Nostr notes by DougMerritt (log😅 = 💧log😄)

Putting my typography hat on: no, the interword spacing isn't ...

2026-08-28T15:38:54Z

In reply to nevent1q…0g4j
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Putting my typography hat on: no, the interword spacing isn't *missing* -- it's clearly wider than the inter-character spacing.

It's that it is aesthetically narrower than ideal, which is quite different than being non-existent.

And we didn't have your earlier article to compare with to see the change you disliked.

felix (npub1pny…j469)

My English teacher would have said that the flow was rather ...

2026-08-28T14:31:23Z

In reply to nevent1q…4z4y
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My English teacher would have said that the flow was rather choppy. 🙂

It isa joke, because of the dynamic tension between you being a ...

2026-08-24T18:34:49Z

In reply to nevent1q…cghl
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It *is*a joke, because of the dynamic tension between you being a category theory expert on the one hand, versus the polite presumption that, as the keen professor we know that he is, he can learn anything at all, including category theory, in a single bound, without asking questions of anyone.

So it's a joke, and yet it would be rude to laugh. Instead I shall wish him a good trip and a good read.

(Obviously I like explaining things, too, including things for which no one asked for an explanation.)

[@j_bertolotti](https://mathstodon.xyz/@j_bertolotti ) David Quintero (npub1qf9…r5tc)

This is reminiscent of the way that some females take offense to ...

2026-08-24T15:25:12Z

In reply to nevent1q…k7x5
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This is reminiscent of the way that some females take offense to being called "ladies", since they think it's insulting by implying they are old etc. -- it's not, unless context unambiguously shows otherwise. It was originally a term of respect, and sometimes still is, and it's simply not true that young women are not yet worthy of respect, after all.

But it's worse here: in common dialects of English, "guy" is merely informal terminology for a male.

You probably just ran into some specific context that suggested otherwise, like the "Terrence & Phillip" sub-cartoon within South Park, that used "guy" very heavily with people arguing over word choice & connotations.

(Maybe South Park knows more than I, and in Canadian English there *is* a negative connotation, but it nonetheless still isn't true of common American dialects.)

But yes, thanks for the reminder about the mathematical Pope! :)

Then you should absolutely archive it, because Wikipedia policy ...

2026-08-18T15:14:19Z

In reply to nevent1q…4967
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Then you should absolutely archive it, because Wikipedia policy has always been clear: original work is to be deleted on sight, not to save it somewhere.

I'm not exaggerating; it's always been that way.

If it weren't for the universe's love of mathematical ...

2026-08-12T16:36:41Z

In reply to nevent1q…szm8
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If it weren't for the universe's love of mathematical beauty, it would've been just fine with just an electron and a positron.

For a bit.

Thank you. It's just that I remain unclear on this: > We ...

2026-06-12T15:21:37Z

In reply to nevent1q…7txy
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Thank you. It's just that I remain unclear on this:

> We also know that m₁ and m₂ are really close to each other, while m₃ is further away. So
>
> m₁ < m₃ < m₂
>
> is ruled out, as @UweHalfHand noted.
>
> But none of this says whether m₃ is bigger or smaller than the other two masses.

It's just that I don't see how m₃ could be known to be "further away" when it's not even known whether it's above or below m₁ and m₂.

Usually a situation like that would mean that the unknown value could be anything in that entire range.

Strider Uwe 🇺🇦🇨🇦🇲🇽 (npub1zkt…gyj7)

Sure. That's why I'm asking for clarification ...

2026-06-12T14:27:04Z

In reply to nevent1q…cad4
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Sure. That's why I'm asking for clarification "annoyingly" :)

John Carlos Baez (npub1nf4…nqe4)

Since it's not known whether m₃ is lighter or heavier than ...

2026-06-12T14:18:32Z

In reply to nevent1q…qfx0
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Since it's not known whether m₃ is lighter or heavier than the other two, your quote seems like merely a careless statement that shouldn't be taken too literally.

John Carlos Baez (npub1nf4…nqe4)

I'm going to annoying ask "why not a third possibility, ...

2026-06-12T14:13:47Z

In reply to nevent1q…er8n
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I'm going to annoying ask "why not a third possibility, that m₁ < m₃ < m₂ ?" right before you post again saying precisely why not.

The more obvious an answer is, the more likely it is to be ...

2026-06-06T18:51:03Z

In reply to nevent1q…tlc8
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The more obvious an answer is, the more likely it is to be labelled as "silly", in the sense that the questioner presumably already knew that, so it indicates a lack of common sense in not taking that into account.

Conversely, John gives a much less obvious and much more insightful answer, which is more in the direction of something that a questioner would not already know.

John Carlos Baez (npub1nf4…nqe4)

Physical Review Letters: "Impostor among Neutrinos: Dark ...

2026-04-05T17:29:43Z

Physical Review Letters:
"Impostor among Neutrinos: Dark Radiation Masquerading as Self-Interacting Neutrinos"
2 April 2026
Abstract
Multiple cosmological observations hint at neutrino self-interactions beyond the standard model, yet such interactions face severe constraints from terrestrial experiments. We resolve this tension by introducing a model where active neutrinos resonantly convert to self-interacting dark radiation after BBN but before CMB epoch. This exploits the fact that cosmological observables cannot distinguish between neutrinos and dark radiation with the same abundance and free-streaming properties. Our mechanism, based on a simple type-I seesaw framework along with a keV scale scalar mediator, achieves two objectives: (i) it produces strongly self-interacting dark radiation that imitates neutrino self-interactions favored by cosmological data, and (ii) it depletes the active neutrino energy density, relaxing cosmological neutrino mass bounds and easing the tension with neutrino oscillation data. The model naturally evades laboratory constraints through suppression of the neutrino-mediator coupling by the squared mass ratio of active and sterile neutrinos. We show that this scenario is favored over Λ⁢CDM by the combined Planck and DESI data, while being consistent with all other constraints. Our mechanism is testable in future laboratory probes of absolute neutrino mass and searches for sterile neutrinos.
https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/jprg-jll6
Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 131003 – Published 2 April, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/jprg-jll6

So Clifford was saying that the motion of matter is exclusively ...

2026-01-12T03:50:50Z

In reply to nevent1q…9qcp
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So Clifford was saying that the motion of matter is exclusively due to the wave-like motion of "hills"/curves in space.

Pretty early for that sort of talk.

It's a good thing that Poincare is famous in his own right ...

2026-01-10T00:00:24Z

In reply to nevent1q…lwm3
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It's a good thing that Poincare is famous in his own right rather than going down in history as a completely forgotten unknown, although not a household name like Einstein.

Yes, Einstein's work is typically discussed as if he was ...

2026-01-09T20:06:17Z

In reply to nevent1q…2rgj
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Yes, Einstein's work is typically discussed as if he was working complete ab initio, as if like Athena sprung fully formed from the brow of Zeus, without mention of precursor work, but of course Einstein, although brilliant, was not working in a vacuum. His work was enabled by multiple other mathematicians and physicists.

Without prompting my memory, the first obvious such is Minkowski.

We all stand on the shoulders of other humans (giants or not :)

RE: https://wandering.shop/@cstross/115861935194088492 ...

2026-01-09T00:19:12Z

RE: https://wandering.shop/@cstross/115861935194088492

John Carlos Baez (npub1nf4…nqe4)
Life in Edinburgh....

I'm not so sure about adding anything multi-paradigm to the ...

2026-01-08T06:55:04Z

In reply to nevent1q…uzcl
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I'm not so sure about adding anything multi-paradigm to the list, but I see that that point can be argued.

I see the motivation for all of them, in any case.

Except that I haven't really looked much at Python, and not at all at Elixer, unlike all those other languages (several of which I've even implemented 🙂 ), so I don't have an opinion otherwise.

amen zwa, esq. (npub1gnu…0jmx)

True, and there are various arguments for and against each of ...

2026-01-08T05:51:41Z

In reply to nevent1q…60rc
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True, and there are various arguments for and against each of those (and for any language, of course).

But note that you are sort of underscoring his point. C++ began as "C With Classes", a mix of C and Smalltalk (and then added a truly vast amount of avoidable complexity on top of that).

Haskell and OCaml are similarly mixes of Standard ML and other ideas.

I agree that entirely separate paradigms were introduced by SQL, Lisp (not Scheme), Prolog, and APL (not J) historically. So those fit in the list.

And it's fair to bend the rules and use Scheme as an improvement over Common Lisp, and to use J, a good modernization of APL.

I think Amen was aiming at fairly pure examples of foundational paradigms, not "best language to use", but any discussion of these things can quickly get complicated.

amen zwa, esq. (npub1gnu…0jmx)

Yes, I don't disagree -- but students of a field always find ...

2025-12-26T17:17:05Z

In reply to nevent1q…3fvs
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Yes, I don't disagree -- but students of a field always find ways of viewing terminology in a way that makes it seem completely arbitrary, even though their teacher sees that it was motivated.

The circle of fifths helps clarify the topic. In fact for most ...

2025-12-26T16:46:48Z

In reply to nevent1q…wxrd
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The circle of fifths helps clarify the topic. In fact for most western music it is essential to master thinking in terms of it (despite the "contradiction" that, descending in the other direction, it's the circle of fourths).

None of this is illogical, not one little bit. The *terminology* of course derives from historical accident.

Hmm. Well, why did that recipe use the word "chip" at ...

2025-12-21T22:37:50Z

In reply to nevent1q…863w
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Hmm. Well, why *did* that recipe use the word "chip" at all?

There's something unexplained here.

> wildfire So, a long term repeating issue, not one-off.

2025-12-20T16:52:19Z

In reply to nevent1q…e8w2
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> wildfire

So, a long term repeating issue, not one-off.

"We have always been at war with Glasgow."

2025-12-16T17:13:39Z

In reply to nevent1q…3jas
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"We have always been at war with Glasgow."

RE: https://wandering.shop/@cstross/115725135370824735 ...

2025-12-16T16:59:13Z

In reply to nevent1q…nw5k
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RE: https://wandering.shop/@cstross/115725135370824735

John Carlos Baez (npub1nf4…nqe4)
If it's not one thing, it's another.

If it's not Edinburgh weapons of mass destruction, it's Edinburgh Deep Government helicopters:

Charlie Stross (npub1dnd…hzjs)/115725136248568177">https://mathstodon.xyz/Charlie Stross (npub1dnd…hzjs)/115725136248568177

A cynic would say that every country has such a term, but I see ...

2025-12-15T20:59:55Z

In reply to nevent1q…fy9l
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A cynic would say that every country has such a term, but I see that's not the kind of answer you're looking for.

Thomas (npub15fr…ltmz)

Oh, and at the start it says that the video contains her ideas ...

2025-12-15T18:55:48Z

In reply to nevent1q…4sh6
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Oh, and at the start it says that the video contains her ideas for such an approach.

Links include her paper:
⁠Could ∞-Category Theory Be Taught To Undergraduates? (paper): https://arxiv.org/pdf/2302.07855

@npub1nf4…nqe4 This conceivably could be of interest to you, ...

2025-12-15T18:53:19Z

John Carlos Baez (npub1nf4…nqe4)
This conceivably could be of interest to you, although it's 8 months old so you also may have heard of it already:
"Emily Riehl Makes Infinity Categories Elementary"
"Emily Riehl, one of the world’s leading category theorists, shares her vision for making infinity category theory something undergrads can actually learn.

"In this talk, she breaks down how rethinking the foundations of math could change the way it’s taught and understood—and why it might redefine what math even is."

In the channel of Curt Jaimungal, who somehow manages to get a lot of high-profile interviewees.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTwvecBthpQ

People keep reinventing that notion, but it can't be true: ...

2025-12-14T21:29:21Z

In reply to nevent1q…8m85
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People keep reinventing that notion, but it can't be true: black holes have a pretty well defined position and center in 3 dimensions, because it obviously is a 3-dimensional object despite having a past and future, while the universe (and the Big Bang) has no center in 3 dimensions; it is 4-dimensional.

John Carlos Baez (npub1nf4…nqe4)

The fundamental particles all being on the Compton line is ...

2025-12-14T20:35:36Z

In reply to nevent1q…fnt8
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The fundamental particles all being on the Compton line is verrrrrrry suspicious.

Sounds like you know more about all that than I. I take it ...

2025-12-11T11:11:50Z

In reply to nevent1q…nj70
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Sounds like you know more about all that than I. I take it there's evidence Orwell knew about Zamyatin's "We"?

[@ramin_hal9001](https://fe.disroot.org/users/ramin_hal9001 ) Daniel Kochmański (npub1urw…lh52)

Our actual reality not falling apart sufficiently or fast enough ...

2025-12-11T10:25:06Z

In reply to nevent1q…rt98
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Our actual reality not falling apart sufficiently or fast enough for some people, they must start imagining the joining of some of the darkest of warnings famously in novels over history.

Just kidding. 🙂

Well...maybe I'm not kidding, because things look pretty bad, but I hold no ill will, how's that.

I always thought Brave New World was the scariest in mainstream literature (not counting e.g. science fiction), because it is structured so as to seem paradisical to most of its inhabitants / possible critics, and yet certain aspects are strongly dystopian.

Every instrument has a soul -- when played that way. Perhaps the ...

2025-12-10T21:03:02Z

In reply to nevent1q…wmu6
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Every instrument has a soul -- when played that way.

Perhaps the musician and the instrument share one soul, when they are in accord.

Sauron followers.

2025-12-10T18:04:21Z

In reply to nevent1q…03y5
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Sauron followers.

I feel like this is why spin 1/2 particles must anticommute; ...

2025-12-08T15:10:07Z

In reply to nevent1q…s9pt
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I feel like this is why spin 1/2 particles must anticommute; I'm not way off base there, am I?

Fleshing that out a touch: People who moved from twitter to ...

2025-12-07T13:27:53Z

In reply to nevent1q…sjmg
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Fleshing that out a touch:

People who moved from twitter to places like hereabouts when they did, triggered by events, presumably have a set of traits that are less common in people who stayed on twitter.

(I know there are people who had already been here for years, but I don't know their traits, and I think the refugees are the larger population here anyway)

The traits in question *might* predispose certain attitudes towards AI.

It's food for thought; I don't immediately see a good way to test the idea, though, so....thought is good 🙂 .

Yes, I had read what Terry said. Most of the public seems to ...

2025-12-07T11:10:50Z

In reply to nevent1q…dmja
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Yes, I had read what Terry said. Most of the public seems to polarize to be either strong for or against LLM, but Terry just grabbed the bull by the horns and uses it so carefully but forcefully that it bends to his will, unlike many of the hyper-enthusiastic crowd who are nowhere near so careful.

The lessons in that are obvious -- but you're that kind of person, too, so I'm preaching to the choir here.

Agreed on all of the above, although apropos of nothing but that ...

2025-12-07T10:49:22Z

In reply to nevent1q…ka9k
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Agreed on all of the above, although apropos of nothing but that you said the word "language":

"verbing weirds language" -- Calvin and Hobbes

> However, the Axiom team didn't notice this. Or more ...

2025-12-07T10:45:58Z

In reply to nevent1q…fcr5
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> However, the Axiom team didn't notice this.

Or more likely, they were more interested in claims that assisted getting $64 million than they were in carefully accurate statements. 🙄

Yes, I remember, and yes, it's certainly different. The ...

2025-12-06T22:48:03Z

In reply to nevent1q…e2cs
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Yes, I remember, and yes, it's certainly different.

The current era's new ways has both positives and negatives, as usual, but I'm a lifelong fan of technology.

We all managed to get by, and to share, before the internet, so ...

2025-12-06T17:59:36Z

In reply to nevent1q…8rtn
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We all managed to get by, and to share, before the internet, so this would merely be returning to our past practices -- although it would be devastating to everything otherwise, since all is based on the internet these days.

But BBSes still exist, and there are still people with modems to communicate over phone lines.

> => I would only write things that can be shouted in a crowded pub or restaurant. 📢

Great!!!

Tom is correct. OTOH someone said that a conditional, ...

2025-12-05T15:40:47Z

In reply to nevent1q…0l24
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Tom is correct.

OTOH someone said that a conditional, "if", is being added to CSS, which brings it closer. If they add looping with something like "while", then it becomes a programming language, albeit a problematic one.

And there are many choices of a coordinate system, including ...

2025-12-05T14:29:59Z

In reply to nevent1q…9mjs
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And there are many choices of a coordinate system, including coordinate-free.

Practical applications typically emphasize a particular choice because it has been found to be useful in that context, but that doesn't mean that it's the only choice, and in pure math it is often useful to dismiss them altogether.

Bridging pure math and applied math for practical applications can be complex and confusing, but it's good to remember that they *are* different domains.

There are many common distributions of noise, including this one, ...

2025-12-05T14:22:08Z

In reply to nevent1q…4up8
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There are many common distributions of noise, including this one, and they are all of technical interest. In signal processing I usually see them addressed in terms of Fourier Analysis, but of course that's just the start.

It appears to include material that you doubtless previously ...

2025-11-30T01:58:46Z

In reply to nevent1q…7eww
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It appears to include material that you doubtless previously studied; which parts of it prompted your purchase?

I'm aware that you have a strong background in multiple ways, ...

2025-11-25T22:55:39Z

In reply to nevent1q…cqqg
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I'm aware that you have a strong background in multiple ways, but I think this is the first time I've heard someone say they really should already know algebraic geometry much better.

I mean, I was under the impression that one needed to specialize in algebraic geometry to know it well.

Oh, well, I'm just in the company of talent here, between you and John, so why am I surprised.

Edit: in no way am I comparing the two of you; I should have worded that more carefully.

John Carlos Baez (npub1nf4…nqe4)

I listened to them yesterday. Beautiful. I'm not an expert on ...

2025-11-23T10:14:23Z

In reply to nevent1q…5pln
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I listened to them yesterday. Beautiful. I'm not an expert on Bach but I liked them. Meanwhile my music theory friends haven't gotten back to me about them, but hey, Bach is Bach.

2001 - Anders Hejlsberg invents C#. C# is a relatively verbose, ...

2025-11-23T02:49:59Z

In reply to nevent1q…2f9z
_________________________

2001 - Anders Hejlsberg invents C#. C# is a relatively verbose, garbage collected, class based, statically typed, single dispatch, object oriented language with single implementation inheritance and multiple interface inheritance. Microsoft loudly heralds C#'s novelty.

2003 - A drunken Martin Odersky sees a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup ad featuring somebody's peanut butter getting on somebody else's chocolate and has an idea. He creates Scala, a language that unifies constructs from both object oriented and functional languages. This pisses off both groups and each promptly declares jihad.

Footnotes
[1] Fortunately for computer science the supply of curly braces and angle brackets remains high.
[2] Catch as catch can - Verity Stob
https://james-iry.blogspot.com/2009/05/brief-incomplete-and-mostly-wrong.html
6/6

1995 - Yukihiro "Mad Matz" Matsumoto creates Ruby to ...

2025-11-23T02:49:43Z

In reply to nevent1q…w3j2
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1995 - Yukihiro "Mad Matz" Matsumoto creates Ruby to avert some vaguely unspecified apocalypse that will leave Australia a desert run by mohawked warriors and Tina Turner. The language is later renamed Ruby on Rails by its real inventor, David Heinemeier Hansson. [The bit about Matsumoto inventing a language called Ruby never happened and better be removed in the next revision of this article - DHH].

1995 - Brendan Eich reads up on every mistake ever made in designing a programming language, invents a few more, and creates LiveScript. Later, in an effort to cash in on the popularity of Java the language is renamed JavaScript. Later still, in an effort to cash in on the popularity of skin diseases the language is renamed ECMAScript.

1996 - James Gosling invents Java. Java is a relatively verbose, garbage collected, class based, statically typed, single dispatch, object oriented language with single implementation inheritance and multiple interface inheritance. Sun loudly heralds Java's novelty.
5/6

1986 - Brad Cox and Tom Love create Objective-C, announcing ...

2025-11-23T02:48:48Z

In reply to nevent1q…ehu7
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1986 - Brad Cox and Tom Love create Objective-C, announcing "this language has all the memory safety of C combined with all the blazing speed of Smalltalk." Modern historians suspect the two were dyslexic.

1987 - Larry Wall falls asleep and hits Larry Wall's forehead on the keyboard. Upon waking Larry Wall decides that the string of characters on Larry Wall's monitor isn't random but an example program in a programming language that God wants His prophet, Larry Wall, to design. Perl is born.

1990 - A committee formed by Simon Peyton-Jones, Paul Hudak, Philip Wadler, Ashton Kutcher, and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals creates Haskell, a pure, non-strict, functional language. Haskell gets some resistance due to the complexity of using monads to control side effects. Wadler tries to appease critics by explaining that "a monad is a monoid in the category of endofunctors, what's the problem?"

1991 - Dutch programmer Guido van Rossum travels to Argentina for a mysterious operation. He returns with a large cranial scar, invents Python, is declared Dictator for Life by legions of followers, and announces to the world that "There Is Only One Way to Do It." Poland becomes nervous.

1995 - At a neighborhood Italian restaurant Rasmus Lerdorf realizes that his plate of spaghetti is an excellent model for understanding the World Wide Web and that web applications should mimic their medium. On the back of his napkin he designs Programmable Hyperlinked Pasta (PHP). PHP documentation remains on that napkin to this day.
4/6

1973 - Robin Milner creates ML, a language based on the M&M ...

2025-11-23T02:47:45Z

In reply to nevent1q…nvr6
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1973 - Robin Milner creates ML, a language based on the M&M type theory. ML begets SML which has a formally specified semantics. When asked for a formal semantics of the formal semantics Milner's head explodes. Other well known languages in the ML family include OCaml, F#, and Visual Basic.

1980 - Alan Kay creates Smalltalk and invents the term "object oriented." When asked what that means he replies, "Smalltalk programs are just objects." When asked what objects are made of he replies, "objects." When asked again he says "look, it's all objects all the way down. Until you reach turtles."

1983 - In honor of Ada Lovelace's ability to create programs that never ran, Jean Ichbiah and the US Department of Defense create the Ada programming language. In spite of the lack of evidence that any significant Ada program is ever completed historians believe Ada to be a successful public works project that keeps several thousand roving defense contractors out of gangs.

1983 - Bjarne Stroustrup bolts everything he's ever heard of onto C to create C++. The resulting language is so complex that programs must be sent to the future to be compiled by the Skynet artificial intelligence. Build times suffer. Skynet's motives for performing the service remain unclear but spokespeople from the future say "there is nothing to be concerned about, baby," in an Austrian accented monotones. There is some speculation that Skynet is nothing more than a pretentious buffer overrun.
3/6

1958 - John McCarthy and Paul Graham invent LISP. Due to high ...

2025-11-23T02:44:15Z

In reply to nevent1q…rueu
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1958 - John McCarthy and Paul Graham invent LISP. Due to high costs caused by a post-war depletion of the strategic parentheses reserve LISP never becomes popular[1]. In spite of its lack of popularity, LISP (now "Lisp" or sometimes "Arc") remains an influential language in "key algorithmic techniques such as recursion and condescension"[2].

1959 - After losing a bet with L. Ron Hubbard, Grace Hopper and several other sadists invent the Capitalization Of Boilerplate Oriented Language (COBOL) . Years later, in a misguided and sexist retaliation against Adm. Hopper's COBOL work, Ruby conferences frequently feature misogynistic material.

1964 - John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz create BASIC, an unstructured programming language for non-computer scientists.

1965 - Kemeny and Kurtz go to 1964.

1970 - Guy Steele and Gerald Sussman create Scheme. Their work leads to a series of "Lambda the Ultimate" papers culminating in "Lambda the Ultimate Kitchen Utensil." This paper becomes the basis for a long running, but ultimately unsuccessful run of late night infomercials. Lambdas are relegated to relative obscurity until Java makes them popular by not having them.

1970 - Niklaus Wirth creates Pascal, a procedural language. Critics immediately denounce Pascal because it uses "x := x + y" syntax instead of the more familiar C-like "x = x + y". This criticism happens in spite of the fact that C has not yet been invented.

1972 - Dennis Ritchie invents a powerful gun that shoots both forward and backward simultaneously. Not satisfied with the number of deaths and permanent maimings from that invention he invents C and Unix.
2/6

A Brief, Incomplete, and Mostly Wrong History of Programming ...

2025-11-23T02:42:49Z

A Brief, Incomplete, and Mostly Wrong History of Programming Languages
James Iry; Thursday, May 7, 2009

1801 - Joseph Marie Jacquard uses punch cards to instruct a loom to weave "hello, world" into a tapestry. Redditers of the time are not impressed due to the lack of tail call recursion, concurrency, or proper capitalization.

1842 - Ada Lovelace writes the first program. She is hampered in her efforts by the minor inconvenience that she doesn't have any actual computers to run her code. Enterprise architects will later relearn her techniques in order to program in UML.

1936 - Alan Turing invents every programming language that will ever be but is shanghaied by British Intelligence to be 007 before he can patent them.

1936 - Alonzo Church also invents every language that will ever be but does it better. His lambda calculus is ignored because it is insufficiently C-like. This criticism occurs in spite of the fact that C has not yet been invented.

1940s - Various "computers" are "programmed" using direct wiring and switches. Engineers do this in order to avoid the tabs vs spaces debate.

1957 - John Backus and IBM create FORTRAN. There's nothing funny about IBM or FORTRAN. It is a syntax error to write FORTRAN while not wearing a blue tie.
1/6

Sweet!

2025-11-23T02:12:35Z

In reply to nevent1q…eq9l
_________________________

Sweet!

> Date: Wednesday November 21, 2025 Presumably that should say ...

2025-11-21T00:11:27Z

In reply to nevent1q…6k0l
_________________________

> Date: Wednesday November 21, 2025

Presumably that should say "Friday"?

I'm sure there's a lot of pity for the US involved as ...

2025-11-20T22:18:52Z

In reply to nevent1q…jjed
_________________________

I'm sure there's a lot of pity for the US involved as well.

Preserving code that shaped generations: Zork I, II, and III go ...

2025-11-20T20:48:49Z

Preserving code that shaped generations: Zork I, II, and III go Open Source
"Today, we’re preserving a cornerstone of gaming history that is near and dear to our hearts. Together, Microsoft’s Open Source Programs Office (OSPO), Team Xbox, and Activision are making Zork I, Zork II, and Zork III available under the MIT License. Our goal is simple: to place historically important code in the hands of students, teachers, and developers so they can study it, learn from it, and, perhaps most importantly, play it.
"...The games remain commercially available via The Zork Anthology on Good Old Games."
https://opensource.microsoft.com/blog/2025/11/20/preserving-code-that-shaped-generations-zork-i-ii-and-iii-go-open-source
https://github.com/historicalsource/zork1
And an Ars Technica article about that:
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2025/11/microsoft-makes-zork-i-ii-and-iii-open-source-under-mit-license/

I originally beat Zork in the original PDP-10 version, arpanet-ing in to MIT to play it.

The original Zork written in the MDL dialect of Lisp was already available:

"This version of ZORK has been (slightly) changed from the original in order to run on the Confusion MDL Interpreter.
https://github.com/whitten/MDL-Zork

There's also this:
'This directory contains files related to Confusion, an MDL interpreter which, to quote its author, "Works just well enough to play the original Zork all the way through."'
http://www.ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archive/programming/mdl/interpreters/confusion/

Ah, nice, very interesting. Thanks for the thorough answer and ...

2025-11-11T14:17:55Z

In reply to nevent1q…nd86
_________________________

Ah, nice, very interesting. Thanks for the thorough answer and follow-up sources!

Tony Vladusich (npub18zu…xdht)

Looking at both the brief and the full table of contents, this ...

2025-11-11T07:56:03Z

In reply to nevent1q…fvfy
_________________________

Looking at both the brief and the full table of contents, this looks like a thorough introduction by an important author -- but in what sense does it show "A good overview of the many approaches [to deriving quantum theory from plausible axioms]"? It's not showing just one approach?

Chapter 1: Measure and Integral
Chapter 2: The Axioms of Hilbert Space
Chapter 3: Linear Functionals and Operators
Chapter 4: Spectral Theorem and Spectral Representation
Chapter 5: The Propositional Calculus
Chapter 6: States and Observables
Chapter 7: Hidden Variables
Chapter 8: Proposition Systems and Projective Geometries
Chapter 9: Symmetries and Groups
Chapter 10: The Dynamical Structure
Chapter 11: The Measuring Process
Chapter 12: The Elementary Particle in One Dimension
Chapter 13: The Elementary Particle Without Spin
Chapter 14: Particles with Spin
Chapter 15: Identical Particles

Josef Maria Jauch (September 20, 1914 in Lucerne – August 30, 1974 in Geneva) was a Swiss/American theoretical physicist, known for his work on quantum electrodynamics and on the foundations of quantum theory, and leader of the "Geneva School" of mathematical physics.

Tony Vladusich (npub18zu…xdht)

I guess it was a stupid joke, based on cos being extremely ...

2025-11-06T10:37:16Z

In reply to nevent1q…7mug
_________________________

I guess it was a stupid joke, based on cos being extremely similar to sin, so it's almost like he just did an identity transform. Perhaps I should just delete it.

@npub1nf4…nqe4 Wherein Brewster Kahle, founder of archive.org, ...

2025-11-03T10:40:09Z

John Carlos Baez (npub1nf4…nqe4)
Wherein Brewster Kahle, founder of archive.org, asks about desalination and cooling with salt water.

I know that it's harder than it sounds (desalination by boiling takes a lot of energy, salt water is corrosive, etc) but I thought it was possible that you had physics thoughts on the matter.

(Indeed, your voluminous explanations may include such a discussion for all I know.)

Kahle is influential and has resources, so I don't think this is inherently an idle question.

Brewster Kahle (npub1ftl…3e6s)/115484280435881456">https://mathstodon.xyz/Brewster Kahle (npub1ftl…3e6s)/115484280435881456

@npub1nf4…nqe4 This caught my attention, being so close on the ...

2025-11-02T07:39:07Z

John Carlos Baez (npub1nf4…nqe4)
This caught my attention, being so close on the heels to your analogies.

This metaphor is pretty colorful!

"Lobsters are mermaids to scorpions" -- Geek Club

https://mathstodon.xyz/@ColinTheMathmo/115473737522285375

"Language Models are Injective and Hence Invertible" ...

2025-10-30T20:20:06Z

"Language Models are Injective and Hence Invertible"
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.15511

> For example, analogy questions like > "> queen is ...

2025-10-30T18:54:06Z

In reply to nevent1q…lckr
_________________________

> For example, analogy questions like
>
"> queen is to king as WHAT is to father?"
>
> are really asking you to perform a ternary operation.

This kind of thing is of high importance in current LLM AI encoding of words/phrases as vectors in a latent semantic space, starting with the word2vec operator (also the name of software that translates words or pieces thereof into vectors), which builds an explicit vector space, and moving into a latent semantic vector space in training.

(The training fairly successfully uses the notion that words appearing in the same position in sentences will tend to have similar or at least related semantics.)

The apparent need for an unworkably high number of dimensions for the vector space(s) is obviated by the observation that, in higher dimensional spaces, vectors pointing in directions as different as merely one degree are sufficiently orthogonal to serve as another basis dimension despite their lack of absolute mutual orthogonality, allowing the absolute spatial dimension to be limited to hundreds to thousands of dimensions, yet allowing the *effective* number of semantic dimensions to be in the trillions (or indeed far more).

That in turn allows the internal mechanisms to use vectors and matrices of a mere few hundred entries in length (resp. width & height), making the whole apparatus actually practical to implement.

The idea is straightforward but I'm not sure how it is best analyzed in terms of completely rigorous mathematics.

Anyway the classic example given is first learning the "father" and "mother" and for FEMALE to be implicitly derived, along with latent semantics like (queen = (king - father + mother) = (king + female) or some such.

I guess I'd internalized it without remembering the name; the ...

2025-10-29T20:50:05Z

In reply to nevent1q…s9el
_________________________

I guess I'd internalized it without remembering the name; the article seemed obvious. But "just because something seems obvious doesn't mean that it's unimportant" :)

@npub1nf4…nqe4 You just pop up all over the place; I was ...

2025-10-29T03:25:58Z

John Carlos Baez (npub1nf4…nqe4)
You just pop up all over the place; I was randomly following links and reading wikipedia on the Eckmann–Hilton_argument and I get to the end and the **first two** references are to John Baez, week 89 and week 100.

It makes it feel like it's a small world :)

> Bizarrely, my most popular book, Gauge Fields, Knots and ...

2025-10-28T09:35:53Z

In reply to nevent1q…x5st
_________________________

> Bizarrely, my most popular book, Gauge Fields, Knots and Gravity, is not on the list.

Clearly you should raise its price to the general public to $1000 to $3000, since that's now the going rate for your books.

@npub1nf4…nqe4 > But was this developed under the influence ...

2025-10-28T08:53:09Z

In reply to nevent1q…xj6a
_________________________

John Carlos Baez (npub1nf4…nqe4)
> But was this developed under the influence only of gravity?

I would have said the terminology was developed under the influence of drugs. 🙂

But seriously, if you mean fundamental forces, the wikipedia article's first paragraph mentions the strong nuclear force (nucleon-nucleon) and electromagnetism ("Coulomb repulsion"), and John and the stack exchange article talk about beta decay (the weak nuclear force), so that's all four fundamental forces.

> Still, as it is in WP we know it must be adequately sourced.

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or serious -- wikipedia is usually pretty good, in my experience, but it isn't perfect, and it's up to *us* to fix it when it needs it (and yes, I've been doing so since it was new, sometimes frequently, sometimes infrequently).

The article's first three citations look pretty good at a glance (although I didn't double check them):

[1] Caplan, M. E.; Schneider, A. S.; Horowitz, C. J. (24 September 2018). "Elasticity of Nuclear Pasta". Physical Review Letters. 121 (13) 132701. arXiv:1807.02557. Bibcode:2018PhRvL.121m2701C. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.121.132701. PMID 30312063. S2CID 206317364. Retrieved 26 August 2021.
[2] Pons, José A.; Viganò, Daniele; Rea, Nanda (2013). "Too much "pasta" for pulsars to spin down". Nature Physics. 9 (7): 431–434. arXiv:1304.6546. Bibcode:2013NatPh...9..431P. doi:10.1038/nphys2640. S2CID 119253979.
[3] Reagan, David. "Visualizations of Nuclear Pasta". Advanced Visualization Lab, Research Technologies, Indiana University. Archived from the original on April 4, 2020. Retrieved 28 June 2013.

Gotta love it! This terminology deserves to be more widely known.

2025-10-26T16:51:38Z

In reply to nevent1q…vjuk
_________________________

Gotta love it! This terminology deserves to be more widely known.

...and some of the ejecta form various nuclei which eventually ...

2025-10-26T10:20:14Z

In reply to nevent1q…y46q
_________________________

...and some of the ejecta form various nuclei which eventually end up going into newly forming star systems, so it's always interesting as to *what* nuclei are created, and how, and in what ratios, and all sorts of complications like that.

There's some kind of threshold for "part of a neutron star" ... "intermediate stage?" ... "outside the neutron star", where phase 1 is largely neutrons (I thought it was neutronium, but at least one person said no, so where does that go), and phase 3 contains lots of heavy nuclei...

Maybe people have simulated that.

> That's a very interesting question. Do you read Physics ...

2025-10-26T10:14:49Z

In reply to nevent1q…8uav
_________________________

> That's a very interesting question. Do you read Physics Overflow daily?

Erratically I'm afraid.

I liked this one because it severely questioned some assumptions I'd been making without realizing it.

A full answer might actually require a simulation. There must be a threshold...

@npub1nf4…nqe4 BTW: cool, I see that your cousin was at the No ...

2025-10-26T05:59:32Z

John Carlos Baez (npub1nf4…nqe4)
BTW: cool, I see that your cousin was at the No Kings rally in San Francisco Oct 18.

@npub1nf4…nqe4 Interesting question posted yesterday: "How ...

2025-10-26T05:55:37Z

John Carlos Baez (npub1nf4…nqe4)
Interesting question posted yesterday:
"How can decompressing neutronium accelerate beta decay to form heavy elements?"
https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/861363/how-can-decompressing-neutronium-accelerate-beta-decay-to-form-heavy-elements

It's not clear that any of the answers are authoritative, although some are plausible, but I think the question itself is interesting, anyway.

There are in fact browser-from-scratch projects, but the general ...

2025-10-24T21:43:25Z

In reply to nevent1q…xlhw
_________________________

There are in fact browser-from-scratch projects, but the general problem is that backward compatibility issues are huge, and always have been, and just get worse each year.

I've also got it mixed up with Postscript (which they ...

2025-10-23T06:08:59Z

In reply to nevent1q…vekr
_________________________

I've also got it mixed up with Postscript (which they *claimed* was an accidental reinvention).

Oh right, that's simpler than I remembered. Thanks. :)

2025-10-23T06:07:51Z

In reply to nevent1q…q6p0
_________________________

Oh right, that's simpler than I remembered. Thanks. :)

Forth uses postfix notation, so push 3 push 1 push 5 - * (or some ...

2025-10-23T02:41:15Z

In reply to nevent1q…pudy
_________________________

Forth uses postfix notation, so
push 3
push 1
push 5
-
*
(or some such syntax -- it's been a long time) ...would yield 12. ((5 - 1) * 3)

Not at all, the point is that I am easily confused and have a ...

2025-10-23T02:24:06Z

In reply to nevent1q…ewq3
_________________________

Not at all, the point is that I am easily confused and have a poor memory, so I never know what's going on.

So...your goal was to create a hybrid of Forth and Lisp, and now ...

2025-10-23T02:07:13Z

In reply to nevent1q…56rg
_________________________

So...your goal was to create a hybrid of Forth and Lisp, and now that works?

Congratulations, in that case. (If that's not it, well, I never know what's going on)

I used to talk to someone on the mud (a quite brilliant guy ...

2025-10-22T20:48:14Z

In reply to nevent1q…93qs
_________________________

I used to talk to someone on the mud (a quite brilliant guy working at a famous think tank) who ended every single conversation with "More later, bye."

amen zwa, esq. (npub1gnu…0jmx) Paul Sutton (zleap) (npub17lx…475e) mousebot (npub1fny…lkuy)

Surprisingly, Verne did not invent the fax. It was invented and ...

2025-10-21T15:28:45Z

In reply to nevent1q…ne68
_________________________

Surprisingly, Verne did not invent the fax. It was invented and patented in real life in the 1840s, although it would take 100 years for a practical form to start being widespread in businesses, and another 40 years after that to be widespread in small offices and homes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fax#History

Although that took quite some time, it's far from unheard of. E.g. photography, too, was continually reinvented in the 19th century, originally appearing in many forms that worked but were not suitable for wide use -- although it was made practical and widely used much faster than fax.

LLMs are broken when it comes to sane operation when they ...

2025-10-19T19:11:01Z

In reply to nevent1q…atax
_________________________

LLMs are broken when it comes to sane operation when they don't know something or how to do something. I understand the basics of why, but I don't yet know why they aren't better compensating for this.

It *looks* like I've succeeded in just telling them to say so when they have such troubles, but then again I've mostly been telling them to do things that they know how to do.

> If you don't have access to Wikipedia, or any source, just tell me - don't pretend

Exactly; so my point is that I don't think that such instructions are optional, they are necessary. But not necessarily sufficient; that requires more experimentation.

Well, they're both about fundamentals, and I'm interested ...

2025-10-16T14:27:47Z

In reply to nevent1q…48qx
_________________________

Well, they're both about fundamentals, and I'm interested in fundamentals.

Ok, I admit it, I got lost, and then there it was. :)

Then I got distracted by The Fundamental Theorem of Natural ...

2025-10-16T09:44:46Z

In reply to nevent1q…cwg6
_________________________

Then I got distracted by The Fundamental Theorem of Natural Selection. Nice slides! Very interesting topic.
https://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/fisher/fisher_web.pdf

> But in today's article I'll tweak the theory so we ...

2025-10-16T09:29:13Z

In reply to nevent1q…9c0c
_________________________

> But in today's article I'll tweak the theory so we do get the observed periodic table, at least roughly!

Aha! You wizards *DO* do magic; I knew it!

> They don't seem to cause extinction events, even though ...

2025-10-15T13:06:33Z

In reply to nevent1q…7608
_________________________

> They don't seem to cause extinction events, even though more cosmic rays could get down to the Earth's surface.

I would think that the solar wind is the larger danger. I've been puzzled for a long time as to *why* they don't seem to cause extinction events. It seems like it would be a very bad time to go outdoors.

Ah, good old wikipedia. Thanks! :) @npub1hkl…9agh ...

2025-10-14T22:28:43Z

In reply to nevent1q…dgra
_________________________

Ah, good old wikipedia. Thanks! :)

demofox (npub1hkl…9agh) Mark Reid (npub133q…u368)

John, we're talking about why phi is special and our memories ...

2025-10-14T22:03:46Z

In reply to nevent1q…eknw
_________________________

John, we're talking about why phi is special and our memories are failing; do you have an article about that?

demofox (npub1hkl…9agh) Mark Reid (npub133q…u368)

Exactly. It has special qualities, it's not just yet another ...

2025-10-14T22:02:04Z

In reply to nevent1q…ze3r
_________________________

Exactly. It has special qualities, it's not just yet another random algebraic solution.

Mark Reid (npub133q…u368)

I don't fully understand the mathematics behind the ...

2025-10-14T21:40:05Z

In reply to nevent1q…a6ns
_________________________

I don't fully understand the mathematics behind the phenomenon, but people have pointed out that phi pops up all over, in a manner reminiscent of pi.

I vaguely recall that it's a high profile fixed point of something, but not the details.

Clearly I need to refresh my memory on what people have discovered.

> I'm not quite sure why they think it was a helium star ...

2025-10-14T18:46:56Z

In reply to nevent1q…ewf7
_________________________

> I'm not quite sure why they think it was a helium star

They're comparing multiple alternative theoretical models, like collapsars, and the only viable match was a stellar mass object merging with a Helium star, with an overview in Table 4.

> the only viable options involving a stellar-mass compact object consuming a star and involving more angular momentum than can be contained within a star.

The table lists "Helium Merger" as the only one of two possibilities. Actually, the other is a "Micro Tidal Disruption Event", which I don't immediately see discussion of.

> are not absorbed due to γγ-annihilation(γγ→e−e+) ...

2025-10-14T18:08:54Z

In reply to nevent1q…yjja
_________________________

> are not absorbed due to γγ-annihilation(γγ→e−e+)

This stuff is *so* exotic. I always think of that reaction in reverse.

BashStKid (npub18qx…9a9r)

I like it. It's been some years since I've listened to ...

2025-10-11T13:30:45Z

In reply to nevent1q…5tzk
_________________________

I like it.

It's been some years since I've listened to something created in any such way.

: "only a finite number of interaction terms are physically ...

2025-09-22T01:38:57Z

In reply to nevent1q…dvxg
_________________________

:
"only a finite number of interaction terms are physically allowed and result in a renormalizable theory (i.e. that you can't keep introducing terms with higher powers or derivatives of the various fields into the Lagrangian)."

John Carlos Baez (npub1nf4…nqe4) :
"Right, that was exactly my point. You're stating it more precisely."

Nick: Oh good, you got the point when I didn't.

I'm not sure that was the point, although of course I may ...

2025-09-21T18:49:01Z

In reply to nevent1q…nzjv
_________________________

I'm not sure that was the point, although of course I may have misunderstood something here.

Unlike nice clean theories like GR and QFT and such, the Standard Model is not really one unified theory (I'm sure you're aware there is no full unified theory), it is a hodge-podge of different theories glued together with a moderately large number of magic constants that are not predicted by theory but are nonetheless essential.

John Carlos Baez (npub1nf4…nqe4) Freya Blekman (npub1a97…mqm8)

Of course, it will always be the case that there might be ...

2025-09-21T14:53:09Z

In reply to nevent1q…uhqx
_________________________

Of course, it will always be the case that there *might* be particles at energies far too high for us to reach with whatever technology we develop, leading to potential cynicism about unfalsifiable theories.

But putting that to the side, yes, you make a very interesting point. We have a semi-workable theory after all (supersymmetry) if we just accept that the superpartners exist but are currently unobservable.

I'm not paraphrasing you very well, but I'm trying to say "yeah! What *he* said!" :)

Freya Blekman (npub1a97…mqm8)

Aha, your edited post is helpful on this; thank you.

2025-09-21T14:00:50Z

In reply to nevent1q…9x8k
_________________________

Aha, your edited post is helpful on this; thank you.

Typically it's not that I don't know really basic stuff ...

2025-09-21T13:59:21Z

In reply to nevent1q…fdwc
_________________________

Typically it's not that I don't know really basic stuff like this at all, it's that it's been so long that my memory is fuzzy.

Of course, doubtless that's because I didn't learn it all well *enough* in the first place. It's all just a hobby.

Re-reading your missive, I see that "model" in particular ...

2025-09-21T13:54:35Z

In reply to nevent1q…8a0g
_________________________

Re-reading your missive, I see that "model" in particular is something I need to re-study.

Thanks, that's an interesting way to put it. I'm sharing ...

2025-09-21T13:51:30Z

In reply to nevent1q…e2xe
_________________________

Thanks, that's an interesting way to put it. I'm sharing that electron microscope with Rob. :)

Long ago I studied Löwenheim-Skolem profitably, but I guess I need to refresh my memory.

Certainly these are all deep and slippery topics!

The lack of observation of Supersymmetry motivates looking for a ...

2025-09-21T13:18:21Z

In reply to nevent1q…9mmc
_________________________

The lack of observation of Supersymmetry motivates looking for a much better theoretical model that doesn't imply Supersymmetry, and my naive understanding was that that was basically what you worked really hard on, before getting frustrated with whatever resulted or did not result from those efforts.

Freya Blekman (npub1a97…mqm8)