Jason Modisette

TIL that setscrews in door handles can be left-handed. Somehow I unscrewed the thing without realizing, then I just could not get it to seat to screw back in. Eventually I tried reverse-screwing it to see if I could get it to seat, and it started going in. Learning this took 30 minutes.

It seemed like a good time to watch a David Lynch movie.

So we're watching The Straight Story with our 8yo. It's the Disney David Lynch movie. I'm enjoying it; it's the true story of an elderly fellow who drove across Iowa and Wisconsin on his riding mower to visit his sick brother.

It took me several reads to understand that you had not built a pretty accurate scale model in the dessert.

FB suppressing the reach of article links is annoying, but it's a choice.

FB suppressing the reach of article links in a manner that's so easily subverted is offensively stupid.

Million-dollar idea free to good home: you know those fireplace TV channels they have in the winter? And you know those aquarium screensavers? Combine the two - a fireplace with firefish swimming around in the flames! Be cosy AND minimally entertained!

Fall Color, Falling Water Two days of photography in the Lochsa River corridor, just as the autumn rains began: it’s not a place known for fall foliage, but subtler color in moody settings is just what I love these da…

A set of images from October that it's taken me a while to edit, despite its being one of my best photo trips of the year. (Preview image is horribly cropped here, please click through.)
#landscapephotography #autumn #idaho #larch

frishmanphoto.wordpress.com/2025/01/25/f...

I knew it! Now I will be paranoid again.

Syd Harris comic: a couple overlooks a tiny valley town, standing next to a pay telescope ("See picturesque Valleydale, 25c") and a large contraption ("Parabolic Mike: Hear the inhabitants' intimate conversations, 25c")

For ten years I worried folks would spy on me with drones, they never did. When I was a kid it was parabolic mikes - and I've never even seen anyone using a parabolic mike. Maybe "spying on Jason" is just not a thing people do.

I asked ChatGPT for advice on a car problem: the car was doing A, so I did B to fix it. It said "probably B caused A". Seems like it might know that causes precede effects but only in a stochastic sense, not as a hard and fast rule.

A squirrel's been eating palm fruits in my Jeep's engine compartment, with a side of wiring. He didn't chew actually through anything, so I taped up the chew marks. Probably be fine.

Trump ought to be advertising this everywhere. It makes $TRUMP a great purchase for memecoin investors - every time Trump gets a bribe, you get part of it!

May be a depressing read for actual high-energy physicists. Otoh, excellent schadenfreude for condensed-matter physicists who don't get to partake in those huge particle accelerator budgets.

Hossenfelder also has a fun podcast on YouTube. (5 of 5)

Hossenfelder does not do the usual nonfiction thing where she repeats a point over and over in different ways. For big chunks of the book, she makes a point in one sentence, then makes another point that builds on it in the next sentence, then maybe a sentence of snark, then another point. (4 of n)

Her writing style is very entertaining. I can pretty much follow it, and while I do have a degree in physics, I did condensed matter rather than high energy, so I know as little about the standard model as an enthusiastic non-physicist would. The book is nominally for the layman. (3 of n)

Hossenfelder talks about how this is not the scientific method, and about the long history of beautiful theories being wrong (and, of course, being right). The heliocentric model of the Solar System was rejected for valid-seeming reasons of beauty that are not the ones you would expect. (2 of n)

Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray Buy Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray on Amazon.com ✓ FREE SHIPPING on qualified orders

I'm really enjoying Sabine Hossenfelder's Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray
www.amazon.com/Lost-Math-Be...
Post-1990-ish high-energy physics has been a loss because theorists are looking for beautiful theories, for a definition of beauty that is too complex to go into here. (1 of n)