It’s time for another post collecting links to my blogging at Forbes. This is a highly irregular series, so where the last installment covered about six months, this one’s only going to be two. But I was a busy blogger in July, so it’s a reasonable amount of material:

—Physicists Gotta Physics: Why New Eperiments Are Inevitable: In which I take issue with Sabine Hossenfelder over the question of whether it’s a good idea for physicists to start new experiments looking for exotic physics predicted by current theories.

—What Do We Know About Quantum Jumps? A look at what’s arguably the signature quantum phenomenon.

—The (Mostly) Quantum Physics of Making Colors: A run through several processes that make light of different colors, and how they’re rooted in quantum mechanics.

—Why Study Science? The Same Reason You Would Study Anything Else: A little pushback on the common narrative that students choosing STEM majors are doing so mostly for economic reasons.

—The Crisis In Theoretical Physics Is Not A Moral Imperative: More about my disagreement with Sabine Hossenfelder over whether physicists in other fields should launch experiments to search for “new physics” predicted by current theories.

—Indirect Contributions Are Essential To Physics: Some thoughts about physicists who are best known for teaching and helping others who became more famous.

So, you know, that’s some stuff. As I noted on Twitter the other day, I realized that I’ve mostly become a pundit these days, doing commentary and not much in the way of reporting or direct experiment/analysis. That’s been driven by a combination of software and editorial limitations and what the audience at Forbes will read– posts where I play around with stuff on my own just get no traction there, for whatever reason. And since those are very labor-intensive, I mostly don’t bother any more.

On the one hand, I sort of miss the more playful style, and wish I had the time and space to do more of that. On the other, the conscious realization that I’ve made this shift is sort of helpful, mentally. Thinking of the blog less like a space where I ought to be doing lots of actual physics work and more like a kind of weekly-ish column has helped make it easier to see angles and Takes that turn into blog posts. It’s definitely a difference, though, and I’m still sorting out what I think about the whole thing.

Anyway, that’s the current state of my physics blogging. I’ve already got a couple of posts up in August, and an idea for at least one more, so we’ll see if the “Weekly-ish column” approach continues to work, or if I fall into something else.