Albion Lawrence
@albion.bsky.social
Theoretical physicist working in physical oceanography, geophysical fluid dynamics, quantum field theory, and quantum gravity. Opinions my own and not that of my employer.
https://albionlawrence.github.io/
https://albionlawrence.github.io/
Of the reviews I’ve read this is closest to my own experience of the novel.
Why is this Great American Novelist's swan song stuffed with so much goofball nonsense? Because Thomas Pynchon is funny. defector.com/thomas-pynch...
Thomas Pynchon Is Laughing All The Way To The Brink | Defector
Thomas Pynchon’s reputation precedes him. He is literature’s ur-diagnostician of the post-war psyche, the author of difficult doorstopper novels, and a sort of prophet of paranoia—someone ahead of…
defector.com
November 21, 2025 at 4:29 AM
Of the reviews I’ve read this is closest to my own experience of the novel.
Reposted by Albion Lawrence
Thomas Pynchon is laughing all the way to the brink:
Thomas Pynchon Is Laughing All The Way To The Brink | Defector
Thomas Pynchon’s reputation precedes him. He is literature’s ur-diagnostician of the post-war psyche, the author of difficult doorstopper novels, and a sort of prophet of paranoia—someone ahead of…
defector.com
November 19, 2025 at 3:43 PM
Thomas Pynchon is laughing all the way to the brink:
Reposted by Albion Lawrence
When I was at Arizona, a colleague teaching a class described this exchange:
Student: Where’s that idea in the textbook?
Colleague: This is from one of my own articles
S [angrily]: You mean you’re just MAKING IT UP?!
C: Do you think textbooks are dug up out of the ground like turnips or something?
Student: Where’s that idea in the textbook?
Colleague: This is from one of my own articles
S [angrily]: You mean you’re just MAKING IT UP?!
C: Do you think textbooks are dug up out of the ground like turnips or something?
November 14, 2025 at 12:34 AM
When I was at Arizona, a colleague teaching a class described this exchange:
Student: Where’s that idea in the textbook?
Colleague: This is from one of my own articles
S [angrily]: You mean you’re just MAKING IT UP?!
C: Do you think textbooks are dug up out of the ground like turnips or something?
Student: Where’s that idea in the textbook?
Colleague: This is from one of my own articles
S [angrily]: You mean you’re just MAKING IT UP?!
C: Do you think textbooks are dug up out of the ground like turnips or something?
Also contains lizard lassoing and Anole Annals
Fat AND sassy? A three-legged lizard really can have it all! defector.com/fat-and-sass...
Fat AND Sassy? A Three-Legged Lizard Really Can Have It All | Defector
Decades ago, the evolutionary biologist Jonathan Losos found himself chasing a lizard around an island in the Bahamas. The island was little more than mound of craggy limestone the size of a baseball…
defector.com
October 30, 2025 at 4:03 AM
Also contains lizard lassoing and Anole Annals
Reposted by Albion Lawrence
has your scientific work been cut? @nytimes.com wants to hear from you.
www.nytimes.com/2025/10/08/c...
www.nytimes.com/2025/10/08/c...
Has Your Scientific Work Been Cut? We Want to Hear.
www.nytimes.com
October 9, 2025 at 2:56 PM
has your scientific work been cut? @nytimes.com wants to hear from you.
www.nytimes.com/2025/10/08/c...
www.nytimes.com/2025/10/08/c...
Reposted by Albion Lawrence
I'm sad to report that Rainer (Rai) Weiss passed away yesterday at age 92. Rai developed the design for LIGO, he and Kip got it funded, trained countless researchers, and received the 2017 Nobel Prize. Rai always had time for students and treated us as equals. May his memory be a blessing
August 26, 2025 at 6:21 PM
I'm sad to report that Rainer (Rai) Weiss passed away yesterday at age 92. Rai developed the design for LIGO, he and Kip got it funded, trained countless researchers, and received the 2017 Nobel Prize. Rai always had time for students and treated us as equals. May his memory be a blessing
Reposted by Albion Lawrence
If you put the DOGE guys on a desert island where the only way out was to say the magic words “I’m not sure what the answer is, let me consult someone who has worked on this problem for a long time” they would all starve to death
August 4, 2025 at 3:23 AM
If you put the DOGE guys on a desert island where the only way out was to say the magic words “I’m not sure what the answer is, let me consult someone who has worked on this problem for a long time” they would all starve to death
Reposted by Albion Lawrence
Mary K Gaillard, a theorist who had a knack for telling experimental physicists where to look, died in her home on May 23 at 86.
Dr. Gaillard was an unpaid scientist at CERN for more than a decade, & the first woman physicist hired & tenured at Berkeley:
www.nytimes.com/2025/07/31/s...
Dr. Gaillard was an unpaid scientist at CERN for more than a decade, & the first woman physicist hired & tenured at Berkeley:
www.nytimes.com/2025/07/31/s...
Mary K. Gaillard, 86, Physicist Who Probed the Subatomic Universe, Dies
www.nytimes.com
July 31, 2025 at 9:53 PM
Mary K Gaillard, a theorist who had a knack for telling experimental physicists where to look, died in her home on May 23 at 86.
Dr. Gaillard was an unpaid scientist at CERN for more than a decade, & the first woman physicist hired & tenured at Berkeley:
www.nytimes.com/2025/07/31/s...
Dr. Gaillard was an unpaid scientist at CERN for more than a decade, & the first woman physicist hired & tenured at Berkeley:
www.nytimes.com/2025/07/31/s...
Reposted by Albion Lawrence
"In the absence of strong and principled leadership from Columbia’s Board of Trustees and Acting President, it falls to the faculty, above all, to defend the values and norms that have defined the university and allowed it to flourish." academeblog.org/2025/07/29/a...
An Agreement That Settles Nothing
BY THE COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY CHAPTER OF THE AAUP The Agreement between the federal government and Columbia University announced on July 24, 2025, has been presented as a settlement of Title VI violat…
academeblog.org
July 30, 2025 at 5:50 PM
"In the absence of strong and principled leadership from Columbia’s Board of Trustees and Acting President, it falls to the faculty, above all, to defend the values and norms that have defined the university and allowed it to flourish." academeblog.org/2025/07/29/a...
Reposted by Albion Lawrence
Reposted by Albion Lawrence
The cited cost of this putative center ranges from $500m to $1b. Meanwhile, over at Harvard’s School of Public Health, a $200m budget gap due to the Trump admin breaking hundreds of NIH and NSF research contracts has already produced hundreds of layoffs, including of TT faculty. Priorities.
Exclusive: Harvard leaders have discussed creating a center for conservative scholarship as the school fights the Trump administration’s accusations that it is too liberal.
Harvard Explores New Center for Conservative Scholarship Amid Trump Attacks
The Ivy League school has discussed an effort to ‘support viewpoint diversity’ with potential donors. Harvard says the initiative ‘will not be partisan.’
on.wsj.com
July 11, 2025 at 12:48 PM
The cited cost of this putative center ranges from $500m to $1b. Meanwhile, over at Harvard’s School of Public Health, a $200m budget gap due to the Trump admin breaking hundreds of NIH and NSF research contracts has already produced hundreds of layoffs, including of TT faculty. Priorities.
Reposted by Albion Lawrence
Academic freedom mostly means freedom to work on something for 10 years and still not submit it
June 22, 2025 at 8:27 AM
Academic freedom mostly means freedom to work on something for 10 years and still not submit it
Reposted by Albion Lawrence
Someone on Twitter posted that they had run into Philip Glass at their lower Manhattan polling place, saying nice things about Mamdani.
The campaign put this up as a quote-tweet within the hour.
The campaign put this up as a quote-tweet within the hour.
June 22, 2025 at 9:20 PM
Someone on Twitter posted that they had run into Philip Glass at their lower Manhattan polling place, saying nice things about Mamdani.
The campaign put this up as a quote-tweet within the hour.
The campaign put this up as a quote-tweet within the hour.
Reposted by Albion Lawrence
who would the New York Times and Wall Street want in charge of New York's fire department: an upstart young firefighter or a serial arsonist? The answer may surprise you
June 22, 2025 at 7:14 PM
who would the New York Times and Wall Street want in charge of New York's fire department: an upstart young firefighter or a serial arsonist? The answer may surprise you
Reposted by Albion Lawrence
Brandeis faculty and staff out for #NoKings in Waltham! L to R: Matthew Headrick, Sabine von Mering (as a bear), Abigail Arnold, Irina Dubnina, and Toni Shapiro-Phim. Matt,Sabine, and Irina are members of @aaupbrandeis.bsky.social .
June 16, 2025 at 8:04 PM
Brandeis faculty and staff out for #NoKings in Waltham! L to R: Matthew Headrick, Sabine von Mering (as a bear), Abigail Arnold, Irina Dubnina, and Toni Shapiro-Phim. Matt,Sabine, and Irina are members of @aaupbrandeis.bsky.social .
Reposted by Albion Lawrence
At 1pm Eastern today, 200 scientists will be doing a 100 hour livestream about all of the ways that the administration, through DOGE, is endangering us, through the dismantling of the weather and climate science apparatuses. Let people know and tune in. You don't have to watch all 100 hours.
Redirecting to: https://www.youtube.com/@wclivestream/live
wclivestream.com
May 28, 2025 at 3:21 PM
At 1pm Eastern today, 200 scientists will be doing a 100 hour livestream about all of the ways that the administration, through DOGE, is endangering us, through the dismantling of the weather and climate science apparatuses. Let people know and tune in. You don't have to watch all 100 hours.
There is also a BlueSky account: @aaupbrandeis.bsky.social
May 19, 2025 at 6:56 PM
There is also a BlueSky account: @aaupbrandeis.bsky.social
Reposted by Albion Lawrence
It's neat that instead of taking on entities that have been gradually eroding the quality and very concept of education for profit, politicians and pundits have spent the last decade focusing on threats to higher ed like "the existence of trans people" or "people who oppose race science on campus."
May 7, 2025 at 2:44 PM
It's neat that instead of taking on entities that have been gradually eroding the quality and very concept of education for profit, politicians and pundits have spent the last decade focusing on threats to higher ed like "the existence of trans people" or "people who oppose race science on campus."
Reposted by Albion Lawrence
If a degree is just a piece of paper you need to get a desirable, good-paying job, someone invents a machine that can do it for you, and the notion that you might go to college to develop your mind for its own, non-remunerative sake is a punch line and an elite privilege, why not use the machine?
May 7, 2025 at 11:57 AM
If a degree is just a piece of paper you need to get a desirable, good-paying job, someone invents a machine that can do it for you, and the notion that you might go to college to develop your mind for its own, non-remunerative sake is a punch line and an elite privilege, why not use the machine?
Coming next week! On May 14, 12 EDT, @annalisa-clim.bsky.social will give the @apsphysics.bsky.social virtual Climate Physics seminar, on "Multiscale physics and ocean-based climate solutions: the case of alkalinity enhancement". Register to receive a Zoom link engage.aps.org/gpc/resource...
Resources - Unit - GPC
engage.aps.org
May 6, 2025 at 2:57 PM
Coming next week! On May 14, 12 EDT, @annalisa-clim.bsky.social will give the @apsphysics.bsky.social virtual Climate Physics seminar, on "Multiscale physics and ocean-based climate solutions: the case of alkalinity enhancement". Register to receive a Zoom link engage.aps.org/gpc/resource...
10 years of total devotion...to his stomach.
May 5, 2025 at 1:43 PM
10 years of total devotion...to his stomach.
I'm very pleased with this paper, which emerged from my @simonsfoundation.org Pivot Fellowship year at @caltech.edu arxiv.org/abs/2505.00819
Characterizing Ocean Flows with the Scattering Transform
Upper-ocean flows are a multi-scale jigsaw puzzle of turbulence and waves. Characterizing these flows is essential for understanding their role in redistributing heat, carbon, and nutrients, yet power...
arxiv.org
May 5, 2025 at 1:32 AM
I'm very pleased with this paper, which emerged from my @simonsfoundation.org Pivot Fellowship year at @caltech.edu arxiv.org/abs/2505.00819