The Mathematical Society of France will not be at the 2026 International Congress of Mathematicians, to be held in Philadelphia. This is great news. I hope other mathematical societies pull out as well. It would help if the @amermathsoc.bsky.social also declined to participate, in solidarity.

Het plan voor een slimmer academisch jaar aan de @rug.nl . Ik vind er wat van. ukrant.nl/plan-voor-sl...

Welcome to the office. Where we are supposed to work and this afternoon also have oral exams 🥶🥶🥶

Columnist Dirk-Jan Scheffers keek reikhalzend uit naar de plannen voor een slimmer academisch jaar, maar is nu teleurgesteld: ‘Terug naar de tekentafel.’ ukrant.nl/plan-voor-sl...

Board of Peace - Season 1

Last term I tried an experiment: I walked into my Tech and Design Ethics class, admitted that I had *no idea* what to do about ChatGPT - so I would let them figure it out. As in: their first project was to decide and write the ChatGPT policy for the class. Here's what happened:

Interesting take on the title question. We play and have played an important role, contributing a great deal to the software ecosystem, but in a way that maximises mutual benefit over profit (to be fair, this is true also from many other people everywhere, US included) ploum.net/2026-01-22-w...

This is straight up terrifying: Because the quality even on the smaller models is amazing and the web demo-version is about 1/4 real-time, it would probably be reasonable to make it realtime probably even on an iPhone 17 given the built-in TPU. There is SO much malice this offers up...

That aside, what a strange journalistic job it is to say "Musk said a thing" and leave it at that. Anyway, it seems odd to a science journalist.

"Fink opened the session by instructing the audience to applaud more enthusiastically for Musk. "That was not a large applause. Start again," the BlackRock chief said." www.euronews.com/2026/01/22/e...

All My Apes Gone, academia edition. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

NEW: You think disinformation is bad now? Wait until you hear about "AI swarms" and how they have the potential to upend democracy across the globe www.wired.com/story/ai-pow...

Have you tried with llama.cpp? May be marginally slower but I heard it works well now that some initial implementation hiccups have been fixed. I can confirm that it works well on Mac for other models

The Bureau Toetsing Investeringen, or investment check office, is examining the takeover of cloud company Solvinity by US-based Kyndryl to determine whether there are implications for national security.

This has been an unexpectedly interesting read. I won’t say more, but I think it is worth it (if you are interested in education) ploum.net/2026-01-19-e...

One month ago the university council rejected the budget for 2026, after a tense and animated debate. Still almost no one knows at our university. I was told that this is an important and very rare event, how comes that there is still nothing about it at least in the @ukrant.bsky.social ?

In the context of taking our data back to Europe, I have been exploring possibilities recently and collected my notes in a blog post: www.mseri.me/bringing-the... I am sure I have missed many options, please let me know if you have good recommendations and I’ll update the post.

For non-German speakers: “Dear media, I can’t stand the headline "No agreement between the US and Denmark” any longer. If an armed man storms a bank, you don't run the headline: "Robber and cashier can't reach an agreement on money transfer." Stop framing imperial aggression as normal diplomacy.”

The Science will be there, but we need your input! What’s your take? ✅ What’s working? ❌ What’s not? Drop your thoughts below or DM @therezalangeler.bsky.social Boost this post so we can gather as many voices as possible before the meeting next week!

🚨 Science Faction needs your input: the Arbeidsinspectie is coming to the RUG! The Dutch Labour Inspectorate is checking if we’ve improved on work pressure & social safety (especially leadership & discrimination). If not, the RUG could face fines.

@mailbox.org I could not find a more private way to contact you. I just wanted to let you know that if one clicks on the logo on the top left of your (english) website, they are redirected to default/en instead of the homepage.

Another advice that I can pass on to mathematicians without altering one pixel.

Goede column van Cor Zonneveld. Er bestaat overigens uitgebreid onderzoek dat aantoont dat studentevaluaties geen graadmeter voor onderwijskwaliteit zijn - en ook nog eens schadelijk want seksistisch, bevooroordeeld en racistisch. Dat soort drek doet wat met docenten. 1/ www.folia.nl/nl/opinie/17...

Weather update ❄️ UG buildings will close all day tomorrow, with a few exceptions. If possible, education will take place online. Today, most buildings will close at 5 p.m. Read more 👇 www.rug.nl/news/2026/01...

In case anyone needs it for their syllabi, my statement in gen-Ai from the minicomic I made as a syllabus for class last semester. All online and printable here spinweaveandcut.com/fall-2025-sy...

Due to the bad weather and lack of public transport the event is unfortunately cancelled

YAG Pub Lectures are back with the new year. Join us Jan 7, 2026 @ Vin Natuur for two fascinating talks: * Dina Maniar on "Sippin’ on Sustainability: The Secret Life of Polymers" * Willem Jespers on "Computer-Aided Drug Discovery" 📍 16:30–18:30 | Free drinks + Q&A! #YAGroningen

Only a few more days to apply for the Training in Embodied Critical Thinking and Understanding program with summer school in Aarhus. Check out www.trainingect.com for more information (deadline is January 15th)

We wrote a short piece on conducting participatory workshops to change research culture, given our experiences in teaching workshops on climate activism & open scholarship. With @anne-urai.bsky.social @clarekelly.bsky.social @annaveer.bsky.social 📝 rdcu.be/eXja4 🧪 #AcademicSky

I also have a picture from yesterday afternoon of 12 degrees from the office next to mine 🥶

This week, we start the Institut Henri Poincare program "Illustration as a mathematical research technique" (indico.math.cnrs.fr/event/13123/) with a graduate school at the @cirm-math.bsky.social. For the week, 53 participants will immerse themselves in all things #illustratingMath. (1/n)

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Anyone at #JMM2026 interested in starting the year with an #illustratingMath project? Don't worry, @mathgrrl.com has you covered, see information below and go create some #MathArt!

Classical billiards can compute. With Isaac Ramos, we show that 2D billiard systems are Turing complete, implying the existence of undecidable trajectories in physically natural models from hard-sphere gases to celestial mechanics. Determinism ≠ predictability. 🎱🧠 @upc.edu @ricardsole.bsky.social

Fuck you people. Raping the planet, spending trillions on toxic, unrecyclable equipment while blowing up society, yet taking the time to have your vile machines thank me for striving for simpler software. Just fuck you. Fuck you all. I can't remember the last time I was this angry.

My best wishes for a relaxing break!

E vai di solstizio!

Streaming services are getting more expensive and are packed with adverts + DVD prices are incredibly low = I guess I will go back to buy the DVD of the movies/series I want to watch

Zo fijn dat de (zelfverklaarde) onderwijspartij de verkiezingen gewonnen heeft!

A whole lot has been going on in just 4 months in the Uni Council. We have been trying hard to figure out how to do things better, and navigate the current uncertainties. And I needed to take it off my chest. If you are curious it’s all on the @sciencefaction.nl blog: www.rug.nl/about-ug/org...

There has been outrage as the @ACM rolls out AI generated summaries of papers. This is doing AI exactly wrong by replacing valuable, peer-reviewed content with a possibly inaccurate summary. It's still not too late to correct it though, and I've penned down my recommendation for what the ACM […]

I find it extremely comforting to know that Python development will basically be revolutionized every two years by @crmarsh.com and his crew at Astral. astral.sh/blog/ty

🔭 Andromeda and Sprites over Australia Image Credit & Copyright: JJ Rao apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap25121...

Worrisome: More than half of researchers now use AI for peer review — often against guidance www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Animals with misleading names. I'm seeing this go around as part of a viral tumblr thread so I thought I'd reshare it.

I hate how much I enjoyed this BIG NERD DESIGN ENERGY 🫦

I’m trying to teach this topic using the function machine notation that @blatherwicksam.bsky.social talked about at MathsConf last year. I like how this works for multiple transformations so wanted to introduce it now. #ALevelMaths

The report is accessible at demonstratierecht.nu

The University Council - including the whole Science Faction - just voted negatively on the budget for next year. In times of stringent budget cuts, it just wasn't good enough. Not good enough for our students, not good enough for our staff, not good enough for our university.

One of the most striking trends from our recent AI survey is the fact that leisure use of generative AI is consistently high across all age groups, ranging from 82% to 93%. This suggests that gen AI is not only a tool for work or study but has become a widely adopted part of everyday personal life.