ramblings

I've cycled over it on a couple of Five Boro Bike Tours, it was not the most fun part of that ride

students doing exercises and discussing in small groups under supervision is valuable.

but extracting ideas from text is a skill, and if the students haven’t prepared successfully you wind up needing to give a lecture anyway, except it’s impromptu

a bunch of colleagues who’ve tried flipped classrooms say their students asked to go back to lectures midway through

Jeffrey Epstein, Gerald Chan Coordinated on Proposed Tsinghua University Campus in Boston | News | The Harvard Crimson Prominent Harvard alumnus and megadonor Gerald L. Chan coordinated with child sex offender Jeffrey E. Epstein in late 2016 to explore establishing a Boston-area extension of Tsinghua University, accor...

Math people, note the second paragraph.

www.thecrimson.com/article/2026...

Oh my god what if Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart go head to head with Waldorf and Statler

i don't think transgender people are an example of oncoming transhumanism & techbro debauchery and anyone saying as much does not have our best interests in mind. changing ur sex is no more a perversion of the natural order than eyeglasses

transgenderism *is* transhumanism

eyeglasses *are* a perversion of the natural order

appeal to nature fallacies are dumb, stop letting "tech bros" negatively polarize you against genuinely good and cool things

welcome back!

the founder of mumsnet was married to a guardian editor, which is a big piece of it

"Dear Jeffrey Epstein, I really enjoyed going to your island with Michael Vassar, ex-President of MIRI, who has definitely been to the island.

Just in case you forgot, Michael Vassar has definitely visited your island before.

XOXO, thank you for everything"

I heard Gross say that mathematicians should take money from anyone who would give it to us, and uh, I guess he meant it

so Yau and Gross were asking Epstein for money for the Harvard math department, huh

I'm hearing from multiple people that students who submitted ecology GRFP proposals are having those proposals rejected without review, despite ecology being listed as an eligible field. If this is a programmatic change, this is devastating. Ecology is the study of Earth's life support systems.

(this is not saying that obsessive weightlifting is necessary, just that a certain amount of bulk and strength makes things much easier, handguns don't work like Star Wars blasters)

part of marksmanship is controlling the gun as it fires, which means dealing with recoil, yes. and larger caliber handguns take more size/strength to manage. I've gone shooting once, and I'm small enough that I found a 9mm handgun extremely difficult to shoot effectively, for example

sliwa got to him, man

This is amazing for several reasons, including the fact he genuinely thinks everything about NYC snow removal is fascinating and wants you to understand why it's fascinating too, to positioning the obligation to shovel your sidewalks as part of the collective work.

IF THIS IS YOUR FIRST WINTER STORM, REMEMBER FOUR TIPS: 1. FILL UP YOUR TUB AND/OR POTS WITH WATER FOR YOUR TOILET. 2. DO NOT USE PROPANE HEATERS INDOORS. THE FUMES KILL. 3. EVERYONE STAYING IN ONE ROOM CONSOLIDATES WARMTH. 4. THE NORWEGIAN CAMP DIDN'T DESTROY ITSELF. ONE OF YOU IS THE THING.

Some safety tips for the big storm! Be safe, everybody.

snowy street, looking uphill

snowy street, looking downhill

Alex Pretti from his early days working at the VA

Alex from our time working together, while he was in nursing school. Later, he moved to ICU, working as a nurse to support critically ill Veterans. He had such a great attitude. We’d chat between patients about trying to get in a mountain bike ride together. Will never happen now

they’re abducting our neighbors and putting them in concentration camps and they’ll empty a whole goddamn magazine into you while you’re lying on the ground if you don’t cheer them on while they’re fucking doing it.

Here’s a cartoon for no one

marketing email from Greyhound with subject line "Want a weekend adventure to brag about?"

NO

The Beltway is like the warp from WH40K where you get extra speed at the cost of your sanity

sorry my mentions are a wreck now—will be sending photos and videos to the company tomorrow and will update if I learn anything about how this happened or what they did about it

but uh, thanks for tuning in for this episode of “musicology duck gets briefly kidnapped”

If you’re not following @musicologyduck.bsky.social you’re missing the wildest live thread I’ve seen in ages

NSF building on Eisenhower Av. HUD now owns.

Destroying the NSF mural in the foyer. Of the Eisenhower building.

The National Science Foundation sign on our Eisenhower Av building is now gone.

The NSF mural in the foyer is removed and torn off in sheets.

We were supposed to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the agency in May 2025. That never happened.

2 pieces of cherry scrap wood, joined with a cross-lap joint with mitered shoulders

practice joint cutting #woodworking

www.math.harvard.edu/in-memory-of...

Renfrew Christie Dies at 76; Sabotaged Racist Regime’s Nuclear Program

Holy hell, what an obituary

I overlapped with her in college, but I remained blissfully unaware