Cyril Closset
@spinozainlove.bsky.social
UK-based string theorist. Pro-education as a public good. Random (non)thoughts about this world we share.
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Cyril Closset
@spinozainlove.bsky.social
· Mar 15
A young child's biggest joy is to interact with their surrounding: smile, touch, taste, lift and drop objects. As an older child/scientist, I like a science that lifts and drops, smiles and tastes. I'm not doing research to solve our society's many ills. I do it because I'm still a child. Sue me.
Reposted by Cyril Closset
Currently reading this harrowing and important memoir by Gazan physics student Wasim Said which comes out in under two weeks and I hope you’ll preorder, read, and take action #BookSky
1804books.com/products/wit...
1804books.com/products/wit...
PRE-ORDER: Witness to the Hellfire of Genocide
I didn’t write this to make you cry.Not for you to tell me: “Poor you.”I write this so I can hang these words around your neck—to make you bear the responsibility of my perspective,the responsibility ...
1804books.com
September 20, 2025 at 10:00 PM
Currently reading this harrowing and important memoir by Gazan physics student Wasim Said which comes out in under two weeks and I hope you’ll preorder, read, and take action #BookSky
1804books.com/products/wit...
1804books.com/products/wit...
Reposted by Cyril Closset
Even as the stakes are raised ever higher there's still a fair number of people who still fundamentally see being on the left as a cool counter culture whose value is partially constituted by exclusivity.
what's funny is that like, those protests are an excellent time to do left recruitment. i have no idea why cringe is used as a purity test here
September 20, 2025 at 7:11 AM
Even as the stakes are raised ever higher there's still a fair number of people who still fundamentally see being on the left as a cool counter culture whose value is partially constituted by exclusivity.
Reposted by Cyril Closset
On the whole I still think this (from here: sootyempiric.blogspot.com/2025/08/woke...) is true. But the people who haven't changed up, who are still orientating their lives around Are Woke College Students The Red Guard? in the year of our Lord 2025, are genuinely embarrassing to behold right now.
September 15, 2025 at 7:57 AM
On the whole I still think this (from here: sootyempiric.blogspot.com/2025/08/woke...) is true. But the people who haven't changed up, who are still orientating their lives around Are Woke College Students The Red Guard? in the year of our Lord 2025, are genuinely embarrassing to behold right now.
Reposted by Cyril Closset
Concentration camps with no privacy, guarded by the military, in terrible climate, on indigenous lands. This happened to Japanese Americans. And of course indigenous peoples were “removed” to reservations, that is to say, camps. This is who we always have been as a country.
July 2, 2025 at 4:50 AM
Concentration camps with no privacy, guarded by the military, in terrible climate, on indigenous lands. This happened to Japanese Americans. And of course indigenous peoples were “removed” to reservations, that is to say, camps. This is who we always have been as a country.
Reposted by Cyril Closset
AOC: "On this point of tax on tips, as one of the only people in this body who has lived off of tips, I want to tell you a little bit about the scam ... the cap on that is $25,000 while you're jacking up taxes on people who make less than $50,000 across the US ... while kicking them off the ACA."
July 2, 2025 at 3:37 PM
AOC: "On this point of tax on tips, as one of the only people in this body who has lived off of tips, I want to tell you a little bit about the scam ... the cap on that is $25,000 while you're jacking up taxes on people who make less than $50,000 across the US ... while kicking them off the ACA."
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What's astonishing about this is that "violence against a military force currently shelling civilians at food distribution points in the occupied territory they have been starving out" becomes equivalent to "calling for a genocide". It's just an insane moral reversal of the actual situation.
This looks completely deranged - and it is - but it’s a product of 2018-19, the late Brexit/Corbyn Labour era. Short version: it finally dawned on the lads that they are holding the microphones, so *they decide what the story is*, and how intense it should get. It’s worked very well for them so far.
June 30, 2025 at 7:10 AM
What's astonishing about this is that "violence against a military force currently shelling civilians at food distribution points in the occupied territory they have been starving out" becomes equivalent to "calling for a genocide". It's just an insane moral reversal of the actual situation.
The lens to understand the ramping up wars isn't "regime change", it is "country destruction." We are in a new/old story, where the powerful prefers to utterly destroy the enemy rather than having to e.g. occupy it. Genocidal supremacy on the rise, as we see e.g. within Russia, Israel, and the US...
June 22, 2025 at 8:05 PM
The lens to understand the ramping up wars isn't "regime change", it is "country destruction." We are in a new/old story, where the powerful prefers to utterly destroy the enemy rather than having to e.g. occupy it. Genocidal supremacy on the rise, as we see e.g. within Russia, Israel, and the US...
Reposted by Cyril Closset
We don't talk enough about how an influential part of the American Right wants to hasten the end of the world through war and environmental destruction.
June 22, 2025 at 1:02 AM
We don't talk enough about how an influential part of the American Right wants to hasten the end of the world through war and environmental destruction.
Militarism is the main tool of a fading, senseless wold order. It is also most likely to end us all.
I’ll never understand the boys and their fascination with their toys.
I’ll never understand the boys and their fascination with their toys.
June 22, 2025 at 5:46 AM
Militarism is the main tool of a fading, senseless wold order. It is also most likely to end us all.
I’ll never understand the boys and their fascination with their toys.
I’ll never understand the boys and their fascination with their toys.
Reposted by Cyril Closset
It's pretty telling that the second part of the "Mamdani is a danger to Jewish new yorkers" pitch is always "so vote for sexual harasser shitbag Italian Catholic Andrew Cuomo" and not "so vote for Jewish Progressive Brad Lander"
June 16, 2025 at 1:59 AM
It's pretty telling that the second part of the "Mamdani is a danger to Jewish new yorkers" pitch is always "so vote for sexual harasser shitbag Italian Catholic Andrew Cuomo" and not "so vote for Jewish Progressive Brad Lander"
Reposted by Cyril Closset
But the weird thing is my enemies are bringing it down *cos they mistook the nonsense machismo stuff for real strength*. I guess I have not taken fully seriously the role of sheer inept stupidity, raw childish thoughtless emotional indulgence, in world history.
June 14, 2025 at 10:01 AM
But the weird thing is my enemies are bringing it down *cos they mistook the nonsense machismo stuff for real strength*. I guess I have not taken fully seriously the role of sheer inept stupidity, raw childish thoughtless emotional indulgence, in world history.
Reposted by Cyril Closset
“Two people deeply familiar with the Charleston 787 plant told the Prospect they had particularly acute quality concerns over planes that were delivered to Air India.” 😱
One of the Dreamliners That Gave a Boeing Manager Nightmares Just Crashed
Whistleblowers always warned that passengers would pay a price for Boeing’s tyrannical corner-cutting, especially with the planes shipped overseas.
prospect.org
June 13, 2025 at 9:00 AM
“Two people deeply familiar with the Charleston 787 plant told the Prospect they had particularly acute quality concerns over planes that were delivered to Air India.” 😱
Reposted by Cyril Closset
I'm being called immature for my "war is bad" stance, so let me be absolutely clear on this:
If being an adult requires accepting brutally murdering, maiming, and destroying human beings en masse rather than sitting down at a table and talking, I'm perfectly fine not being one.
If being an adult requires accepting brutally murdering, maiming, and destroying human beings en masse rather than sitting down at a table and talking, I'm perfectly fine not being one.
June 13, 2025 at 3:13 PM
I'm being called immature for my "war is bad" stance, so let me be absolutely clear on this:
If being an adult requires accepting brutally murdering, maiming, and destroying human beings en masse rather than sitting down at a table and talking, I'm perfectly fine not being one.
If being an adult requires accepting brutally murdering, maiming, and destroying human beings en masse rather than sitting down at a table and talking, I'm perfectly fine not being one.
Reposted by Cyril Closset
My opinion on the political psychology of many of the Trump true believer devotees is that the aesthetics of army men marching out against the forces of Disorder, being foreign and Urban (ahem) as they are especially, is an incredibly potent high for them. They will seek this out again and again.
June 10, 2025 at 6:50 AM
My opinion on the political psychology of many of the Trump true believer devotees is that the aesthetics of army men marching out against the forces of Disorder, being foreign and Urban (ahem) as they are especially, is an incredibly potent high for them. They will seek this out again and again.
Reposted by Cyril Closset
French-Palestinian Member of European Parliament Rima Hassan:
"If you're seeing this video now, it's because we've been stopped by the Israeli army or their complicit allies. We count on your mobilization to put pressure on the French government to demand our release."
"If you're seeing this video now, it's because we've been stopped by the Israeli army or their complicit allies. We count on your mobilization to put pressure on the French government to demand our release."
June 9, 2025 at 2:21 AM
French-Palestinian Member of European Parliament Rima Hassan:
"If you're seeing this video now, it's because we've been stopped by the Israeli army or their complicit allies. We count on your mobilization to put pressure on the French government to demand our release."
"If you're seeing this video now, it's because we've been stopped by the Israeli army or their complicit allies. We count on your mobilization to put pressure on the French government to demand our release."
Reposted by Cyril Closset
There are going to be people out there who will mourn burned Waymo cars more than they will burned Palestinians.
June 9, 2025 at 6:49 AM
There are going to be people out there who will mourn burned Waymo cars more than they will burned Palestinians.
Reposted by Cyril Closset
90!
Since October 2023, write Neve Gordon, Guy Shalev, and Osama Tanous, ninety Palestinian detainees have died in Israeli custody. “In comparison, nine inmates died in detention at Guantánamo Bay over a period of more than twenty years.”
The Shame of Israeli Medicine | Neve Gordon, Guy Shalev, Osama Tanous
In late March 2024 Israeli soldiers raided Nasser Hospital in the southern Gaza Strip. They arrested medical staff and patients, as well as civilians who
buff.ly
June 8, 2025 at 11:05 AM
90!
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“Defund the police” was in fact a great slogan.
June 7, 2025 at 9:21 PM
“Defund the police” was in fact a great slogan.
Rule of thumb of UKHE is that every new procedure to "streamline" a process will make it more cumbersome for the academic end users. I am reminded of this as I discover in horror the new forms to request IT hardware.
It's as if they didn't want us to do research, but why?
It's as if they didn't want us to do research, but why?
June 2, 2025 at 8:48 PM
Rule of thumb of UKHE is that every new procedure to "streamline" a process will make it more cumbersome for the academic end users. I am reminded of this as I discover in horror the new forms to request IT hardware.
It's as if they didn't want us to do research, but why?
It's as if they didn't want us to do research, but why?
American science’s demise under the current regime will affect us all…
Presidential budget is out. Here's NSF. Biggest cut, by amount, is $1 billion, or 66.8%, from MPS (Physics & Math directorate). nsf-gov-resources.nsf.gov/files/00-NSF...
May 31, 2025 at 8:26 AM
American science’s demise under the current regime will affect us all…
Can anyone explain to me why the EU can’t or won’t expel Hungary? Aren’t we supposed to be some sort of union of democratic countries?
May 21, 2025 at 9:20 PM
Can anyone explain to me why the EU can’t or won’t expel Hungary? Aren’t we supposed to be some sort of union of democratic countries?
I'm a big believer in having more Israel hasbara clowns on radio and TV: their callous nonsense is so blatant that it does the work of dismantling Zionist ideology for us.
Listening to UK radio journalists getting frustrated with them while they so wish they could defend Israel is something...(1/2)
Listening to UK radio journalists getting frustrated with them while they so wish they could defend Israel is something...(1/2)
May 21, 2025 at 6:24 AM
I'm a big believer in having more Israel hasbara clowns on radio and TV: their callous nonsense is so blatant that it does the work of dismantling Zionist ideology for us.
Listening to UK radio journalists getting frustrated with them while they so wish they could defend Israel is something...(1/2)
Listening to UK radio journalists getting frustrated with them while they so wish they could defend Israel is something...(1/2)
Bless the students.
Also, as a nearly middle aged person, I’ve come to hate how we tell the younger generation that they’ll have to fix the mess we and our parents created. We have more power then the students. Let’s use that power. Rock the boat that these stupid ghouls are steering to the abyss.
Also, as a nearly middle aged person, I’ve come to hate how we tell the younger generation that they’ll have to fix the mess we and our parents created. We have more power then the students. Let’s use that power. Rock the boat that these stupid ghouls are steering to the abyss.
Columbia University Acting President Claire Shipman welcomed to Columbia College's graduation ceremony with sustained jeers and boos.
Minutes later, students break out in loud chants of "Free Mahmoud":
Minutes later, students break out in loud chants of "Free Mahmoud":
May 20, 2025 at 8:34 PM
Bless the students.
Also, as a nearly middle aged person, I’ve come to hate how we tell the younger generation that they’ll have to fix the mess we and our parents created. We have more power then the students. Let’s use that power. Rock the boat that these stupid ghouls are steering to the abyss.
Also, as a nearly middle aged person, I’ve come to hate how we tell the younger generation that they’ll have to fix the mess we and our parents created. We have more power then the students. Let’s use that power. Rock the boat that these stupid ghouls are steering to the abyss.