Jeffrey M Epstein

even aside from my usual hobbyhorse about how this is bullshit for investors that should not be confused with a serious academic opinion, sam altman is just not qualified to assess whether it's 'phd level' (whatever that means) in *any* field. he literally can't tell because he doesn't know the shit

And I can't think of any situations where you'd treat the EM field as particle photons and charge and current in terms of densities. Something very contrived with photodetectors maybe?

Not to say the question isn't interesting, just I don't think what you're noticing is that classical EM treats on a different footing two things that QED treats the same, but that there are more situations where one intermediate theory (particle matter, field gauge) is useful than the other is.

Yeah true, although you don't get quantization of charge automatically from the formalism there, so the countable nature of particles seems to still be missing. You could also do the same with distributions of EM fields to describe a point-like feature that you then think of as a photon (maybe?).

I don't think it's quite fair to frame it that way. In classical electromagnetism you often talk about charge and current distribution, after all. Those, together with the electromagnetic field, are the objects that show up in Maxwell's equations, so there's no particle notion in that theory.

I hate it when there aren't enough sciences per token in the papers chatgpt dubs over my hard data

what a lot of these "DOGE didn't know we actually govern very efficiently" highlights miss is that, ok, DOGE didn't know they govern very efficiently, but that is totally irrelevant to DOGE. it's like saying "ICE officers don't know immigrants have low levels of criminality." they don't care, man

Wait I think this is actually even stupider than I realized - it sounds like that was just the "original idea", and then they came up with some new bullshit in four days and whatever that is is their company now.

"Duolingo-style app for liberal arts and sciences" give me a break

So what I'm hearing here is that nobody involved in this story has ever had a complete thought in their lives (to continue the linkedin rage posting).

Overheard at sf coffeeshop: “Sorry about your coinbase”. Need to get the hell out of this place.

I think it's that, and also a kind of petulant reaction to the (mostly) imagined attitude on the part of philosophers that physicists just don't know at all what we're doing, which most of us at least sort of do, even if we're not making those same questions the core of our day to day work.

Also if I were a bird I think I'd be curious about birds.

The idea that it's not interesting to think about what we're doing when we do this thing that is allegedly very interesting, at least to us personally, is so boring!

Rewatching Devil Wears Prada I suddenly saw a parallel between Miranda’s iconic cerulean speech and the way we philosophers react to Feynman-like arguments that scientists need philosophy as much as birds need ornithology. 1/n

VCs and quantum startups stop telling obvious lies challenge (impossible)

It is a huge problem that the people in charge of where money is being spent to progress how we learn about things believes that history is merely the re-stating of facts and things that happened. So much of the study of history is individuals with new perspectives moving the lens into new areas.

I wish a very happy “fuck you” to everyone who thought throwing trans people under the bus was going to stop these lunatics

Their goal has *always* been the eradication of the entire LGBTQ+ community, and they’re not gonna stop at Obergefell either

This is why we fight for *everyone*

Agree with all this, and I'd add that even without the motivation of quantum gravity, quantum mechanics by itself already runs counter to some of our most basic pretheoretic metaphysical intuitions, eg. about how things combine and what it means to describe an object. Pulling at that thread matters!

Every time I see three things now I wonder how to make them match up with the modalities of the power to punish

I bet the Jewish students who were almost certainly funded by some of those grants feel much more secure now

Reading Foucault to become even more annoying

I think it’s the use of the word “boundary” that implies a sharp distinction to me.

Agreed it’s ambiguous. I read the statement more as “there are fundamentally classical systems”, but I guess it’s hard to believe almost half of the physics community believes that.

I love how this doesn't mean anything at all

45% say there’s a “boundary between the quantum and classical worlds”?! I love that phrasing because I disagree so strongly, and that’s apparently controversial!

I want to go one day in San Francisco without overhearing a conversation about ChatGPT.

ICE steps up arrests at S.F. immigration court Every adult without a child with them was taken by agents, including a man who tried to self-deport. “I want to go voluntarily," he said.

Six people arrested this morning at SF immigration court —the most yet in one day from a single judge’s docket.

One of them was a man who asked & was granted an order to self-deport.

“I don’t want to be arrested,” he said. “I want to go voluntarily." missionlocal.org/2025/07/hed-...

One factor per topping