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David Bindel

@dbindel.bsky.social
1.1K followers 656 following 743 posts

Professing computing and applied math at Cornell. Numerical methods for data science, plasma physics, other stuff depending on the day. Director, Cornell Center for Applied Mathematics; Director, Simons Collaboration on Hidden Symmetries and Fusion Energy.

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Reposted by David Bindel
AgonyFlips @agonyflips.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
When you're ticked off and a friend sends you something to make you feel better. 🐑🔊
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David Bindel @dbindel.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
After the panel, and the post colloquium socializing, I walked home. It's a beautiful day here. The weather is nice, the sun is shining, and it is Friday. I'm not certain of much, but I am pretty sure that's worth appreciating.
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David Bindel @dbindel.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
The news is awash with certainty borrowed from sources I don't trust. Experts make mistakes. Zealots are sure they never do. What about when somebody tries to borrow certainty from an AI question? Democratized expertise? If nobody involved knows what they know, where is the expertise?
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David Bindel @dbindel.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
There are places, too, where I feel I have earned some certainty for myself. I know a few things about error analysis. I know some things about writing high performance code. Those are things that I have worked on a long time.
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David Bindel @dbindel.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
I have some certainty of many things that I have not directly worked on. I go up elevators, certain they will not fall to the ground. I ride vehicles, certain they will not burst into flames. That certainty is borrowed; I believe the engineers who worked on the design knew their stuff.
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David Bindel @dbindel.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
It seems to me that unearned certainty is a silent scourge right now. By unearned certainty, I mean certainty that is borrowed from another source where that other source has no vetting.
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David Bindel @dbindel.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
My colleagues on the panel all expressed some amount of uncertainty. I would have expected nothing less. I worry much more when I read takes in which people are totally certain what will happen next.
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David Bindel @dbindel.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
I send emails to the applied math PhD students on Fridays, and this was no exception. At the end of those emails, I often put a little "sermon.". This week, I wrote about uncertainty and unearned certainty. It wasn't exactly about AI. It also wasn't exactly not about AI.
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David Bindel @dbindel.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
That panel discussion took place today. Needless to say, it was standing room only. We had people online, and we brought extra chairs into the room.
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David Bindel @dbindel.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
In early summer of this year, one of the applied math PhD students asked whether we could have a panel on AI and mathematics in the fall colloquium series. I said yes, and we started planning it on earnest about a month ago.
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H. P. Read @readhpr.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
Lovely article about a 99-year-old retired math professor who recently published a major result. It's the story of mentorship and multi-generational collaboration. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/06/s...
nytimes.com
The 92-Year-Old Mathematician and the Teenage Apprentice (Gift Article)
Joan Birman thought her major discoveries were behind her. Then came an email from a young neighbor — a girl who knew little but wanted to learn.
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David Bindel @dbindel.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
Fortunately, kid 1 also likes fountain pens and just came down for dinner, so I can put down the phone and talk to him.
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David Bindel @dbindel.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
I get that many things are bad right now. That is why I want the distraction of people talking about fountain pens.
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David Bindel @dbindel.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
The SF fountain pen show was this weekend, and I have been admiring from afar on Reddit. And sometimes on Mastodon. And somehow on Bluesky, I am mostly finding people who mentioned a fountain pen once and now want to express their anger about politics.
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Courtney Milan @courtneymilan.com · 30/08/2026
come on outlier, why is "eigenvalues" not a word????
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David Bindel @dbindel.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
Evergreen.
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David Bindel @dbindel.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
Every so often, I remember being a youngster who thought we had about even odds of a major nuclear war killing off most of humanity before I got to high school. So, I suppose, the current moment could be worse.
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David Bindel @dbindel.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
Sprinting woodchucks are the funniest damn things.
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David Bindel @dbindel.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
Students returning, and the woodchucks are freaking out. I saw two of them practically sprinting across the path on my way in.
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Mike Boylan-Kolchin @mbkplus.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
Just one extra week, bro. That’s all I’m asking. One additional week before the semester starts, bro, and I’ll have cleared my to do list and be ready to hit the ground running. Honest, bro.
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Joshua Grochow @joshuagrochow.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
"Coffee. The bitter liquid that provides the only semblance of pleasure left in these dark times." From, of all places, Lego Movie 2 😂
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David Bindel @dbindel.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
In my most optimistic moments, I hope that the backlash to Some People trying to shove AI into everything (including research writing) will involve far fewer papers that are written not to be first, most technical, SOTA, etc but rather to delight the reader.
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David Bindel @dbindel.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
I will probably need to switch gears tomorrow and not work on this paper for a bit. But I'm squirreling away the feelings of delight over the whole business.
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David Bindel @dbindel.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
One of the lovely things about reading these old papers is appreciating that I grew up in an academic tradition where people care about writing. These people were insightful, clever mathematicians -- and also very witty. And it shows.
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David Bindel @dbindel.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
Without too much detail, part of the reason that I'm so excited about this thing is because it seems obvious once you put the pieces together. And the pieces are not totally new! A fair fraction of the bibliography involves papers that are older than I am.
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David Bindel @dbindel.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
I spent much of today and yesterday working on a draft of something that I'm excited about. There are arguably more urgent things on my list -- overdue reviews, urgent admin tasks, classes that start in two weeks. But I'm struggling with some things, and research can be soothing.
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David Bindel @dbindel.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
Avogadro's number is very close to 2 to the 79. That's all. Go on with your day.
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David Bindel @dbindel.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
I don't know if compactness or anything else applies, so maybe it should be called HBO Sup?
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Reposted by David Bindel
Phil Plait @philplait.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
This editorial is indeed blunt, in your face, sweary, and absolutely 100% correct. I'm happy Science published it. It needs to be spread far and wide, because it strips away all the usual mealy-mouthed crap when it comes to discussing Trump and makes it clear who he is and what he's doing.
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Diana Cai @dianarycai.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
I’m joining Cornell as an Assistant Professor in Computer Science this fall! My group will work on probabilistic machine learning for scientific discovery. I’m recruiting PhD students to start in Fall 2027 -- and stay tuned for postdoc opportunities!
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David Bindel @dbindel.bsky.social · 11/07/2026
Nicely put.
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David Bindel @dbindel.bsky.social · 28/06/2026
Five bunnies so far today on just a couple short walks around the neighborhood. Two adults, three young'uns. They have eaten most of our garden (they don't like collards), and that's not great. But they are cute.
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Reposted by David Bindel
Steven Strogatz @stevenstrogatz.com · 23/06/2026
My new book! Written w my pal Alex Townsend, it's about the math behind enormous systems (medical scans, AI, etc.) and what happens when they outgrow our ability to understand them. Pre-order at @barnesandnoble.com for 25% off -> www.barnesandnoble.com/w/big-math-s... @littlebrown.bsky.social
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David Bindel @dbindel.bsky.social · 20/06/2026
Anyone else hum the Ghostbusters theme to themselves when a story about the reflecting pool passes by?
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Reposted by David Bindel
Grant @syncingsinking.bsky.social · 19/06/2026
The Strait is open The Strait is closed The Strait is second countable The Strait is totally disconnected The Strait is perfect The Strait is normal The Strait is Hausdorff The Strait is a Polish space
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David Bindel @dbindel.bsky.social · 18/06/2026
"How many AI monkey butlers will there be?" "Oh, one at first, but he'll train others."
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David Bindel @dbindel.bsky.social · 12/06/2026
Pete also wrote many of my favorite books on numerical linear algebra. He was always entertaining to read, and of course a very deep thinker.
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David Bindel @dbindel.bsky.social · 12/06/2026
Pete Stewart passed away this week at the age of 85. He was a mentor when I was an undergraduate at the University of Maryland, and somebody I looked forward to seeing at conferences for a long time after.
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Clément Canonne @ccanonne.github.io · 07/06/2026
After the Odyssey, Christopher Nolan is working on an adaptation of the myth of Sisyphus. According to sources, they've already cast The Rock
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Tiago Peixoto @tiago.skewed.de · 24/05/2026
Dijkstra, “On the foolishness of ‘natural language programming’”: “When all is said and told, the 'naturalness' with which we use our native tongues boils down to the ease with which we can use them for making statements the nonsense of which is not obvious.” www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcr...
cs.utexas.edu
E.W.Dijkstra Archive: On the foolishness of "natural language programming". (EWD 667)
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David Bindel @dbindel.bsky.social · 17/05/2026
Thinking about my fall teaching, an upper-division undergrad systems programming course. And I am at 75% planning to use Rust (it was in C++ when Ken Birman taught it the past several years). Pointers to good models are welcome.
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David Bindel @dbindel.bsky.social · 17/05/2026
This is primarily supposed to be a course about systems programming where Rust happens to be the implementation language, not primarily a course about Rust where systems programming happens to be the domain.
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David Bindel @dbindel.bsky.social · 17/05/2026
Text is likely to still be Bryant and O'Halloran CS:APP3e, though I am sure that I will add some things.
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David Bindel @dbindel.bsky.social · 17/05/2026
Thinking about my fall teaching, an upper-division undergrad systems programming course. And I am at 75% planning to use Rust (it was in C++ when Ken Birman taught it the past several years). Pointers to good models are welcome.
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David Bindel @dbindel.bsky.social · 09/05/2026
2.25 hours into my 2.5 hour final. Nobody is leaving early. I hope I did not badly miscalibrate the difficulty.
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David Bindel @dbindel.bsky.social · 09/05/2026
I used to joke that our department should offer a masters in computational evil, and had ideas for courses we could all contribute. I stopped telling it years ago, though.
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David Bindel @dbindel.bsky.social · 21/04/2026
A math degree is also great!
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David Bindel @dbindel.bsky.social · 20/04/2026
Spring in Ithaca. Mid 70s on Saturday, snow flurries yesterday and today.
A bush covered with snow in the foreground. In the background, a cherry tree in bloom, with snow dusting the top. Ithaca campus April 20, 2026.
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Dr. Damien P. Williams, dread portent down from a mountain cave @wolven.blacksky.app · 16/04/2026
Massive Attack. And Tom Waits. I mean just holy shit y'all. www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVTV...
youtube.com
Boots on the Ground
YouTube video by Massive Attack - Topic
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