Andrew Jaffe

I made a thing.

Surprised that Taylor needs to promote her latest with an A4 poster at the Imperial College elevators (lifts).

Last year was a sabbatical, so today I’ve got my first proper teaching in a full year and a half — a two-hour lecture to start my Information Theory course.

Feeling a bit nervous!

Not a Number

R.I.P. George Smoot, experimental cosmologist, Nobel prize winner and one of the discoverers of primordial fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background, a colleague and mentor back when I was a postdoc in Berkeley, always curious and enthusiastic.

macOS Tahoe/Safari complaint: in sidebar showing Tab Groups, current group shows tab list as if the disclosure triangle clicked.

Bad enough. But worse: old group in the sidebar stays open even when I click to a new one!

This seems so wrong that there must be a setting — but I couldn’t find it.

This seems like a whole mess of bugs. (Trying to update to macOS 26 Tahoe. Perhaps this is telling me it’s a bad idea?…)

> `PASSWORD_ALERT_TITLE_WITH_USERNAME_OSX_REBRAND_SERVICE_ICLOUD`

> `PASSWORD_ALERT_MESSAGE_WITH_USERNAME_OSX_REBRAND`

> `FOL... https://andrewjaffe.net/microblog/2025/09/1062/

Yesterday, someone walked into the café I was sitting in wearing a Primitives t-shirt. Today, their wonderful “Crash” came on my random streaming mix, so it seems appropriate to share one of the great pop songs of all time.

The amazing Lisa Lucas’ latest for the NY Times, on hunting the autumn leaves in Japan — 3 Days of ‘Momijigari’: Experiencing Japan’s Fiery Autumnal Foliage.

You can pre-order The Random Universe, get a 7% discount, and support local bookstores, all at the same time.

Quarter of schools in England lack a physics teacher, analysis finds — The Guardian Institute of Physics says ‘critical’ shortage means 700,000 pupils are deprived of a subject specialist

Quarter of schools in England lack a physics teacher, analysis finds – The Guardian

Back — home — to London after 386 days away.

A highlight of our road trip through Western Europe has been my daughters singing along to Lucinda Williams’ “Car Wheels on a gravel Road”, the Mekons’ version of “Wild and Blue”, and Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire” as well as songs from “Hamilton” (along with, yes, Katy Perry and Ed Sheeran).

Spent the night with the family in the Frassenhütte at the top of an Austrian Alp…

… followed by our trek down the mountain in pouring rain, hail, thunder and lightning (and inappropriate clothing).

Spent the night with the family in the Frassenhütte at the top of an Austrian Alp.

Cornhole is “American pétanque”.

Ulysses for longer things. Obsidian and apple notes for notes. MarsEdit for blogging from my Mac. Trying out @scripting.com’s Wordland. Plain text editors for LaTeX technical writing.

We left our home in London exactly a year ago for my sabbatical abroad. After stops in Japan & New York, tomorrow we depart from our last long-term stop — a temporary but already much-loved home — in Leiden, the Netherlands, with still a few weeks to go before our final return.

Congratulations to Imperial’s Professor Michele Dougherty, the UK’s new Astronomer Royal!

15% still seems like a lot.

YouTube video by Yale Press The Random Universe by Andrew H. Jaffe

youtube.com/shorts/z1QJ4...

@ppfideas.bsky.social

Past Present Future podcast Past Present Future is a bi-weekly History of Ideas podcast with David Runciman, host and creator of Talking Politics, exploring the history of ideas from politics to philosophy, culture to technology. David talks to historians, novelists, scientists and many others about where the most interesting ideas come from, what they mean, and why they matter.

. @ppfideas.bsky.social Thanks to the Past Present Future podcast episodes on the American Revolution, trial of Charles I & English Revolution, I finally understand the American Revolution against the tyranny of the King despite the British constitution’s weak monarch and strong Parliament.

Freewheeling family fun in the Netherlands: a cycling and camping trip along the Maas river The Maasroute is the ideal entry-level, multiday bike trip for young children – flat with plenty of riverside cafes, family-friendly campsites and ice-cream stops en route

The latest from Lisa Lucas at the Guardian! Freewheeling family fun in the Netherlands: a cycling and camping trip along the Maas river. With special guests!

U.S. abandons hunt for signal of cosmic inflation | Science | AAAS

Now-canceled CMB-S4 project would have searched the afterglow of the Big Bang for signs of cosmic exponential growth spurt.

This is mildly clever, very slimy, and a little bit funny (since it only works against other slimy — or at least lazy — people).

@tedbunn.bsky.social Happy Birthday, Ted!

Thanks, Dave. It wasn't clear to me where to post feature requests; apologies for misusing/misunderstanding the infrastructure that you've set up.

@scripting.com Just trying to figure out how best to ask about my wordland.social questions/feature requests... (1. getting my posts into wordland when created/edited elsewhere; 2. direct markdown editing.) Are these hopeless?

WORDLAND The best writer's toolkit for WordPress.

It seems that olive oil, cheap balsamic vinegar, greek yogurt, miso paste and garlic make a good chicken marinade. (Also, this is a Wordland test.)