Charles Day

I had fun speaking today at the Quantum World Congress panel on Demystifying Quantum: How to Communicate Cutting Edge Science to Diverse Audiences. Alongside the fantastic moderator @csrday.bsky.social and esteemed panelists @nicoleyh11.bsky.social and Ben Stein #QWC2025

I bought and read Masterpiece too! I hope it gets adapted for TV or a movie.

According to a study by the New York Fed, physics majors had the second highest unemployment rate, 7.8%, among college graduates in 2023. What's going on? www.newyorkfed.org/research/col...

Are the gravitational anomalies attributed to dark matter due to WIMPs, axions, primordial black holes, modified gravity or something else? Take Physics Magazine's survey for a chance weigh in on this and other big questions.

I think of JWST whenever I play this card in Terraforming Mars.

Are you back in the UK? If so, where?

Jon, there's nothing remotely erotic about either Trump or Musk. That said, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_34

Homemade garganelli pasta with chicken gizzard sauce.

My thoughts too. There was no lakeside venue but the historical resonance was clear. And even if some viewers don't know about Wanseee, the ruthless, bureaucratic inhumanity was obvious.

Signature of alien life 'found' 120 light years from Earth A distant ocean-covered world, teeming with life. That's the most likely explanation for a new discovery made by scientists studying the planet K2-18b.

I saw this. www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/...

I was sorry to hear of the death of Mario Vargas Llosa. Two weeks before, I bought a copy of his 2001 novel The Feast of the Goat at my local second-hand bookshop. The book was misfiled in the cookery section. I like to think Mario would be amused.

My go-to brand for one of my favorite foods. Unlike anchovies canned in olive oil, the ones packed in salt need to be filleted. But the effort is worth it for the fishier flavor.

Mary Jackson (engineer) - Wikipedia

I walked by NASA HQ this morning with my dog. The building is named after (for now) Mary W. Jackson. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Ja...

I like that one K is one degree Celsius. I also acknowledge that, despite my metric inclinations, the Fahrenheit scale is optimized for weather. I do not miss my native country's predecimal currency of pounds, shillings and pence (LSD in Latin).

"This new knowledge has all to do with honor and country but it has nothing to do directly with defending our country except to help make it worth defending" - Robert Wilson explaining to Congress why the US should fund an expensive and powerful particle accelerator and, by my extension, science.

I followed your strategy when I was on Facebook. I pretended to be a devout member of the Taliban. Pretty much every ad that the algo showed me was offensive in some way, so I flagged them. The tactic kept the ads at bay for a few months then they (and Taliban me) returned.

Column | More than a quarter of computer-programming jobs just vanished. What happened? Learning to code was supposedly the salvation of millions of liberal art majors. But now programming jobs are plummeting. The Post’s Department of Data tries to figure out what’s going on.

The conclusions of this article hinge on a distinction between programmer and developer. But how clear is that distinction?

Nervous about Trump, international tourists scrap their U.S. travel plans International tourists are canceling plans to visit the United States, with Canadians leading the way.

Possibly related www.washingtonpost.com/business/202...

I hope the term Darkfriend enters the mainstream. It's turned out to be useful and apt.

Jan and I haven't read the books, but we're digging the TV adaptation. It's better than Rings of Power and better than the last season of House of the Dragon.

“If we are lucky, some new ideas will emerge that are really valid. Ponder why the successful flavors do work; use that understanding to choose new possibilities” — Giuliano Bugialli.

Erotic writing is becoming more explicit Gardening metaphors are out. Other things are very much in

"There is now a vast variety of erotica available, including cosy erotica (knitwear is torn off), Austen erotica . . . There is even erotica featuring—readers may wish to brace themselves—physicists."

So happy to be reading again one of my favorite novelists of my teens and twenties: Honoré de Balzac. The pic is from the cover of Lost Illusions (1837-43).

Arsenic and phosphorus in bugs and superconductors On Mondays I usually visit Science's press site, which contains links to papers that will appear in the journal four days later alongside enticing summaries of the most newsworthy papers. This Monday ...

My original skepticism remains. Arsenic's cosmic abundance is tiny. pubs.aip.org/physicstoday...

An equal mix of red, white and blue pigments results in lilac. I dig the alliteration of Lilac Land.

Favorite clue in today’s FT Xword: Knight crossing an eastern river (6). Knight, DUB, crosses an, AN, to give DANUB followed by eastern, E.

YouTube video by vertigo60 Ron Davies - It Ain't Easy (1970)

The track that closes side 1 of David Bowie's album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars is a cover. I've finally sought and listened to the original version, and it's good.

Christopher Priest's 1998 novel The Extremes is like one long creepy and riveting episode of Black Mirror.

Myths around quantum computation before full fault tolerance: What no-go theorems rule out and what they don't In this perspective article, we revisit and critically evaluate prevailing viewpoints on the capabilities and limitations of near-term quantum computing and its potential transition toward fully fault...

Useful perspective, clearly written and well-reasoned.
arxiv.org/abs/2501.05694