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Leo C. Stein

@duetosymmetry.com
4.4K followers 837 following 1.7K posts

Physics Prof @ U of MS. Sloan Fellow. Black holes, gravitational waves, general relativity & beyond. Formerly Caltech MIT Cornell. Need thin pizza + fruity coffee. He/him 🌐 duetosymmetry.com @duetosymmetry everywhere

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Reposted by Leo C. Stein
McSweeney's @mcsweeneys.net · 27/09/2026
"I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait to get my hands on some fucking gourds and arrange them in a horn-shaped basket on my dining room table. That shit is going to look so seasonal." buff.ly/pykYN6f
buff.ly
It’s Decorative Gourd Season, Motherfuckers
For the seventeenth year: Welcome to autumn, fuckheads.
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Leo C. Stein @duetosymmetry.com · 25/09/2026
Confidently answering the wrong question… The Netherlands is literally named after being low-lying. Its average elevation is 30m above sea level. (The correct answer is Bhutan at 3.28km, just edging out Nepal at 3.27km)
Screenshot of googling "country with the highest average elevation", and the AI responds with The Netherlands because their men are 184cm tall on average.
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Dan Garisto @dangaristo.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
And here's a plot of workforce changes relative to 2024.
Plot of workforce change relative to 2024
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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Research units from across government have been gutted. More than 10,000 PhDs have left government. For example the research arm of the Department of Education lost 90% of their staff and the research office for the Secretary of Health and Human Services lost an estimated 60% of their staff.
figure shows dramatic cut in research staff
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Liℤℤy Kodpuak née Acid Lich (can’t spell sheaves without she) @acidlich.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Is it so easy to forget that people like beautiful things
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Jessica Valenti @jessicavalenti.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Horrific though unsurprising report from @propublica.org: Ectopic pregnancy deaths have basically doubled since the end of Roe
propublica.org
Ectopic Pregnancy Deaths Have Nearly Doubled. It’s Worse in States With Abortion Bans.
With prompt and appropriate medical care, experts say, people shouldn’t die from an ectopic pregnancy. Women in Texas and Oklahoma have sued over delays in care, which, coupled with our new analysis, ...
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Josh Eyler @josheyler.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Have you ever wanted to hear @cjdenial.bsky.social, @thetattooedprof.bsky.social, @liznorell.bsky.social, and me talk about the need for resisting AI in education? If so, you're in luck! On October 13th, we're doing a reprise of a session on this topic, and we're hosting it on Zoom FREE OF CHARGE.
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Dan Garisto @dangaristo.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Grantmaking has leveled off, so it looks like NSF will make around 6,200 new grants—down from an average of ~11,000. That's a historic low, not seen since the 1980s, when NSF was a far smaller organization. Left was our projection three weeks ago, right is the current data.
Previous plot of NSF new grants projected FY26 would be ~6100Current data for total new grants at NSF
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Leo C. Stein @duetosymmetry.com · 08/09/2026
Kinda bullshit that none of these items are used to make tea, Earl Grey, hot
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Dr Elisabeth Kosters @elisabethkosters.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
Does Renee Good’s widow also get a @nytimes.com column? Alex Pretti’s parents and sister? Or the widows and widowers of the people who died (were murdered) in ICE concentration camps?
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Leo C. Stein @duetosymmetry.com · 07/09/2026
I've been looking through a lot of dynamical systems lit lately, more on the mathematician side, not the physicist side. Even though I think I know a lot more of this than most physicists, there is just so much that most physicists barely ever scratch the surface! I could study this for decades…
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Saramoira Shields @mathematigal.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
Hey Cornell faculty. Sweeties. Honeybunches. Y’all need a union. Because what the hell is this?!
Screenshot of an email message sent at 9:33am on Labor Day from Cornell University’s Dean of Faculty Office. It opens with “Dear Colleagues, Labor Day is today, which Cornell observes by cancelling classes, thereby giving the faculty a nearly uninterrupted day in which to work.”
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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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Matt Novak @paleofuture.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
This is pretty fucking wild. I had assumed in a worst case scenario he would target blue zip codes and toss ballots based on technicalities but this is even worse than I imagined.
Not only is this system astonishingly untested, USPS has simultaneously implemented an
impracticable zero percent failure rate.
13 When ballots are submitted to USPS in large-volume
batches, if any one ballot in the batch cannot be verified against the Portal, all ballots in that
batch will be rejected. For example, if a state election official brings a batch of 10,000 ballots to
USPS and USPS is unable to match just one of those ballots against the Portal – because, for
example, someone has recently changed their name after marriage or they’ve moved – then
USPS would refuse to mail the remaining 9,999 ballots as well. As the whistleblower notes,
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Jess Calarco @jessicacalarco.com · 01/09/2026
It breaks my heart that it wasn't the ankle monitor that broke him—it was the way his college classmates treated him for having to wear It. Which says so much about the kinds of hatefulness that permeate American culture and that made it possible for MAGA to gain so much power.
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Leo C. Stein @duetosymmetry.com · 30/08/2026
I adopted a pixel!
Certificate that I have adopted a pixel from the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope
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Laurence Datrier @asleepywanderer.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
The little dopamine rush from citations has convinced me that they're just social media likes for academics
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Fractal Kitty @fractalkitty.com · 27/08/2026
I'm going to run a group - Painting the OEIS. Please share your favorite sequences and why. I'll share what art I do with any of them. #oeis #mtbos #mathArt
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Leo C. Stein @duetosymmetry.com · 26/08/2026
Tim Curry and Dolly Parton both demonstrated how gender is a social construct. RIP legends
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Phil Lewis @phillewis.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
“A 1-year-old baby appeared in immigration court without legal representation in Arizona and received an instruction: File an asylum application before the next hearing or face deportation.”
notus.org
Judge to Baby: File an Asylum Application
The 1-year-old is one of the migrant children who advocates say appeared in immigration court without legal representation.
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Chris⚖️Justice @chrisjustice01.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
💥 ICE drag mom & teen daughter out of hospital room—in middle of being treated after car accident. Still wearing hospital gowns. Both victims of car collusion, with asylum case pending in good standing & valid work permit. Grace Calero 39, & Giulianna Carriel 19, from Ecuador.
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Leo C. Stein @duetosymmetry.com · 22/08/2026
Optimist: The cup is half full. Pessimist: The cup is half empty. Measure theorist: There are an infinite number of (non-canonical) measures on your space.
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Jacquelyn Gill @jacquelyngill.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
Hey folks, this hasn’t gotten much attention, but remember those proposed OMB rule changes we all commented on recently? There’s a new attempt to sneak them just for NSF. We have three days to comment. Please don’t sleep on this!
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Dan Garisto @dangaristo.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
The culprit? Like last year, NSF is spending more up front, discontinuing multi-year awards and paying off the mortgage on existing awards. But FY26 and FY25 have similar budgets. What accounts for the difference is that NSF has withheld $1 billion—$1,016,862,632, to be precise.
Chart showing total grants much are much lower in FY26 and FY25
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Dan Garisto @dangaristo.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
Scoop: For nearly a year, NSF has struggled to make new grants. Now we know that it will not catch up. In fact, NSF will award just 6,100 new grants—a 30% y/o/y decline, itself down from a previous avg. of 11,000+. In fact, the last time NSF awarded so few grants was in the early '80s.
nature.com
Exclusive: NSF set to issue lowest number of new grants in four decades
The US science-funding agency is withholding $1 billion of its budget so that the money can go to a special White House project.
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Leo C. Stein @duetosymmetry.com · 19/08/2026
The gravity + astrophysics group at UMiss has a totally overhauled web page! Many thanks to João Dinis Álvares for his work overhauling the site. www.phy.olemiss.edu/GR/ ⚛️🧪🔭
Screen shot of the new web site
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Henry Mance @henrymance.ft.com · 19/08/2026
Woah.
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Nikhil Shah @grandmastershah.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
"A database of federal law enforcement officer misconduct records. A survey measuring physical, sexual and emotional violence against children and youth. Real-time pollution readings collected by air quality monitors from US embassies around the world."
theguardian.com
Trump 2.0 has deleted or altered nearly 400 US datasets, endangering public health, education and more
Health data appears to be most affected by administration’s attempt to wipe findings that don’t align with its priorities, tracker shows
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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
I think part of the pundit crack-up has been that they missed the big call of their lifetimes about which was the bigger threat to America: wokeness or authoritarianism. And rather than admitting that, they are doubling down on wokeness, while ignoring an authoritarianism that does not threaten them
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Leo C. Stein @duetosymmetry.com · 11/08/2026
#MathSky, can somebody tell me the significance of M23 (and thus all sporadic finite simple groups) being Galois over Q?
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Matt Henderson @matthen.com · 10/08/2026
Who is doing cool maths animations on here? Have found a few people..
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Leo C. Stein @duetosymmetry.com · 10/08/2026
I learned about this movie during sophomore(?) year from a quantum mechanics homework problem. The problem wanted us to estimate the probability of quantum tunneling through a mountain, based on what happens early in the movie. Obviously, we had to watch it!
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ꭓle Ormsby 𓆙 @e-infinity.space · 09/08/2026
Does anyone have digital copies of the newsletter they can share? Physical copies should be with Smale's papers in Berkeley's Bancroft Library. And is this the source of your newsletter's name, @courtneygibbons.phd?
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Mike Boylan-Kolchin @mbkplus.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
"Across DI colleges, 94 percent of athletics programs, including 49 of the 69 Power colleges, spent more than they generated in revenue in the 2023–24 academic year. The median college reported a gap of $20.6 million. This gap was larger than the median a decade earlier ($12.3 million)."
washingtonpost.com
Most Division I colleges lose money on sports
Over 90 percent of these athletic programs spend more money than they generate, according to the Government Accountability Office.
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Merriam-Webster @merriam-webster.com · 05/08/2026
Jane Austen used 'however' at the beginning of a sentence, and so can you.
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🐈Rex Parker🐈‍⬛ ✏️ 🧐 @rexparker.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
You cannot trick me into reading Joyce Carol Oates’s take on Emily Wilson’s take on Christopher Nolan’s take on Homer. I have stabbed myself in the eye once too often. I have no more eyes left to stab.
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Leo C. Stein @duetosymmetry.com · 20/07/2026
Andy, did you write the waltz about masturbation... (wait for it)... singlehandedly?
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Ron Filipkowski @ronfilipkowski.bsky.social · 14/07/2026
The reason why ICE agents continue to shoot people is because nothing ever happens to them when they do. They essentially have been granted full immunity for whatever they choose to do to people by a lawless regime of thugs.
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Dean Obeidallah @deanobeidallah.bsky.social · 12/07/2026
Michael Fanone's take on Lindsey Graham is one of the most powerful I've read:
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Robert McNees @mcnees.bsky.social · 12/07/2026
People who don’t want to be spoken ill of when dead, shouldn’t work so hard to make the living hate them so much.
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Leo C. Stein @duetosymmetry.com · 11/07/2026
Two more PhDs defended! duetosymmetry.com/news/Two-mor...
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Dave Byrnes @djbyrnes1.bsky.social · 09/07/2026
He added, as others have observed, that ICE has learned lessons from Midway Blitz: specifically, by not riling white areas. "I think they're being more strategic," Jesse said. "They're not hitting white communities. They're hitting Back of the Yards. They're hitting communities that are brown."
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Leo C. Stein @duetosymmetry.com · 08/07/2026
There are 544,831 groups in their database! You can search by e.g. order, or number of conjugacy classes, or solvability, or so many other things. Check out their advanced search: www.lmfdb.org/Groups/Abstr...
lmfdb.org
LMFDB - Abstract groups
Welcome to the LMFDB, the database of L-functions, modular forms, and related objects. These pages are intended to be a modern handbook including tables, formulas, links, and references for L-function...
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Leo C. Stein @duetosymmetry.com · 08/07/2026
I don't know who needs this information, but the LMFDB site includes a huge database of finite groups and their properties. Here's the entry for A₅: www.lmfdb.org/Groups/Abstr.... I know there is also groupprops.subwiki.org , but that's just a wiki whereas the LMFDB was generated programmatically 🧮
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ceej @ceej.online · 04/07/2026
celebrating the good parts of america today. if you don’t think there are any good parts, just look to all the stuff the fascists are desperate to stifle
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Shannon Watts @shannonrwatts.bsky.social · 04/07/2026
The white supremacist group, Patriot Front, was seen marching through Capitol Hill this morning.
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Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 04/07/2026
“.. Members of the group Patriot Front ride the metro on the 250th anniversary of U.S. independence in Washington, D.C.” @reuters.com
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Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
FT: Joe Biden “made 13 transactions over four years.” In 2025 alone, “Trump made more than 22,000.” @financialtimes.com www.ft.com/content/9067...
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NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory @rubinobservatory.org · 30/06/2026
The moment we've all been waiting for is finally here… On June 29, 2026, NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory officially began the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST)! 🔭🧪☄️🌌 🔗: rubinobservatory.org/news/action-...
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