Taylor Smith

Image with purple text in a white box on yellow background Text: Townhall: Protecting Post Secondary Education in Nova Scotia A Conversation about Provincially Mandated Program Reviews and Bill 12

Why does the Nova Scotia government want to cost universities hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of dollars? Why have they spent almost half a million dollars on an American consulting firm?

Find out more tonight! Online town hall (zoom link on linked page below)

cocogov.org/blog/townhall/

YouTube video by Victor Le Masne - Topic Parade

Likewise, the composer for the 2024 Olympics in Paris set a high bar for whoever's tasked with the music for the 2030 Olympics in the French Alps. Combining orchestra with French house was just a stroke of brilliance.

YouTube video by Milano Cortina 2026 - Topic Fantasia Italiana

Composers for the Olympics always seem to understand the assignment. This piece managed to bring together multiple Italian musical themes from across centuries, and the finale starting at 10:20 was a fantastic (pardon the pun) backdrop for each of the medal ceremonies.

Proud of Team Canada and proud to be Canadian 🇨🇦

Canadian Tire store in Ottawa. giant red triangles everywhere

in Canada we have a store called "Canadian Tire" and you're probably thinking "a store named after a tire definitely has a circle for a logo" but no, you're wrong. they chose a colossal red triangle

An illustration of my brand-new (digital) IEEE senior membership card, with appropriate personal details censored, of course.

Some exciting professional news this week: the IEEE has awarded me a senior status to go along with the growing number of gray hairs on my head.

Valentine’s Day: tiresome, expected to spend money to show one’s love, exclusive of single people
Flag Day: exciting, one can look at the flag for free, inclusive of everyone who appreciates waving fabric

Title: A Valentine’s Day experiment In an effort to test the efficacy of cupids arrows of desire. A placebo group is shot with regular arrows. Their injuries range from moderate to sever. Unexpectedly, romances struck up in hospital and lawyers’ waiting rooms create a "romance ratio" similar to that of magic arrows. However, once the cost of compensation claims is factored in, it is decided to discontinue.

A Valentine’s Day cartoon for @newscientist.com

(This is my extremely unsubtle way of hinting that I'm very receptive to collaborating with my complexity theory colleagues. I won't try to corrupt you too much by going on about the beauty of automata theory.)

Looking through the list of accepted papers for STOC 2026, I see a lot of impressive work, but also a huge emphasis on algorithms+complexity. It'd be nice to publish in one of these big theory conferences, but I don't imagine Eurotheory like automata+languages is what they're targeting anymore.

I heard that, in the past, evaluation groups met in-person in Ottawa. It's kind of a shame things have shifted online - I think we as a society ought to agree to move past MS Teams once and for all.

It's my first day of participating in NSERC Discovery Grant deliberation meetings, and I'm surviving so far! But check in with me again by the end of the week and we'll see if my answer stays the same.

Isaac Bashevis Singer being interviewed about the Super Bowl

In 1979, the “New York Times” asked Isaac Bashevis Singer if he planned to watch the Super Bowl.

Watching competitors at this level is always impressive. But seeing people say "he beat the guy without needing any high-tech shooting equipment!" is hilarious when said "high-tech shooting equipment" is two pieces of plastic.

Image of the Yeti in the skiing Windows game SkiFree eating the player

Breaking: Tragedy at the Winter Olympics

New SIGACT award expository work, created in memory of Luca Trevisan: "intended to promote and recognize high-impact work expositing ideas and results from the Theory of Computation."

A wonderful initiative—consider nominating people!

⏰ Nomination deadline: April 10
sigact.org/prizes/trevi...

When I was in London last summer, I was walking back to my hotel after dinner and had to wait at an intersection for the signal to change. As I waited, a fellow on a rental bicycle stopped right in front of me.

In my post-dinner satiety, it took me a beat to realize that fellow was Rami Malek.

I hope one day I hit a point in my career where I can arrange a month-long speaking tour. Have a great trip!

Judicative knowingness (is a skill one needs to write these sentences!)

Here's a fun little afternoon distraction: what is the smallest value of n, 1 ≤ n ≤ 26, for which there does not exist an English word of length n starting with the nth letter of the English alphabet?

Memorial University of Newfoundland (MUN) has announced a restructuring of its executive leadership team and the intention to sell multiple properties, as the university tries to address a shortfall of approximately $25 million. The changes are just two of several that are expected in the year ahead, as the university also contends with an upcoming tuition-fee freeze. In late January, MUN announced it will begin selling multiple properties in St. John’s that are “not closely aligned with its academic mission,” as well as its Harlow Campus in the United Kingdom. The announcement came just two weeks after the university announced executive restructuring, which saw it reduce the number of vice-presidents from seven to three.

PSA: it is in fact possible for universities to address financial challenges by slashing (incredibly expensive and largely useless) admin positions.

Memorial University just downsized VPs from 7 to 3.

Yes we can!

universityaffairs.ca/news/memoria...

Thomas Watson has a new computational complexity textbook about to be published by Cambridge University Press. There's a free version online for personal use.

complexityincs.com

Shubenacadie Sam comes through!

Hey, if the groundhog gets a snow day, I do too. I don’t make the rules.

mother just referred to a pop star named 'taylor smith'

A screenshot of three social media posts in a thread. The first post reads "If your surname is the name of a profession, you probably shouldn't give your son a first name that's the name of a different profession, it's confusing". The second post reads "Taylor Smith. Hunter Baker". The third post reads "I read Taylor Smith and I thought about Taylor Swift but completely forgot that Smith wasn't her last name. So for 30 seconds in my head Taylor Smith was a real celebrity."

I had someone share with me some posts from a different website. I was just sitting here minding my own business, what'd I do to be attacked like this?

A Magic: The Gathering card from the forthcoming "Secrets of Strixhaven" set. The card is titled "Mathemagics". At a cost of 2B2X mana, the "target player draws 2^X cards".

Excited to soon be able to add to my (currently very small) collection of math-related Magic cards that I put on my office door.

Ok a raise please for the sub editor who chose the photo

amen -> name anger -> range anon -> nano cone -> econ earn -> near earth -> heart eighth -> height hint -> thin idea -> aide leaf -> flea leap -> plea lump -> plum open -> nope ought -> tough outer -> route over -> rove reef -> free ring -> grin riot -> trio there -> ether

Was editing and noticed that if you rotate-left "those" you get "ethos". Was curious how many of these are in English. Big dicts have a lot of junk, and most endings in "s" are for plurals. Here's a good list of rotwords.

The logo of the DCFS 2026 conference.

Please submit your research papers and join us at the 27th International Conference on Descriptional Complexity of Formal Systems (DCFS 2026), to be held in Kingston, Canada from August 9 to 11, 2026!
Details: research.cs.queensu.ca/dcfs2026/
#tcssky #mathsky