Gregor
@coexact.bsky.social
machine for turning coffee into other fluids
Pinned
Gregor
@coexact.bsky.social
· Feb 4
Electric charge is an integer quantity in nature. It didn't have to be this way: We could imagine a world in which electrons and protons have charges that aren't precisely equal and opposed to each other. Chemistry would break! So where does this conspiracy come from? (it's topology) 🧵
ok idk what happened today, I was bored I guess. Watch me seamlessly go back to 5 non-reply posts in half a year now; gn.
December 23, 2025 at 12:58 AM
ok idk what happened today, I was bored I guess. Watch me seamlessly go back to 5 non-reply posts in half a year now; gn.
kinda interesting story here. Can a LLM with some vibecoded framing produce a decent index for a book?
I confess I wasn't aware of indexing as a profession prior to this, but even without leaving this site you can find the tail end of a community, with orgs, conferences, meetups..
I confess I wasn't aware of indexing as a profession prior to this, but even without leaving this site you can find the tail end of a community, with orgs, conferences, meetups..
I want to read this article. Two (meant constructively) things:
1) "demonstrating that LLMs are worthless for indexing" should, like most of these things, have qualifiers like "in our hands and with our LLM"
2) when people talk like this about accuracy, I suspect the workflow as much as the model.
1) "demonstrating that LLMs are worthless for indexing" should, like most of these things, have qualifiers like "in our hands and with our LLM"
2) when people talk like this about accuracy, I suspect the workflow as much as the model.
There’s an excellent and devastatingly thorough article in the latest @indexers.bsky.social journal by Elizabeth Bartmess and Michele Combs demonstrating that LLMs are worthless for indexing
December 23, 2025 at 12:21 AM
kinda interesting story here. Can a LLM with some vibecoded framing produce a decent index for a book?
I confess I wasn't aware of indexing as a profession prior to this, but even without leaving this site you can find the tail end of a community, with orgs, conferences, meetups..
I confess I wasn't aware of indexing as a profession prior to this, but even without leaving this site you can find the tail end of a community, with orgs, conferences, meetups..
no matter how you slice it, if intelligent life survives all other hurdles, it will eventually end for astrophysical reasons, be that the expansion of the sun or cosmic heat death. It will be like climate change but worse: much slower, much more predictable, not preventable, hopelessly unsurvivable
so like is life in that galaxy kind of fucked long term? Kind of love hate the idea of being one of the solar systems in the wake thats just flung on its own
Runaway supermassive black hole? Did not know this could be a thing. It’s moving at 2.2M mph and “is pushing forward a literal galaxy-sized ‘bow-shock’ of matter in front of it, while simultaneously dragging a 200,000 light-year-long tail behind it”. [space.com]
December 22, 2025 at 10:53 PM
no matter how you slice it, if intelligent life survives all other hurdles, it will eventually end for astrophysical reasons, be that the expansion of the sun or cosmic heat death. It will be like climate change but worse: much slower, much more predictable, not preventable, hopelessly unsurvivable
to point at an elephant, it is incredibly obvious that the long-term global "cost" of basically ending extreme poverty is super-duper negative
What would it cost to end extreme poverty?
"We estimate that reducing the poverty rate to 1% ... would cost $170B nominal per year."
"The results correspond to a cost of (approximately) ending extreme poverty of roughly 0.3% of global GDP."
"We estimate that reducing the poverty rate to 1% ... would cost $170B nominal per year."
"The results correspond to a cost of (approximately) ending extreme poverty of roughly 0.3% of global GDP."
December 22, 2025 at 3:50 PM
to point at an elephant, it is incredibly obvious that the long-term global "cost" of basically ending extreme poverty is super-duper negative
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons
(TS Eliot)
(The power was out at the NIST atomic clocks, presumably)
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons
(TS Eliot)
(The power was out at the NIST atomic clocks, presumably)
Now you have the perfect excuse if you were about 5µs late for work this morning. 🔽
The atomic clocks in Boulder are back in service. But they could be as much as 5 microseconds off!
That's no big deal for transmitting time on the internet, where millisecond irregularities are common. But it'd be 5000 times the usual nanosecond errors!
groups.google.com/a/list.nist....
That's no big deal for transmitting time on the internet, where millisecond irregularities are common. But it'd be 5000 times the usual nanosecond errors!
groups.google.com/a/list.nist....
December 22, 2025 at 3:41 PM
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons
(TS Eliot)
(The power was out at the NIST atomic clocks, presumably)
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons
(TS Eliot)
(The power was out at the NIST atomic clocks, presumably)
If you've ever wanted to actually watch a laser beam bounce through a light clock, AlphaPhoenix just dropped the most incredible video
This is what the speed of light looks like
YouTube video by AlphaPhoenix
www.youtube.com
October 17, 2025 at 11:18 AM
If you've ever wanted to actually watch a laser beam bounce through a light clock, AlphaPhoenix just dropped the most incredible video
Reposted by Gregor
Been awhile since I wrote a blog post.
Anyways... why haven't quantum computers factored 21 yet?
algassert.com/post/2500
Anyways... why haven't quantum computers factored 21 yet?
algassert.com/post/2500
Why haven't quantum computers factored 21 yet?
Craig Gidney's computer science blog
algassert.com
August 31, 2025 at 12:21 AM
Been awhile since I wrote a blog post.
Anyways... why haven't quantum computers factored 21 yet?
algassert.com/post/2500
Anyways... why haven't quantum computers factored 21 yet?
algassert.com/post/2500
Reposted by Gregor
THREAD: Resurgence
or: How do physicists keep getting away with ignoring infinitely big things?
I wrote about this back when everyone was still on twitter. Someone asked me a question and I think it's an excellent occasion to repost the thread.
1/20
or: How do physicists keep getting away with ignoring infinitely big things?
I wrote about this back when everyone was still on twitter. Someone asked me a question and I think it's an excellent occasion to repost the thread.
1/20
August 13, 2025 at 9:48 PM
THREAD: Resurgence
or: How do physicists keep getting away with ignoring infinitely big things?
I wrote about this back when everyone was still on twitter. Someone asked me a question and I think it's an excellent occasion to repost the thread.
1/20
or: How do physicists keep getting away with ignoring infinitely big things?
I wrote about this back when everyone was still on twitter. Someone asked me a question and I think it's an excellent occasion to repost the thread.
1/20
obsessed with this prediction of 2025 by a 1999 4th-grader; I've read it so many times and it's complete poetry
August 3, 2025 at 8:50 PM
obsessed with this prediction of 2025 by a 1999 4th-grader; I've read it so many times and it's complete poetry
Natural bundles are those associated to the frame bundle; spinor bundles are supernatural
July 16, 2025 at 3:37 PM
Natural bundles are those associated to the frame bundle; spinor bundles are supernatural
Kids these days... built different
July 16, 2025 at 3:13 PM
Kids these days... built different
Is it just me or is user-restricted search broken?
July 4, 2025 at 1:20 PM
Is it just me or is user-restricted search broken?
I've had enough summer now we can skip the rest
June 30, 2025 at 1:29 PM
I've had enough summer now we can skip the rest
this was accidentaly a question about eternal inflation
let p be the probability of any given week to be one in which a decade happens. If p is too large we risk hitting an infinite recursion and not being able to progress in time 😰
What is the likelihood of this occurring?
What is the likelihood of this occurring?
June 25, 2025 at 5:20 PM
this was accidentaly a question about eternal inflation
thought about this again recently and have a picture I'm satisfied with, I think.
Suppose at some spacetime pt there is a spontaneous nucleation of a decay to a new Lorentz-symmetric vacuum. This spreads out in a bubble at the speed of light and inside the bubble there must be some hot state to
Suppose at some spacetime pt there is a spontaneous nucleation of a decay to a new Lorentz-symmetric vacuum. This spreads out in a bubble at the speed of light and inside the bubble there must be some hot state to
I still don't get how the big bang chooses a reference frame
June 20, 2025 at 4:08 PM
thought about this again recently and have a picture I'm satisfied with, I think.
Suppose at some spacetime pt there is a spontaneous nucleation of a decay to a new Lorentz-symmetric vacuum. This spreads out in a bubble at the speed of light and inside the bubble there must be some hot state to
Suppose at some spacetime pt there is a spontaneous nucleation of a decay to a new Lorentz-symmetric vacuum. This spreads out in a bubble at the speed of light and inside the bubble there must be some hot state to
did uall know they found a geometric circle in the sky
June 6, 2025 at 9:09 AM
did uall know they found a geometric circle in the sky
one day I will complete a second blog post
June 2, 2025 at 3:45 PM
one day I will complete a second blog post
Aaron Swartz should Also have been granted unfettered access to JSTOR tbc. Weird twisting going on here. Pls don't go to bat for academic publishers bc you don't like AI
May 31, 2025 at 7:18 PM
Aaron Swartz should Also have been granted unfettered access to JSTOR tbc. Weird twisting going on here. Pls don't go to bat for academic publishers bc you don't like AI
lmao at one pt the startup CEO guy says that soon datacenters will cause '10-15 degrees of global warming', not bc of fossil fuels but bc they just pump out heat by themselves
guess we've found the magical energy source of the future: datacenters
guess we've found the magical energy source of the future: datacenters
May 26, 2025 at 10:15 AM
lmao at one pt the startup CEO guy says that soon datacenters will cause '10-15 degrees of global warming', not bc of fossil fuels but bc they just pump out heat by themselves
guess we've found the magical energy source of the future: datacenters
guess we've found the magical energy source of the future: datacenters
things don't look hard on video, but this was pretty hard (for me, more objectively it's around 7C). Those holds are pretty bad, esp the big ones
(click if u want to watch me climb a boulder, and don't mind the screaming)
(click if u want to watch me climb a boulder, and don't mind the screaming)
May 23, 2025 at 11:21 PM
things don't look hard on video, but this was pretty hard (for me, more objectively it's around 7C). Those holds are pretty bad, esp the big ones
(click if u want to watch me climb a boulder, and don't mind the screaming)
(click if u want to watch me climb a boulder, and don't mind the screaming)
I am apparently just going to be miserable & stressed this week until I manage to Do the Task
my apartment has been getting cleaner today, which is unrelated to the hypothetical existence of any pressing unpleasant tasks that I could be taking care of
May 20, 2025 at 10:38 PM
I am apparently just going to be miserable & stressed this week until I manage to Do the Task
my apartment has been getting cleaner today, which is unrelated to the hypothetical existence of any pressing unpleasant tasks that I could be taking care of
May 19, 2025 at 2:30 PM
my apartment has been getting cleaner today, which is unrelated to the hypothetical existence of any pressing unpleasant tasks that I could be taking care of
just went to the optician and it turns out my vision has worsened by a full diopter in the last year oops
May 17, 2025 at 2:09 PM
just went to the optician and it turns out my vision has worsened by a full diopter in the last year oops
Reposted by Gregor
there is a spoon's worth of plastic in our brains. soon it will be two spoons. then four spoons. Turning into Oil is achievable even for us
May 6, 2025 at 4:43 PM
there is a spoon's worth of plastic in our brains. soon it will be two spoons. then four spoons. Turning into Oil is achievable even for us
learning things on wikipedia
![Etymology
Gamergate derives from the Greek words γάμος (gámos) and ἐργάτης (ergátēs) and means 'married worker'. It was coined in 1983 by geneticist William Louis Brown[1] and](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:rraadtrn2ajoojaeryw6lzot/bafkreifuy2th4i2w6oebiyskizi7casvok2lu4tzbkbvycwyzkn5wteh4a@jpeg)
May 12, 2025 at 1:13 PM
learning things on wikipedia