Giulio Ruffini @ruffini

Twenty-five years ago, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology made a bold move that most universities would never dare. Instead of locking its world-class course materials behind campus walls, MIT decided to put nearly its entire curriculum online, completely free for anyone with an internet connection. That decision gave birth to MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW). What began as a bold experiment in 2001 has become one of the most significant educational initiatives in history. Today, OCW provides materials from more than 2,500 undergraduate and graduate courses across virtually every discipline: physics, engineering, artificial intelligence, economics, biology, mathematics, computer science, and many more. Anyone can access lecture notes, problem sets, exams, syllabi, and a growing library of video lectures, with no tuition, no application, and no account required. According to MIT, more than 500 million people worldwide have used these resources over the past 25 years. The impact has been profound. Students use it to ace exams, explore new fields, and launch careers. Educators around the globe integrate the materials into their own teaching. Many learners credit OCW with helping them pass professional certifications and unlock new opportunities. Beyond its direct benefits, OpenCourseWare helped spark the global open education movement, inspiring dozens of other universities to share their knowledge freely online. Even more impressive: the project was originally planned as a 10-year initiative. A quarter-century later, it's still expanding. MIT now aims to reach 1 billion learners in the coming decade, while enhancing the experience with powerful new AI-powered learning tools.

@pickover @KangarooPhysics Beautiful. giulioruffini.github.io/assets/blogs/t…

During a solar eclipse, the gaps between leaves on trees act as multiple pinhole cameras, and each gap projects its own crescent-shaped image of the eclipsed sun onto the ground. 📹gottigreen

This skateboard trick may never be eclipsed. Danny León, a Spanish Olympic skateboarder, set up this shot and landed it during today's eclipse in Spain. Perfect planning!

Surely a Monty Python sketch

Brian Krassenstein @krassenstein

a week ago

That is so much going on here. Trump sleeping while RFK JR. shakes uncontrollably…

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We need >1K pre-orders to be competitive for any kind of bestseller status on release. This elusive accomplishment is very hard for anyone, let alone a debut author, but good to aim high. Our start so far is where we need it though. 451 pre-orders... lnk.to/HowPsychedelic…

🌡️ Has vist algú dormint al carrer aquest estiu? Recollim una sèrie de consells pràctics per si, aquests dies de calor més intensa, veus persones dormint al ras. 👇

Eine kleine Geschichte des Widerstands: In den USA haben jetzt Klimawissenschaftler:innen, die von Donald Trump gefeuert wurden, die ehemalige nationale Klimawebsite climate.gov, die ebenfalls von der Trump-Regierung abgeschaltet wurde, komplett neu aufgebaut und kürzlich unter climate.us neu online gestellt. Alles ehrenamtlich und mit Kleinspenden finanziert. Ziel der „Aktivisten“ ist es, das neueste und seriöse Klimaforschung auch unter einer Klimaleugner-Regierung weiter für die Öffentlichkeit zugänglich ist. Ein kleiner Sieg der Wahrheit über die Lüge, im postfaktischen Trumpland❤️💪

Published! "Cross-Frequency Coupling as a Neural Substrate for Prediction Error Evaluation: A Laminar Neural Mass Modeling Approach" direct.mit.edu/neco/article/3… @Castaldo_Fr @ERC_Research @galvani_lab @neurotwin @Neuroelectrics @bcom_foundation @KarlFristonNews

Trump's numbers are in the basement, but he doesn't care. This narcissistic megalomaniac actually believes his poll numbers are "the best they've ever been." Next time, be careful who you vote for. Don't do it casually. It does make a difference.

Please consider retweeting the thread below and tweeting It at journalists or anyone with any influence. There’s some really important information in the thread from some of the world’s leading climate scientists. It’s just not acceptable that journalists who control what the public understand are asserting that they know more than literally the worlds greatest academics and scientists on how this planet works, from NASA to the Royal society to the university of Reading and other of the world’s leading planetary science institutions. @piersmorgan @vicderbyshire @jonsopel @maitlis @Emmabarnett @tombradby @WilfredFrost @CliveMyrieBBC @amolrajan @SophyRidgeSky @TVNaga01 @OborneTweets @JohnSimpsonNews @richardpbacon @rickedwards1 @MickBooker @MartinDaubney @PatrickChristys @carolvorders @KamaliMelbourne @BBCsarahsmith @kirstiemallsopp @krishgm @tombradby @skynews @itvnews @ITNProductions @adamboultonTABB @KayBurley @alexberesfordTV @kayeadams @janem @rickygervais @rachelburden @bbcnews @skynews @ShelaghFogarty @bbcnickrobinson @tomhfh @susannareid100

Matthew Todd 🌏🔥 @MrMatthewTodd

2 weeks ago

I do believe @TomSwarbrick1 who is a great broadcaster and decent person, is wrong here. @ZackPolanski wasn’t referring to these last few months in themselves as ‘the worst crisis since World War 2’, he said ‘we are facing the worst crisis since World War 2’ and he’s right. In

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❌¡Los taurinos son unos violentos! 💚Gracias a Peter Janssen @VeganStreaker85 por luchar contra la tauromaquia y por defender a los animales. Pocas personas tienen la valentía que tú tienes para saltar así a un ruedo. 😡En cambio, los taurinos demuestran una vez más su violencia, no solo con los toros a los que matan, sino también dando golpes a los que luchan por defenderlos. 💪¡Estamos contigo! #TauromaquiaAbolición #StopTauromaquia #CrueldadVsEvolución #ÚneteAlaRevoluciónVerde #ÚneteAPACMA

"Understanding is the ability to see one thing in many ways." — Richard Feynman bcom-foundation.github.io/bcom-rosetta-s… @Castaldo_Fr @galvani_lab @ERC_Research @Neuroelectrics @bcom_foundation #nmm #neuroscience #computataional_neuroscience

The Rosetta Stone of Neural Mass Models comes now with a delightful web companion, the result of a summer internship by Claudia Santamaria and Lucia Ruffini at NE/BCOM. Enjoy! bcom-foundation.github.io/bcom-rosetta-s… @Castaldo_Fr @ruffini @Neuroelectrics @ERC_Research

@HowToPrompt__ follow up here: preprints.org/manuscript/202… => From “More Is Different” to Algorithmic Emergence: Why Compression Is the Hard Part

I think that the paper is not interpreting the concept of compression correctly. General relativity is a simpler theory than others: it compresses more facts (known physical laws inferred from data) and observations (data) than others before it into a simple set of rules. arxiv.org/abs/0704.1147 (sec 1.7)

So what follows? The ~8% from fire we can partly regrow. The ~92% from fossil fuels and cement we choose daily in power plants, kilns, and engines. Which means the levers are: grid decarbonization, cement chemistry, no new fossil expansion. All technically available now.

Method, for anyone who wants to check it: Conversion: 1 ppm CO₂ ≈ 7.8 Gt CO₂ (≈2.12 Gt C). Fossil fuels + cement: the Global Carbon Budget projects 38.1 Gt CO₂ for 2025. This is its net fossil-and-industrial total, including cement-production emissions and cement-carbonation uptake. Pro-rated to day 208 of 2026: 21.7 Gt → 2.78 ppm. Assumption: 2026 tracks 2025. Fires: CAMS/GFAS reports just under 400 Mt C for 1 Jan–30 Jun 2026—the lowest first half in its 24-year record, driven mainly by reduced seasonal burning in tropical Africa, with below-average activity also across much of Asia. I estimate that July added ≈120 Mt C: • Canada: ≈41 • Siberia: ≈30 • Africa + Asia: ≈37 • United States: ≈9 • Europe: ≈3 Total: ≈520 Mt C. Assuming ≈90% of emitted fire carbon is carried as CO₂ rather than other carbon species: 520 Mt C × 44/12 × 0.9 ≈ 1.7 Gt CO₂ ≈ 0.22 ppm. Estimated range: 0.20–0.24 ppm. In this reconstruction, the European fires that dominated the news contributed ≈2–3% of July fire emissions and ≈0.6% of the year-to-date total: catastrophic locally, negligible globally. These are EMITTED quantities expressed in ppm units, not the observed atmospheric concentration increase. During 2015–2024, roughly half of total anthropogenic CO₂ emissions accumulated in the atmosphere; mean atmospheric growth was ≈2.6 ppm/yr, although individual years varied substantially. Sources: Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service/GFAS and the Global Carbon Project. The regional July reconstruction is my estimate from available regional fire data and burned-area reports. CAMS H1 2026 review: atmosphere.copernicus.eu/lowest-global-… Global Carbon Budget: globalcarbonbudget.org

Year to date, 27 July 2026 — CO₂ emissions expressed as atmospheric ppm: • Fossil fuels + cement: ≈+2.8 ppm • All vegetation 🔥s on Earth: ≈+0.20–0.24 ppm gross CAMS/GFAS through June; July projected here from regional fire activity, especially dominated by Canada and Siberia. Gross fire emissions are therefore about 7–9% of fossil-fuel and cement emissions. Much of the fire carbon can be reabsorbed if vegetation regrows; burning fossil fuels and producing cement add geological carbon to the active carbon cycle. Worsening extreme fires are a symptom and a feedback. We are the forcing.