Experimental nuclear physicist at @BrookhavenLab RHIC & @CERN LHC. Tenured prof @CUBoulder, now having fun with it. Prev @MIT @Columbia. Soviet émigré, Papa 🐻
Boulder, CO
Joined April 2009
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Folks, I'm pleased to be promoted to Associate Professor with Tenure at @CUBoulder, just days before my 36th birthday!
An immeasurable thank you to my colleague Jamie Nagle, and to our post-docs, grad students, and undergrads for taking a chance on a new junior faculty!
I unironically believe that Ukrainians will save the free world, and that my family's homeland in the Donbas is the rock against which the global forces of authoritarianism will shatter and exhaust themselves.
But I also wish it did not have to be them. A reminder that many heroes don't get to choose their moment.
Чим далі тим більше переконаний, що ми своїм спротивом поламали глобальні плани про переформатуванню світового порядку.
Рашка повинна була захопити нас, деморалізувати захід, який би мовчки спостерігав, якби ми самі за себе не воювали
Потім по інерції Китай - Тайвань, КНДР - Південна Корея
А потім приходить Трамп, посилаючись на безлад у світі і необхідність посилення Америки як "гаранта світової демократії" робити те що ті дуани і почали робити, не розуміючи що для цього немає підстав. Тобто анексія Канади, Гренландія. В цей час Росія розширює або політично, гібридно або і воєнно експансію на Європу. І в результаті розділити світ на трьох.
Але все коту під хвіст, бо don't fuck with Ukraine
Dennis V. Perepelitsa 🇺🇦🇺🇲 retweeted
BREAKING NEWS
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the 2026 #NobelPrize in Physics to Francis Halzen “for decisive contributions to the IceCube Neutrino Observatory and the discovery of high-energy neutrinos of astrophysical origin.”
A targeted strike on the National Academy of Sciences.
The Russian invaders will deface and ruin every blessing of civilization. They are willing to burn it all down if it means they can rule over the poisoned ashes. Vandals and murderers.
A Russian strike against the building of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. A rescue operation is underway: crews are putting out the fire and searching for people who may have been trapped inside. All services are deployed. Today in Kyiv, a pharmaceutical company and gas stations were also attacked; in Dnipro, a business center; and in other cities and regions, civilian facilities, businesses, and communications infrastructure were targeted as well. Sadly, people have been killed… My condolences to their families and loved ones. Russia will definitely face a response to this. And every one of Ukraine’s partners must see from this terror, from these strikes, that supporting Ukraine means truly supporting people’s lives – supporting the principle that terror must never be normalized, anywhere. Russia must be held accountable for all of this and face real consequences. I thank everyone who helps Ukraine!
Folks, I’m getting very credible information from industry sources that ASI (All-night Sleeping Intelligence) is close to being achieved internally in the nursery.
We must reject all calls to pace the frontier — think of the parent-sleep-hours at stake!!!
I was in high school when 9/11 happened.
In the weeks that followed, two facts became very clear to me: (1) Evil exists — not “blowback”, not “chickens coming home to roost”. Evil. (2) Open, liberal Western civilization has enemies who want very badly to pervert and dismember it.
And later, over a period of years: (3) there are people whose political philosophies prevent them processing (1) and (2).
Donna Spera, who has made it down from the South Tower’s 78th-floor Sky Lobby, describes the scene as a “gore floor.”
Over 200 people were gathered in the Sky Lobby when the second plane crashed into the South Tower, dousing almost everyone in jet fuel as the ceiling and walls caved in. The room is a “sea of dismembered limbs and heads.”
One other survivor describes seeing people burning alive, unable to move, begging for death, as he made his way downstairs.
Spera is covered in burns and is carried from the building.
4 year old: 🎵 I’m bringing home a baby bumble bee / won’t my mama be so proud of me 🎵
me: aw what a nice song, I wonder how the rest of it goes
Very funny to me how baby bottle design has essentially been Solved.
There is the end result of all technological innovation. We have found the deep global minimum and are now Done.
Extremely interesting data here on possible trajectories in public higher education (where I'm tenured faculty).
The research flagship (UIUC) and the university located in the big dynamic city (UIC) prosper, and another 3-4 can muddle through. But the bottom half are all headed to zero.
The question is how much will this generalize (i.e. how strong are the IL-specific factors?)
Side by side threads on Boulder-area @nextdoor this week:
* People lamenting the closing/merging of multiple K-12 schools, forced by decreasing enrollment in the district
* White-hot shrieking about the attempt to develop one (1) dilapidated parking lot
My four-year old discovered optical illusions yesterday and we looked at a bunch of them.
I love the unrelenting novelty of childhood. On any given day, you can encounter a totally novel concept completely outside your previous experience.
And this happens constantly, for years.
People have rightly commented how even recent sci-fi feels outdated and goofy in the modern LLM era.
But I still find it funny when older sci-fi works could imagine the complete transformation of human technology, biology, society, culture… just not the end of the Soviet Union.
Proportionally scaling the food consumption and weight gain of a baby up to a full grown human is very funny.
As a 200lb man, you would have to:
* drink half a gallon of whole milk
* every few hours
* 24/7, for months
* and by doing so, gain 10lbs every week