Welcome to The Quantum Dragon

Not the newsletter you need right now, but the newsletter you deserve.

I’ve been saying for years that quantum is way too interesting for anything written about it to be boring. The Quantum Dragon will be aggregating news, books, papers, podcasts, etc.... anything that is as entertaining as it is informative.

If everything is stale in any given week, I’ll report that, too. I might end up sharing only my own content — which I dare characterize as a bit unconventional — or I might end up telling lame jokes. We just don’t know at this point.

But what I’m hoping for is that everyone will start showing their enthusiasm for what they do. I’ve asked researchers things like “what’s your favorite factoid about ______” and their faces always light up as they answer. But you won’t find that enthusiasm in the paper about it, nor will you find that enthusiasm in the social media posts. That’s a shame. That’s a darned shame.

I can tell you with certainty that there is an audience for this sort of stuff. With this newsletter, I hope to reward fellow thrill writers with a little extra push.

Quantum Ice Cream

June 6 saw the official launch of “Quantum Ice Cream,” which is available as a free download on Payhip. This “book” is actually a Jupyter notebook, designed and tested in Google Colab. It compares designing quantum algorithms to making ice cream, which is probably a first as far as quantum computing books go. It even includes a few ice cream recipes — which definitely has to be a first — so if you don’t enjoy the book, hopefully you can at least enjoy the ice cream.