Here are my favorite videos, a new one each month!
October 2024
When the Physics Nobel Prize was revealed, I joked on Reddit that the Chemistry prize will go to DeepMind. But I wasn't the only one who correctly anticipated the Chemistry Nobel Prize. Here is a video of my colleague Indy Gupta performing a song in his lecture.
September 2024
Moving to the Bay Area, Palo Alto to be precise. We live in a quiet residential area. As European, you expect to hear a lot of cars and motorcycles. But there are almost no motorcycles, and surprisingly many bicycles on the road. So can we even sleep with windows open in these hot summer nights? (Also, against our expectations, our house does not have air conditioning.) Alas, we cannot. Because of some dopey regulation, trains must use their horn three times at all railroad crossings. And since we live in a city, railroad crossings are plenty, so basically the trains honk their horn all the way from San Francisco to San Jose. The last train passes at 1am, the first train passes at 5am. So there is a 4 hour window of sleep. We don't live very close to the train line, so we cannot really hear the trains, but we can certainly hear their horns.
August 2024
Quiz Question: Which Swiss city has most skyscrapers? For concreteness, let's define a skyscraper as a building which is at least 100 meters high. So not very high, but we are talking about Switzerland. According to Wikipedia, there are only 11 skyscrapers in all of Switzerland . One is in Winterthur, one in Ostermundigen, one is in Zurich. The other 8 are in just two cities. Four are in Basel, and four (all right next to each other, and in that sense the only "skyline" in Switzerland) in ...
July 2024
When "Comedy Central" hosts the main voice of reason.
June 2024
This spring I rediscovered the 2023 album Madres by Sofia Kourtesis. Relaxing, a touch of house, with latin influences. Tough to choose a track though, since somehow they're all equally excellent. Best listen to the whole album.
May 2024
Really love the fragile experimental pop songs by Saya Gray. Every song on the QWERTY II EP is exciting in its own way.
April 2024
3Blue1Brown is the gold standard of modern teaching. Alternatively, I recommend this hilariously nerdy video explaining GPT-2 in a spreadsheet.
March 2024
Malik Elassal. What a set. What a finish.
February 2024
Jon Stewart is back at The Daily Show. That alone would be worth the video of the month, but this is independent journalism at its best.
January 2024
Video from the CUSO Winter School in Computer Science in Champery. The video has two parts. In the first part I explain the basics of Graph Neural Networks. In the second part I explain how this is related to "Thinking Slow". The first part is based on the invited talk at PODC 2023, the second part is based on the invited talk at OPODIS 2023.
December 2023
Not quite a Christmas story.
November 2023
Stupidity and/or corruption.
October 2023
I always wondered about the computational aspects of the moon landing, and this video explains it beautifully.
September 2023
Impressive student project, should be all over the news. Is this actually the first vehicle (of any type, but with a driver) doing 0-100 km/h in less than a second?
August 2023
Not sure I am the target audience, but Yaeji is what I'm listening this summer. (Here is an older track with an actual video.)
July 2023
The Map Men are back!
June 2023
I participated in a panel (a "conversation") on the connection between generative artificial intelligence and modern art at Art Basel. That was a cool experience.
May 2023
Here are George Michael and Morrissey, two of the biggest pop stars at the time, discussing a book on Joy Division. This setup does not translate well into 2023.
April 2023
Here is the official interview of state-affiliated media BBC with Elon Musk. It's an enjoyable video, definitely recommended. But below is the bit the BBC conveniently did not include. Now that bit is hilarious.
March 2023
Just three days before Credit Suisse was handed over to UBS, the infamous "Inside Paradeplatz" reported that the Credit Suisse head of IT Joanna Hannaford was given 6 Million Swiss Francs as a welcome bonus for her introduction to the board of Credit Suisse. Probably Ms. Hannaford deserves that, because she knows IT like nobody else? Checking her linkedin reveals that she indeed studied computer science, not just at one but at two universities: Anglia Ruskin University and Staffordshire University. Both universites are not among the top UK universities, not even by a long shot. Anglia Ruskin is in Cambridge (one may say it's "the other university" in Cambridge). Apparently royalty goes there to prevent being challenged (by a tough academic curriculum or by annoying commoners?). With Credit Suisse going down, Swiss taxpayers now pay the bonuses of royalty? (The video is lots of fun by the way, especially if you're curious about Swiss German.)
February 2023
Just another episode in the fun and educational "Great Moments in Unintended Consequences" series.
January 2023
It's Davos time again!! By 2023, it seems pretty obvious that Davos is a textbook Orwellian organization. So why does the media talk about Davos? Why does nobody boycott the Davos sponsors? And why are so many scientists attending Davos? If Davos asks you to attend, just say no! (The video below is a classic exchange with the head Davos guy from the Netherlands.)
Earlier Videos
I started this one video each month tradition in January 2010. You will find the early years here.