Jacopo Bertolotti

Got a package from @statuesque.bsky.social They got a little soapy bath to remove any grease and are ready to be primed. #MiniaturePainting #MiniPainting

Had this idea in lockdown, half-built it, forgot about it, remembered it again, though might as well finish it.

Why isn't there a #miniature -based #wargame in the #GirlGenius setting? It has everything: factions, armies, big battles, small battles, weird characters to lead a unit, big guns, and giant mechas! (Asking the aether, but also @thephilfoglio.bsky.social )

My old iPad is now at the stage where more than 50% of its storage is occupied by the OS and the system data, and there isn't enough space left for the next OS update 🤦‍♂️

Microsoft saying the quiet part out loud

ChatGPT is going to start meddling with old and stratified Cobol code that has allowed stuff to run for decades. What could ever go wrong? www.engadget.com/2291457/open...

Since yesterday my computer, tablet and phone are all refusing to load sidequested.com (it is a good #webcomic, try it out). No clue why 🤷‍♂️ @alepresser.com / @kbspangler.com Any idea what might be happening?

Last I'll post about this, but Elon Musk disagrees with me. This means I am onto something, and I feel more valid in my opinion than ever.

Stereographic Rubik’s

I have seen several posts claiming the latest Tesla stunt is AI. It isn't. It requires a bit of good engineering, but you can make a 4-wheeled vehicle to drive upside down for a brief period, do a flip, and land. No problem. It is just utterly useless, illegal on any public street and dangerous.

There has been a recruitment... Hannah Fry joins New Scientist as our latest columnist www.newscientist.com/article/2593...

Dear editors, "You have to create an account on our system for the privilege to review for us" is an automatic decline. #AcademicChatter

Jugglers are all kind of amazing. youtu.be/EcDJJSKs2o8

Remember, the whole crysis of the UK higher education sector is completely manufactured, and it would take very little for the government to solve it. But cutting international students is the easy way to artificially push the immigration numbers down, so they are never going to do it.

Criticism of OpenAI's Big Bag of Slop released two days ago goes beyond the presentational problems I pointed out yesterday (🔽). Some colleagues have started looking into various proofs, and there are… issues. 🧵⤵️ •1/11

arXiv has updated our policy on rate limiting for all submitters. This update was made to fairly distribute moderator time & support the arXiv community of staff, volunteers, readers & authors. Please read our announcement to learn more: https://blog.arxiv.org/2026/10/01/updated-rate-limit-policy/

When everyone decides to post their paper on arXiv on the same day to ensure maximum visibility for their work.

What is with the EU and shooting themselves in the foot? Is that some kind of kink for the EU Commission? youtu.be/mQRcK9nYg9g

'The University continues to make a sizeable surplus. What financial pressures exist are significantly due to spiralling depreciation from irresponsible capital spending.' University of Edinburgh Joint Unions Financial Working Group www.ucuedinburgh.org.uk/blog/depreci...

I envision a near future where kids will just rediscover the ancient art of creating a online forum.

This is an important point. AI is not going rogue. It is behaving as it was designed to behave. The ones going rogue are the companies themselves who have violated norms, and are committing crimes daily from stealing IP to cybercrime. It did not have to be this way, but... Techbros.

My latest @newscientist.com cartoon. many more here: www.newscientist.com/author/tom-gauld/

This part is often omitted in popular science discussion of the Higgs field, and I think it should receive more attention.

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<Insert here my shocked face> (The moment they go public they need to declare how much money they are burning and how much in debt they are.) www.engadget.com/2256984/sam-...

I wrote this quickly at a bus stop and didn't realize it would go viral, or else I would have worded it better. But the point is that the media is too credulous about AI killing everyone in 10 years (how?) when climate change is killing people now and will only get worse (we know exactly how).

AlphaFold did not solve the protein-folding problem, but sidestepped it. So maybe that's good enough - but this was not "one of the greatest unsolved challenges in biology", and it is not "critical for understanding how diseases work and how to treat them".

HISTORY OF PHYSICS Yang on Mills. In 1953-1954, I was visiting Brookhaven and Bob was my office mate. We discussed many things in physics, from the experimental results pouring out of the new Cosmotron [a proton synchrotron, at Brookhaven National Laboratory], 1/

I like this piece: it doesn't offer many solutions but it feels like a more generous framing of the problem than we're used to hearing.