david jon furbish

photo of tri-colored Australian Shepherd standing in grassy field looking upward at camera with toy stuffed dragon on the ground at her feet

“Hey Big Woof, I brought my dragon, did you bring the soccer balls for our game of Dragon Soccer?”

#dogs
#dogsofbluesky
#AustralianShepherd

lol delightful essay

what if instead we lean on a comma and write:

the central, limit theorem

...the motions of natural angular particles down rough inclined surfaces under the influence of gravity, negligibly influenced by the surrounding fluid. This topic serves to highlight the statistical mechanics of particle disentrainment in which, following entrainment, the cessation of motion within any downslope interval is probabilistic. A description of the energetics of particle--surface collisions during downslope movement yields a well-defined distribution of particle travel distances whose form and parametric values reflect a balance between the particle kinetic energy gained from gravitational potential energy and the extraction of kinetic energy by collisions. The analysis illustrates why the notion of a deterministic threshold for cessation of motion is an illusion, with implications transferable to bed load transport.\footnote{Similarly, particle entrainment is probabilistic, and the notion of a so-called critical shear stress marking the onset of bed load transport is an empirical expedient --- an illusion of mechanics.}

my colleague @cstark.bsky.social recently reminded me of a cool word: polemical

so for fun, here is one of my favorite footnotes in something I'm currently writing... which concerns the statistical physics of sediment transport

brilliant… and Samuel Jackson does it perfectly

YouTube video by Angela Collier vibe physics

Also see Angela Collier’s thorough, very funny takedown of “vibe physics” using genAI

A master class in erudite snark

www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMoz...

Why "vibe physics" is the ultimate example of AI slop The conversation you're having with an LLM about groundbreaking new ideas in theoretical physics is completely meritless. Here's why.

The title says it all. Ethan Siegel’s explanation is thorough and clear.

Why “vibe physics” is the ultimate example of AI slop

bigthink.com/starts-with-...

deterministic language of continuum mechanics involving continuously differentiable functions, while avoiding the probabilistic language of statistical physics and the pronounced consequences of the small numbers of particles involved in rarefied sediment transport.

9/9

To insist a priori that we need to tie things up — granular flows and sediment transport phenomena — using a nice continuum ribbon and bow is just not how good science works.

I'm not submitting an abstract. And to answer the question above, we are hopelessly monolingual, clinging to the...

8/n

is only continuum-like in an ensemble averaged sense. Despite decades of group-think assertions, things like bed load transport and rain splash transport in fact involve rarefied conditions that have little to do with continuum behavior.

7/n

Why in the world do we continue to uncritically buy into the myth that natural sediment transport is, or ought to be treated as, a continuum phenomenon? Yes, things like debris flows approximately satisfy the continuum hypothesis. But even (dense granular) creeping soil...

6/n

The title and session description in fact reveal the scientific agenda at the outset: to force — come hell or high water — descriptions of particle-scale mechanics into a continuum framework.

Tsk tsk...

5/n

continuum description difficult to achieve," and "the particle-scale has yet to be harmonized into a consistent theoretical body…" etc.

4/n

Regarding the science, consider the title phrase, "bridging grain-scale mechanics and continuum modeling," together with supporting phrases in the description: with "…geophysical granular flows and sediment transport phenomena...," "...the... nature of granular materials render[s] a...

3/n

that picked up references to my publications, and AGU records showing my previous membership. The title and description of the session are here:

2/n
agu.confex.com/agu/agu25/pr...

This thread concerns science dogma.

I recently received an email from the American Geophysical Union (AGU) encouraging me to submit an abstract for a session at the 2025 annual meeting. I suspect the email was AI generated from a data scrape...

1/n

Paul Dirac - Wikipedia

To reinforce the point with an example counter to Feynman, consider the amazing legacy of Paul Dirac. Beyond physics-minded people (and some math types), who is even aware of Dirac and his contributions?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Di...

YouTube video by Angela Collier vibe physics

Angela Collier ripping through Billionaire AI Vibe Physics Bullshit like a tornado. ❤️❤️❤️

www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMoz...

#AI #LLM #ChatGPT #Physics

“Staggering” Water Loss Driven by Groundwater Mining Poses Global Threat A new study finds that freshwater resources are rapidly disappearing, creating arid “mega” regions and causing sea levels to rise.

NEW: “Staggering” Water Loss Driven by Groundwater Mining Poses Global Threat

A new study finds that freshwater resources are rapidly disappearing, creating arid “mega” regions and causing sea levels to rise.

By @abrahm.bsky.social

lol Rowan was rather annoyed with me that I posted her less-than-graceful dock dive without explanation… and insisted that we make things right

so… here it is… her fearlessly and properly executed dock dive (and splash!) with precise tennis ball fetch! 😂

#dogs
#dogsofbluesky
#AustralianShepherd

💥 My research area of Earth-surface processes, w/ emphasis on sediment transport, is nominally a subfield of geophysics. Yet this paragraph (with certain exceptions) nails the state of affairs in this area. The disconnect between theory and purposeful experimental design/data analysis is glaring.

💥 My research area of Earth-surface processes, w/ emphasis on sediment transport, is nominally a subfield of geophysics. Yet this paragraph (with certain exceptions) nails the state of affairs in this area. The disconnect between theory and purposeful experimental design/data analysis is glaring.

A compelling argument for science reform by the always-compelling @rmcelreath.bsky.social, doubly worth the read for all the incidental shots fired at Nature.

The Hater's Guide To The AI Bubble Hey! Before we go any further — if you want to support my work, please sign up for the premium version of Where’s Your Ed At, it’s a $7-a-month (or $70-a-year) paid product where every week you get a ...

Newsletter: This is the Hater's Guide To The AI Bubble: genAI is nothing like Uber or Amazon Web Services, there are no profitable genAI companies, agents do not and cannot exist, there is no AI SaaS story, and everything rides - and dies - on selling GPUs.
www.wheresyoured.at/the-haters-g...

Enshittification and the Bitterness of Billionaire Bros Hell hath no fury like a tech god scorned

Regarding billionaire spew, Krugman has it right.

“In a more equal society… people expressing the views we’re hearing from the likes of Peter Thiel or Marc Andreesen would be treated as cranks. In fact, they’d probably be hiding their opinions.”

paulkrugman.substack.com/p/enshittifi...

Billionaires Convince Themselves AI Chatbots Are Close to Making New Scientific Discoveries

To re-spin this: The combination of delusion regarding so-called AI, ignorance of science and how it works, and lack of self awareness, is breathtaking. These people should be ridiculed relentlessly rather than platformed to spew their bullshit with minimal pushback.

gizmodo.com/billionaires...

Rowan would chase her ball into the lake for hours if I let her

lol she’s a bit shy and maybe less than graceful with her dock dive this time

#dogs
#dogsofbluesky
#AustralianShepherd

Accuracy has rather noticeably declined in a similar manner in Tennessee.

Perhaps this essay concerning sediment systems will provide a brief (serious cool science) distraction from ongoing calamities of the madding crowd. But things are exhausting. I'm thinking I might not post any more new essays after this one. 6/6

"Expectations of behavior are thus probabilistic, where variability about an average state is just as important as the average in terms of characterizing how the process works." 5/n

"Then... the variability in realizations of the particle transport rate is viewed as an inherent feature of the transport process where, for a specific set of controlling factors, any one of an ensemble of possible realizations could occur, each entirely consistent with the physics involved." 4/n