Dan Piponi

A reminder to the news media: “conflicting accounts” is what you say BEFORE the incontrovertible video evidence appears. After that, your job is to ask why one side is lying, not to repeat the lie and pretend no one knows the truth.

Photo of a guy standing in Times Square holding a sign that says “Zohran is not my mayor” His tweet is “ I flew 10,000 miles to New York City to say one thing: “Zohran Kwame Mamdani is not my mayor.”

Twitter undefeated in the brain worms arena

I wonder if there is a direct line of descent from Kriegspiel to modern eurogames. Maybe not.

I was in Cambridge overnight for the 40 year reunion of our old D&D group. Very tightly scheduled or I would have contacted you :( Next time! I'm also a bit confused about whether you can see this reply as I was notified of it via mastodon and can't find it on bluesky if I go there directly myself.

Density plot of eigenvalues from 1 million 10×10 tridiagonal matrices w/ entries randomly chosen from {0, ±1, ±i, ±10, ±10i, ±20, ±20i}. viewing window is [-48-48i, 48+48i]. The color represents eigenvalue density.
#Python #MathArt #SciArt #CreativeCoding #Mathematics

On your phone while grabbing a cart with the other hand? Algorithms are easy. It's the preparatory data munging I hate.

Tip of the day is the start of a question you can ask chatbots:

"Here's my shopping list. Can you regroup it so items that are close together in Trader Joe's end up in the same groups..."

(Don't forget to check the list 'cos it might add chocolate just because it's learnt people like that...)

Defence plan will ensure UK is ready for war, minister says The Army needs to become "10 times more lethal" to face a "new era of threats", defence secretary says.

By strapping a pair of hair dryers to a vacuum cleaner the UK has found it can save £130,000,000 per year on equipment.

www.bbc.com/news/article...

Someone spent their £1.99 well.

Eigenvalues for 15 million random 10×10 tridiagonal matrices w/ entries sampled from the discrete set {0, ±1, ±i, ±20, ±20i}. The image shows the density of eigenvalues in the complex plane, with brighter regions indicating higher concentration.
#Python #MathArt #SciArt #CreativeCoding #Mathematics

The now viral, incorrect meme that LLMs are just next token predictors is causing so much confusion

I do consider it. A friend has family in the oil business and said that when they dealt with George W Bush before he was president he seemed like a person of normal intelligence. But it seems like such a cynical thing to do. Do people behave like this? Do they hate their electorate this much?

The fact that people like this exist is an insult to anyone anywhere who's ever bothered to learn anything. She has a degree from the University of South Dakota. I can't imagine what kind of institution this is that can produce such ignorance and stupidity.

My daughter just sent me this meme about induction stoves and proof by induction. My work is done.

It’s still hard for me to believe that after so many years of deranged posts like this, we’ve still never had a serious national conversation about this man’s mental health.

Exploring the roots of 177,147 polynomials with coefficients in {-1, 0, 1}
Each dot represents a root of a degree-10 polynomial, w/ brightness revealing its frequency across all polynomials constrained to [-1.6, 1.6] × [-1.6, 1.6].
#p5js #MathArt #VisualMath #SciArt #CreativeCoding #Mathematics

I'd pick machines I don't really know as a learning experience: Apple Lisa. Camputers Lynx. Jupiter Ace. Sinclair QL.

n-category theorists can think in ways that we mortal mathematicians cannot. 😔

I'll have whichever one has a BASIC with an inline assembler thank you very much.

I still remember the many ads I saw back then emphasizing that Snowball had 7000 locations which honestly didn't seem like a good feature.

Photographed from the driveway yesterday. Cute faces, both of them.

Trump film tariffs: What next for Hollywood and beyond? As Trump turns his attention to what he calls the "dying" US film industry, his solution has provoked strong reactions.

Did you know that there is a shortage of American movies and so now we have to tax foreign movies to ensure American movies get made? Or Republicans are the stupidest people who have ever stumbled across the face of the Earth. One of the two anyway.

www.bbc.com/news/article...

Trump orders reopening of notorious Alcatraz prison President Trump says the famous island prison off San Francisco is to be reopened to house "ruthless and violent" offenders.

The country that locks up more people than anywhere else in the world (because the US loves freedom apparently) can't find enough space to lock people up so it's having to commandeer tourist attractions.

www.bbc.com/news/article...

Each point represents one eigenvalue from the spectrum of a random 5×5 matrix with entries from {-1,0,1}. Warmer colors show regions where eigenvalues cluster more densely.
#MathArt #LinearAlgebra #CreativeCoding #Mathematics #VisualMath #ComplexAnalysis #math

I really feel pity for these people. They really are good at nothing.

It's the wrong units too. I could understand saving $X/yr but an instantaneous saving of $X doesn't entirely make sense.

As I've said numerous times: lawyers, journalists, politicians, few of these people have any clue what numbers are and what they represent. Especially numbers bigger than about 3. They're just a thing you put in sentences to give the impression of authority.

Not sure why anyone needs to one-up RFK. He's already funny enough.