Cherry flowers in front of the building.

Cherry flowers on a sunny day, with blue sky in the background.

Cherry flower season still going.

I don’t know her reasons for apologizing, but I do know that sometimes people’s apologies to colleagues are less about being right or wrong and more about knowing their colleague’s behaviors, how they respond to slights or perceptions of slights, and how those responses can impact others.

‘Once in a Century’ Proof Settles Math’s Kakeya Conjecture | Quanta Magazine The deceptively simple Kakeya conjecture has bedeviled mathematicians for 50 years. A new proof of the conjecture in three dimensions illuminates a whole crop of related problems.

In case you have not followed this, the female mathematician Hong Wang is the leading candidate for a Fields Medal this year. www.quantamagazine.org/once-in-a-ce...

MOOCs were going to replace universities back when? 10 years ago? 15?

Part 2.

bsky.app/profile/73sn...

Bluesky synchronicity part 1.

Ipod shuffle, lying on a tablecloths

I still have and use mine!

(And my new Fiio music player is a worthy successor.)

CD player: press button, listen to music

Streaming device: create account, provide cc info, set up 2fa, connect devices, update app, update os, decline 15 special offers, listen to ads, oops your app has crashed

A) we don't own anything now
B) the stuff we don't own doesn't work and can be taken away at a moments notice

OpenAI: We’re burning money like the Joker. A miracle needs to happen for us to turn a profit

Microsoft: Please please use our AI systems, we’re teetering on the edge here

Anthropic: I wonder what’ll kill us first: lawsuits, regulations or model collapse

Media and universities: AI is here to stay

Lol, we actually have the sun coming through right now 😂 go figure.

A dinner plate with the food described in the post.

Fiddleheads, baby broccoli, tofu, and calamari ink pasta. Just to make my feed less gloomy.

“We just can’t trust consumer sentiment. Everyone is mad for no reason.” Meanwhile -

Canadian Travel Boycott Of U.S. Continues—14 Straight Months Of Declines—Amid Trump Slump Now 14 months in, Canada’s rejection of the U.S. is the most successful tourism boycott in memory.

"Canadian visits to the US are down 35%...dealing a massive, sustained economic blow to the US economy that shows no sign of reversing in 2026"

“In my 37 years in the travel industry, I have never seen anything like what the Canadians have pulled off"

www.forbes.com/sites/suzann...

The same old story every. damn. time.

1) Ed-tech often attracts dedicated and enthusiastic teachers. That, and not ed-tech, is what makes them successful.

2) Motivated and well-supported students usually do well anyway.

3) Everyone is shocked that this does not scale. Shocked!

What I like best about the Artemis II photos is that it was taken by actual humans. An actual person had to frame it and manually adjust settings. It's their own artistic rendition of what they thought looked best at the time, something no probe, rover or unmanned spacecraft can take. it's art

Beautiful old cherry tree in bloom, with a kid sitting between its branches.

Just found my favourite photo of that tree. I will miss it.

They Cut Down ‘Grandpapa’ | The Tyee The mysterious vanishing of one of Vancouver’s most loved cherries posed a deeper question. What do we owe to our big, old trees?

“This is the story of one much-loved tree in Vancouver — important to me and, it turns out, a lot of other people. It’s a story about how we lose big trees, not only here but around the world, and what’s lost when we do.”

J.B. MacKinnon writes. 🌳🌸

This is awful.

Absolutely heartbreaking. So many mathematicians I know studied there, men AND women.

Maryam Mirzakhani studied there.

If this isn't enough to cancel/relocate from the US the International Congress of Mathematicians #ICM2026, nothing will be.

The academic center is one of the most elite hubs of scientific development in the Middle East. Destroying universities and schools is not justifiable. Such attacks are violations of a nation’s human capital, commitment to development, and the fundamental principles of international law. 2/2

American and Israeli missiles hit Sharif University in Tehran tonight. Often called #Iran’s MIT, the institution has been home to some of the country’s best and brightest minds in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics since 1966. 1/2

Cherry blossoms, with blue sky in the background.

Wishing us peace.

The process of getting a MAL face has to be both expensive and painful, I would think? And all that just to get discarded at the earliest convenience.

Written in 1937

Trying to write up some math that's been mostly just living in my head for several months now. Wish me luck.

What are you talking about? There's nothing wrong with AI fact-checking!

This is so, so well-articulated.

Editing a badly written student essay, but without the satisfaction of teaching an actual human student.