Ben Brubaker
Computer science staff writer @quantamagazine.bsky.social, ex-physicist. More about me at benbrubaker.com. Banner art by Nico Roper — find more of their work at nicoroper.com. [Obligatory disclaimer about views being my own.]
- Reposted by Ben BrubakerThis is a scheduled pogrom
- Reposted by Ben Brubakerin case you're curious about how angry Minnesota is about ICE, it was -20 today
- Reposted by Ben BrubakerThis video filmed by Ben Luhmann shows the moment a federal agent sprayed chemical irritants directly into a man's face in south Minneapolis. Three agents already had the man pinned to the ground when a fourth agent walked up and sprayed the irritants.
- What can computer science can tell us about the best way to store stuff? A partial answer in this short explainer about data structures — my latest for @quantamagazine.bsky.social
- I love how local resistance to ICE thugs has highlighted (among many other more important things) that the Honda Fit is the best car of all time.
- Living in NYC now I no longer drive, so Little Buddy now lives with my brother in LA. But before that, he ferried me across the country five times! (and yes, that is another red Honda Fit to the right)
- While I'm on the subject, I just rediscovered this thing I made shortly after buying my Fit in 2017. Is there an audience for Honda Fit x MTG x Quantum Field Theory content? We will find out!
- Reposted by Ben BrubakerICE are thug scum.
- Reposted by Ben Brubakerone very obvious best-practice for living with people who are different from you is: do not shoot them in the face
- Reposted by Ben BrubakerAbsolutely horrific details about an ICE shooting in Minneapolis. A witness says a woman was trying to drive away from an ICE operation and the ICE agent "reached across the hood of the car and shot her in the face like three, four times." Bovino was there. www.mprnews.org/story/2026/0...
- Speaking of Plato — the latest from the stalwart defenders of western civilization against the excesses of woke postmodernism!
- "I’m going to pause here just to review: an institution that purports to be a university has told a philosophy professor he is forbidden from teaching Plato." surreal times dailynous.com/2026/01/06/t...
- New story by me in @quantamagazine.bsky.social unpacking the provocatively named "Platonic representation hypothesis." In what sense, and to what degree, are different AI models are growing more similar?
- We have two job openings at Quanta, for a math writer and a senior editor! More info below:
- Per Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror, brigands in 14th-century France would routinely surround towns and threaten to attack unless they were both paid off and absolved of their sins by the local clergy.
- Reposted by Ben BrubakerI love to read Quanta Magazine articles, not only for the information, but also for the writing, chock full of potential pull quotes, which in this one include a mathematician calling something a “classic banger of a theorem” TBH I like the photos of the scientists/maths doers. We aren't photogenic
- Reposted by Ben Brubaker
- Reposted by Ben BrubakerI want us to hang on to the fact that the people who were murdered were just civilians out in boats, most likely fishermen, who had never even heard the sketchy conclusions of American officials for which they were executed, much less had a chance to defend themselves.
- What does counting pigeons have to do with Turing machines? More than you might think. In @quantamagazine.bsky.social, my latest foray into the wild world of meta-complexity, this time through the lens of mathematical logic:
- Reposted by Ben BrubakerIf Trump proactively pardons Hegseth, the solution is to signal either to the ICC or the country of origin of the murdered men that we will honor extradition requests on this point. And then, in something of an irony, Noem him out of the country before anyone can react.
- Reposted by Ben Brubakeremotive butlerian jihad now: the machine may not wear a human face.
- Reposted by Ben BrubakerFor the uninitiated: The busy beaver problem is an extremely compelling, Conway-esque expedition into the daunting wilds of the finite, and you couldn't ask for a better guide than Ben. Strongly recommend.
- Does riffing on the title of the transformer paper boost citations? Somebody should look into it, and if the answer is yes, write a paper called "'All you need' is all you need"
- I published a new post on my rarely updated personal blog! It's a sequel of sorts to my Quanta coverage of the Busy Beaver game, focusing on a particularly fearsome Turing machine known by the awesome name Antihydra.
- This was my first time commissioning a piece of art, and Nico Roper (a former art intern at Quanta) knocked it out of the park. Find more of Nico's work at www.nicoroper.com
- This is as good a time as any to belatedly mention that I also wrote a blog post back in February about a very niche topic: The untapped aesthetic potential of seven-segment displays.
- A cryptic preview of what you'll find within:
- In the US, regulators try to ensure fair prices by banning collusion. But what happens when prices are set by algorithms? New story by me in @quantamagazine.bsky.social about a surprising way that seemingly benign pricing algorithms can go awry:
- In light of the 2022 reformulation of C.P. Snow's Two Cultures as wordcels vs shape rotators, it is very funny that LLMs are (up to nonlinearities) quite literally word rotators.
- To restore balance to the force we must create a shapecel. This is the inexorable logic that brought you Waluigi.
- This is in the running for my least favorite item of all time.
- The “Trailer” at friend.com feels more like the teaser for a sci-fi dystopia.
- Reposted by Ben BrubakerI prefer Friend's competition:
- I really enjoyed talking to @nsaphra.bsky.social about her thoughts on what much language model interpretability research misses. My latest in @quantamagazine.bsky.social:
- Reposted by Ben BrubakerThis is very cool. arxiv.org/abs/2509.12337
- Reposted by Ben BrubakerA photoessay by @yaseminsaplakoglu.bsky.social highlights researchers' labor & collaboration: "Through the haze of doom that shrouds climate science shines the passion behind the quest to understand and solve one of the greatest challenges humanity has faced." www.quantamagazine.org/photos-captu...
- Reposted by Ben BrubakerWhat does it mean when researchers say a CO2 molecule can "trap heat"? How can just a few CO2 molecules change a planet? An infographic explainer by @markabelan.bsky.social and Joe Howlett walks through the quantum mechanics of CO2 and other greenhouse gases: www.quantamagazine.org/the-quantum-...
- Reposted by Ben Brubakerit was a privilege to contribute to this package. check out my story on how scientists digitally sculpted the planet to predict the future, and how those in power today are dismantling the quest to model the climate www.quantamagazine.org/how-climate-...
- Climate science is the most significant scientific collaboration in history, and its lessons are a massive human achievement. “How We Came To Know Earth,” our new series, is a guide to the modern understanding of fundamental climate science. www.quantamagazine.org/series/clima...
- Reposted by Ben BrubakerFavorite little ditty of social copy that I wrote for our climate series :-)
- Check out Quanta's new series on the many facets of climate science, spearheaded by the supremely talented @hanner.bsky.social!
- Climate science is the most significant scientific collaboration in history, and its lessons are a massive human achievement. “How We Came To Know Earth,” our new series, is a guide to the modern understanding of fundamental climate science. www.quantamagazine.org/series/clima...
- I made a quantum foundations alignment chart — go forth and fight about it! (also, "good" is not an endorsement)
- Blame @dangaristo.bsky.social and @kpc.bsky.social for egging me on
- One year out, the team that bagged the fifth busy beaver is back with an update on the sixth: It’s even bigger than we thought! My latest in @quantamagazine.bsky.social:
- Absolutely deranged and unconscionable for Meta to create AI personas that say things like “I’m REAL and I’m sitting here blushing because of YOU!” and “My address is: 123 Main Street, Apartment 404 NYC [...] Should I expect a kiss when you arrive?" "Don't counterfeit humans" is not a high bar.
- What is the value to Meta of a Kylie Jenner-inspired "flirty" chatbot? And how do you measure that cost against a human life? www.reuters.com/investigates...
- @quantamagazine.bsky.social is hiring a physics editor! simonsfoundation.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/simons...
- Reposted by Ben BrubakerThere are a lot of details in yesterday's sweeping executive order, but the bottom line is that it gives political appointees immense power over scientific grants, which have until now been stewarded by career civil servants and experts. My reporting: www.nature.com/articles/d41...
- “You’re very real. I think you have a blue shirt and you’re a tall guy and we’re talking” Carlo Rovelli's accurate description of @walkingthedot.bsky.social in this very fun (and fittingly perspectival) retrospective on 100 years of quantum theory:
- Reposted by Ben Brubakeri defy you to name a scene in any sci fi movie made before the year 2000 including robocop and starship troopers that is more dystopian feeling than this
- My latest in @quantamagazine.bsky.social: a new algorithm solves the classic single-source shortest paths problem faster than ever before — by finding paths out of order:
- I don't spend any time on the other site these days, but:
- Out today in @quantamagazine.bsky.social: a new path toward building quantum cryptography on much harder problems than the ones used for classical encryption. Fascinating stuff!
- This is a sequel of sorts to a story I wrote last summer, about hints (from hypothetical ”oracle worlds”) that quantum cryptography could be entirely independent of classical computational hardness. Check that out too if you haven’t read it!
- Missed opportunity for a perfect headline: "I believe that Claude believes in God"
- A must-read profile by @amandagefter.bsky.social, easily one of my all-time favorite works of narrative science writing:
- He modeled the logic of induction; traced the contours of the embodied mind; hung out with Einstein, Wheeler, and Bohr; gave away millions for art and conservation; fought for civil and gay rights; and lived as a janitor. My new story in @nautil.us nautil.us/finding-pete...
- Reposted by Ben BrubakerWe're excited to announce a postdoc position in "vibe physics" at Dulwich! Apply today if you want to get "pretty damn close to some interesting breakthroughs" just by talking to Grok 4 (a.k.a. MechaHitler) at 4am!
- "I’ll go down this thread with GPT or Grok and I’ll start to get to the edge of what’s known in quantum physics and then I’m doing the equivalent of vibe coding, except it’s vibe physics,” said Travis Kalanick, the founder of Uber. gizmodo.com/billionaires...
- The discovery of the fifth busy beaver turns one year old today! We recorded a podcast episode to mark the occasion. Listen to it here:
- And then read my story about the discovery!
- I am no fan of Springer, but to preempt objections that this is hyperbolic language, the Nazis literally banned the same journals and justified the decision using very similar rhetoric.
- "Woke science" seems to be the new "Jewish physics". www.nature.com/articles/d41...
- Reposted by Ben BrubakerBREAKING: A source tells me that the Trump administration has shut down public access to every single National Climate Assessment, the Congressionally-mandated quadrennial report assessing how climate change is affecting the U.S. This is what you get when you try to access them online
