Alec Barns-Graham

@34Nil35 @SolvingForZ Only pure mathematics allowed :)

@AlecEBG @SolvingForZ When you mix them you end up including them in Maths degrees and we don't want that. 🙅

EUROPE & AMERICA VS MATH ❤️🌹♥️

@34Nil35 @SolvingForZ Previous Lucasian professor of mathematics was a string theorist. The line between theoretical physics, mathematical physics, applied mathematics is blurry. Separating them is to the detriment of both! Freeman Dyson wrote a very good essay on this called Missed Oppurtunities.

@AlecEBG @SolvingForZ Because they're not math. 🤷

@stinor @mfreeman451 @Andercot If you mean a consistent theory of quantum gravity, he has worked on it with the community. It's called string theory :) He has recently been working on observables in quantum gravity

@AlecEBG @mfreeman451 @Andercot When I listen to story of his intellectual capabilities, I find it very curious that he hasn't come up with something more substantial, like a ToE.

why don't we have famous physicists anymore?

@RichardHanania Oh FFS America

Trump has done all other kinds of unprecedented things, this would be the ultimate step.

@stinor @mfreeman451 @Andercot The thing with Witten is he's done so much that people forget about his work that is more like real physics (for example his foundational work on skyrmions), because of how great Seiberg-Witten theory is or a hundred other very mathematical things :)

@mfreeman451 @Andercot Except for Penrose and maybe Susskind, what have they contributed to science? Anything that we will remember in fifty years? Ed Witten, might, but not in a way you probably think.

@mfreeman451 @AISpout @Andercot Weinstein as your first to defend is a very odd choice. In fact him being on the list at all is odd

@AISpout @Andercot Seriously? Eric Weinstein has his theory of everything (GU), Garret Lisi same thing with E8, Ed Witten has been doing work in string theory research for over 40 years. Besides that, most of these people have very popular podcasts that reach a large audience.

@CJHandmer The UK is constructing more nuclear power capacity than the rest of the West combined atm

Some thoughts on destruction of oil and gas infrastructure in the Gulf. It is not exactly a new insight that modern economies operate on oil. Oil access, synthesis, and interdiction was a major theater of WW2. 100 years ago oil-poor nations spent heavily and participated in terrible wars over oil. See, for example, the Combined Bombing Offensive, Operation Tidal Wave, and the destruction of the Leuna synthetic fuel plants, not to mention the effectiveness of the submarine war in the waters around Japan. In 2022, energy producer Russia invaded Ukraine, instantly throwing into stark relief the idiocy of European energy policy, where an unholy alliance of heavily regulated energy contractors and astroturfed "green" activists managed to get Germany to shut down their nuclear industry. Even as solar panel production, largely initially developed and funded in the West, grew to overwhelming proportions, Europe insisted on sending roughly $1b *per day* to Russia for access to their oil and gas. If Europe had adjusted course in early 2022, then they would be able to support their power grids and probably some synthetic fuel production by now. The US built nuclear weapons from scratch in 2.5 years in the 1940s in competition with other national priorities at the same time. It's been more than four years since Ukraine's invasion. But no, they did sweet fuck all about ensuring energy sovereignty. Indeed, they even went in the other direction. Britain concentrated government resources on cracking down on free speech and stopped drilling for oil. The continent continued their ill-informed blanket ban on fracking, and working age people continued to pay the price, in the form of ever higher costs, ever higher taxes, ever poorer public services, ever dropping fertility. What about the rest of the oil importing developed world? France and Japan maintained their nuclear industry, their navies, their shipping industries and the fungibility of their supply - to an extent - even as they continued to actively burn up their economies in other more insidious ways. New Zealand shut down their last refinery. Australia exports a lot of crude and gas but mostly lacks the ability to close their supply chain in their own borders, and fuel prices have almost doubled. California continued to ban new drilling and continues to wage open regulatory warfare against their oil refineries, perversely increasing oil-related air pollution in the state from foreign oil tanker imports and pushing gasoline prices ever higher. More of the world has attempted to switch to natural gas supply, with investments exceeding $1t on gas import and export terminals, as though it's some fundamental law of nature that hydrocarbons must cross an ocean before they're used. As though the US fracking boom will last forever, or Asian demand growth won't see European prices continue to increase, further crushing their economic dynamism. I have been in the room with various Asian and European energy ministers and have asked them point blank: What's your plan? I have never gotten a better answer than a shrug, as though they'll muddle through and soon it'll be someone else's problem. The best time to get serious about domestic energy supply chains was four years ago. The second best time is today. The pain will ease just as soon as you say the magic words: I must increase my own energy supply! And yes, it is totally possible to produce synthetic oil and gas pretty much anywhere that people live with a solar-based process we've spent four years developing at @TerraformIndies, it is future proof, it is strategically robust, it is price-linked to solar manufacturing cost, which continues to fall like a rock. It's not entirely trivial to do but, given that Europe spends about 100,000x more on Russian oil and gas imports than they do on (privately funded) synthetic fuel development, I am on safe ground when I accuse Europe's leaders of committing gross capital misallocation. Imagine what the synthetic fuel industry could achieve with $1b/day! If you are an energy minister, now is a good time to reflect on fates worse than losing an election. Get back to work!

@KelseyTuoc Yes, in the UK it is now a major talking point of how to get our nuclear detterent not reliant on the US.

Everyone here forgot about it; people in the affected countries didn't, and "support American operations where asked" went from a strong default to something that was going to be deeply unpopular at home

When Trump backed down on Greenland I saw a lot of people saying "see? a nothingburger" but in fact, I think the Greenland threats dramatically and lastingly altered the political viability for governments in Europe of following America's lead on military operations

@Duderichy You should work on your aim

I miss my friends

@BenjDicken Killed by java 25, no AI needed

Celebrating the death of coding by hand with a pic of my first programming book. RIP public static void main(String[] args)

@ThePrimeagen Confluence is garbage I wish we just used markdown in git repos

I don't think you hate atlassian enough

@paulg Cambridge Uni Press?

Brands I love: Lego, Leuchtturm, Oxford University Press, Pentel, Schöffel, Aqualung, Paradores, Staedtler, Birkenstock, Braun, Knoll, Patagonia, Herman Miller, Iittala, L.A. Burdick, Artemide, Aman, Thames & Hudson, Yeti, Rimowa, L.L.Bean, Timbuk2, Eschenbach, Ridge, Maui Jim.

@docmilanfar There's a nice argument to do with circles and light for why the sum of inverse squares is pi^2/6

- 100 people throw their hats in a pile and draw randomly, prob(nobody gets their own hat back)=1/e. no "self-scaling" - sum of series (1 + 1/4 + 1/9 + 1/16 + … )=pi^2 /6 . no periodic process - squaring is not doubling! (3^2 isn’t 6). sqrt doesn't "half complete" anything

that’s nonsense - you’re a taking few common physics applications where these constants appear, and pretending they’re fundamental rules. counter-examples abound, an obvious few in reply

@Odinsraven66 @AndrewHClark As Pete Hegseth said, apart from Iran shooting ships in it with missiles, it's open.

@AndrewHClark But the strait isn’t open

In 72 hours we went from: Trump never expected the possibility of Hormuz closing, To: Trump was briefed Hormuz could close but riskily did it anyway, To: Trump bombed Kharg Island but it likely won’t force Iran to open the Strait To: Iran opened the Strait

@dwarkesh_sp I'd love to hear more about his work on the cosmic distance ladder with Tanya Klowden I'm curious about what he'd advice a 6 year old version of himself alive today, given that when that version is 21 we'll have 15 years more development of AI

What should I ask Terence Tao?

@worstall @Eyespeeled3 Its top ten, but not 3rd en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_l…

@Eyespeeled3 I've heard it said - not sure how true, but - that the NHS is world's third largest centrally managed org at present. Indian Railways, Chinese military, NHS.

The thing that no government is willing to grasp. Running a blue water navy is a big, expensive thing to do. We're an island and we probably should do so. So, find the money. Between say, 1720 and, hmm, 1880 or so the Royal Navy was the largest industrial organisation on Earth.

@fermatslibrary What about 2 4 and 8?

It is unknown if there are any other powers of 2 whose digits are also powers of 2, apart from 128

@TheGingerBill Are you actually only 30? So you started odin at 20 while doing your undergrad in physics?

Retiring at 30? I must have done really well for myself if this post is true. In all seriousness, I still use Sublime Text because it is honestly hell of a lot faster most of the other editors out there. I can literally see (not just feel) the delay in Electron-based editors.

@devabram @ChShersh Make sure to use an HPA (horizontal pigeon autoscaler)

@ChShersh Pigeons messangers

Imagine everyone in the world has your app installed on their phone. How would you implement a system to deliver 8B+ notifications to everyone within 2 seconds?