It is well known that Physicists have a special relationship with beer. There is just something magical about the amber fluid. Here I want to discuss the ways in which beer and the desire to improve the brewing process furthered humanities analytic chemistry techniques by clever applications of optical physics! We...

Rating: 🟧 Type: Non-Fiction This is a complicated one to recommend. It was a bit of a slog to read, and parts of it were quite confronting. Without going too much into my own political ideology, I don't think it would be that surprising to most that I do not agree 100% with the political opinions espoused by a...

1 On the role of technical skills in fighting power I've been reading Yanis Varifakis's Technofeudalism: What killed capitalism and have been thinking about the pessimism a lot of progressives have in opposing oligarchy. Specifically, progressives are often reluctant to engage with techno-capital on its own terms,...

So, what on Earth do I actually work on? Lets explain it at 5 different levels. 1 Primary School I use lasers to talk to astronauts Credit: NASA 2 High School We use lasers to communicate to communicate with satellites and other things in space. It is like morse code, turning the laser on and off to symbolise "1"s...

I dont care about how it works, what do I need to do? Scroll to the bottom, and grab the code and instructions there. Embedding Mastodon Posts into your Static Web Page There are a few tools for embedding Mastodon toots into a webpage. The most straightforward is to get the embedding code straight from mastodon...

1 Background A while back, I wrote a quick explainer on how to set up your own RSS feed for your site. It was pretty straightforward, and showed you how to hard-code it. Then I got lazy, updating the feed.xml file every time I wrote a blog post was becoming a pain. To resolve this, I opted to use 11ty to auto-update...

How I do My Research (As a PhD Student) It has almost become a cliche amongst a certain kind of PhD student to explain Exactly your research workflow, and why it works. Now it is my turn to add to the pile. The overall "philosophy" (If you can even call it that) of my Pesonal Knowledge Management (PKM) system, is...

Rating: ⭐ Type: Non-Fiction Varoufakis is a surprisingly great writer. The first chapter draws an extremely compelling extended metaphor between physics and philosphy and economics which blew me away. His core thesis is that we have moved beyond capitalism, and far from the socialist utopia which many predicted...

Rating: 🟩 Type: Non-Fiction I've readlly enjoyed his Youtube channel "Gary's Economis" for a while now. In that light I was slightly disappointed that the book was mostly biographic, with not a whole lot of economics. That said, Stevensen is a REALLY great writer. Lots of very funny anecdotes, and insights. Worth...

Rating: ⭐ Type: Fiction Cixin does not miss. This short graphic novel which I read in an hour hit me like a sledgehammer with its final panel. Teachers are amazing. Go thank your nearest teacher.

Rating: ⭐ Type: Fiction Cixin Liu did that really cool thing where he managed to thread the needle between a scathing critique of capital, while also criticising a reactionary authoritarian communist attempt at redistribution

Rating: 🟥 Type: Non-Fiction I found this to be less interesting than I hoped. Yep, if you work too hard you will burn out, and there are physiological signs. Idk, maybe some people need a book to tell them this, but I found it obvious and tedious