Category Archives: resources

20 February 2025
english, resources, skepticality

Government efficiency

Bernard Stiegler predicted DOGE at the end of the Obama era.

He was French philosopher and theorist of digital technology, and explored the logical conclusion of the concept of disruption. He compared tech tycoons to Barbarians who work by outpacing the law. He passed away in 2020, and didn’t live to see how prescient he was:

The goal is ultimately to radicalize the conservative revolution — which was itself a radical critique of social-democratic reformism and the “Fordist-Keynesian compromise.” This occurs either by subordinating all material, formal, and final causes to the efficient cause that disruption would represent as self-sufficient; that is: without any goal beyond efficiency itself. The aim is to outpace law and its consequences through the immediacy of facts.

This dominance of fact-driven action leads to the dilution of public authority: what the Barbarians are attacking is the legitimacy of the public realm — specifically because it cannot be appropriated by private initiatives. This attack by the Barbarians represents a claim, if not for complete lawlessness, then at least for the futility of law, against which disruption enables them to “undermine France” by multiplying loopholes — and consequently, chaos. It is in this way that accomplished nihilism realizes the “new form of barbarism.”

–Bernard Stiegler, “Dans la disruption” (2016)

“Without any goal beyond efficiency itself” (Elon Musk and Javier Milei, February 2025)

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11 February 2025
english, projects, resources, science life

Golden Alumni – Cafe virtuel

I participated in a French Alumni “Cafe virtuel“, organized by the French Alumni association and talking about my professional journey and my research.

Here is the recording:

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7 January 2025
english, epistemology, projects, resources, science, science life

Missing millions

(this is a blog entry that was initially a bluesky post – you can follow me at bsky.app/profile/antonymous.bsky.social)

Total US population by Age and Characteristics in December 2024

I was reading the latest report from the @nationalacademies.org on global talents, and the need for a strategy to recruit and train talents. One sentence in the preface about the “missing millions” really caught my attention:

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15 December 2024
english, projects, resources, science, science life

CILAC – Synchrotrons in the Greater Caribbean and Beyond

The Latin American and Caribbean Open Science Forum (CILAC – Foro Abierto de Ciencias de Latinoamérica y el Caribe), an event organized by UNESCO had a satellite even on GCLS/LAMISTAD Symposium: Synchrotrons in the Greater Caribbean and Beyond (website) to which I participated (and help organize)

Day 1:
https://www.youtube.com/live/LFEzfNRtfXQ

Day 2:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bo_U1suKib

Day 3:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SP1h0OHqoIc

9 July 2024
english, language, resources, science, science life

The State of the Science Address – National Academy of Science

I stumbled upon the The State of the Science Address from Marcia McNutt, the President of the National Academy of Science, through the always very interesting AIP FYI weekly newsletter.

Here’s a tl;dr version:

  • The US win 15% of the medals at the Olympics, but 60% of the Nobel – really efficient at attracting and retaining talents
  • The US science workforce is increasingly International, but the US become less attractive (and visas are getting harder to get)
  • China is rapidly increasing as a global force in science. Not only they publish a lot of science, but the quality of the output has increased
  • International collaboration is important to avoid the possibility a single player flaunts the rules.
  • researchers are underpaid (industry pays 70% better)
  • The quality of STEM education in K-12 is not keeping pace with the world
  • Philanthropy is a major funder of science (about 10%)
  • Public support for science is important

Concluding slide from from Marcia McNutt’s State of the Science Address (full talk)

Five years ago, I had a chance to meet Dr. McNutt at Berkeley Lab. She was seeking input from postdocs on how the envisioned science.

An old picture from 2019 with the President of the National Academy of Science Marcia McNutt and the Berkeley Lab postdocs (my besties Sinead, Valentine, Fadji, Maria and I)

I told her that I really enjoyed being a scientist in federal lab (i.e. not a professor on campus), but I bluntly put that in my opinion academia (on campuses) is increasingly becoming a ponzi scheme – the PI recruits postdocs who take care of grad student who supervise intern. I guess she doesn’t disagree.

All the conclusion slides:

Opportunity slides from from Marcia McNutt’s State of the Science Address (full talk)

21 April 2024
berkeley lab, english, epistemology, projects, resources, science, science life

Greater Caribbean Light Source

Last week I hosted Leo Violini, the founder of the Centro Internacional de Física in Bogotà (Columbia), and a proponent of the the Greater Caribbean Light Source

Big science in Latin America: accelerate particles and progress – Nature (March 2024)

Here is a video of his talk on the proposal for Greater Caribbean Light Source:

And a video of his second talk on science diplomacy:

16 April 2024
english, mood, resources

Ionic Man

My last internal combustion engine died on me, and I bought a new car. That was the plan all along – I wanted to keep my convertible as long as possible for I really enjoyed driving with the roof down, and get an electric car as a replacement–  but the engine failure came as a surprise.

In a sense, it came at just about the right time.  I don’t have a garage, so  I need to rely on the public charging infrastructure. I decided to buy a Ioniq 5, for its has an intriguing design, a very decent range (300 miles), and it has fast charging capabilities, an interesting feature when fast charger are starting to materialize all over California. The best thing is that I get 2 years of free charging – so I drive essentially for free.

Charging my car at night feels very Blade Runner

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20 January 2024
berkeley lab, english, projects, resources, science life

Rise of the Machines

Recently, there’s been a lot of interesting activity in the field generative AI for science from large companies such as Google, Meta and Microsoft.
Creating new materials from scratch is difficult, since materials involve complex interactions that are difficult to simulate, or a fair amount of luck in experiments (serendipity is scientists’s most terrifying friend)
Thus most of these efforts aim to discover new material by accelerating simulations using machine learning. But recent advances (such as LLM, e.g., ChatGPT) have shown that you can use AI to make coherent sentences instead of a word soup. But the same way cooking is not just about putting ingredient together all at once but carefully preparing them, making a new material involves important intermediate steps.  And new approaches can be used create new materials.

The various steps of making a new material (from Szymanski et al.)

Last month, Google in collaboration with Berkeley Lab announced that their DeepMind’s Gnome project had discovered a lot of new structures: Google DeepMind Adds Nearly 400,000 New Compounds to Berkeley Lab’s Materials Project. They managed to actually make and analyze some of those new materials ; that is quite a tour de force, and while there’s some interesting pushback on the claims, it’s still pretty cool!
In September, I invited Meta’s Open Catalyst at Berkeley Lab (here’s the event description and the recording – accessible to lab employees only)

Zachary Ulissi (Meta/OpenCatalyst) and Jin Qian (Berkley Lab) at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (September 2023)

Meanwhile, Microsoft is collaborating with Pacific Northwest National Laboratory on similar topics
Meanwhile, the research infrastructure has it gears moving; it seems that DeepMind’s AlphaFold is already routinely used at the lab to dream up new protein structures. I wonder where this will go!
Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future
– Niels Bohr
Thinkpieces blending chips and AI in full bloom:
We need a moonshot for computing – Brady Helwig and PJ Maykish,  Technology Review

The Shadow of Bell Labs

I want to resurface an interesting thread by my former colleague Ilan Gur:

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18 January 2024
english, resources, science

APS DPB newsletter

My piece for the American Physics Society Division of Physics of Beams Annual Newsletter  about the Advanced Light Source upgrade has been published!

Here it is for your own delight:

10 January 2024
english, resources

Antoine’s guide to Marseille

Because of the Paris Olympics, many friend ask me for advice about Paris, and I refer them to the my Insider’s guide to Paris. But there’s another French city I recommend visiting to people: Marseille. It is a city on the Mediterranean, with a very rich culture – the city was founded by settlers from Phocaea 26 centuries ago, with lots of great food, sights and people.
Actibus immensis urbs fulget masiliensis
“The city of Marseille shines through his great achievements”
So here’s a bunch of things not to miss in Marseille:
– Notre Dame de la Garde (“La Bonne Mere”, or the good mother), the cathedral that sits on top of the city. Unique architecture and history, you can see it from pretty much everywhere. Walking up there is doable, or you can take a bus. When you go down, there is path that brings you to Roucas Blanc (the fancy, low-key neighbourhood of Marseille), if you feel like wandering (ask around.)

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