I really wanted a French monic baguette, but they were all out

Reading a paper citing work of mine from 2007. Every sentence of the author's summary has me responding "wait, what? I did?"

You're against the Pythagorean Theorem? How hyperbolic of you.

Whenever I read about the Eckmann-Hilton Argument, my brain immediately imagines both men screaming associative operations at each other.

For the homologically minded, another Elf on a Shelf thing. (attn @courtneygibbons.phd )

You've heard of Elf on a Shelf. Now get ready for

What I've learned from AI is that if you are going to be wrong, do so with an authoritative tone.

One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them

Tonight there are people walking around this house singing "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Caribou". People is me. I am people.

Twins

Colleague: Are you going to focus your ring theory course on commutative rings? Me: Yeah, mostly. There isn't time to do justice to noncommutative rings in a 10 week course. C: Great! *a few minutes later* Wait, you are going to stick with *associative* rings, right? Me: *grins like a maniac*

Existential horror

Because they learned in previous classes that it's where they will get the most points taken off.

I wonder who will voice me in the anime adaptation of my life

Brazil, where hearts were entertaining June We stood beneath an amber moon And softly murmured "someday soon."

"It turns out that" does a lot of heavy lifting in mathematics.

I guess it's time I confess, I'm just an LLM. (Largely Loony Michael)

George Boole died on this day in 1864. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_... His biographer Des MacHale left these flowers at his grave today. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Des_Mac...

Movie you’ve watched more than six times with a gif. Hard mode: no Stars (Wars nor Trek), LOTR, or Marvel, Disney Animated or Pixar.

I was the shadow of the waxwing slain By the false azure in the windowpane

Every day I am thankful that all it takes to verify my humanity is my ability to check a box.

I much prefer being mistaken over being incorrect, and I prefer being incorrect over being wrong. On the other hand, if I'm right, I'm right.

Typical instructions for algebra exercises: "Simplify the following expressions. Assume that all variables are positive." That second sentence is so important, and so often ignored or forgotten. (Context: I just graded exams and every student simplified sqrt(x^2) to x instead of |x|.)

I hope my coauthor shares my optimism.

At one of those "clarity vs elegance" junctures in my writing of this paper. I'm greedy though, so I hope I'll figure out how to have both.

While considering a purchase, I asked "how much does the free trial cost?" so now I have to walk from Denver into the Pacific Ocean.

Reading a paper that denotes the kernel of a mapping f by "ker f" but the kernel of a mapping n is denoted by "kern".

K: Have you considered consulting a doctor about that? Me: I am a doctor. I have a PhD in mathematics K: No, I meant Me: and therefore I am an expert in all scientific disciplines

You kids and your six trig functions. Back in my day we had only one, and we used it for everything. sin(θ) sin(π/2 - θ) sin(θ)/sin(π/2 - θ) 1/sin(θ) 1/sin(π/2 - θ) sin(π/2 - θ)/sin(θ)

a∈A {a}⊆A {a}∈𝒫(A) *sigh*

I've been in academia for about 33 years, but even today when I hear or read "P.I.", my brain first thinks of Tom Selleck.

Our dog freaks out whenever she hears the doorbell. Trick-or-treating in this neighborhood starts soon. It's going to be an interesting evening.

arxiv.org/abs/2510.19961 /Loops with squares in two nuclei/ Michael Kinyon (@profkinyon.bsky.social) , J.D. Phillips

The more coauthors a paper has, the more typos it will have. It seems counterintuitive but each author assumes the others are the ones responsible for carefully checking everything.

Abel's line "it appears to me that this theorem admits exceptions" is one of my favorite sentences in the history of mathematics.

Given a ladder, if: * you know how to get on the first step, and * if you're on a step, you know how to get on the next one, then you know how to climb the ladder. #induction

Me: Canvas is down! How will I teach my class? K: You hardly use Canvas at all and you never use it in the classroom, so what difference does it make? Me: I guess I'll cancel class and go hiking. K: But... Me: SEE YOU LATER, I'M TAKING THE DOG WITH ME

Inserting a paragraph break in the middle of a sentence because I like to live wild and free, and I want to see if my coauthor notices.

Coauthor: OK, so that means these elements lie in the subset A. Me: Do they tell the truth outside the subset A? C: ... Why do I even talk to you? Me: I don't know

I don't have a learning style but I am definitely a visual forgetter.

Found at the end of a proof in this manuscript I've been working on: "... we have the desi red result." No lie, for a little over a half minute, I puzzled over what I could have possibly meant by "desi red".

Concluding \begin{itemize} with \end{enumerate} like the buffoon that I am.

Integration by vibes is the best technique

Remembering a professor who, in all sincerity, advised me, a grad student, that if you don't start a journal at some point in your career, you haven't succeeded. Even at that point in my nascent career, I realized the guy was full of shit.

Me: In this problem, if you're not sure what properties of the integers you're allowed to assume, just ask me. Student: Can I assume Fermat's Last Theorem? Me: Is that going to help you in some way? S: Well, no, I just wondered if I can assume it anyway. Me: 🙄

I just learned a little bit about iatromathematics and now I feel like I should lie down for a little while. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iatroma...

@timhenke.bsky.social How's your ã? One of my closest friends is a João and it took me a lot of practice to get his name right.

Maybe my students will pay more attention if I have my class autotuned

Every time I teach integral calculus, I forget one of Wolfram Alpha's defaults: ∫1/√(1-x2)dx = arctan(x/√(1-x2)) + C instead of arcsin(x) + C Invariably someone asks why it does that, I reply I don't know, write a note to myself to find out, and then... Repeat the next time I teach the class

I just spent way too long trying come up with a joke combining "p-adic" with "Paddington Bear" and completely failed, so I decided instead to tell a self-deprecating story about how long I spent working on the joke.