Calvin McPhail-Snyder

A statement by 40 Jewish faculty and staff on antisemitism and DEI at U.Va. As scholars and teachers, we know that dissent and debate strengthen our intellectual commitments and moral judgments rather than threaten them. We reject any attempt to deny these basic truths. 

I am not really active on here at the moment but I wanted to share this regarding my alma mater:

www.cavalierdaily.com/article/2025...

Since we’re just unilaterally declaring things this week, Outlook is joining in and declaring it doesn’t want to send any emails

This seems one of the (few?) good uses of AI. Although I’d want to really read the output carefully to make sure there aren’t changes…

Every semester someone replies all to the teaching assignment email, but every semester it’s a *different* person

I know it's a collision of two very different working cultures, but it's really annoying there's no way to automatically tell Dropbox to stop syncing .swp files

I can overlook racism but I draw the line at cheating at message board arguments .jpeg

The idea is that writing text is faster on a computer but drawing figures is easier with a pen, and also that it’s better for the students to see me sketching things (I’m teaching multivariable calculus)

Trying something new this semester for teaching: I’m making slides in typst but then writing on them with a drawing tablet while lecturing

If they had shown THAT live I might have actually died

Apparently it’s just his thing and he does it before every kick???

I almost had a heart attack watching him adjust his hair 10 times

the Washington Commanders have WON A PLAYOFF GAME

This is related to working with rational functions as functions on the whole field: they have some singularities but you can just work away from those and composition, etc. still makes sense

z |-> 1/z is not a function on the complex numbers but it is natural to consider it to be a “meromorphic” function from CC to CC (which means function defined except at nice isolated singularities)

Yes, BUT it’s ok to extend the definition of “function” to things that are not technically functions

Are you even allowed to add a subtle political message by including a prominent symbol of the government in the background?

Toyota makes over 5 times as many vehicles per year!!!

Born too soon to explore the galaxy, born too late to email Don Knuth

I recently switched to using typst for teaching stuff and would also like to know the answer to this…

I think that’s the easiest thing to do if you want the students to be able to mark where the questions are in their assignments.

A Google search for "kirby moves" whose first result is an article about the video game character Kirby in Super Smash Brothers

I was thinking more about Dehn surgery but that's cool too I guess

Not to mention the Greek-speaking Eastern Roman Empire was around for another 1600 years or so...

The fundamental issue with stuff like this is that "Greek civilization" isn't really a thing you can precisely measure. Does it count as "decline" if the Roman empire takes over but embraces Greek culture?

That's from the introduction about the history of Western mathematics. I'm hoping the shorter ones later (about stuff like the history of quaternions) are better

I like that the textbook I'm using this semester has historical sections! I do not like that it includes phrases like "After the death of Archimedes in 212 BCE the Greek civilization went into slow decline"

I finally removed the app from my phone when it was sending me two fake notifications a day

You ever tried Factorio?

I think it’s more about relative emphasis. The traditional approach to teaching math is a bit like drilling jump shots without ever showing anyone a real game of basketball.

Is phil as bad as math? I’ve had two papers take 30+ months to review, and one of those is still pending

...a more fair comparison is how ChatGPT performs compared to a typical math undergrad who has access to Mathematica and Google while writing the Putnam. And I think that the answer to that question is "eh, about the same".

Thread/rant over.