some data on the shrinkage

Omaha Is Home to a Massive Superfund Site. Most Kids Living There Aren’t Tested for Lead. For more than a century, a smelter and other factories spewed 400 million pounds of lead dust across the city’s east side. Faced with similar concerns, 13 states passed laws requiring all kids to get ...

Many states have passed laws requiring universal lead screening — but not Nebraska.

So in Omaha, where factories deposited 400 million pounds of the toxic metal, most kids haven’t been tested.

Our REU renewal was funded!

We found out today so we are accepting applications now! Like right now!

Application review is going to happen swiftly as we know we’re are late in the typical cycle.

pa.msu.edu/undergraduat...

#reu #physics #astronomy #research

They counted on a rural dialysis unit to keep them alive. Then it closed A hospital in Nebraska shut down the only dialysis unit for miles, upending lives. That's despite a new federal program that gave the state more than $200 million to improve rural health care access.

A hospital in Nebraska shut down the only dialysis unit for miles, upending lives. That's despite a new federal program that gave the state more than $200 million to improve rural health care access. n.pr/3O7XtpM

Merici Vinton led the team who created Direct File: a free, easy-to-use service that let you file your taxes without being upsold or having your data sent to Facebook. So who wanted it gone? full episode in the profile.

A post by Jessica Taylor of Cook Political Report gives 4 changes in ratings: NCSen Toss Up -> Lean D GASen Toss Up -> Lean D OHSen Lean R -> Toss Up NESen Solid R -> Likely R

"anyone can have fun with mathematics and rationality and it’s all within reach regardless of age or credentials."

How can you cut this brownie into two identically shaped pieces with a single (not necessarily straight) cut?

aperiodical.com/2012/10/who-...?

I was actually quite wrong about this. Trump managed to choose humiliation *AND* escalation.

Ok I'm bored and want to procrastinate work so let's do a thread instead. Wanna hear a story?

Alright then, story it is. So gather around, children, because now we're going to talk about the most important science book you've probably never heard of.

Ready? Off we go, then.

So this happened
www.smbc-comics.com/comic/sphere...
#smbc #comics #math

Dependency

As a Nebraskan, I feel obliged to link to this cartoon:

xkcd.com/2347/

Some folks just make a killing in Polymarket betting on a cease fire. polymarket.com/event/us-x-i...

The seal is broken, the signal's dead. The cost is paid in blood and bread. Let the city’s concrete burn, As ancient evils now return. Old hungers wake in steel and stone, The jar is cracked, the seeds are sown. Deep within a hollow room, Hope is a candle in the gloom.

#ও☉❢☉✑
#poetry
#writing
#micropoetry
#blueskywriters
#writingcommunity

"If traders on the New York Stock Exchange don’t take the President’s threats seriously, then why should the leaders of the Revolutionary Guard?"

Marjorie Taylor Greene weighs in:

Is Math Art? Werner Herzog Says Yes | Artnet News Werner Herzog kicked off Brooklyn Public Library's Pi Day celebrations with a keynote titled “Mathematics and the Sublime.”

#mathart amazing from Werner Herzog news.artnet.com/art-world/we...

Satellite image of a large area that was burned in the western Nebraska Sandhills. Much of the burned area has the look of bare sand, although on the ground you would probably see that the burned remnants of bunches of grass and shrubs are fairly densely distributed. The Lake McConaughey reservoir is visible in the southeast corner.

Cloud-free view of the whole area burned by the Morrill Fire in Nebraska, plus smaller adjacent fires to the northeast. Sentinel 2 image from yesterday. The marker is at Crescent Lake and southeast of there, Blue Creek. For scale, most of the irrigated circles are 0.5 mile (0.8 km) in diameter.

Mastodon skull, with pointy teeth visible. Morrill Hall, Lincoln Nebraska

Happy #FossilFriday everyone! Throwback to one of my favorite mastodon fossils at Morrill Hall. Look at those choppers! 🦣✨

Tolkien had to make major changes to the timeline of LOTR to have the climax on March 25.

Tapping the sign

Operation Epic Fubar ?

Probability Tree Diagrams Calculating probabilities can be hard, sometimes we add them, sometimes we multiply them, and often it is hard to figure out what to do ...

… to show how the sequence of choices works. www.mathsisfun.com/data/probabi...

(Disclaimer: i am not a school teacher and you know better how your students think)

I think I would ask students about how they would pick a snack, emphasizing the two choices, jar then item. An example with very different numbers of items in the jars, as someone else mentioned, would show the difference in the two ways of picking an item. You could draw probability trees …

It’s a nice question, as it shows the importance of context. Are you first picking a jar and then picking an item from that jar? If so, the first answer seems right. If you weight by items in each jar, so picking the first jar 18/(17+18) times, then the second answer is right. 1st more natural to me

Here is a result for math & stats from 2022, but there may be more recent data?

nces.ed.gov/programs/dig...

Bryna Kra headshot. AMS Retiring Presidential Address, "A Mathematician's Challenge." JMM logo.

Watch Invited Addresses from #JMM2026

Today's video is the AMS Retiring Presidential Address by Bryna Kra, Northwestern University,
titled "A Mathematician's Challenge."

Watch: https://youtu.be/vvqHebohtiY

Pet peeve: un-self-aware academic junket culture. We spend $2000 to attend conferences where 75% of speakers rail against American inequality, while we splurge on $75 dinners, stay in $300/night hotel rooms, and take a $50 uber ride to avoid a 3-stop subway ride that would cost $2.50.

It’s always worth remembering that Weierstrass was 70 when he proved the Weierstrass Approximation Theorem.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone%E...