Brilliant piece

Celebrate the communication medium that's inherently local!

Found around the house

A personal highlight from the Electric Dreams show at the @tatemodern was Mary Martin's Permutation of Six, 1966 This work repeats and arranges six shapes using generative number patterns.

Inspired by Fred Rogers, @nature.com asked readers to help us 'find the helpers' amid the crisis in American science. What emerged were inspiring stories of researchers, legal experts, data hounds and government scientists who are fighting the dismantling of the US research enterprise. 🧪🧵1/6

Been going through the $1.5 billion Anthropic settlement. First, the settlement is for $3,000 per work for 500,000 works. Despite what this NYTimes article states, it is not for 500,000 authors. @nmamatas.bsky.social pointed this out and I confirmed it. 1/ www.nytimes.com/2025/09/05/t...

Billionaire Larry Ellison helped land top QB Bryce Underwood for Michigan, his wife’s alma mater. Now he’s investing hundreds of millions at Oxford University — and tapped former UM president Santa Ono to lead an institute there. www.wsj.com/business/lar...

"A recurring flaw in AI alarmism is that it treats intelligence as a property of individual minds, rather than recognizing that this capacity is distributed across our civilization and culture" (Maciej Cegłowski, quoted by Becker p112). He calls out the lone genius myth prevalent in US, too.

My calculus teacher would write out a proof on the board, look at us, and ask "Do you believe it?" When we gaped at him in uncomprehending horror, he would sit right down and maybe cry a little. He was very, very old, and Italian. He would say "You are horrible people," and prove it another way.

Terry Tao on Trump/Republicans' irrational disinvestment in science: "in our current environment, when even the most benign activities are subject to capricious disruption and political interference, the luxury of disengagement is no longer a viable option." newsletter.ofthebrave.org/p/im-an-awar...

Such a fun book to work on

I urge everyone outraged at this letter to demand that their congressional representatives vote for a ban on gerrymandering at the national level.

Celebrating the 2025 Euler Book Prize winner: @ismarvolic.bsky.social's Making Democracy Count. So much talk at #MAAthFest re gerrymandering, ranked choice voting & where we go from here. Thanks to @joinmaa.bsky.social. @princetonupress.bsky.social is honored to be a part of it. #ItAllStartsWithMath

Mathfest friends, @princetonupress.bsky.social is displaying stimulating books by thoughtful mathematicians, and we're running our traditional display copy giveaway. Visit us at booth 205 and save 30% online with code EXH30. #MAAthfest #ItAllStartsWithMath

Gotta love economists. This is from a paper about researcher views on open peer review:

Someone needs to do this with the Houston redistricting map instead of the Van Gogh

On the Rushfield Lunch today, @theankler.com's @richardrushfield.bsky.social asked me for my mandatory Hollywood curriculum, and suffice it to say that I got a little carried away. You've been warned, but enjoy. open.substack.com/pub/franklin...

In Making Up Your Own Mind, Edward B. Burger shows how we can become better at solving real-world problems by learning creative puzzle-solving skills. 🧩 This inspiring and entertaining #audiobook is now just $2.99/£2.99—but only for a limited time! press.princeton.edu/books/audio/... #Education

“Honey bees … play a key role in keeping the U.S. food supply stable…. beekeepers will need organizations such as USDA fully funded and firing on all cylinders.”

Dear #mathsky, if you repost this, it will let people see the article for free. Thanks! www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Architecture in Isfahan, Irán, Photo by: @ghasem.baneshi. #Architecture #Art #Discover

Current favorite referee comment: "One danger an instructor faces ... is getting bogged down in point-set topology: you get into topological spaces and never get out."

I've been waiting for this since it was first proposed, mere days after I experienced abject failure as a bugwatcher.

? This is exactly what you DON’T have to do in ranked choice voting, but you DO have to do in winner take all voting. The whole point of RCV is to rank your preferences and let the system deal with the whole “well I would have voted this way to beat this person” thing

Wilshire Federal Building in Westwood. I'll bet this guy was late to pick up his rush passport and didn't realize human frailty is not allowed. It's a pity: in my (limited) experience the vibe of that building in the past was official but humane.

Advisory Circular, the only bot that posts about aircraft circling over Los Angeles, is back in action. And with a good first post on its return.

The Princeton University Press team is thrilled to congratulate Benjamin Nathans, whose book To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement is the winner of 2025 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction! 🎉 www.pulitzer.org/prize-winner...

Meet Ozymandias. He doesn't know it yet, but once he's had his second jab, he's going to be the new Magdalen College kitten.

Editorializing in the copy of Reyner Banham's Los Angeles that I borrowed from the UCLA library.

From the late, great Village Voice sports section:

Pi Day celebrations don't often commemorate the mystery of the mathematical constant. Pi Day is about fun, and an example of John Horton Conway’s gift for spontaneous combustion. Read more from Siobhan Roberts in this edition of Ideas. press.princeton.edu/ideas/pi-day...

We are looking forward to all the incredible speakers at #TMO25, our free, virtual conference. Join Mary T. Bassett, @dtkung.bsky.social, and @ismarvolic.bsky.social as they examine #math as the key to understanding and improving the world around us. Register now! bit.ly/tmo-2025-reg...

At my parents' for the semiannual Culling of the Hoarded Boxes. Sincere shoutout to Delta Faucets and Easy Spirit shoes for beautifully designed boxes -- no tape, no glue, and the Delta box has a nearly rectangular footprint!

Lively discussion of whether America is ready for “Piece of Kit” in a book title.

Whoa -- nothing makes you reach for your Fowler's like discussing English with a French author.

The long-awaited middlebrow turn in math -- foretold by Cassels & Flynn in the 1990s. assets.cambridge.org/97805214/837...

Thoroughly enjoyable screening of #interstellar at the Chinese Theatre yesterday. Now we're spending all day arguing about the hero's journey, characters who are always right, The Philadelphia Story, and The Winter's Tale.

Books are great, I don't see a single gambling ad in them and they were written by a real person.

I love this joyful interview with authors Chris Golé and Nancy Pick: www.nepm.org/podcast/the-...

IT'S A SALE!! But, seriously, there are always great values to be found when Princeton University Press has its flash sale. I'm ordering "The Calculus of Happiness." (But... um... I may also need to buy and first read "Calculus Simplified" 😳)