Today my 15yo taught me that trickle down theory actually started with Alexander Hamilton. As if I needed another reason to believe this country was founded on greed disguised as freedom.

Love the irony in how the latest ICE action is named after a beloved children’s book about the power of community and self sacrifice, Charlotte’s Web.

Today in physics class we talked about the Black Panthers. We’re using the Ising model to understand social dynamics.

Whenever some petty little man gets angry with me and throws a tantrum, I like to remind myself of Rumplestiltskin’s ending in the fairy tale. He got so angry about losing he literally tears himself apart. That’s what these men are doing. Tearing themselves apart because I won.

Happy Halloween.

Trees at the edge of a pond with a mix of green red and gold leaves.

A cloud of white aster flowers.

Early autumn colors.

I really want Eric Bogosian to star in an Anthony Bourdain biopic.

You do not need to get back to Nature. It’s already all around you. The mind blowing mechanics of the quantum world are happening inside you right now. Your minimalist home is teeming with microbial life. Want to make it more visible? Don’t wash your dishes for a few days. “Nature” will show up.

Woodchuck looking towards camera standing on grass.

The cuteness of woodchucks is really underrated. Look at the cute lil ears n lil nose n big ole belly and ignore the fact that this monster would decimate your garden, munching every thing even remotely edible in about 10.2 seconds!

It’s as slimy as a regular cucumber. Tastes just like a cucumber too.

Picture of very large Hmong cucumber with butter knife for scale.

Bought a Hmong cucumber today from a local farmer at the Flea Market. Biggest cucumber I have ever seen. The flea market seems to have better vegetables than the farmers market. I asked a farmer why and learned the low entry cost and fewer rules makes flea markets a good alternative for them.

Infographic saying: Nearly 2,500 confined youth are incarcerated in adult jails and prisons. Kids need care, not cages.

When children are confined in adult facilities, they face greater safety risks, and fewer age-appropriate services are available to them.

The carceral system is no place for children.

Been playing with a simulation based on the Ising model lately. It really drives home how important your neighbors are.

The two types of nerds who do projects with cathode ray tubes:

1.) Those who have badly shocked themselves

2.) Those who will badly shock themselves

My teenage son keeps getting “ads for socialism “ (Robert Reich ads) on YouTube. It’s a big improvement over the PragerU ones he used to get.

Moonlight.

Wondering how all the leftists who suggest reading Lenin feel about the Red Scare or Mao the Cultural Revolution. Can’t we find better theorists to derive inspiration from that didn’t endorse mass murder of the same working class people they had pledged to defend?

Visit to magical Round the Bend Farm.

#OtD 13 Jul 1921 anarchists detained without charge in Russia ended their hunger strike after the Bolsheviks agreed to exile most of them. One anarchist, however, 34-year-old Jewish factory worker Fanya Baron, was executed on Lenin's orders stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/8482...

Reading for the holiday.

Universities are not about the accumulation of knowledge, hoarded like gold ducats in a locked vault.

Humanity’s collective knowledge is a living thing; it circulates through society like blood; it must constantly be transmitted and renewed.

That is what we do.

Phun physics query: which of these is not a quark: top, bottom, vers, strange, or charm?

Did you know that bacteria stake out territory, guard its boundaries, and kill any invaders? We should stop waging war like single celled organisms without organelles and start cooperating with each other. “Country” is an outdated concept.
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Providence No Kings rally.

The happiness of having the dog park all to yourself.

Red roses with white lace cap climbing hydrangeas.

For your bloomscrolling pleasure: roses and hydrangeas.

One of the surprising results from physics is just how catastrophic failure can be. We may not even be able to see the cracks one day, then the next the floor is falling out from under our feet.

The Old Man went for his last swim in the Sea today. Love and miss you K-Pa.

I’m dying. My teenage offspring just suggested I look up “this guy Stephen Colbert who makes the news funny.” Son, I’ve been aware of Colbert since before you were a twinkle in your daddy’s eye. I was alive during the heyday of something called “cable tv”, before the internet.

Celebrating Emmy Noether today, one of the mothers of theoretical physics. She showed how symmetries lead to conservation laws and paved the way for the uncertainty principle in quantum mechanics.