came out.
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Marco Piani @marcopiani.bsky.social · 02/04/2025
I have recently looked into Fibonacci coverings, and it is hard not to play with them to create cool images. Plotted with @matplotlib.org
Fibonacci covering of the plane with grey colormapFibonacci covering of the plane with grey colormap
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Marco Piani @marcopiani.bsky.social · 01/04/2025
It is not clear that it’s multiverses that provide a quantum advantage Back to sCuare 1 arxiv.org/abs/2503.22768
arxiv.org
Definitive Proof of the Classical Multiverse!
Recent astonishing experiments with quantum computers have demonstrated unambiguously the existence of a quantum multiverse, where calculations of mind-boggling complexity are effortlessly computed in...
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Max Roser @maxroser.bsky.social · 18/03/2025
In 2004, it took the world a year to add one gigawatt of solar power — now it takes a day.
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Marco Piani @marcopiani.bsky.social · 18/03/2025
The work is mysterious and important
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Adam Kucharski @adamjkucharski.bsky.social · 13/03/2025
One week until UK release! Here’s why you might want to consider pre-ordering 👇
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Marco Piani @marcopiani.bsky.social · 12/03/2025
Facebook reminded me of this rolling multi-ad billboard in Glasgow, Scotland, 7 years ago.
Ad warning about obesity as cause of cancerAd for large burgers
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Robert Niffenegger @bobnifty.bsky.social · 10/03/2025
I'm posting my Intro to Quantum Computing Course on Github this year. github.com/UMassIonTrap... 13 interactive Colabs 16 recorded lecture (so far) 70 pages of 'Goodnotes' Focus is visual and interactive learning of how qubits work (eg. RWA below) Hope it's helpful! I'll post updates as we go!
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Marco Piani @marcopiani.bsky.social · 10/03/2025
Whenever one feels Musk has reached rock bottom, he plays The Boring Company card.
Musk replying with “You are a traitor” to former astronaut Senator Kelly on X, because of Kelly’s push to continue to support Ukraine.
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Marco Piani @marcopiani.bsky.social · 04/03/2025
One must appreciate how the mentioning of fentanyl is always an afterthought. It was never about fentanyl, at least not in the case of Canada. Fentanyl is an excuse. youtu.be/VfUew8_XrJo?...
youtu.be
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Marco Piani @marcopiani.bsky.social · 04/03/2025
"Contrary to others, Putin asked nicely", President Trump commented before announcing the new change
Gulf of Russia
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Marco Piani @marcopiani.bsky.social · 02/03/2025
TFW the grift is so badly evident that they have to post an addendum
Trump’s posts about a crypto reserve
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