Got the flu vaccine and the updated COVID vaccine and now I have ethernet over a 10GBASE-BX bidirectional fiber connection. Go figure.

Happy summer solstice, and happy start of firefly season! First one I saw this year was last night.

Drove through the Endless Mountains of Pennsylvania ("Next 6 Exits"). Maybe they're endless in a different direction?

Last week, a gardening rake fell off the back of a pickup truck in front of my house and landed in the middle of the road. It took four minutes (and 14 cars passing) for a stranger to move the rake safely out of the road.

Is anyone working on a battery-electric instant hot water heater, like battery-electric stoves by Copper or Impulse Labs?

I'd like one to couple with a (distant) heat pump water heater to decrease the time-till-hot. Batteries would allow skipping a new thick copper line & a (likely) 60A breaker.

Subject: "Congrats Jacob, you're now a member of Zach Weinersmith"

Wonderful to join the collective, slime-mold-like organism that is @zachweinersmith.bsky.social

Got on the wrong train this morning and ended up at Newark Airport 19 minutes earlier than expected :)

#3914, 6:19 @ PJC --> 6:52 @ Newark then #3817, 6:56 --> 7:02 @ EWR.

I had expected to take the #3818, 6:25 @ PJC --> 7:21 @ EWR train.

This sounds trivial but basically 20 to 30 of these little (not evidence-based) additional requirements is what leads to 5x - 10x costs to build transit stations in North America vs Europe.

I've been using Mathematica for more than 10 years but only realized this week it doesn't have a (IEEE-754 type) NaN built in the base language. 0/0 is "Indeterminate". This caused trouble when importing a HDF5 file with NaNs.

"...Trains, Trains, Trains"

I recently learned about `:set paste` in vim. It makes autoindent not trigger during pasting, so I can paste with the correct formatting. Super useful. Turn it off with `:set nopaste`.

I'm honored to be speaking at Foresight Institute's Vision Weekend in Puerto Rico (Feb 21-23, 2025)! I'll be talking about fusion. The conference will be exploring progress in longevity, neurotech, space, and more. Technical talks, networking, island adventures. Info here: foresight.org/vw2025pr/

No, That’s not a comet. That’s the planet Mercury with it's sodium tail.

I've learned to use the microwave's power level button for cooking oatmeal and it's a game changer—no more boiling over.

Happy to be integrating things like: $\cos \nu \cos^2\theta / |\Delta^2|$.

As a side project I've been thinking about spin-polarized fusion, a neat way to get extra power, burn fuel more efficiently, and even direct neutrons to preferred locations. PPPL made this press release about a recent paper by J. Parisi where I'm one of the co-authors:

www.pppl.gov/news/2024/sp...

Hello! I'm a fusion energy researcher working at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. I also have a personal website jaschwartz.net where I post about fun physics-y problems I've been solving.