good morning [from] Les Houches

mind the gap [jatp]

air shame [cover]

a journal of the conquest, war, [snow] famine, and death year

Read yet another novelette by Aliette de Bodard, The citadel of weeping pearls, set in the same universe of a Viêt Nam inspired galactic civilisation, which proved somewhat equal to the previous ones,  with the plus of digging into mother-daughter and sibling relations and the slight minus of involving time travel [which, surprisingly, rarely fails to annoy me]. Right level for filling the nightly wake-ups I encountered while in Les Houches, despite a reasonable amount of physical activities since I totalled 79km of running that week and a few thousand meters of positive climb.

Made very little cooking while in Les Houches, obviously!, although we brought back a nice collection of very local cheeses, or the obvious reason of having evening meals at the workshop hotel together with the other participants. Nothing spectacular to report on that front, except for a limited vegetarian offer, incl. failed risotto and dhal, and more than substantial portions presumably calibrated for ravenous skiers (rather than regular runners!)… But had a lunch stop on the [high]way back home at [Ratatouille’s inspiration] Bernard Loiseau‘s bistro, Loiseau des Sens (and not the Michelin Côte d’Or**!). While the dishes were made from unsophisticated ingredients, their perfect preparation really proved worth the détour (and light enough to avoid falling asleep on the remainder of the drive home!!!)

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Watched House of Shinobi (忍びの家) on Netflix, following the paradoxes of a family of ninjas facing the modern Japan but somewhat unwillingly keeping their duties and honour code, which proved predictably cartoonesque but involved comic relief, as well as including the actors Eguchi Yōsuke (playing a similar role in the series of Kinshin films) and Miyamoto Nobuko (who played in the excellent 1980’s Tampopo). And Happiness (해피니스), yet another Korean zombie series, lengthy and easily forgotten.

d≥3 strikes again

Yesterday, Bálint Tóth (University of Bristol and Alfréd Rényi Institute of Mathematics) came to Paris Dauphine for a seminar on the Botlzmann-Grad limit and the existence of a central (double) limit theory. Which was somewhat related with the above video of an earlier seminar, albeit without the first part on the historical roots of the problem. This was a brilliant talk as quite accessible to the entirety of the lab, while providing detailed entries on the mechanism leading to the CLT, in particular the substitution of the physical process by a Markovian(ised) process that stayed closed enough to the original for long enough, a sort of (anti-)coupling idea I had never met before. The other (personally) striking feature of the seminar was the occurrence of the boundary d=3 on the dimension of the process, The same boundary as in the Stein phenomenon (and the difference from recurrent to transient in random walks). But I could not see a clear connection with the present challenge.