Ben Monreal

Not the most important thing in the world, but does anyone remember what carrots tasted like in the 1980s? Anything above 3/4" diameter was overripe and tasted like a lawnmower bag full of witch hazel. Today they grow carrots as big as your wrist that are orange and sweet right through.

Story: Once I had an idea for a green-energy tech. I knew I could spin up a startup if I had $200k for R&D and a sabbatical? Got my ducks in a row & submitted a DOE SBIR Phase I proposal. Then Trump shitcanned all the FY25 applications. I back-burnered it. Whole different experience from

Congratulations Cesiley!

TIL that ultra high molecular weight polyethylene (UHMWPE) can be pronounced "uh wump ay"

The MLB always wants to increase scoring. How about: on a fly ball, the batter is NOT automatically out; they become an ordinary baserunner. They can tag up at home and run to beat a throw to first OR they can invoke the infield fly rule ON THEMSELVES to avoid creating a force at another base

I have forgotten the names of 90% of everyone I knew in 8th grade, but I absolutely remember Earth Science teacher and Science Olympiad coach Dan Schnipp (1938-2026). Also I remember how a sling psychrometer works and all the different kinds of clouds. Also I grew up to be a scientist. RIP.

<scene: late 1940> DEMENTED FDR: let's bomb, uh, Nauru <soon> TUGWELL: sir, voters are mad about phosphate shortages FDR: buy some from Hitler STIMSON: The RAF demolished Germany's ore docks, sir FDR <raging>: Churchill! He's doing this to help Wilkie! FDR <into phone> Adolph, teach him a lesson

New milestone reached 🥳 Nearly 500 segments of the main mirror of our ELT have now arrived from Europe at the ELT Technical Facility at our Paranal Observatory in Chile. That is around half of all the segments being made for what will become a 39-metre eye on the sky. 🔭 🧪

woooooooooooooooooooooo guardians full disclosure: I am a sucker for a Cinderella story; a White Sox win would have been one for the ages and I would have cheered for them to go all the way. but to repeat: wooooooooooooo guardians

I am amazed by the logistics of playoff hosting. "Hey Comiskey Park you might be hosting 44,000 visitors tomorrow? You got enough drinks? We'll probably have the time nailed down before midnight." (Me, I'm grateful I can wrangle a conference room reservation and a boxed coffee order on 24h notice.)

#guardsball fans, calm, down, this team is sticking to the plan. The plan is to wait for sub-.500 opponents to cough up unearned runs. It'll work someday, right? A postseason where everyone but the Rockies was disqualified somehow?Four 1-0 games won on walkoff passed balls? That's the dream.

Going out on a limb with my Physics Nobel prediction/wishlist: to Paul Ginsparg (ArXiV), Gunther Eichhorn (Astrophysics Data System) and Louise Addis (SPIRES) for revolutionizing the dissemination of physics research literature online

I don't like the thing the MLB does where player statistics reset in the postseason. Like, Brice Turang is a .286 hitter in the regular season who also doesn't have a hit yet in 7 postseason at-bats against the Padres. Surely the .286 number is what a viewer (me) wants to see at a glance

My proposal: go ahead and pass a $750M gas tax suspension, then immediately cancel $750M worth of ODOT highway projects. Ain't no highway traffic growth in the world of $60,000 cars and $5 gas and population decline that the GOP has chosen for us. (Then raise the gas tax and spend it on transit.)

things I did not expect to say this summer: "the upcoming White Sox/Rockies series is a big deal"

A public bus takes the same route repeatedly, same potholes, same stops, same lurches. I wonder whether (a) fancier control theory (b) knowledge of what's expected next, and (c) a fancy active suspension, could create buses with tram-like smooth rides. 🚌🚋🛣️

In 1941, the administrator of St Pierre et Miquelon declared his loyalty to Vichy France rather than to De Gaulle and Free France. The Free French navy, defying the regional powers, snuck a small naval force over to seize it. LOOK AT HOW TIME MAGAZINE DESCRIBED THE WARSHIPS (link in alt)

Life as a pedestrian in the US is going to seem like a game of Death Frogger after a week in puffin-crossing-equipped Manchester, UK, where I felt safe crossing unfamiliar car/bike/tram spaghetti intersections despite the cars being on the wrong side of the road🚶‍♀️🌇 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puffin_...

This is the first time I've been at a talk that used "ββ0ν" rather than "0νββ". (Google has a few hits for for "ββν0" as well.)

I saw very very few spotted lanternflies this summer, neither nymphs nor adults. Do they come in waves? Is there a web page with a tracker?

The science behind this started in my classroom! I was teaching undergrad environmental fluid mechanics ("The Physics of California") at UCSB; one student's final paper was the baby-steps first look at this; he re-attacked the problem (and named the phenomenon) as a grad student at UCSD.

favorite journal article title of the day 🧪⚛️ doi.org/10.1021/jp03...

TIL that Python3 has a builtin "locals()", which returns a symbol table with all your variable name in it. This gives me the heebie jeebies; having started out in C I still think of variable names as a private matter between me and my compiler, not as text strings visible to some floozy runtime.

MESON PHYSICIST IN 1975: I have seen 100+ inept bump hunts this year and I am burned out. Don't even show me results below, say, 4 sigma. HIS NEMESIS: mine's 4.1 MP: <shouting> 5 sigma! YOU, A BRAIN GENIUS READING DECADAL LZ NEWS IN 2026: pfft, these guys didn't learn the five-sigma rule ⚛️🧪

Cleveland's RTA unveiled the first of 54 new Siemens railcars, part of a $435 million program to replace a fleet in service since the early 1980s. ⤵️ Photo via Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority

Wikipedia says that Nancy Grace Roman, post-Ph.D. but pre-Yerkes in 1949, spent two months at CWRU's Warner and Swasey Observatory (then at its East Cleveland site, now in ruins, whose telescope is now at Kitt Peak and still operable.) Can't find any other info, anyone know what she did there? 🔭

a) Obi-Wan offers Han 17k credits to take them to Alderaan b) Han crows he can finally pay his debt to Jabba c) Luke sells his land speeder to raise an upfront 2k SO d) The Solo/Hutt debt that drives half the action across three movies was only 8.5x the fire-sale value of a farmboy hotrod

Why did my 3M Command strips ship in a box with a no-frills matte exterior and a glossy full-color interior? The color side's printing details suggest it could be assembled that way out, BUT there's no barcode on that side.

Meet Phoebe, a CWRU Physics undergrad working with Prof Benjamin Monreal on Project 8 to develop methods for measuring neutrino mass. Her research uses machine learning and PyTorch to analyze power spectral density data and identify frequency bands. #CWRU #CWRUPhysics #UndergradResearch

who among us is surprised that when given the choice between the people of Cleveland and executives of private jet companies, Ohio Republican elected sided with the private jet companies? signalcleveland.org/cleveland-bi...

I neglected to take a photo of it but last night I had to prepare buttercream frosting in four different colors so I could pipe this onto a sheet cake

During yesterday's game, Chase DeLauter's single in the 3rd pushed his OPS over 0.800. It only lasted a few innings, but briefly the Guardians lineup had THREE batters with OPS > 0.800 (DeLauter, Lowe, and Genao.) How long has it been since that was last true, @clevelandfan.bsky.social?

Since much of human knowledge has migrated from libraries to the internet, once sane government returns to the US, a new mandate should be given to the Library of Congress: to create and operate a search engine that is free to all to use. Something that is free of ads & AI, independent of oligarchs.

Remember March '20, when a single infected singer at a Skagit Valley Chorale rehearsal had infected most of the choir, with two dead? Normal folks' reaction was "this is bad", but I guess Bernie Moreno lit a cigar and said "imma destroy any government nerd who reacts to this in any way"

Federal "X breakthrough" grantmaking is always $250k over 4y: I can train a new X workforce $225k over 2y: I hope someone trained an X I can hire $200k over 1y: our aging X expert has to write grants all day $175k for 6mo: the "big consulting group zero-expert intern-written report" sweet spot🧪

(unpacking into my new office) I remember picking this up for $0.50 at an MIT Library book sale. check out the inscription 🧪

This spring I'm reviving Physics 306: Nuclear Physics and Technology. Everything from shell models to reactor neutronics. Last time (2021) we talked about AP1000s, ESBWRs, and doomed SMR startups. Times have changed! Would love advice about how to teach the latest fusion and SMR R&D. #nukesky ⚛️🎢

(getting unpacked into my new office) Once at SNOLab I picked up a piece of rock underground for a souvenir. (Or two?) And I think Harry Nelson brought me a rock from SURF once. Did I label them? Stupidly, no. @steve.mastodon.cooleysekula.net.ap.brid.gy could that be Sudbury norite lower left?

I switched offices. I scooted a lil' particleboard desk in, movers hauled a literal ton of Steelcase desks out. Are desks a material-culture sign of how long people expected enterprises to last? Steelcase was "It's 18-gauge so your nth successor in the same office can use it 70 years from now"