Chebucto Regional Softball Club

@jesuisatire

OMG what a delightful monster.

My most toxic trait is that it annoys me when conservation focuses on "cute" animals like large mammals. Whenever I have that feeling I send ten bucks to xerces as it's more constructive than being a grouch about pandas.

This survey is easy! So is supporting invertebrate conservation.

The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation

The Xerces Society is a science-based nonprofit organization that protects wildlife through the conservation of invertebrates and their habitats.

The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation (xerces.org)

@Catfish_Man “let him cook”

that is aave for old people like my great grandma i get whiplash every time some NJ girl says it on tiktok— who keeps telling?

yall ruined woke Im sick of it.

I just explained to middle school students the meaning of “get in the zone” and how in the 90s everything was “xtreme” and now I feel old. These days you “lock in” and everything is “based” (based on what?)

Why would lockdown traumatized kids want to “lock in?”

@britt this would only make it worse

I don’t know? this had a big impact on me. Maybe it is odd to look up portraits of the people who did things that interest you. But, I distinctly remember looking at the wrong image and being kind of annoyed that someone who did such unexpected things with math looked so boring— I thought he seemed like that kind of person who was good at everything. Pleasant at parties, well dressed, nice manners. How annoying.

The new one is somehow more comforting. I KNEW he wasn’t a normie!

He never looked like the sort of person who would do analytic continuation on the factorial. But the new version? yes that is the man who did this.

It’s wild to me this story didn’t make a bigger splash when it was discovered. Legendre is huge! I have looked on that face in deep frustration. But, just look at the difference between the incorrect portrait and the only known one based on the man himself!

But this makes so much more sense now. Everything about gamma functions… it’s all falling into place for me.

Legendre who?

In Chapter 10 of my book, Euler's Gem, I give Adrien-Marie Legendre's beautiful proof of Euler's polyhedron formula: for any (convex) polyhedron with V vertices, E edges, and F faces, V-E+F=2. His use of spherical geometry to prove the theorem is extremely elegant. On page 88 I include the portrait of Legendre shown at right.…

David Richeson: Division by Zero (divisbyzero.com)

@fuzztech @notoriousiptg @mjr @MarkHoltom

I would be irrational not to notice a pattern.
And this is kind of a huge problem since it’s really typical. In a city like this they should be more popular— but they aren’t.

And part of that is they don’t really see how the city has changed.

@fuzztech @notoriousiptg @mjr @MarkHoltom

But in reality they are exceptionally well funded and your average New Yorker is rather docile and grew up watching shows that said cops are heroes.

And one might stay that way were it not for one bad experience after another. I’ve spoken to police some 15 times over 20 years living here and always gone in trying to be helpful — in half of these cases it was frankly scary.

@fuzztech @notoriousiptg @mjr @MarkHoltom

I grew up in a suburb and when I first moved to NYC I found the general ire for NYPD perplexing. The most charitable reading is that they still are acting as if the city hasn’t changed since the 70s — NYPD act as if they are an underfunded city service tasked with policing an impossibly violent and chaotic city.

@fuzztech @notoriousiptg @mjr @MarkHoltom

IDK when I was a messenger I saw another delivery rider get hit by a car. It was bad. Two of us chased the car and got their plates. We were both eyewitnesses to this kid getting maimed and we hung around to talk to the police. They didn’t even write down the plate number I gave them. I gave the number to the kid as the put him in the ambulance. Tried another cop who said “this isn’t a crime”

These two images show why it’s bad to get mixed up working on the gamma function— study something friendly and useful like fourier series— stay away from those creepy esoteric functions.

@TofuTheSquirrel ok what would you call that then?

I was refreshing myself on partials when “the only known portrait of Adrien-Marie Legendre” caused a record-scratch in my mind.

What The Heck Is This?

I really thought I knew what this cat looked like— a round and forgettable-looking frenchmen like many others but it turns out we’ve been using the wrong portrait for the guy!

He was FIERCE. (the guy on the right is Fourier who was also done dirty by these caricatures)

@notoriousiptg @mjr @MarkHoltom

If you simply contest it and show up it will be dropped since the won’t pull the camera footage or (as it was in my case) even if they did it wouldn’t show me running the light. But I’ve had two Saturdays wasted over bogus tickets.

I think they just assume everyone on a bike is a “terrorist”

@notoriousiptg @mjr @MarkHoltom

This might sound absurdly petty, but for a variety of reasons NYPD dislikes people who ride bikes. They constantly have these absurd little traffic stops for bikes near the bridges that come in to Manhattan from the Bronx and Brooklyn and hold up everyone exiting the bridge looking for someone who ran a red light. Or they give everyone tickets even if you didn’t run a red light.

@mjr @MarkHoltom

In NYC Manhattan and downtown Brooklyn are the worst for bike theft. Oddly enough my bike is fine up in the Bronx. But then I lock it up next to the bikes from the delivery guys next to the old people playing cards.

These things are more powerful than any lock.

@hatter @MarkHoltom

I'm desperate for some good news. Tell me again about that one time someone got their bike back.