iron is cosmic ash
That's my favorite quote from Dan Kasen at this month's Astro Night.
Stars fuse hydrogen into heavier elements, but anything past iron takes energy.
Some stars fuse all the way to iron before collapsing in on themselves, forming supernovae, dwarf stars, and (sometimes) black holes!
I'm comfortable at home.
I just made some pani puri with Ravi.
Parsa and I regularly chat late into the night.
Madison and I play basketball at the court nearby.
New sights!
I saw a fox howl on a trail in Marin!
Never seen so many dolphins (and two humpback whales) on the way back from Santa Cruz Island.
I loved the exhibits and planetarium at Chabot Space Science Center.
If you like pinball, check out the Pacific Pinball Museum in Alameda.
Life is good.
I'm on campus regularly for research in wind turbines and gamma-ray detectors. This involves new programming tools, time on supercomputers, and increasingly more mathematics.
I enjoyed last Sunday at the Berkeley Kite Festival. (This is my favorite event in the Bay Area!)
I still make pizzas and PBJs regularly.
Mind murmurs
I've been thinking heavily on the (protested) construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope. It's more nuanced than "science" against "tradition". I'd love to hear your thoughts on this topic.
I started a GitHub "copyeditor" robot, locating and fixing typos semi-automatically on up to hundreds of thousands of projects. (It's not finished yet!)
I want to start a "notes" column, similar to Nadia's, but I'm not sure where to put it yet. Here's one on my mind:
overfitting is like hallucinating (see things that aren't there)
underfitting is like blindness (can't distinguish differences)
Things I've liked or thought about recently:
physics and math
* 2-minute video on a neutrino detector: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYtKcZMJ_4c
* what the heck is an axion? https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/PT.3.4227 and http://inspirehep.net/record/395783/files/Pages_from_C95-01-22--1_149.pdf?version=1
* a theorist's investment: https://alumni.berkeley.edu/california-magazine/just-in/2019-06-14/chalk-market-where-mathematicians-go-get-good-stuff
* great video explanation of π vs the number line: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-o3eB9sfls
* living the moon landing, 50 years later: https://apolloinrealtime.org/11/
computers and learning
* (long) the story of the command line http://cristal.inria.fr/~weis/info/commandline.html
* (long) learning version control without Git: http://svnbook.red-bean.com/
* what is knowledge, really? https://aeon.co/essays/knowledge-is-a-stone-age-concept-were-better-off-without-it
music
* Nina Simone live! (from Emma): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dlrXCYrNYI
* What "the kids" are listening to (from Surina): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gAzkZGuCgE
* Familiar singer, new territory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=655nId4QKeA
* 1000-year composition: https://longplayer.org/
* my favorite song from the new Chance album: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWo1NrwYdCs
* from an era I must have missed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JkIs37a2JE
* Kenny Rankin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgyWU7uyYWI
* Nahre Sol's piano videos are really cool! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6Usd3_fbq8
* First time listening to Rush: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZm1_jtY1SQ
people
* where does everyone live? https://pudding.cool/2018/10/city_3d/
* notes on working effectively: https://sivers.org/book/GettingThingsDone
* facebook is awful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziltBdyFxDo
* online metropolises: https://nadiaeghbal.com/hidden-cities
* visualization of global peace: https://boringbarchart.com/global-peace-gap/
comics
* neural nets are everywhere: https://xkcd.com/2173/
* choose your addiction: http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/screentime
* what can you be sure of? https://xkcd.com/263/
* trusting each other: http://www.lunarbaboon.com/comics/you.html
What's on your mind?