Any discussion about knot theory invariable ends up with a demonstration of how to get Rob Scharein's cat on the surface of a knot in KnotPlot

Magnetic field around a knotted wire

A good physics day for guys named John.

The @canjphysics.bsky.social just followed me and this reminded me of the time about 10 years ago that my paper was rejected there because the referee thought I should acknowledge that he was on the path to win a Nobel prize in high school.

Three major problems that have been solved in my lifetime: -ozone depletion -acid rain -USB plugs that are always upside down the first two times you try to plug them in

New preprint with Ryan Blair and student Jonathan Strange, developing a new way to detect if ellipses form Borromean rings. It is 150 times faster than using the Jones polynomial! arxiv.org/html/2509.15...

COVID watchers, how high do we think this trend will get before the next zenith?

What would this scatterplot look like? On the x axis is the mass of objects from electrons up to tanker ships. On the y axis is the fastest speed humans have managed to make it go.

What if we kissed 👉👈 in the topological jellyfish

New preprint for you knot weirdos arxiv.org/abs/2507.20903

Inverted Wolfram Alpha logo spotted at St. Mark's basilica in Venice

Reading "Termination Shock" by Neil Stephenson and I find it funny that even though the book is about dealing with a global environmental crisis, he takes every opportunity he can to point out how stupid he thinks environmentalists are.

At the risk of getting scooped

@xkcd.com RANDALL ARE YOU OK?!

@techconnectify.bsky.social You may already be aware of this, but people are making memes about you in one of the largest Simpsons meme groups on facebook. For example:

If you like scientific figures that look like spaghetti, this is the paper for you www.nature.com/articles/s41...

NEW CHEESE PHYSICS JUST DROPPED IN PRL (pasting arxiv though) arxiv.org/html/2501.00...

Dozens or hundreds of people are suddenly following me as of the last few days. Was there another twitter exodus event? Are science starter packs going around again? Did I post some sort of banger?

New acquaintance, casually: "I was ok at math but I gave up when the numbers became imaginary." Me, justifiably: "Oh so I guess you're just a HUGE fan of gimbal lock?!"

Lezgo! link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Cool TEM image of a polycatenane crystal from a new preprint chemrxiv.org/engage/api-g...

Will Farrell, Colin Farrell, and Colin Firth imply the existence of a Will Firth to close the ring. He does exist, and is an Australian translator of Serbian literature.

My two-factor authenticator has given me the number 88 three times in the last week, I'm worried it might be a white nationalist.

Worst part of teaching my lab class is that after wearing rubber gloves for three hours then going home, my cats don't feel as soft.

Diamonds are scary! They can include little pockets of water that remain at ~237000x atmospheric pressure (it's about 5,000x atmospheric pressure at the bottom of the ocean) once the diamond has been erupted to the surface. The water is so highly pressurized it's Ice VII at room temperature.

Have the Canadian electoral cartographers considered using an upside down Mercator?

(walking around a conference poster session with a comically large 3-minute hourglass that I flip over every time I start talking to a presenter)

After an accidental release of tsetse flies in Southern Ontario, the popular hiking route is now known as the Brucei Trail

(guy drowning in a tide pool) "omg I'm littorally dying here"

Physicists may recognize Weber State as the home of prolific textbookist @dvschroeder.bsky.social

As a Canadian scientist in the US I'm skeptical of this "bad US science conditions are a boon for Canada!" claim. Canada doesn't even have science jobs for its own scientists which is partly why so many are in the US.

For some reason my email doesn't usually register when I've actually checked one, so I reached this fake and arbitrary milestone today. Also not sure why it uses British spelling, it's an American email on an American computer.

Therapist: Herzsprung-Russell hummingbird doesn't exist, it can't hurt you. Herzsprung-Russell hummingbird:

Recording of my talk from Friday, watch if you're interested in the topic or want to hear me say "so, ummmm" 1000 times. www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTex...

Very happy that my work with @agnesebarbensi.bsky.social is finally preprinted. We developed a very cool technique to see how the topology of open curves evolves, and applied it to learn some cool things about knotted proteins. arxiv.org/abs/2504.12659

Glass ceiling of improper lab attire has been shattered

When we talk about tariffs we should pronounce it like it rhymes with Omar Sharif.

On Friday at 12 Pacific I will be giving a talk "Mathematical Investigations of Kinetoplast DNA" which will also be on zoom. csulb.zoom.us/j/88191069435

How it started // How it's going

Forbidden pizza

Brandon Sanderson: *publishes 10 hours of youtube video lectures about the art of writing* Me, who has never and will never write fiction: "Wow, such good points Brandon!"

I really hate that the internet went this way

The least-need addition to Windows 11 was adding tabs to Notepad.

@ndp.ca can you tell me anything about candidate Suzanne Dufresne? She has literally zero online presence as far as I can tell. Unless she's a Winnipeg-based CBC reporter running in Montreal.

The next great schism will be between churches who represent the trinity as three linked rings vs those that represent it as Borromean rings.

I've been doing scientific programming regularly for over 15 years and just this week I used recursion for the first time.

Received my Canadian absentee ballot, which I am required to place in envelope A, which I then place in envelope B, which I then place in envelope C, which I then mail to Ottawa. I now innately understand von Neumann's definition of the natural numbers.

Experimental Mathematics put our image on its cover! (but didn't tell us)

In collaboration with @finnthompson.bsky.social , we have created either the smallest big knots ever or the biggest small knots ever arxiv.org/abs/2504.00861