David Sloan
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davesmaths.bsky.social
David Sloan
@davesmaths.bsky.social
Chief Scientific Officer of the Foundational Questions Institute. Reader in Physics at Lancaster University. Friend to dogs. (He/Him)

Trans rights are human rights, black lives matter, Palestinians are human beings. The unfollow button is up there ⬆
Pinned
Now I'm loose on the internet, and I've got some strong opinions about contact manifolds.
Reposted by David Sloan
This Valentine's Day, we'll be talking about life, not love. The winners of our 'How Quantum is Life?' competition are revealed 14 February.

Who's going to share the $53,000 prize pot?
February 12, 2026 at 5:30 PM
Whatever it is you think your society should be, this cannot be part of it.
A drawing by a 5-year-old girl detained at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center in Texas with her mother Hayam El-Gamal. “I am 5 years old” is written at the top of the page. Lower down, next to stick figures, are the words “let us go.” Courtesy of Eric Lee, Lee & Godshall-Bennett, LLP
January 30, 2026 at 7:37 PM
As usual, @acollierastro.bsky.social nails this. I sometimes wonder what fraction of academia is now a closed loop of chatgpt setting assignments, completing them and then marking the results. Why not just close the loop entirely and we can all go home?
@acollierastro.bsky.social says it better than I did. "Everyone can have maximum output while accomplishing nothing." www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pqF...
January 25, 2026 at 8:06 PM
I'm endlessly amused by conservatives who think Star Trek isn't essentially a rebuttal of everything they believe.
Whelp, I was already making a video essay on it and was going to release it tomorrow, but because Stephen Miller had to open his fascist mouth about Star Trek, I added to it and released it today. So enjoy me clowning on conservative assholes terrible Star Trek opinions - youtu.be/3HOzBtDUlbo
Nazis Have the Dumbest Star Trek Opinions
YouTube video by Jessie Gender
youtu.be
January 17, 2026 at 7:44 PM
Reposted by David Sloan
Following coverage over the weekend of Sir Paul Nurse's comments that suggested that the only reason that a Fellow should be expelled from @royalsociety.org is scientific misconduct, I have written to him to explain the risks such an attitude poses of increasing sexual harassment in STEM.
January 12, 2026 at 8:59 AM
Due to diminishing returns on increasing efficiency, the time taken to cut wood up into n pieces is O(log n).
This joke idea is too good to actually do, so I'm posting it here
January 12, 2026 at 5:39 PM
I guess it's post your favourite Popcorn cover time: www.youtube.com/watch?v=O775...
December 25, 2025 at 8:30 PM
Come on, Guardian, "McDonald's serves up slop" was right there...

www.theguardian.com/business/202...
‘Ruined my Christmas spirit’: McDonald’s removes AI-generated ad after backlash
Commercial in Netherlands depicting festival-season chaos at ‘most terrible time of year’ prompted flurry of criticism online
www.theguardian.com
December 18, 2025 at 12:22 AM
Reposted by David Sloan
Your brain uses 20 watts of power constantly. This is a massive reproductive fitness cost. Why can natural selection not reduce that cost?
December 15, 2025 at 4:01 PM
Reposted by David Sloan
I'm hiring a postdoc -- come and do awesome cosmology with great people in one of the nicest cities in the world (not that I'm biased or anything) 🔭 🧪
cosmology.blogs.auckland.ac.nz/2025/12/12/p...
Post-doc @ Auckland
Looking for a cosmology post-doc at the University of Auckland
cosmology.blogs.auckland.ac.nz
December 12, 2025 at 10:12 AM
Last cosmology lecture today, so we had open questions. A student asked a question about quantum gravity...
December 11, 2025 at 11:47 AM
Inverse challenge for the @zachweinersmith.bsky.social books: Divide by a hundred.

A year of solitude
@zachweinersmith.bsky.social poses a fun activity: add “hundred” to a book title.

A Tale of Two Hundred Cities
Lord of the Hundred Flies
The Hundred Brothers Karamazov
A Hundred Hundred Years of Solitude

www.smbc-comics.com
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - Hundred
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - Hundred
www.smbc-comics.com
December 5, 2025 at 8:56 PM
Can't wait to see who's gonna win the Nobel prize for football.
this shit is just beyond parody, man
December 5, 2025 at 7:08 PM
Finishing 2025 with a bang: arxiv.org/abs/2512.03645

Scaling symmetries can even reduce singular theories, like the standard model.

Next stop: General Relativity!
Gauge Symmetries, Contact Reduction, and Singular Field Theories
The reduction of dynamical systems which are invariant under changes of global scale is well-understood, for classical theories of particles, and fields. The excision of the superfluous degree of free...
arxiv.org
December 5, 2025 at 9:56 AM
Reposted by David Sloan
1/4
How do you escape the "parallel universe of fake papers?"
@nicolakimjones.bsky.social spoke with Ilka Agricola, chair of the IMU's committee on publishing and a physicist and mathematician at the University of Marburg, in Germany.

Full story: qspace.fqxi.org/articles/281...
December 3, 2025 at 5:15 PM
I'll be in New York at a Simons workshop from Feb 20th until March 11th. If anyone on the east coast wants a physics talk around those dates (or just to meet up) let me know.
December 2, 2025 at 4:23 PM
Masterclasses with Julian Barbour, courtesy of @fqxi.org !
fqxi.org FQxI @fqxi.org · Nov 26
Join Julian’s new three-part FQxI masterclass, “Complexity in the Cosmos”, on QAcademy – where he radically rethinks gravity, the Big Bang and time.

Limited-time offer. Free access for three weeks. Offer ends 17th December 2025.

GET FREE ACCESS: qacademy.fqxi.org/offers/fkEBq...
November 26, 2025 at 10:37 PM
Carl Orff - O Fortuna ~ Carmina Burana
YouTube video by Beatriz
www.youtube.com
November 24, 2025 at 6:07 PM
Reposted by David Sloan
It is time for universities — not just staff and student unions, but the senior management too — to admit out loud that this government is actively trying to make universities fail. We *all* need to come together and collectively try to fight their attempts to loot and pillage.
i: Reeves to unveil £600m raid on foreign student
university fees #TomorrowsPapersToday
November 24, 2025 at 10:25 AM
The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became the truth. George Orwell, 1984

www.msn.com/en-us/health...
MSN
www.msn.com
November 20, 2025 at 8:04 PM
Are Labour MPs having a competition to see who can come up with the most disgusting policy proposal?

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

This isn't about economics, it's about being fucking horrible to people.
Asylum seekers’ jewellery could be seized to pay for processing costs, says Home Office minister
Idea borrowed from Denmark is latest attempt to reduce number of people seeking asylum in UK
www.theguardian.com
November 17, 2025 at 8:35 PM
Reposted by David Sloan
The science journals Critical Care Medicine and Biology Open and the science platform Research Hub have been testing how paying reviewers affects the science publishing process. Reporter Geoff Marsh found out more.
Full podcast: qspace.fqxi.org/podcasts/125
November 12, 2025 at 5:15 PM
Life imitates art...
November 11, 2025 at 10:51 PM
Reposted by David Sloan
Another not-at-all dated reference from today's lecture.
November 6, 2025 at 3:11 PM