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[2026-10-19] · src Qu, Ge, Wang, Schaan, Wu, Friedland, Sherwin, "Measuring Cosmic Neutrino Masses Independently of Dark Energy", arXiv:2607.24742v1 (preprint, 27 Jul 2026)
The ΛCDM combination of Planck, CMB lensing and DESI DR2 BAO gives Σmν < 0.056 eV (95% CL), which sits 2-3σ below the 0.10 eV inverted-ordering floor. The authors show how much of that depends on the dark-energy model. Marginalizing over (w0, wa), and over flexible binned and cubic w(a) histories, still gives a bound of Σmν < 0.152 eV. A second route uses primary CMB (marginalized over acoustic-peak smoothing) plus reconstructed CMB lensing and no late-time expansion information; it gives Σmν < 0.41 eV today. Forecasts: Simons Observatory lensing brings that route to 0.31 eV, with a cosmic-variance floor of 0.28 eV; adding SO lensing and Spec-S5 BAO to route one gives σ(Σmν) ≈ 0.043 eV. For comparison the direct KATRIN limit is mνe < 0.45 eV (90% CL), implying Σmν ≲ 1.3 eV.
For the standing question on the neutrino-mass bound: the headline 0.056 eV is a ΛCDM number, not a model-independent one, and the defensible dark-energy-agnostic figure is about 0.15 eV, which no longer excludes the inverted ordering. The late-Universe-free 0.41 eV bound is roughly KATRIN-scale and within reach of Project 8's ~0.1 eV mνe target, so terrestrial and cosmological measurements stay complementary. This is a single-group preprint read here only at the abstract level, and the numbers above are its stated results rather than something checked independently.
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[2026-10-19] · src —
Alto takes today: three days since it was last assigned, the longest gap of the three, and trumpet was assigned yesterday. With no method book chosen yet, this is another fundamentals session. The target is a sound that stays the same size across the break, with wider leaps than last time: G major in fourths, where the jump between registers is exposed.
6 minutes: long tones on written low C, D, E and F, 10 counts each at quarter = 60, mp, started with a soft tongue and held without drifting in pitch. Then 4 minutes of overtones off low C: voice the first, second and third partials, each held 4 counts at p.
G major scale, two octaves, in fourths (G-C, A-D, B-E, and so on up and back), slurred, at quarter = 66, then 76, then 88. Success criterion: three consecutive clean passes at each tempo with every leap speaking on the first try, and the upper note of each fourth matching the lower in weight.
Play the first four bars of any standard you know by ear in G, twice: first plainly, then shaping each phrase toward a single high point and letting the tail of the phrase relax. The second pass should sound like one breath per phrase.
About 25 minutes. Stop when the embouchure tires, the tone thins or the pitch starts to sag, even if 88 is not reached; stopping early with a good sound beats finishing ragged.
[2026-10-19] · src —
hearPhil Woods — I Remember Bird · Tidal · Spotify
An alto player from the Parker line, tribute in the title. Listen for how the tone stays full and unforced when the lines leap between registers, and how the top of a phrase is as warm as the bottom. That consistency across wide intervals is what the fourths are for.
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[2026-10-19] · src Supreme Court docket 26A274 (NRCC v. Brown, stay of Sept. 4, 2026) and 26A476 (FCC v. Brown, administrative stay of Oct. 8, 2026), as summarised by Wiley and TheDesk.net (Oct. 12). The orders themselves could not be read: the PDFs were not text-extractable here.
The FCC Media Bureau's March 30, 2026 Public Notice reminded broadcasters that the "lowest unit charge" (LUC) rate for political ads covers two things beyond a candidate's own committee: authorised committees engaged in joint fundraising with a legally qualified federal candidate, and ads that are coordinated expenditures between a party and a candidate. Four Democratic candidates challenged it. On August 25 a divided Fourth Circuit panel (2-1) set the notice aside, reading Section 315 to limit LUC to candidates and treating joint fundraising committees with non-candidate members as ineligible. On September 4, the day the LUC window for the November election opened, the Supreme Court, in an unsigned per curiam order over Justice Jackson's dissent, stayed that judgment, saying the Fourth Circuit likely lacked jurisdiction because the candidates' application for review was still pending before the full Commission. Secondary sources say that reasoning splits with every other circuit to consider the question.
The dispute then moved again. The Fourth Circuit's October 7 judgment (No. 26-2230) required the FCC to decide the pending application by noon on October
The Solicitor General applied for relief (26A476), and on October 8 Chief
Justice Roberts administratively stayed that judgment pending further order, with a response due October 10. The docket lists an entry titled "26A476 FCC v Brown (10/14/2026)" on the Court's opinions-relating-to-orders page. Its contents were not readable here, so how the Court disposed of the application is not recorded in this item and should be checked on the docket.
Facts versus interpretation: that the notice was issued, that the Fourth Circuit set it aside, and that the Court stayed that ruling are documentary. Whether LUC properly extends to party-coordinated and joint-fundraising ads is a statutory question the Supreme Court has not reached.
Neither stay decides the meaning of Section 315. The September order is a preliminary view on jurisdiction only, and the Fourth Circuit's merits reading is stayed, not reversed. The October 8 order is administrative and says nothing on the merits of the application.
Through at least the November election, the March 30 Public Notice's reading governs: stations must offer LUC to the covered committees and coordinated ads. Per Wiley, a certiorari petition is due in late November, so the stay likely outlasts the election. A broadcaster or committee has no different obligation to plan for unless the Court's October 14 action changed the position, which this item cannot confirm.
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[2026-10-19] · src Typst changelog, 0.15.1 (2026-07-17)
Typst 0.15.1 (2026-07-17) updates the bundled New Computer Modern fonts to
8.1.1. The changelog says this fixes the regular weight of the math font, which
still used old calligraphic letterforms that were meant to live in stylistic
set 6. The same patch fixes two math regressions: alignment points inside
lr (matched delimiters) and vertically misaligned op elements. I have not
compared specimens myself; the changelog gives the cause, not a picture.
If you set a Lagrangian, a Hamiltonian or a Hilbert space with cal(L),
cal(H), the glyph you got from 0.15.0 may not be the one Computer Modern
users expect, and a document compiled before the patch can change shape when
recompiled after it. Pin the compiler version for anything you will reissue, and
look at one page of calligraphic capitals before and after. The alignment
regression matters more for derivations: an & inside a delimited expression
that silently stopped aligning is the kind of bug that survives to the PDF.
[2026-10-19] · src Typst reference, page and align; LaTeX =titlepage= environment
Set a titlepage for a short set of notes: title, author, date, one-line
abstract containing \mathcal{L} (Typst: $cal(L)$). Do it once with the
titlepage environment and once with Typst's page and align, in under an
hour, from a document you already compile.
Success criterion: the title block's optical centre sits at 38 to 42 percent of the page height measured from the top; exactly three sizes are used (title, author and date, abstract), each at least 1.25 times the next smaller; the abstract measure is 45 to 60 characters; and the calligraphic L in the abstract is the same glyph in both outputs, checked at 400 percent zoom. Write down the measured numbers for both.
Placing a block by numbers instead of by eye is the technique that transfers: the next preprint or lecture handout gets the same ratios for free. The calligraphic check is the second half: it is the cheapest test of whether the two toolchains agree on a glyph you actually write every week.