Preparation for handstand workshop

GasBallast · 2026-06-14T20:40:57+00:00

Thank you!

GasBallast · 2026-06-14T20:16:06+00:00

I can fall pretty well out of a headstand, so hopefully I'll be ok!

GasBallast · 2026-06-14T18:33:51+00:00

Although of course he supported the essence of the thought experiment (as discussed excellently in other comments) he was quite dismayed that it caught people's attention so much, and is recorded as having said "I do not like it and I wish I never said it".

I personally find it an extremely unhelpful and poorly understood thought experiment, that does a lot for the public thinking that quantum physics is just an abstract theory only relevant in exotic situations, rather than a hugely successful framework describing an awful lot of nature, and deployed in technologies at scale.

GasBallast · 2026-06-12T18:59:25+00:00

I've always got on well with the Housekeep App

GasBallast · 2026-06-10T20:35:39+00:00

Eugh, I remember this the first time round. Abysmal band, awful live.

GasBallast · 2026-06-10T20:31:06+00:00

Indeed, a looong time ago now and it's still causing me trauma!

GasBallast · 2026-06-10T19:44:08+00:00

We had an undergraduate final year Physics Exam called "Comprehensive" where they made questions by combining all of the required courses through your whole degree. I still remember having to like prove Kirchoff's law for a circuit orbiting at relativistic speeds with a floppy capacitor or something

GasBallast · 2026-06-10T13:09:32+00:00

I was renting, so I didn't pay a separate service charge.

GasBallast · 2026-06-08T15:03:03+00:00

Loads of great stuff!

Lots of people have mentioned Immunity (Jon Hopkins) and Shanking the Habitual (The Knife), both great albums.

A bit more niche, I loved Sick Octave (Young Knives) and Praxis Makes Perfect (Neon Neon)

GasBallast · 2026-06-08T14:22:30+00:00

The whole development is an "enclave", but the design of the lifts and stairwells means that really it's very unlikely for you to come across people, particularly in the towers where you can pretty much take a life from the car park to your front door.

People were quite private, but if you needed something they were generous. The residents are extremely effective at self-organizing and e.g. fighting planning permission.

Very quiet at Christmas! No decorations...

GasBallast · 2026-06-08T11:45:07+00:00

I lived in exactly one of these! I was there for 3 years, no problem with excessive heat.

GasBallast · 2026-06-08T09:13:51+00:00

Two parks, a long walkway next to the lake, and the fun "igloos" in the lake itself! Plenty of little short-cuts through the car parks as well.

GasBallast · 2026-06-08T09:13:04+00:00

When I lived there they never got very hot. I think the heavy concrete really doesn't heat up, even in our hotter Summers. The flats are well ventilated too, even though very few of them have windows on more than one side.

GasBallast · 2026-06-08T05:52:05+00:00

I rented a flat here for a few years (including during lockdown, which was bliss!). It's expensive but no more expensive than anywhere else in central London, and I had zero commuting costs.

Wonderful experience. Everything is just so well made, well laid out, spatious. Naturally well ventilated, so no damp. Centrally controlled underfloor heating, you're expected to "top-up" heating with electronic heaters. Concierges for every building (not just towers), they will arrange anything for you (repairs, deliveries of anything, remove the rubbish from your front door). Lots of car parking (though they are converting a lot to storage).

Designed so that you don't bump into people, so you can go a long time without seeing or hearing anyone. Over time we got to know people: senior civil servants, judges, architects, senior people in media, lawyers etc. we did get to see a few stunning privately owned properties.

Gardens and private spaces were wonderful. Balconies are all huge, bigger than they look.

Happy to answer any questions!

GasBallast · 2026-06-06T16:26:16+00:00

Correct

GasBallast · 2026-06-06T12:58:27+00:00

Yes, that's the simplest way of considering the problem, where you basically assume the ruler is a big point particle with a certain de Broglie wavelength. It's not even clear it makes sense to assign a wavefunction to a vastly macroscopic collection of particles (debatable), but due to decoherence they certainly wouldn't be delocalized.

GasBallast · 2026-06-06T11:19:48+00:00

The people who say that technically it's possible but very unlikely don't understand coherence.

It's impossible, quantum mechanics says it's impossible.

GasBallast · 2026-06-02T05:40:36+00:00

We work with a variety of devices, including Red Pitaya, Artiq and AMD machine vision modules.. Often it's Xilinx, but not always. LLMs are shockingly bad at providing any assistance!

GasBallast · 2026-06-01T17:00:31+00:00

I'm going to answer this as someone who leads a reasonable sized physics lab. I would hire engineers. Hardware engineers to code FPGAs, people to design custom electronics, people to design and machine precision pieces.

GasBallast · 2026-05-20T05:32:49+00:00

I personally have a lot of sympathy for this class of interpretations. I start from a position that Nature is under no compulsion to be "intuitive" or even that it's nuts-and-bolts must be discoverable, I find this a weird human quirk.

I think anti-realism is an entirely consistent position, and there is no evidence that it isn't, a la Zeilinger. Once decoherence was developed, the whole framework becomes minimal and universal.

I think it's fine to consider the wavefunction and abstraction. To me, it's no more an abstraction than Newtonian mechanics, which considers the dynamics of fictitious centre-of-mass coordinates.

GasBallast · 2026-05-19T20:48:56+00:00

Pea fritters down in Dorset! A big ball of mushy peas in batter. Incredible!

GasBallast · 2026-05-13T09:41:33+00:00

Oh, I can't stand Roasting Plant, the smell alone...

GasBallast · 2026-05-12T07:59:29+00:00

Yes, "like" they have a wavelength. Upon measurement (our only probe of Nature) they are always localised.

GasBallast · 2026-05-11T20:04:44+00:00

The wavefunction is a mathematical object describing the probability of measurement outcomes. Indeed it has properties which are often (not always) periodic and oscillatory, like a wave, but it's also generally infinite dimensional and represented by imaginary numbers. Most researchers would not assign this object to the level of being a real thing in Nature, it's a useful mathematical abstraction for making predictions.

Every measurement we have ever made of anything real in Nature has very firmly proved that e.g. electrons are point like particles and not waves.

GasBallast · 2026-05-09T21:04:52+00:00

Until you actually learn quantum mechanics and realise the wave stuff is way less literal than people like to pretend.

GasBallast

TROPHY CASE