iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Dan Drake 🦆 @ddrake.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 14/07/2026

My office right now. A reasonable person could be forgiven for thinking I'm a kindergarten teacher, and not preparing materials for a college introduction to programming course. (Let me know if you're interested in what those activities are...) (And also a […] [Original post on mathstodon.xyz]

An office desk, with piles of Legos sorted into piles by color; some paper, cardboard tube, glue stick, and tape; the textbook "Artificial Intelligence: a Modern Approach"

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Dan Drake 🦆 @ddrake.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 09/07/2026

A great day -- reconnecting with my PhD advisor Dennis Stanton, and my colleague Jang Soo Kim from my days at KAIST in South Korea! (We did not find a $q$-version of...anything, sadly. 🤔 We'll have to have lunch again sometime...)

Dennis Stanton, Jang Soo Kim, and Dan Drake at a table at the EaTo restaurant in downtown Minneapolis.

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Dan Drake 🦆 @ddrake.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 06/07/2026

One thing I love about Saint Paul: they put poetry on sidewalks. Here's some in my neighborhood. Art + infrastructure! #saintpaul #minnesota #poetry #sidewalks

A sidewalk with a poem imprinted in it:

I don't know enough
about balance to tell you
how to do it

I think, though,
it's in the trying
and the letting go

that the scales measuring
right and wrong -- quiver
and stand still

A sidewalk with a poem imprinted in it:

there's no place I'd rather be
then here
in this quiet common place
where late morning sun
meets the scent of concrete and cut grass
stirring

A sidewalk with a poem imprinted in it:

Midnight in the Burger King parking lot
We could drop a dime, see it sparkle
fifty feet away. We would always
have the moon we said

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Dan Drake 🦆 @ddrake.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 21/06/2026

I've been thinking a lot about design lately -- next spring I'm teaching a course in the ethics of software design -- and I realized that even something like an iPad cover / stand can be right-handed, in a way. When the iPad is propped up using the cover in […] [Original post on mathstodon.xyz]

an iPad on a desk, using its cover as a stand.

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Dan Drake 🦆 @ddrake.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 12/06/2026

Usually the best way to communicate with your IT helpdesk staff is to send an email. In this case...

A note attached to an office door. It says "if I'm on a piece of paper, Dan fixed his computer issue! If I'm in a screenshot or some computer file...maybe not."

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Dan Drake 🦆 @ddrake.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 23/05/2026

I've really gotten into doing Miura-ori folds... #origami

Several origami models of the Miura-ori fold.

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Dan Drake 🦆 @ddrake.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 03/05/2026

I've seen lots of turkeys in #stpaul but mostly around Summit Hill a few blocks from Dale and Selby. They've moved closer to us, now -- this at Saint Clair and Cretin. Personally, I would take more turkeys for fewer rabbits. The rabbit population around here […] [Original post on mathstodon.xyz]

A large turkey standing between a sidewalk and a street in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

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Dan Drake 🦆 @ddrake.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 01/05/2026

I was reading some of @JimPropp 's stuff and stumbled on his rotor-router images, which reminded me of my good ol' days doing undergrad research with him on abelian sandpiles. I love those kind of images of cellular automata! OpenAI just came out with a […] [Original post on mathstodon.xyz]

Desktop wallpaper generated with the prompt "I'd like a good desktop background image, something similar to the kind of images one gets from the router-router model of cellular automata, or perhaps the abelian sandpile model. Make an image resembling one of those, with a prominent sense of texture and muted color scheme. Output a 4K-sized image." -- by ChatGPT.

Desktop wallpaper generated by the prompt "I'd like a good desktop background image, something similar to the kind of images one gets from the router-router model of cellular automata, or perhaps the abelian sandpile model. Make an image resembling one of those, with a prominent sense of texture and muted color scheme. Output a 4K-sized image." -- by Gemini.

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Dan Drake 🦆 @ddrake.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 07/02/2026

What is this polyhedron? I made this modular origami piece, and I want to know what polyhedron it represents. The units all have three arms, so the underlying graph is 3-regular, and all the faces are pentagons and hexagons. So, there's necessarily 12 […] [Original post on mathstodon.xyz]

a modular origami kusudama made from Electra units; it has 4 hexagon faces and 12 pentagon faces

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Dan Drake 🦆 @ddrake.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 24/01/2026

Very proud of my fellow Minnesotans and Twin Citians: yesterday was brutally, viciously cold -- high temperature was -9 Fahrenheit (-22 Celsius). That was the HIGH temperature. And in that brutal weather, tens of thousands of people went outside to protest […] [Original post on mathstodon.xyz]

Tens of thousands of people in downtown Minneapolis, January 23, 2026, protesting against ICE.

People at Minneapolis-St Paul Airport (MSP), January 23, 2026, protesting against ICE.

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Dan Drake 🦆 @ddrake.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 11/01/2026

🧵 1/N I was struck by this artwork at the Minnesota Museum of American art. It was part of an exhibit called Queering Indigeneity. I noticed the fractions, and pondered what that would have to do with queerness. Well, being queer could be viewed as being […] [Original post on mathstodon.xyz]

$Photo an artwork with a person facing away, with a table of fractions projected onto the person. Fractions such as 1/2, 15/32, 9/64, and so on.$

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Dan Drake 🦆 @ddrake.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 21/12/2025

My friend @gobfrey sent me this photo. It looks like an origami crease pattern! Also, he knows exactly the kind of geometric images that I find irresistible. #origami #pylons

An image of an electrical transmission line pylon, taken from underneath the pylon looking straight up. The trusses of the pylon form a 4-fold symmetric pattern.

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Dan Drake 🦆 @ddrake.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 14/12/2025

New Yorker magazine should have a diaresis over one of the zeros in its 100-year anniversary logo.

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Dan Drake 🦆 @ddrake.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 04/12/2025

@divbyzero @JenJen now you've got me experimenting with square twist tessellations. The pattern on this paper looks neat with the twists.

Photo of an origami piece with a 2x2 square twist tessellation.

Photo of an origami piece showing the back side of a 2x2 square twist tessellation.

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Dan Drake 🦆 @ddrake.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 28/11/2025

I really like the old-school, text UI style of this cookie popup on the JetBrains website. II usually click reject cookies -- or even click "manage" and decline them there, which surely puts me in rare territory -- but I liked this enough that I accepted the […] [Original post on mathstodon.xyz]

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Dan Drake 🦆 @ddrake.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 26/10/2025

🧵 1/2 Earlier this semester, trying to look all super ambitious and so on, I volunteered to speak at the department seminar. My talk is next week, and they sent out a flyer advertising it...and suddenly it's on nearly EVERY office door near me. So now I'm all […] [Original post on mathstodon.xyz]

Flyer for a seminar talk: "When Bad Predictions Are Better"

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Dan Drake 🦆 @ddrake.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 27/09/2025

Achievement unlocked: I have ridden a bicycle with square wheels. This is from earlier this week at our department's "block party" for our majors and interested students. I'm proud (and a bit intimidated TBH) to work in the same department as Stan Wagon, the […] [Original post on mathstodon.xyz]

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Dan Drake 🦆 @ddrake.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 01/09/2025

The Minnesota State Fair is going on, and it's a tradition there to find the craziest food that is either (1) fried, or (2) served on a stick. (Or both.) Some great math folks -- in particular, Chris Danielson of talkingmathwithkids.com -- started […] [Original post on mathstodon.xyz]

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Dan Drake 🦆 @ddrake.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 21/08/2025

After you've learned Discrete Mathematics with Ducks.... www.amazon.com/Discrete-Mathematics… ...you can, it seems, learn Bayesian analysis with dogs. #math #dogs #ducks

The cover of the book "Doing Bayesian Data Analysis", which has pictures of dogs.

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Dan Drake 🦆 @ddrake.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 19/08/2025

@soaproot my little bit of subversive culture jamming...actual one-sided paper...

A box of Mobius strips next to a sign advertising notebooks made with "one-sided paper".

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Dan Drake 🦆 @ddrake.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 18/08/2025

When I saw this sign advertising one-sided paper, I was really hoping that it would be next to a bin full of Mobius strips. Alas, it seems the paper they're providing actually has *two* sides...sigh. 🤔 😀 #topology #math #ReduceRepairReuseRecycle

A sign advertising "one sided paper here".

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Dan Drake 🦆 @ddrake.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 28/07/2025

Google's Gemini said its image generation is now much better, and suggested a "make a vintage postcard" prompt to test it out. I tried it, with my own modifications...and the results were not as good as I would have hoped. In particular, it seems like since […] [Original post on mathstodon.xyz]

An AI-generated vintage postcard that says "Saint Paul, Minnesota" and has the Saint Paul skyline against the Mississippi River...with a sea monster.

An AI-generated vintage postcard that says "Welcome to Saint Paul" and has King Kong climbing the First National Bank building while being attacked by a flying saucer shooting a purple laser.

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Dan Drake 🦆 @ddrake.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 14/06/2025

#madisonwi's #NoKings protest. Some favorite signs: "so bad, even introverts are here" (resonated with this autistic introvert) "Alexa, change the president" "the only orange monarch I approve of is a butterfly" @johncarlosbaez @inthehands

Me at the No Kings protest, in a crowd of people in front of the Wisconsin State Capitol. My protest sign is Python code:

if __name__ == "Trump":
protest()
constitution.restore()
return power_to(the_people)

Me at the No Kings protest, in a crowd of people at the UW-Madison Library Mall. My protest sign is Python code:

if __name__ == "Trump":
protest()
constitution.restore()
return power_to(the_people)

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Dan Drake 🦆 @ddrake.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 05/06/2025

A real-world application of those "what's the next number in this sequence?" problems: I want a heavier pair of dumbbells. What weight should I get? 🙂

three pairs of dumbbells: a 3-pound, 5-pound, and 8-pound.

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Dan Drake 🦆 @ddrake.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 01/05/2025

When an erstwhile software developer attends a protest... (Please no comments on the typography...I know a proper coding typeface should be monospace, especially for Python, but if I may channel Fermat, the sign was a bit too narrow...) #mayday #protest #madisonwi #50501movement

A person in front of the Wisconsin State Capitol building, attending a protest, holding a sign with Python code on it:

if __name__ == "Trump":
protest()
constitution.restore()
return power_to_(people)

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Dan Drake 🦆 @ddrake.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 15/04/2025

A silly meme I'm copying from a rando Facebook post...I wonder if τ should somehow be in there... #pi #meme

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Dan Drake 🦆 @ddrake.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 13/04/2025

I've been poking at Pixelfed, hoping to find a fediverse alternative to Google Photos. I don't think it's really what I need. But I do have some photos there -- here's a cool one: pixelfed.social/p/ddrake/8166668465… Copying that here: one […] [Original post on mathstodon.xyz]

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Dan Drake 🦆 @ddrake.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 08/03/2025

2/2 The connection with #crochet is cabling: I want to make a scarf, and have 6 cables; I want to make each of them in a different color, and have each color at some point in each position as you go along the scarf. The photo here is roughly what I'm […] [Original post on mathstodon.xyz]

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Dan Drake 🦆 @ddrake.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 08/03/2025

I want to find a particular sequence of permutations. The requirements are: * you start with the identity * each permutation differs from the next by a permutation with only adjacent transpositions * each number appears in every position at least once. For […] [Original post on mathstodon.xyz]

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Dan Drake 🦆 @ddrake.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 28/02/2025

OMG! In Spotify, when you play the Star Wars main theme, the progress bar is a light saber!

A screenshot of Spotify's progress bar while playing music from the Star Wars films. The progress bar is styled to look like a light saber. As the song plays, the glowing part of the light saber extends.

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Dan Drake 🦆 @ddrake.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 21/02/2025

OMG! In Spotify, when you play the Star Wars main theme, the progress bar is a light saber!

Screenshot of the Windows Spotify application showing the progress bar when playing the Star Wars main theme, which looks like a light saber.

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