This morning, a tornado hit Rome. After a lightning strike, which was particularly close, there was a blackout. No blackboard but only the smart board which sadly was turned off. So I taught geometry in space as God intended: in the dark and gesticulating in the air.

Oggi è un buon giorno per esporla al vento. Anche perché vedo che intorno non lo fa più nessuno.

Since September I've been working with an international group to develop what we hope can be a response from the mathematics community to artificial intelligence in maths. The Leiden Declaration is now posted and open for signatures: https://leidendeclaration.ai/ #leidendeclaration

I recently read two essays on what we (mathematicians) do when we do mathematics, in an age of proof abundance. The first is by professor Petra Schwer (@petraschwer.bsky.social): The meaning of doing mathematics (arxiv.org/abs/2509.15998)

Today I learned that Jean Pierre Serre is active on quora www.quora.com/profile/Jean... . Maybe I can quote him to my students preparing for esame di maturità.

I keep reading about LLM solving problems but I have never seen an AI producing something like this. Perhaps I am cheating by choosing a too high target but AI by itself has no meaning and lacks human touch.

A vedere Lo spiraglio, filmfestival della salute mentale al Maxxi a Roma. Ieri pomeriggio ad un incontro di Gruppo di psicoanalisi multifamiliare cittadino aperto. Tante emozioni inattese.

Happy birthday to Emmy Noether. Talking about her today in classes. Here are some drawing about her by coni777.bsky.social crojasmolina.com/illustration...

I love PIM (prestito interbibliotecario metropolitano). The interlibrary loan system of municipal libraries of Rome. They are in a network with university libraries. So I can get books from Castelnuovo’s library again. Here I am about to start reading Giovanni Prodi classic high school texts.

A long time ago, at a meeting, he was encouraging to a young unknown student.

It’s 21º Celsius today, so I went in the garden to relax. Someone woke up, perhaps too soon.

“Is this some sort of divine creation by the mathematical gods, or is there a deeper reason why 𝑀𝑔 exists?” Charming images from this article by Jarod Alper www.ams.org/journals/not...

Raccolto odierno. Ed è ancora rifiorita… a dicembre?

Amo il mio lavoro! Dalle formule parametriche per seno e coseno alle terne pitagoriche (ci sono sempre nascosti una circonferenza e un triangolo rettangolo); da lì alle equazioni diofantee il passo è breve. E mi hanno chiesto come si affrontano equazioni simili: domani si esplora l'equazione di Pell

Can we just appreciate how stunning young Ursula K Le Guin was

Never heard this song before’Finite Simple Group (of Order Two)’ but truly enchanted now. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bipv...

Happy Serre-mas to all who celebrate.

Trovati su una bancarella al mercato questa mattina 📚

È una tranquilla notte di regime. Stefano Benni 1947-2025 😢

A Bussolengo cominciano a prepararsi per il Natale!

What a nice article by @dodecalemma.bsky.social www.scientificamerican.com/article/try-.... I’ll use some problems with students next year.

Summer time is reading time. It’s more than 20 years since I read The fortunate fall by @lateonsetgirl.bsky.social. Time to visit an old friend looking forward to next book next year.

Summer cleaning day for open tabs in Safari. Over 1300 tabs open. And 116 of them are Kagi search results. A couple months of research and curiosities.

L’anno scolastico sta finendo…

When I come back home I find this to welcome me! (The green thumbed one is my wife)

When I got to visit my mum I look at old books and I try to find a reason to bring them over. Maybe I can show them to the student who wants to study mathematics next year at university?

Resistenza sempre…

Afternoon at the museum

I spent some pleasant time playing Block Faker (droqen.itch.io/block-faker) by @droqen.bsky.social

Easy but not obvious! Daily Akari 😊 ✅Mon Apr 21, 2025✅ 🌟 Perfect! 🕓 1:27 dailyakari.com

3 germani reali in piazzetta pescheria a Verona. Non penso sia il loro habitat naturale…

Entrando nella metro a Barberini: “Attenzione allarme antincendio. Evacuare la stazione”. Provo a chiedere e l’addetto mi dice che non sente perché c’è l’allarme! Poi mi dice di andare tranquillamente. Forse è il caso di evocare lo spirito di Hardy: ho dimostrato l’ipotesi di Riemann…

Relaxing in the garden, tending to the new flowers

By chance (long story), today I was in the place my grandfather was born: Montecarotto in Marche region.

Questa mattina ancora assonnato sfogliando Che cos'è la matematica? ho letto male i titoli dei paragrafi: La base allegra della dualità; e Proprietà proiettive delle conchiglie. Ho impiegato un po' per comprendere. Forse è il caso di cambiare punto di vista...

Nice themed one today! Daily Akari 😊 Fri Feb 14, 2025 ✅Solved in 1:33✅ dailyakari.com

I forgot to start Advent of Code. Something it’s not in the air.

“Will there be a mythology in the future, they used to ask, after all has become science? Will high deeds be told in epic, or only in computer code?” Space Chantey R. A. Lafferty

This is relevant even for Bluesky, which, for me, is most of all a read only place. nabeelqu.co/twitter

Oh bother! This TWSBI just touched a hard surface and a piece of the cap flew away. I was used to the indestructible Safari! Just a scar to show to the other fountain pen in the drawer!

Off by one errors in advent of code! As usual it’s better to take a pause before debugging

It’s arrived here in Rome too! The beauty of games. @flantz.bsky.social

Back in Rome!

I merged all windows on Safari. I got 1262 tabs. Ninetytwo of which are twitter! Now I look and close them trying to find a theme…

Trying to build a reasonable workflow for taking notes from the web with 3 devices is apparently easy. For a start Shortcuts doesn’t seem to sync correctly between iPhone, iPad and MacBook.

I couldn’t stand it anymore, it bricked itself every couple of day and I had to try every kind of reset to bring it up. So I reset my iPhone from scratch. Hopefully only app that I use are installed now. And some games (Myst, Expedition and Six ages 2).

Martin Gardner’s long-running column in Scientific American made it onto the front cover of the magazine twelve times. I thought it might be fun to recreate these images by writing code in TikZ. Here's the first! https://aperiodical.com/2023/08/1-patterns/

The devil shows up but it’s not Master and Margherita. Nonetheless a pleasurable story about thinking about what we have got that we never think about.

Just watched Good Omens 2 by @neilhimself.neilgaiman.com . Wow!. Who is Metatron? Pleased to discover some new angelic (?) beings I never heard about. I have some time to meditate and speculate while waiting for season 3.

Dopo quanti numeri è accettabile guardare la soluzione di un gioco della Settimana Enigmistica? Chiedo per un amico…