Matt Mack

Mewgenics moment: Fighting Dybbuk and he possesses my cat that had a Sniper Rifle, meaning the next two turns, two of my remaining three cats got K.O'd immediately :(

I didn't even get a chance to use it on the boss himself :(

The sexual assault case was great, too. I'm most likely never ever going to be in that kind of scenario so I really appreciated seeing what the experience looks like and how difficult it is for all involved parties.
2/2

Really appreciating Deaf representation on The Pitt. Even I didn't know that Deaf people are not necessarily fluent in communicating English, but it makes sense when one frames sign language as their first language, and English as their second language.
1/2

Been playing Mewgenics the last couple of days. Very delightfully typically Edmund McMillen-esque, and I always enjoy turn-based tactical strategy. I can't wait for the game to get more difficult/deep, though; usual first-world experienced-tactical-strategy-player problem.

A small part of my soul was healed last night through finding a Zoom meetup group for hard-of-hearing "young" adults (i.e. not senior citizens, basically) and being able to talk about specific struggles 😊

Oh I have a furnace full of it deep in my psyche, wanna see? 🙃

New blog post! I write about various hard-of-hearing accommodations I've had at various conferences, their ups/downs, and things you can do to help hard-of-hearing people at conferences.

matthras.com/2026/02...

....did you keep a log of that somewhere or is this one of those things you have an oddly specific good memory for? 😝

Discord recently got bought over and enshittifying features are creeping in.

If you need a read for a dive into alternatives: taggart-tech.com/discord-alte...

It's actually crazy how pivotal my supervisors are for keeping me on track and not letting my brain run away in various directions.

Feeling very grateful today 😊🫡

Alright, we need something to make us laugh. Tell me about a really boneheaded decision you made once. I'll start with the time I broke my wrist because someone dared me to jump off a table, up to a doorframe about 10' in the air (old building, large hall), and do a pull-up on it.

I'm not sure how you guessed the topic of my next blog post but I did think of writing such a section 😅

It's at the bottom, here's a peek (before I write a shorter one for LinkedIn): matthras.com/2026/02/16/f...

I'd arrived at the same conclusions but it's great to hear it from someone else. Thanks for live-posting 🫡

I need this stupid cold to go away so that I have additional energy to do more than the bare minimum. Lord knows I'm itching to make/bake stuff for Chinese/Lunar New Year to spoil my work colleagues with, grrrr 🙄

Me when I have 30-45 minutes between conference talks: *easily bashes out a full first draft of unrelated stuff I wanted to write about*

Me when I have to sit down and write it out properly with images and all: WHY IS MY BRAIN FINDING THIS SO HARD 😭

(New blog post incoming!)

I'm grateful to past me for doing some food prep before I left on a week-long conference now that I'm back and starting to feel signs of a cold coming on asdfl;kasjdfkl;aj

Guys, guys, the energy of (tired) mathematicians coming together to solve a newspaper crossword + sudoku in a busy airport whilst waiting for their flight. That's such a new and different feeling for me that I'll relish 😁

Every time I say this to others when explaining my hearing loss, they all twitch at the word "impaired", so I've concluded that a lot of people (unconsciously) attach negative connotations to the word that gets perpetuated through using the word.

too many kids today have never destroyed the family PC with sketchy downloads

you must learn to fear Computer before you can properly wield Computer

One of my favourite things in the world is when people care deeply about something and just OWN it and embrace their weird self without any apology

Do I have any feelings about sticky toffee puddings at all? No

Have I watched this several times? Yes, yes I have

Hmm, I've personally abandoned that question and deliberately schedule time for emotional recovery if emotional duress happens.

What's in my control is limiting how much I expose myself to such events, but this was tricky for me to figure out.

Blue-green socks with dice on them are on display next to a pair of sports shoes, all underneath a round table with a laptop showing presentation slides.

Giving a talk today. Are these sufficient to be called lucky socks? Guess we'll find out! 🙃

There is definitely a minority that dislike captions because to them it's distracting, and it does make me wonder of their lack of consciousness in directing their attention.

There is definitely a minority that dislike captions because to them it's distracting, and it does make me wonder of their lack of consciousness in directing their attention.

My brain derailed: Voice-to-text also works, but requires coordination of presenters to put all slides on the lecture room's computer. Here everyone plugs their laptop into the system to present, so that doesn't work.

My ideal scenario is having a live captioner (stenocaptioner) but hiring one is like $200+ an hour at the minimum and we're not the richest people at math conferences 😛

"more text in slides" has a tricky nuance: have just enough for someone to get the gist, but not so much that you're forcing the audience to read extensively instead of listening to you at the same time

My current solution that minimises money and effort for everyone is encouraging usage of lectern (speaker) + handheld microphones (audience questions), which then makes it loud enough for my phone+Google Live Transcribe to pick up. Inaccuracies can be corrected with slides+context

Current first-world hard-of-hearing problem: Listening to conference talks means less mental energy for socialising with people 😢

/currently hiding out in an unused room during a plenary talk to recharge my socialising batteries

Currently at a Early Career Workshop and both presenters aren't using microphones arrrrrrrrgh. One refused it because she didn't want her hand movements to be restricted. Sigh.

(I'm hard-of-hearing, for those who don't know)