Jamie Zvirzdin

Agreed

The Sheraton Hotel in Connecticut is serving an IPA beer called "I'm Dead Inside" and it made me laugh-cry.

ffmpeg is da bomb 😂

Photos of the 14 victims of the Montreal massacre: Geneviève Bergeron, Hélène Colgan, Nathalie Croteau, Barbara Daigneault, Anne-Marie Edward, Maud Haviernick, Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz, Maryse Laganière, Maryse Leclair, Anne-Marie Lemay, Sonia Pelletier, Michèle Richard, Annie St-Arneault and Annie Turcotte and the rooms where they were killed.

36 years ago today, 14 women, most of whom were studying engineering, were killed by an anti-feminist gun man at École Polytechnique in Montreal. I was a young graduate student studying physics at the time and I will never forget. #MontrealMassacre #NeverForget 🧪 👩‍🔬 ⚛️ 🎢 #AcademicSky 🇨🇦

Slide from presentation by Jamie Zvirzdin, shows a white lightbulb on black background. Our Own Neural Networks Your brain is the ultimate multipurpose problem-solving machine: -adaptable, -fast (~1 exaFLOP*), -robust, -creative, and -energy-efficient (20 watts vs. 20 megawatts). Have a little faith in it when it comes to writing! *1 exaFLOP = 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 floating-point operations per second (FLOPS). Links to NIST, PCMag, DOE, and Wikipedia

Have a little more faith in your own neural network.

Learn to write well in science. We need honest, good science writing. Doesn't have to be perfect.

All slides from the workshop "Psst . . . Your AI Is Showing: How to Put Your Own Voice in Scientific Papers" are here:

doi.org/10.5281/zeno... 🧪🔭⚛️

After reviewing nearly 200 applications from prospective grad students and postdocs over the past few months for a couple different 🧪⚒️ postings, here are some tips, at least as they apply to North American positions. I hope they help future applicants. Share with your networks. 🧵

The universe will not notice your actions in the slightest, but somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, a deeply confused dolphin will feel oddly encouraged. This is the magic of 42.

Publications arXiv preprint  ​ https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2512.01638​ December 1, 2025 ​ Using 14 years of data from the Telescope Array in Utah, this study searched for ultrahigh-energy photons...

I have been alive for 15,353 days today. I have reached the # of Life, the Universe, and Everything.

My birthday wish is that a) you do something kind today, b) read, skim, or share something I wrote for science, and c) do a little jig. 🧪⚛️ #highenergyastro

www.jamiezvirzdin.com/publications...

www.press.jhu.edu/books/title/...

Subatomic Writing Teaser Trailer YouTube video by Jamie Zvirzdin

www.youtube.com/watch?v=6C7t...

Jamie Zvirzdin links principles of physics with those of grammar and linguistics, adds a pinch of poetics, and serves up a tasty guide to scientific thinking and writerly writing.
—Christopher Joyce, Correspondent, Science Desk, NPR

www.subatomicwriting.com
🧪⚛️🔭✏️

Image of the urbs quadrata, a circle with a square cross in it.

A picture of this can be found on p. 47 here: archive.org/details/idea...

I also recommend the 1st-place essay, about treating Google as God. Relevant still for these AI times.

Once upon a time my friends told me about a Science & Religion essay contest, that I had to do it. I wrote the damn thing in a week and won 2nd place and $5,000. At the heart of it is the symbol of the urbs quadrata, like the unit circle centered at a Cartesian origin. 🧪🔭⚛️
issues.org/shuddering-b...

I'm reading The Complete Sherlock Holmes to my son at night. Sherlock says in "A Scandal in Bohemia" (p. 187),

"I have no data yet. It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts."

Wise words.
🧪⚛️🔭

Happy Scrub Five, Six, Seven YouTube video by Max Facts: The Universe Explained

The world can be grim. What sustains us? Meaningful work and kind interactions sustain me, along with good memories. Teaching my son to read is one of these. (We loved these foam letters someone gave us!)

His determination still fuels me.
#parenting #love #education
www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNiS...

We invite you to learn about the link between topology and space engineering when it comes to solving the three-body problem!

Find out in our latest blog post by Arthur Limoge: structures.uni-heidelberg.de/blog/posts/2...

#threebodyproblem #math #spaceexploration #topology

Having been a Latin tutor in college (which was wildly lucrative!), I can say that high Latin was not so very high. It was an evolution of what came before it. We inevitably evolve and ebb and flow, so the best thing we can learn to do is swim, build boats, get snorkels... i.e., make the best of it.

A little cranky😜but I understand. I don't personally need AI to write for me—I'm a science editor/writer. But many people in the sciences, esp. international folks, haven't had that privilege. In the slides, you'll see I still advocate for the development of our own neural networks, our brains.

I am citable! Check it out:

Zvirzdin, J. (2025, January 27). Psst . . . Your AI Is Showing: How to Put Your Own Voice in Scientific Papers. Workshop on Machine Learning for Analysis of High-Energy Cosmic Particles, University of Delaware. doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

#highenergyastro #ai ⚛️🧪

🧪⚛️🔭 Give back, nominate someone who helped you.

Alcohol is AMAZING YouTube video by Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell

Props to @kurzgesagt.org for another fantastic and supremely important science video, this time on the benefits and costs of alcohol. Take a moment to watch it, please.

Check yourself before you wreck yourself. Or others.
🧪

youtu.be/aOwmt39L2IQ?...

Time‐Resolved Leader Spectra of Downward Terrestrial Gamma‐Ray Flashes Observed at the Telescope Array Surface Detector Time-resolved leader spectra associated with two downward Terrestrial Gamma-ray Flashes (TGFs)–a low peak current and a high peak current event–are presented The high-peak-current event exhibits ...

We just published our second paper on this topic! Our #TelescopeArray detectors help us understand energy mechanisms behind both cosmic rays 🌠and lightning.🌩️ Support your local scientists and the National Science Foundation! 💞💸

agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/...

#highenergyastro 🧪⚛️

Black Rock SkyCam and the Monroe Canyon Wildfire YouTube video by Jamie Zvirzdin

My colleague Jeremy Smith put this video together. The camera appears blue at the start of the night shift, when it's hot, then cools down to black through the night. We're in Milliard County but can see the fire happening in Sevier County. #Utah
youtu.be/3Ckt-iul87U

Fantastic article by @rhettallain.bsky.social. I grow tired of physics problems that do not model real life. It only leads to physicists who do not know how to model real life. We need more of this, a careful examination of assumptions.⚛️

Watch Duty - Wildfire Maps & Alerts Real-time information about wildfire and firefighting efforts nearby

Update on the Monroe Canyon Fire: app.watchduty.org/i/55641

Seeing this map of the Western U.S. makes me want to join a fire department. If you are able to, volunteer in some way! Rather than getting fired up at your neighbor on Facebook, we can put out literal fires in an increasingly hot world.🧪

I do! I am honored to do it. But our NSF funding soon ends. 😞 The ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays we are looking for have more energy than anything CERN or anyone else has ever produced. We still don't know with any statistical certainty where they come from or how they are produced.

'Avoid the area': Wildfire breaks out on Monroe Mountain in Sevier County Evacuations are underway as a human-caused wildfire broke out near Monroe in Sevier County on Sunday afternoon.

www.ksl.com/article/5134...

Satellite image of fire in Sevier County, Utah.

I remotely operate sensitive cosmic-ray telescopes in the West Desert of Utah. Wild that we can pick up the light from this wildfire. Be safe, Sevier County!

Select Band="Fire Temperature RGB"
www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/goes/wfo_ban...

#Utah #UofU #TelescopeArray #highenergyastro 🧪

Screenshot of a Meta popup forcing user to pay money to keep data private or give permission for Meta to use data.

Word to the wise, this happened yesterday. I'm in Europe and move frequently for my husband's job. I value staying in touch with friends across the globe. But to be locked out of both Facebook and Instagram with NO warning made me realize I need to write down names/other contact info ASAP.

Hey, thanks! It is no small gift to read through anything these days.

To understand physics, we need to tell – and hear – stories | Aeon Essays Don’t be intimidated by physics: it is made of stories and metaphors. Learn these and the field will open up to you

Scientists can regain public trust by a) being honest in their work and b) not being so proudly inaccessible in their writing. The best physics writing uses different kinds of stories, and I also tell my own.

aeon.co/essays/to-un...
@aeon.co #scicomm #writing #editing #publishing #highenergyastro ⚛️