david jon furbish
@davidjonfurbish.bsky.social
granddad and emeritus professor studying statistical physics of sediment transport & science philosophy
essays on these topics: https://my.vanderbilt.edu/davidjonfurbish/
author of Fluid Physics in Geology: https://academic.oup.com/book/40895?login=false
essays on these topics: https://my.vanderbilt.edu/davidjonfurbish/
author of Fluid Physics in Geology: https://academic.oup.com/book/40895?login=false
Pinned
As a point of reference, meet Rowan the intrepid woof. Together we invented the game of Dragon Soccer involving two soccer balls and a stuffed dragon. The rules are complicated… and fluid. But it seems that whoever controls the dragon controls the game. I’ll be posting numerous pics of Rowan.
Oh gosh our befriended dragon Icarus was seriously injured in a game of Dragon Soccer! Fortunately the Chief Woof does excellent dragon surgery (generally a dangerous business) and fixed Icarus’s noise-maker innards and the laceration. Look at those beautiful butt/tail stitches! All better 😊
October 15, 2025 at 8:16 PM
Oh gosh our befriended dragon Icarus was seriously injured in a game of Dragon Soccer! Fortunately the Chief Woof does excellent dragon surgery (generally a dangerous business) and fixed Icarus’s noise-maker innards and the laceration. Look at those beautiful butt/tail stitches! All better 😊
if you’re wondering, the verb “tech-bro’d” is not complimentary
a nice analysis of yet another tech “solution” that no one needs nor wants
a nice analysis of yet another tech “solution” that no one needs nor wants
The true cost of “solar power at night” with Reflect Orbital
If you played SimCity 2000, you might've loved the idea of "beaming power from space" down to Earth.
Reflect Orbital took that idea, tech-bro'd it, and now could end "night" as we know it.
bigthink.com/starts-with-...
#space #astro
If you played SimCity 2000, you might've loved the idea of "beaming power from space" down to Earth.
Reflect Orbital took that idea, tech-bro'd it, and now could end "night" as we know it.
bigthink.com/starts-with-...
#space #astro
The true cost of "solar power at night" with Reflect Orbital
Solar power has the disadvantage that there's no Sun at night. Satellite startup Reflect Orbital wants to change that, but at what cost?
bigthink.com
October 15, 2025 at 3:39 PM
if you’re wondering, the verb “tech-bro’d” is not complimentary
a nice analysis of yet another tech “solution” that no one needs nor wants
a nice analysis of yet another tech “solution” that no one needs nor wants
“This “compact” is… like an invitation to borrow money from the mob, with substantial control and future penalties assured. If any university agrees to this proposal, it will be under federal control and subject to some unpredictable, arbitrary, extreme penalties.”
newrepublic.com/article/2013...
newrepublic.com/article/2013...
Why This Essay Could Cause the University of Virginia to Shut Down
How Linda McMahon’s latest “compact” would do deep and permanent harm to American higher education
newrepublic.com
October 7, 2025 at 2:30 PM
“This “compact” is… like an invitation to borrow money from the mob, with substantial control and future penalties assured. If any university agrees to this proposal, it will be under federal control and subject to some unpredictable, arbitrary, extreme penalties.”
newrepublic.com/article/2013...
newrepublic.com/article/2013...
Reposted by david jon furbish
For anyone interested in stochastic dynamics, nonequilibrium/critical phenomena, Langevin equations, etc, I *strongly* recommend these new lectures (40x 40 min) by Erwin Frey (LMU Munich). Outstanding.
🧪🧮
www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...
🧪🧮
www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...
Nonequilibrium Physics -- Stochastic Dynamics & Field Theories - YouTube
This lecture explores the fundamental principles and advanced concepts of nonequilibrium field theories and stochastic dynamics. The course focuses on stocha...
www.youtube.com
October 4, 2025 at 8:28 AM
For anyone interested in stochastic dynamics, nonequilibrium/critical phenomena, Langevin equations, etc, I *strongly* recommend these new lectures (40x 40 min) by Erwin Frey (LMU Munich). Outstanding.
🧪🧮
www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...
🧪🧮
www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...
Indeed, based on my reading of the document sent to the nine universities, the “compact” consists of open-ended extortion, and any “benefits” of signing on are an illusion.
This is absolutely right on every point and everyone who sits on a governing board or serves as president or provost or similar should please make the time to read it.
www.nytimes.com/2025/10/02/o...
www.nytimes.com/2025/10/02/o...
Opinion | Trump’s ‘Compact’ With Universities Is Just Extortion
www.nytimes.com
October 3, 2025 at 7:55 PM
Indeed, based on my reading of the document sent to the nine universities, the “compact” consists of open-ended extortion, and any “benefits” of signing on are an illusion.
Reposted by david jon furbish
This is absolutely right on every point and everyone who sits on a governing board or serves as president or provost or similar should please make the time to read it.
www.nytimes.com/2025/10/02/o...
www.nytimes.com/2025/10/02/o...
Opinion | Trump’s ‘Compact’ With Universities Is Just Extortion
www.nytimes.com
October 3, 2025 at 7:15 PM
This is absolutely right on every point and everyone who sits on a governing board or serves as president or provost or similar should please make the time to read it.
www.nytimes.com/2025/10/02/o...
www.nytimes.com/2025/10/02/o...
lol brilliant
We are thrilled to announce that our NEW Large Language Model will be released on 11.18.25.
October 1, 2025 at 5:54 PM
lol brilliant
It’s not just cost. Digital sovereignty and privacy matter. The migration from Microsoft (Windows, Office) to Linux and open-source software (e.g. LibreOffice) is accelerating. This is just one notable example among many.
1/2
www.zdnet.com/article/this...
1/2
www.zdnet.com/article/this...
This European military just ditched Microsoft for open-source LibreOffice - here's why
It's not about the cost savings, either. Many government organizations are replacing Microsoft software for a more important reason.
www.zdnet.com
September 27, 2025 at 5:03 PM
It’s not just cost. Digital sovereignty and privacy matter. The migration from Microsoft (Windows, Office) to Linux and open-source software (e.g. LibreOffice) is accelerating. This is just one notable example among many.
1/2
www.zdnet.com/article/this...
1/2
www.zdnet.com/article/this...
Rowan caught another dragon for our Dragon Soccer game! The dragon was initially annoyed — and still gets a bit touchy about not being able to fly with too much dog spit on its wings — but now seems to enjoy playing with us!
#dogs
#dogsofbluesky
#AustralianShepherd
#dogs
#dogsofbluesky
#AustralianShepherd
September 21, 2025 at 2:10 PM
Rowan caught another dragon for our Dragon Soccer game! The dragon was initially annoyed — and still gets a bit touchy about not being able to fly with too much dog spit on its wings — but now seems to enjoy playing with us!
#dogs
#dogsofbluesky
#AustralianShepherd
#dogs
#dogsofbluesky
#AustralianShepherd
It is soooo satisfying to continue ditching/purging enshittified Microsoft, Adobe, etc. products for high quality open-source software without missing a beat. Things like LibreOffice, Gimp, OmniTools, etc.
September 20, 2025 at 8:57 PM
It is soooo satisfying to continue ditching/purging enshittified Microsoft, Adobe, etc. products for high quality open-source software without missing a beat. Things like LibreOffice, Gimp, OmniTools, etc.
lol oh my gosh are you suggesting that instead of defaulting to an LLM, maybe I should use my own shitty little brain?! lol what a grand idea… 😂😄
September 6, 2025 at 1:03 AM
lol oh my gosh are you suggesting that instead of defaulting to an LLM, maybe I should use my own shitty little brain?! lol what a grand idea… 😂😄
Rowan and I are NOT doom scrolling on my iPad. We’re watching cool dog agility videos and checking out the stuffed animals toys on the webpage of our locally owned pet supply store. We’re getting ready to go hide in the mountains/woods for a week or so.
#dogs
#dogsofbluesky
#AustralianShepherd
#dogs
#dogsofbluesky
#AustralianShepherd
September 3, 2025 at 3:53 PM
Rowan and I are NOT doom scrolling on my iPad. We’re watching cool dog agility videos and checking out the stuffed animals toys on the webpage of our locally owned pet supply store. We’re getting ready to go hide in the mountains/woods for a week or so.
#dogs
#dogsofbluesky
#AustralianShepherd
#dogs
#dogsofbluesky
#AustralianShepherd
eBook Preview
Statistical Physics of Rarefied Sediment Particle Motions and Transport: Applications to Hillslopes and Rivers
Posting this preview of material from my next (unfinished) book might be a mistake. But eh… what the hell.
1/n
cdn.vanderbilt.edu/t2-my/my-prd...
Statistical Physics of Rarefied Sediment Particle Motions and Transport: Applications to Hillslopes and Rivers
Posting this preview of material from my next (unfinished) book might be a mistake. But eh… what the hell.
1/n
cdn.vanderbilt.edu/t2-my/my-prd...
cdn.vanderbilt.edu
September 1, 2025 at 9:15 PM
eBook Preview
Statistical Physics of Rarefied Sediment Particle Motions and Transport: Applications to Hillslopes and Rivers
Posting this preview of material from my next (unfinished) book might be a mistake. But eh… what the hell.
1/n
cdn.vanderbilt.edu/t2-my/my-prd...
Statistical Physics of Rarefied Sediment Particle Motions and Transport: Applications to Hillslopes and Rivers
Posting this preview of material from my next (unfinished) book might be a mistake. But eh… what the hell.
1/n
cdn.vanderbilt.edu/t2-my/my-prd...
Despite growing up in North Carolina, I only recently learned of the Southern Devil Scorpion (Vaejovis carolinianus) and its occurrence in Tennessee. Nocturnal and relatively innocuous, but they make for interesting nighttime walks with Rowan, who insists on sniffing in every nook and cranny.
September 1, 2025 at 3:30 PM
Despite growing up in North Carolina, I only recently learned of the Southern Devil Scorpion (Vaejovis carolinianus) and its occurrence in Tennessee. Nocturnal and relatively innocuous, but they make for interesting nighttime walks with Rowan, who insists on sniffing in every nook and cranny.
lol clever satire wins again
yet despite the absurdity of it all, there are still real academics who actually buy into some of this shit
yet despite the absurdity of it all, there are still real academics who actually buy into some of this shit
"You’re a fine arts major? You should have generative AI draw those nudes for you, and your fellow arts majors will use machine vision to look at your work, and Chat GPT will write up much better criticism than any 19- or 20-year-old brain could have ever come up with."
How I Learned to Stop Teaching and Love AI
Like a fool, I used to resist, but no more. In the past, I railed against the rise of AI. I preached small-minded sermons to students who had to si...
buff.ly
August 28, 2025 at 2:03 PM
lol clever satire wins again
yet despite the absurdity of it all, there are still real academics who actually buy into some of this shit
yet despite the absurdity of it all, there are still real academics who actually buy into some of this shit
“When I say AGI is impossible, I mean: it requires mathematics that doesn't exist to model biology we don't understand to implement functions nobody can define. That's "impossible" in any practical sense.”
fluxus.io/article/alch...
fluxus.io/article/alch...
Alchemy 2: Electric Boogaloo
Why the dream of AGI rests on undiscovered mathematics, biochemical hand-waving, and Silicon Valley's accidental religion.
fluxus.io
August 26, 2025 at 7:19 PM
“When I say AGI is impossible, I mean: it requires mathematics that doesn't exist to model biology we don't understand to implement functions nobody can define. That's "impossible" in any practical sense.”
fluxus.io/article/alch...
fluxus.io/article/alch...
Reposted by david jon furbish
You are, in the next few months, going to see a few pro-AI people who start trying to morph into "thoughtful cynics" on the issue, and I can't wait, because I've been taking such detailed notes
August 19, 2025 at 8:47 PM
You are, in the next few months, going to see a few pro-AI people who start trying to morph into "thoughtful cynics" on the issue, and I can't wait, because I've been taking such detailed notes
Gary Marcus’s assessment of GPT-5 and LLMs more generally is unambiguous
garymarcus.substack.com/p/gpt-5-over...
garymarcus.substack.com/p/gpt-5-over...
GPT-5: Overdue, overhyped and underwhelming. And that’s not the worst of it.
A new release botched … and a breaking research new paper that spells trouble
garymarcus.substack.com
August 19, 2025 at 8:31 PM
Gary Marcus’s assessment of GPT-5 and LLMs more generally is unambiguous
garymarcus.substack.com/p/gpt-5-over...
garymarcus.substack.com/p/gpt-5-over...
re the use of LLMs
my wife just shared a statement that a literary agent (friend of a friend) posts on her website regarding project/agent queries
in effect it says that any query email/statement/letter generated by an LLM will be immediately deleted, unread
my wife just shared a statement that a literary agent (friend of a friend) posts on her website regarding project/agent queries
in effect it says that any query email/statement/letter generated by an LLM will be immediately deleted, unread
August 19, 2025 at 6:17 PM
re the use of LLMs
my wife just shared a statement that a literary agent (friend of a friend) posts on her website regarding project/agent queries
in effect it says that any query email/statement/letter generated by an LLM will be immediately deleted, unread
my wife just shared a statement that a literary agent (friend of a friend) posts on her website regarding project/agent queries
in effect it says that any query email/statement/letter generated by an LLM will be immediately deleted, unread
a thoughtful, clear assessment of the AI delusion
including — and you can’t make this shit up — a Dyson sphere around the solar system, courtesy of Sam Altman’s personal fantasies/delusions/stupidity
including — and you can’t make this shit up — a Dyson sphere around the solar system, courtesy of Sam Altman’s personal fantasies/delusions/stupidity
Hello. I wrote a nice long essay about AI and this very strange moment where we're constantly told we're living in the dawn of a strange new future but the only thing that's actually clear is that everyone feels pretty unmoored and uncertain. I hope you'll read it
AI Is a Mass-Delusion Event
Three years in, one of AI’s enduring impacts is to make people feel like they’re losing it.
www.theatlantic.com
August 19, 2025 at 2:22 PM
a thoughtful, clear assessment of the AI delusion
including — and you can’t make this shit up — a Dyson sphere around the solar system, courtesy of Sam Altman’s personal fantasies/delusions/stupidity
including — and you can’t make this shit up — a Dyson sphere around the solar system, courtesy of Sam Altman’s personal fantasies/delusions/stupidity
just rereading this brilliant (very funny) statement by Greg Mania concerning the appearance of the em dash in AI
stay for the P.S. at the end 😂
www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/the...
stay for the P.S. at the end 😂
www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/the...
The Em Dash Responds to the AI Allegations
“In recent months, a curious fixation has emerged in corners of academia: the em dash. More specifically, the apparent moral panic around how it is...
www.mcsweeneys.net
August 18, 2025 at 7:29 PM
just rereading this brilliant (very funny) statement by Greg Mania concerning the appearance of the em dash in AI
stay for the P.S. at the end 😂
www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/the...
stay for the P.S. at the end 😂
www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/the...
lol wishing I had known of these insights when I was teaching my probability/statistics course 😂
Confirmation bias is a fancy term. It just means "don't read everything you believe."
August 16, 2025 at 5:28 PM
lol wishing I had known of these insights when I was teaching my probability/statistics course 😂
for fun, here is another snippet from something I'm currently writing, which concerns the statistical physics of sediment transport
although focused on transport of soil particles by rain splash, the idea equally applies to other transport processes, including bed load transport in rivers
although focused on transport of soil particles by rain splash, the idea equally applies to other transport processes, including bed load transport in rivers
![Moreover, the ingredients of [expressions of the soil particle flux] are in principle well defined, and the simple linear forms of these expressions appear to hold no surprises. Stated another way, rain splash transport is perhaps the ``tamest'' surface transport process imaginable --- the ``simplest of all geomorphic processes'' (Dunne et al., 2010, p. 15). It is therefore an ideal example to examine the probabilistic consequences of rarefied transport conditions for comparison with a conventional deterministic (continuum-like) description of a process that is fundamentally noise driven. Indeed, like the process of radioactive decay and its measurement, an explanation of rain splash transport requires a probabilistic description; no other possibility exists.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:6ui77txzzc5prhvlfcvrzqqb/bafkreic666ymnq4kvpnyfh5bysloa5fxb3g3mjk4pihdm5a5nqkh5rhggq@jpeg)
August 14, 2025 at 7:17 PM
for fun, here is another snippet from something I'm currently writing, which concerns the statistical physics of sediment transport
although focused on transport of soil particles by rain splash, the idea equally applies to other transport processes, including bed load transport in rivers
although focused on transport of soil particles by rain splash, the idea equally applies to other transport processes, including bed load transport in rivers
A key element of the broken incentive structure that Hossenfelder does not address is the well-known transformation of universities and professional societies into top-heavy corporate enterprises whose role, like publishers, is parasitic abetment.
Today I have a few words about some well-known and maybe not-so well known problems with scientific research and what others have said about this.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yPy...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yPy...
why science is broken
YouTube video by Sabine Hossenfelder
www.youtube.com
August 14, 2025 at 4:59 PM
A key element of the broken incentive structure that Hossenfelder does not address is the well-known transformation of universities and professional societies into top-heavy corporate enterprises whose role, like publishers, is parasitic abetment.