Victor Buendía

Statistical Physics, PhD. Theoretical neuroscience, evolution, ecology and music.
RTDA researcher at Milan.
He/him.

Last Notes

2026-10-22 09:08:51 GMT

People doing computational research: please remember to update your #Python package manager installations!
Due to the last security issue with CA certificates, packages like pip and uv had to be patched. It is important to update in all your virtual environments so everything it's safe. It's just a single command, written here, takes literally 5 seconds 😀
https://discuss.python.org/t/information-for-python-users-regarding-emudhra-emsign-ca-certificate-security-incident/109576

2025-12-15 09:45:35 GMT

Any good open source alternatives to Grammarly? I am not a native English speakers and there're always small things in my written text....
Now that Grammarly is including a lot of weight into AI I'm more worried about potential privacy of what I'm writing there

2025-10-25 16:02:48 GMT

- reply

@nprofile…zqkm @nprofile…8eua ah, this is cool. Can those advances help to get rid of the infinities in field theory? Because as far as I understand one of the main problems always has been the fact that the series of Feynman diagrams is divergent...
If this allows some shortcuts for renormalization I'll be reading it for sure

2025-05-23 12:33:23 GMT

- reply

@nprofile…fa4k I 100% agree with you that some EU orgs see this as an opportunity for grabbing talent that maybe would not have considered coming otherwise.
Also salaries in the EU are lower than the US ones. As the message you cite there says, the cost of living is lower. For some top scientists, I am sure they will be able to negotiate good conditions in specific institutions which are above their EU peers. So I do not think that this is getting people 'for cheap': they are getting the best we can give, which I believe is fair.
Also I see many EU scientist that are willing to help: there is a lot of people of danger in losing their jobs in an absolutely unfair way and institutions here are moving to try to offer them a chance. I think that community spirit is very good from the scientific community :)
My main complain was a different topic, the fact that research funding is lacking in some areas of the UE that is rarely discussed. There's a lot of talent there that unfortunately has a lot of impediments to do cutting-edge research. And it seems that resources can be available if one really wants them, so for people coming from these countries it can feel discouraging at times.

2025-05-23 08:59:14 GMT

Now everybody wants to put funds to attract talent from Harvard. On one side ofc is great. On the other side it kinda saddens me to see that suddenly there's additional UE funds for research... that have been never invested in places were they are urgently needed for years.
Most 'top students' in Spain, Greece or southern Italy cannot join a PhD in their country because of lack of funding and cutting-edge labs. A 'big PI' in Spain has usually 3-4 students, counting away some outliers in Madrid/Barcelona. A Prof position does never come with a 'starter pack', a lab, or students. These countries do usually well in math or theoretical physics because it's cheap. If you look at experimental facilities, we fall behind. Our unis have problems hiring new research personnel, have outdated labs, etc etc.
The US does a terrible policy and then suddenly everybody is considering what can we do to help them. And don't get me wrong, I believe it's a good thing to help people and a great opportunity to catch some exceptional scientists. Just saddens me to see top European talents absolutely wasted, for years, and there is little to 0 conversation about that in other places. As someone who has struggled a lot with this situation, it feels sad.

2025-01-15 14:34:15 GMT

Hi, scientists from the Fediverse! It seems that Nature is asking people about Twitter migration and if they are happier on #bluesky .
On Nature writers' minds, Bluesky is the only place to migrate to. There's not a single mention of the Fediverse in there! However, there is a small free text box where you can write your thoughts, in the step before "send" button. So I did fill the poll anyway, writing why I decided not to go to Bluesky but to Mastodon instead.
I thought that maybe if we get enough people to actually fill the survey and mention that they migrated to Mastodon, we can make a stronger case for open, free networks. It's an extremely short survey, so let's try! https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00037-y
#academicchatter #OpenScience

2024-11-25 10:43:20 GMT

For all the scientists out there: do you write science threads for general audiences? If so, which hashtags do you use?
I would like to start compiling options, especially to have hashtags for different languages. The idea would be to start getting consensus on common hashtags so people interested in science can follow the tag and read cool things in their preferred language.
If you know any hashtag or if you have suggestions, write a comment! :)

2024-11-19 13:00:18 GMT

I have just been invited by a known journal to review a paper about clinical trials on cancer.
My background is theoretical physics. I work on applications to neuroscience. I have never published anything remotely related to cancer. Why in the world would I get this invitation to review? It does frankly speak very bad of the journal.

2024-11-15 14:10:58 GMT

- reply

@nprofile…xm42 a way to share experiences in a lab, and people should have this information when joining.

2024-11-15 13:31:42 GMT

- reply

@nprofile…xm42 I really want something like this, but for PI reviews. There was some initiative but I cannot find anymore.

2024-11-15 09:12:12 GMT

- reply

@nprofile…uc38 @nprofile…xm42 I hope this is merged soon, really really great work. Wish I knew more web programming and had some free hours to do s pair of PRs too. Making the site better is one of the best ways to make it more attractive for users :)

2024-11-12 16:41:27 GMT

- reply

@npub1jzg…hc3a Several absurd requirements with the figure files, a lot of useless emails demanding changes in the proofs with not a lot of time to answer, the webpage gave me a lot of technical problems. Also their author database is not correctly normalized, leading to account duplication and associated trouble. All from their system, since they manually open an account for you on submission/review. I have also similar opinion from other people, especially with figure problems.

2024-05-16 08:36:36 GMT

For #archeology people: my girlfriend has published her first first-author study, on human-bear interactions in the #Paleolithic in Germany.
She worked super hard for it (and she was very stressed), the resulting paper looks beautiful and you might find it interesting. I know I don't have that many archeofollowers but she doesn't have any academic social media and I believe the paper really deserves a bit of publicity after all the effort :)
Hope you enjoy!
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277379124001021