It's my first day of participating in NSERC Discovery Grant deliberation meetings, and I'm surviving so far! But check in with me again by the end of the week and we'll see if my answer stays the same.

In 1979, the “New York Times” asked Isaac Bashevis Singer if he planned to watch the Super Bowl.

Watching competitors at this level is always impressive. But seeing people say "he beat the guy without needing any high-tech shooting equipment!" is hilarious when said "high-tech shooting equipment" is two pieces of plastic.

Breaking: Tragedy at the Winter Olympics

New SIGACT award expository work, created in memory of Luca Trevisan: "intended to promote and recognize high-impact work expositing ideas and results from the Theory of Computation." A wonderful initiative—consider nominating people! ⏰ Nomination deadline: April 10 sigact.org/prizes/trevi...

When I was in London last summer, I was walking back to my hotel after dinner and had to wait at an intersection for the signal to change. As I waited, a fellow on a rental bicycle stopped right in front of me. In my post-dinner satiety, it took me a beat to realize that fellow was Rami Malek.

Here's a fun little afternoon distraction: what is the smallest value of n, 1 ≤ n ≤ 26, for which there does not exist an English word of length n starting with the nth letter of the English alphabet?

PSA: it is in fact possible for universities to address financial challenges by slashing (incredibly expensive and largely useless) admin positions. Memorial University just downsized VPs from 7 to 3. Yes we can! universityaffairs.ca/news/memoria...

Thomas Watson has a new computational complexity textbook about to be published by Cambridge University Press. There's a free version online for personal use. complexityincs.com

Hey, if the groundhog gets a snow day, I do too. I don’t make the rules.

mother just referred to a pop star named 'taylor smith'

I had someone share with me some posts from a different website. I was just sitting here minding my own business, what'd I do to be attacked like this?

Excited to soon be able to add to my (currently very small) collection of math-related Magic cards that I put on my office door.

Ok a raise please for the sub editor who chose the photo

Was editing and noticed that if you rotate-left "those" you get "ethos". Was curious how many of these are in English. Big dicts have a lot of junk, and most endings in "s" are for plurals. Here's a good list of rotwords.

Please submit your research papers and join us at the 27th International Conference on Descriptional Complexity of Formal Systems (DCFS 2026), to be held in Kingston, Canada from August 9 to 11, 2026! Details: research.cs.queensu.ca/dcfs2026/ #tcssky #mathsky

Please submit your research papers and join us at the 30th International Conference on Implementation and Application of Automata (CIAA 2026), to be held in Kingston, Canada from August 5 to 8, 2026! Details: research.cs.queensu.ca/ciaa2026/ #tcssky #mathsky

I gave a lecture this week where we worked through a proof, but class ended before I could explain to the students how we got the mysterious factor of 6 hanging out in the theorem statement. I couldn't figure out how to begin the following lecture, so I just wrote on the board "whence 6?"

Today I learned that apparently kids in school are being given the assignment "go home and ask your parents what their favourite meme is and write a report about it"

I should start taking bets to see which book will be published first: - Martin's "Winds of Winter" - Rothfuss' "Doors of Stone" - Knuth's "Art of Computer Programming, Vol. 4C" - Caro's "Years of Lyndon Johnson, Vol. 5" - My very roughly outlined vague idea of a book about the Montréal Olympics

We will never accept this template: corporatization of higher education: No to Nousferatu nationalpost.com/feature/how-...

Recent news led me to revisit an old cartoon I used to love watching (for some reason) as a kid. I can't believe how well this 25-year-old clip has held up.

Just learned about a tradition at Oxford that needs some wider adoption: sconcing. If you're out for dinner with a group of friends and one of them starts talking about work, politics, religion, etc., you make them drink a tankard of ale right there and then.

Was reminded today that I haven't yet shared my 2025 flight history, which essentially amounted to flying between where I live and where my family lives, together with a fantastic couple of weeks in England. Where will I go in 2026? (Invite me to visit/give a talk/take a vacation!)

Fun fact! 2026 has the special property that it can be written as 2 × 1013. This is the only year in our lifetimes when this will happen. Like and follow for more fun facts in the new year.

Semiotic paradox alert!

Some may remember this ACM guidance on inclusive terminology. E.g., as advocated by an anon ICLR reviewer, it recommends against the technical term Byzantine. It was recently updated, and suggests avoiding "binary classification" and "stable marriage" (incorrectly defined)

Trying to understand the mindset of a group that takes issue with using the word “Byzantine”, yet completely omits phrases like “traveling salesman problem” from their list.

Thank you for your message. I have unlimited access to email, but my will to access it is profoundly limited. And I’m not gonna get in trouble if I don’t

Now that Christmas is over and we’re in the amorphous blob of time that is Dec. 26–Dec. 31, it’s time to pick a folly to pursue in 2026. - Study wine, eventually take a sommelier exam - Learn to fly a small plane - Commission someone to paint a large portrait of me

It an’t Christmas in Canada without…

Merry Christmas to all my family and friends, both near and far. 🎄

Reading Knuth's pre-fascicle 8A on Hamiltonian paths and cycles, and I just discovered one of my new favourite bits of terminology: "lief", a leaf in a trie. The bottom level of a trie is full of lieves.

Nico is taking a break from decorating to wish you all a very merry Christmas.

Go big or go home, I guess

Announcing the first Workshop on Formal Languages and Neural Networks (FLaNN)! We invite the submission of abstracts for posters that discuss the formal expressivity, computational properties, and learning behavior of neural network models, including large language models (LLMs).

Got to YHZ this afternoon for an outbound flight to see family, took in some Christmas choir singing before breezing through security, then was handed free cookies and hot chocolate as I waited to board the plane. I hope your holiday travel goes as smoothly as mine!

A university is so much more than its bricks and mortar facilities. It is also an eduroam network with intermittent access

In the midst of exam season, I'm reminded of the time when, in the first term of my first year of undergrad, I sent a post-exam email to my linear algebra instructor asking if he'd consider applying a square root curve to the exam grades. Sorry, Prof. Denham, I now realize how annoying that was.

Always around this time of year, when I hear the Nutcrackers and the Messiahs on the radio, I wish I lived in a place that had a symphony orchestra I could attend regularly. Just like how if I could somehow afford to live in NYC, I'd spend all my time at the Met Opera, the museums, and the Strand.

You can do this right now: Think of a person who wrote a paper you love, whose work influenced or helped you, or has made your professional life better. Search up their email address. Shoot them a quick email of thanks. It means so, so much. This is a rough time of year, share some joy.

There isn't a single problem "solved" by edtech that couldn't be fixed with smaller classes led by well-paid teachers given real academic freedom

Please submit your research papers and join us at the 27th International Conference on Descriptional Complexity of Formal Systems (DCFS 2026), to be held in Kingston, Canada from August 9 to 11, 2026! Details: research.cs.queensu.ca/dcfs2026/ #tcssky #mathsky

Please submit your research papers and join us at the 30th International Conference on Implementation and Application of Automata (CIAA 2026), to be held in Kingston, Canada from August 5 to 8, 2026! Details: research.cs.queensu.ca/ciaa2026/ #tcssky #mathsky

I’ve posted this before but the light was perfect today- a little Victorian cat paw in a brick at the front of the old Norfolk & Norwich Hospital. As this is on the front-facing corner of the main gates, the bricklayer quite clearly put it there on purpose, at a height where children would spot it.

The folks at the plant-based food company must’ve been high-fiving each other all week when they thought of “chick’n”, but I’ve gotta say, the naming department could’ve worked a bit harder on “be’f”.

My new career goal is to surpass this 1M citation mark by just writing a bunch of slop articles people can use as drop-in citations. Stuff like “An Explication of the Polynomial-Time Reduction from Vertex Cover to Independent Set”.

Today is the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence against Women. On this day, we honour those killed and injured during the École Polytechnique tragedy, and all women who experience violence. It is also a day to commit to ending gender-based violence.