David Rousseau

Almost moved to see these students, who, back in January, were just CVs among a thousand applying to the COFUND #DeMythif.AI program at @univparissaclay.bsky.social (with @dataiainstitute.bsky.social ).
A beautiful start to their PhD journey on AI, uncertainty, and science!

So cool to see this!

Ah so, thanks to LLM’s, arXiv is becoming a postprint server

I thought it was a sketch from a guide !!!

And another white heron ! I find Little, Cattle and Great Egrets we have in France already too many to sort out…

Indeed, and the lesser-known Lukasz Zwalinski...

...so two very different lifer styles, both effortless: the ready-made, and the self-found.
For context: there’s just this one WWBT in France right now, a handful during this autumn.
And just a handful of Grey Phalaropes now; this is the only inland one, brought by Storm Benjamin.
#birds
3/3

A Grey Phalarope, remote, next to a Grey Heron and a Little Egret, photo Damien Ramos, not my picture but my bird indeed

Then I drive to another spot with a full view of the lake. Barely out of the car, I hardly notice a very common Black-headed Gull landing next to a very common Herring Gull just meters from shore.
Wait, this Black-headed is minuscule, yes indeed, this is a Grey Phalarope!
#birds
2/3

White-winged Black Tern, Arnaud Ladole, Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines Oct 24th 2025, not my picture, but my bird indeed!

#289 and #290 France lifers in 15'!
So a White-winged Black Tern had been reported for a week on Lake Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines near Paris.
I drive there, en route I get a note "Near the eastern dam!", I park there, set up the scope and there it is, spectacular black and white pattern!
#birds
1/3

Particle physicists be like

Google Scholar tool gives extra credit to first and last authors Researchers welcome the initiative, but say it doesn’t go far enough to capture the nuance of researcher productivity and impact.

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Then I pinged the same people through direct email: immediate answer, either accepting, or apologising and giving me a handful of alternate referees, very nice!

Looks like I'll stick to private emails for invites from now on.

(I do understand the editor's pov worrying about nothing happening)
3/3

...while I was searching for referees through private email (this paper was really tricky, and it was summer).
So this time, I only used the official platform to invite referees: dead silence!
(even with the hand-crafting of a few lead sentences in the standard email)
2/3

As an associated editor for EPJC, CSBS before, I always search for referees with private emails, and only then I formalise the invite on the official platform.
Last time, an editor was complaining I was not doing anything because he was not seeing any activity on the platform...

1/3
#academiclife

Let's call it for what it is : Regression to mediocrity

My bank notified me of a suspicious charge on my card. Turns out it was fraud. Had to block it and order a new one.
The merchant? HIGGSFIELD.inc 🤨
Coincidence, I think not!

So many years on Twitter, without seeing a single baseball tweet, but on Bluesky, they keep popping up?
Puzzled...

Thought the same

j'identifie pas le fromage, meule trop petite pour du comté ou du gruyère?

A bike path, autumn trees in the morning sun

What we miss by taking the car…

Autumn morning on #Saclay bike path
#biketowork

Je demande à #ChatGPT de me réécrire des paragraphes en anglais.
Ensuite, #grammarly (activé par défaut dans ma console latex) me propose de réécrire des phrases de ChatGPT ("for clarity").
Eh ben c'est nettement mieux.
Peut-être je devrais directement indiquer à ChatGPT d'écrire comme Grammarly

It sounds a bit like the true Bossuet quote
"Dieu se rit des hommes qui se plaignent des conséquences alors qu'ils en chérissent les causes."
"God laughs at men who complain of the consequences while cherishing the causes."

Laplace did work a lot on integration; he was famously the first to integrate the Gauss function to sqrt(pi), and Laplace's integral transform is prominent in the math toolbox.
But the quote cannot be traced earlier than I. Gordon and S. Sorkin, The Armchair Science Reader, New York, 1959. ...

I was intrigued at a seminar where the lecturer quoted in english:
Laplace "Nature laughs at the difficulties of integration"
A good one, but never heard it in French, while I see it is quite popular in the English-speaking academy
It turns out this quote was entirely made up in the fifties! 🧵

Interesting! « Tourner » is very common, (for « to turn ») but « ato(u)rner » did not make it to modern French.

Attorney is french? The only similar sounding french word I can think of is « étourneau » = starling (the bird)

We end up joking about our bikes—turns out he spent 3 years in Lausanne, and he gives me tips for my ride.
Never lose faith in humanity!

5/5

Next turn, who do I find stopped at the next red light?
I pull up beside him.
He stares ahead. I stare ahead. He stares ahead. I stare ahead…
Then I hear him, in pretty decent French: “Comment on dit ‘swap’ en français?”

4/5

He glances at me, then stares ahead.
…Okay.
The light turns green—he bolts, I’m left churning far behind.

And I'm thinking, damn it, David, he probably thought you were threatening him.
Note to self: humour doesn’t always cross cultural divides.

3/5

At the first red light, a guy pulls up beside me on a stunning carbon road bike, full black kit, wraparound sunglasses...
I look at him, he doesn’t look back.
After a while, I gesture: “Maybe we could swap bikes?”

2/5