Having spent the past 12 months coding up an end-to-end model of an astrophysics experiment, with the sole aim of searching for an optimal solution for its design by use of stochastic gradient descent, I am the least qualified person to judge the aesthetic value of the results I am finally getting from it. 
Therefore it makes sense to ask you, dear reader, what you think of the eerily arcane geometries that the system is proposing. I do not think that to be a good judge you need to know the details of how the model is put together, but I will nevertheless make an attempt at briefing you on it, just in case it makes a difference in your judgment.

Light is the most famous thing that is two distinct entities at once - a wave and a particle - but glass is nearly as mysterious. And not well understood.

We think of glass as being transparent and rigid, is a complex and intriguing material but that is only when cooled and its dynamics slow down significantly. This process, known as “glass transition”, is due to "dynamical heterogeneities," where the dynamics become increasingly correlated and intermittent as the liquid cools down and approaches the glass transition temperature.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, chewing gum had a bit of a resurgence. Though gum companies disavow any health benefits - they like being in the candy aisle - people have always used it off-label for various benefits and did so to generate a response against possible virus exposures.  People have always had habits they like. If have a cold, for example, I like to eat a cheese sandwich. If I get nausea, I chew gum.

The Victorian government, like many governments around the world, has announced new regulations on short-stay accommodation. The government says Victoria has more than 36,000 short-stay places, which are reducing the number of homes available for long-term rental.

Other states have capped the number of nights a dwelling can be used for short-stay accommodation. The Victorian response has been to introduce a levy set at 7.5% of the short-stay platform’s revenue.

Astronomers have speculated that black holes eat slowly. A recent paper argues that their computer simulation shows just the opposite. 

Don't get too excited, this is still a computer simulation about theoretical physics, which isn't out there with science-fiction but is limited by the fact that we know very little about black holes - including how fast they consume the universe around them. The new estimate is that a black hole can tear apart space-time and consume the accretion disk of material around it in months, rather than the hundreds of years that some believe.

These days I am in Paris, for a short vacation - for once, I am following my wife in a work trip; she performs at the grand Halle at la Villette (she is a soprano singer), and I exploit the occasion to have some pleasant time in one of the cities I like the most.


This morning I took the metro to go downtown, and found myself standing up in a wagon full of people. When my eyes wandered to the pavement, I saw that the plastic sheet had circular bumps, presumably reducing the chance of slips. And the pattern immediately reminded me of the Monte Carlo method, as it betrayed the effect of physical sampling of the ground by the passengers' feet:

In the future, people in need of an organ transplant will have one grown using their own stem cells. That means no immunosuppressive drugs, no risk of failure, no hoping someone compatible dies. Until then, the best solution to get rid of waiting lists is donor animals.

A new study completed the longest-documented case of a genetically engineered pig kidney functioning in a human body; 61 days. It used a GalSafe pig, an animal engineered by Revivicor Inc., and approved in 2020 by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration as a potential source for human therapeutics, as well as a food source for people with alpha-gal syndrome, a meat allergy caused by a tick bite.

When a pandemic is happening in real time, it's only possible to know in hindsight what was a successful mitigation strategy, what was hype to help a presidential candidate, or even what was suppressed for geopolitical interests.

There is no question mitigation was good, but political and corporate media pressure to keep the world locked down and terrified into 2022 was always immunologically suspect. Many lives their lost due to the pandemic, some lost their lives because it was suggested people should not seek medical care due to imagery of COVID bodies stacked in parking lots, but a whole lot of damage won't be known for a decade or more.

White environmentalists in rich European countries still maintain a kind of benevolent colonialism over Africa, telling those countries Europe won't buy their food unless they use no science in its production - while ignoring that organic farming for thousands of years in Africa showed why it is such a failure for anyone not born into a natural 'breadbasket' region.

A new study finds that while antidepressants reduce negative memories in individuals suffering from depression they may also be improving overall memory function.

But don't go all Ozempic and rush to find a boutique physician willing to prescribe them for you, no one knows how antidepressants work, even after 70 years in existence. Though they outperform placebos like supplements in GNC or other alternatives to medicine, alternative medicine is such a scam because the threshold for placebo is high. Antidepressants are far better than supplement alternatives even though they only work 50 percent of the time. That is why patients routinely have to try a few.