This evening’s viewing with the children: Marcel the Shell with Shoes On. A delightful, hilarious, and highly creative stop motion mockumentary. www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/epis...

Much of the Stranger Things final season saw me trying to remember what the hell happened in the previous episode. Too many people splitting into different groups, in different worlds, simultaneously trying different plans against an assortment of dangers. But, fair play, the finale was terrific.

The @newscientist.com’s Alison Flood looks ahead to science books coming out in 2026 and spots one I’m also feeling excited about.

The audiobooks I have listened to this year, turning my commute and daily chores into opportunities for enlightenment and adventure. Thank you for the good times @aptshadow.bsky.social @edyong209.bsky.social @annleckie.com @gregegansf.bsky.social @davidmcwecon.bsky.social

Many congratulations to @bobbyseagull.bsky.social MBE!

Tim Paulden's thexmaspuzzles.com (FKA the Royal Statistical Society Christmas Quiz, now in association with Chalkdust magazine) are keeping the family quiet this festive period.

Actual mathematician quotes: "It was my lot to plant the harpoon of algebraic topology into the body of the whale of algebraic geometry" - Solomon Lefschetz "It was my fate to implant the electrode of arithmetic geometry in the pleasure center of algebraic topology." - Jack Morava

Pleased that England managed to claw one back. Astonishing to think this is the first time that Joe Root (aged 34 with 13000 test runs) has ever won a test match in Australia. www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricke...

Carol of the Bells in # Kyiv subway. Voices of the Embassies of Germany, France, and the United Kingdom came together to perform Shchedryk in the Kyiv metro as a sign of solidarity with Ukraine. Thankful to everyone who stands with us!

Pleased with my Christmas decoration purchase.

Closing out my year with a journal editor shocker 🧵 Checking new manuscripts today I reviewed a paper attributing 2 papers to me I did not write. A daft thing for an author to do of course. But intrigued I web searched up one of the titles and that's when it got real weird...

A terrific night at Northern Ballet's Nutcracker last night, full of magic and beauty. It's packed with terrific tunes, alongside some truly spectacular dance sequences. Though obviously the highlight was my daughter dazzling in the crucial role of second smallest member of the mouse battalion.

Things I have been waiting for for a long time: England to win the Ashes away & Leeds to get trams. Both prospects as distant as they ever were. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

A line from Flanders and Swann pops into my head: “They argue with umpires, they cheer when they’ve won, and they practice beforehand which ruins the fun.”

The European Mathematical Society (EMS) connects mathematicians across Europe and beyond. Join to support: 🤝 Cooperation between mathematicians 🧑‍🏫 Colleagues in difficult circumstances 📣 A stronger voice for mathematics euromathsoc.org/individual-m... #Mathematics #EMS

A friend just gave me "The Mathematicians' Library" - early xmas gift. It's a beautiful looking tour of great books of mathematics from history. Lovely reproductions. Can't wait to properly read it. amzn.to/4iICuo5

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...

This morning I asked my cricket-crazy sons whether they wanted an update on the Ashes. They said no. Very wise.

“Those two are dating right? No, they used to be but now… no wait actually they’re brother and sister aren’t they. Hang on Winona Ryder is that guy’s mother?” Me watching the new season of Stranger Things and realising I have no memory of the relationships between the characters.

🏅 The 2025 Fermat Prize goes to Vesselin Dimitrov and Vlad Vicol for major advances in number theory, Diophantine geometry, and the analysis of fluid mechanics and turbulence. 🔗 euromathsoc.org/news/2025-fe... #FermatPrize #Mathematics #NumberTheory #FluidMechanics

Haha amazing. I personally love the idea that we can’t actually tell which of i or -i we meant when we named one of them, that they are forever indistinguishable like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. To me, that’s deliciously silly. Also this is the very reason why complex conjugation is even a thing.

I know this one is maybe a bit "ooh, look at me, I'm so clever", but -i really bothers me. The fact that we define one number to be the square root of -1, and then define another number to be the negative of it, despite it having exactly the same properties, that just niggles the hell out of me.

After a talk to sixth formers just now, I invited questions, and someone asked “What’s your least favourite number?” What would you have said? I answered 14 as being the first which didn’t strike me at that moment as being especially interesting, but felt it was a fairly feeble answer.

To celebrate the 400th episode of the excellent Better Known podcast, the host Ivan Wise asked me come on the show and interview him about it. betterknown.co.uk/2025/11/23/4...

This is good - I am persuaded. At least in principle, can’t promise I’ll actually stop writing it the way I have for decades.

From @ericidle.bsky.social & Neil Innes' brilliant & criminally overlooked/unavailable RUTLAND WEEKEND TELEVISION, here's a truncated glimpse of George Harrison's Christmas 1975 guest appearance runner, where he didn't want to perform a song - He really just wanted to play a pirate...

Remembering my old maths tutor Peter Neumann. He was a real eccentric genius. Loved maths. Used to write his name as πeter and insist that the college records use πN as his initials. He did his undergrad degree at Queen's College Oxford and stayed there the rest of his life. #MathSky

Four may not be a particularly impressive score on Wordle, but it's certainly my fastest ever four. Wordle 1,610 4/6 ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛🟩⬛⬛ 🟩🟩⬛🟩🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Though not universally true, in the vast majority of cases, causing offense in those listening in good faith isn't the inevitable cost of being a brave truthteller but the casual cruelty of a lazy or unempathic communicator. There were ways to say the same thing without being an asshole, mate.

🗣️ EMS Magazine No. 137 (Sept 2025) is out! 📖 Abel Interview 2025 (Masaki Kashiwara), modelling light in the eye, art & maths, mental health in mathematics, and more. Open Access: euromathsoc.org/magazine/iss...

Read this. Please.

Thoroughly enjoyable family night out to see Matilda the Musical at the Alhambra in Bradford. Joyous performances by all the young members of the cast and a show-stealing turn by Richard Hurst as a malign & menacing Miss Trunchbull. www.rsc.org.uk/news/cast-ma...

AI sitcom accidentally a Lynchian fever dream. The sort of general malaise that only the genius possess and insane lament.

Pour one out for @wikipedia.org in my latest for @mcsweeneys.net

Saw a partially assembled leg being transported thru Shetland a couple of years back. You don’t appreciate how big they are until you are up close and personal.

We have been looking around the royal yacht HMS Britannia in Edinburgh but my sons were completely distracted by what they thought were parts of a space-rocket being transported by cargo ship. I thought it was unlikely but didn’t have any brighter ideas - any suggestions?

Pub quiz: Where is the only place in the world which has Japanese as a legally official language? Answer in next message…

Enjoyed my chat with this chap I met at the Art of the Brick in Leeds.

Python 3.14 is released today. Happy πthon Day everyone!

One Cut of the Dead (or カメラを止めるな - “don’t stop the camera”) - I haven’t had so much fun watching a film for a long time. Clever, hilarious, and brilliant. Love the fact that it was made for $25,000 and grossed $30 million. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Cut...

Useful reminder from Peter Kellner on the problems we refuse to acknowledge are getting better, and the politics of hopelessness that this breeds open.substack.com/pub/kellnerp...

The @auroraorchestra.bsky.social often play from memory, without sheet music. That’s why they’re widely regarded as the Napalm Death of classical music.

Beaded Archimedean Solids!!! I had lots of fun over the past two weeks making these for the pigeonholes at the TMiP conference. [Each n-regular graph has an n-colouring and there's a pair of colours on each one which form a Hamiltonian cycle.] #TMiP25 #MathsArt #MathArt #Polyhedra

If you haven’t seen it, there’s a very nice new Numberphile video in which @richardelwes explains subcubic graph numbers – heavily featuring the work of my friend and sometime collaborator Adam P Goucher. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-eXjTH6Mq4

More of me on Numberphile! This time talking about some seriously enormous numbers: the mighty subcubic graph numbers. www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-eX...

George W Bush, Ronald Reagan, Dwight Eisenhower and FDR were all cheerleaders, bafflingly. www.flocheer.com/articles/506...

Well that's a compliment I am delighted to take: "Geometry at this level, and presented this well, is like getting a school lunch made by Heston Blumenthal." www.youtube.com/live/BhSlqIe...

Me on Numberphile talking about some of my favourite shapes! youtu.be/BhSlqIe1CRQ?...

Farewell to the great Tom Lehrer - mathematician by day, and by night a songwriter with a magnificently dark sense of humour. youtu.be/I9C2v1oLXQo?...

Lucy Bronze on how she decided to blast her penalty down the middle (and score). “Statistically it’s risky for the goal keeper to stand still… so yeah, I love maths”.