“The advice from these consultants is always the same (not much of a surprise since hawking the same goods around different captive markets is an efficient way to turn a penny)…
www.ft.com/content/5032...
mathematicians writing about past mathematics
the geophysical year is often the reference point for cold war scientific internationalism
In today's AIP History Weekly Edition @janpotters.bsky.social looks at Tom Kuhn's frustrations interviewing ~100 physicists for the landmark Sources for History of Quantum Physics project. An important lesson in what we want from oral history and what it can give us.
📷Niels Bohr & Homer Dodge #HPS
"One of the recurring lessons—and this is not at all unique to mathematics—is that internationalism is always about compromises." - me, in @sciam.bsky.social
starting to worry our best mathematics is behind us
Extra wide rainbow at Granton yesterday needed 2 images blended together with jiggerypokery - was a beezer so it was worth it I think.
#jiggerypokery #Rainbow #Edinburgh
chefs kiss for those y axes
👇👇👇👇👇👇
I’ve said it before and I’ll no doubt say it again. Universities are roughly 1000 years old. They predate most operating models including capitalism and have lasted for a reason. Installing insecure, helpless managers who ape business methods results in bad businesses, not good universities.
Can we have one of these inquiries here, please? #UKHE is also leading a stupid amount of money from the public institutions to these leechy private businesses. And yes, the lack of accountability is a key part of the issue about that.
"One of the recurring lessons—and this is not at all unique to mathematics—is that internationalism is always about compromises." - me, in @sciam.bsky.social
maths history gets into the congressional record so rarely, is it too much to ask that they don't get basic facts wrong?
One of the automated tasks Canvas is promising is "rubric generation." What if I said that moving away from rubric-based assessment is a necessity to preserve your labor and freedom to teach as you wish? We have to look underneath the hood of the systems this technology is shaping.
American universities meet the kind of New Public Management slop Brits have been dealing with since the 1980s. We feel your pain.
Never not shouting that this is DOUBLE wage theft, from the staffer who should be doing the work, and from the reimbursee forced to do it, purely for the purpose of channeling often public university funds into private app developer coffers and it sucks.
the tech isn't good enough for routine administrative transcription (in my experience of others trying to use it in meetings I've been a part of) nevermind scholarly translation
My fear: the work that will need undoing after this is unfathomable, and the resources to undo it will be gone. Consider how far a fake quotation spreads before it’s caught, and how rarely a correction happens even then. The legacy of slop scholarship is going to be several orders of magnitude worse
Will the ICM ultimately be cancelled because of
A) visas
B) US aggression
C) the cost of fuel needed for travel to Philly from anywhere outside of Philly
D) some other thing between now and July
?
New from me in AMS Notices:
A Very Brief Political History of American-hosted International Congresses of Mathematicians
www.ams.org/journals/notices/202604/...
no longer will German number theorist children have to look westward to France for inspiration
Detail showing a small silver instrument formed of a series of rings. It is centred on the point where two cross over.
Happy vernal equinox!
On an armillary sphere and similar instruments, the equinoxes are the two points when the ecliptic (Sun's annual path) crosses the celestial equator.
there are so many
As it did four years ago, the international mathematics community faces a clear choice about what its highest values and aspirations mean.
docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...
heck yeah!
one of my favourite archive moments i've always wanted to write up is the surprisingly bitter fight over technical typing regs for uchicago phds, which one math prof alleged were set essentially to ensure continuous moonlighting income for typists in the dissertation office
You can read the full paper online here -> philsci-archive.pitt.edu/24208/
at the overflow-capacity seminar presentation of the season with Prof Dame Ursula Martin CDBFRSEEng @umartin.bsky.social , which has started with the traditional 15 minutes of nobody in a room full of computer scientists being able to get the slides to display on the big screen
Absolutely serious when I say the history of projecting is highly relevant to this moment in both its ludicrous/scammy and its epically/epochally destructive aspects
mathematicians you should sign this; it is morally correct
