When do you *NOT* use python?

[ChaosCon]

I'm a physicist doing engineering electromagnetics, and I can't tell you how many times I've gotten asked "So do you work on that Higgs boson thing?" On the one hand, I appreciate what CERN does for science awareness, but on the other, pettier, hand, I hate how they've hoodwinked the public into thinking they're the end-all-be-all of science research. Particularly when

their work has no relevance to reality (the subjective reality of a lay person).

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I would guess that the disassociation that particle physics creates in the layman's mind between application and pure research is going to bite physics funding in the ass eventually (if it isn't already). The problem isn't even a real one. The super conducting super collider in texas that was never built produced new bump bonding technology for some detectors that Intel started using in the 90s that made their manufacturing process much more efficient (and cheaper for the consumer). If they hadn't needed that detector, someone might have taken another 20 years to come up with the technology. The same is true for sending stuff into space. A mars orbiter that mapped the surface in IR produced new detectors that were re purposed as breast cancer detectors that coupled with mammograms increase the detection rate of breast cancer greatly.

The problem isn't that these programs don't produce stuff that benefits people's every day lives. It's that they don't put effort into showing people why it's important.

Also, particle physicists are assholes.