iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

ꭓle Ormsby 𓆙 @e-infinity.space · 9h

Differentiating sine and cosine today in calculus. Should take about 30 seconds. 🧮

Graphic showing how the velocity vector of (cos t, sin t) is (-sin t, cos t).

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ꭓle Ormsby 𓆙 @e-infinity.space · 21h

help i am being assaulted with snuggles

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ꭓle Ormsby 𓆙 @e-infinity.space · 27/09/2026

We did the dog DNA test and learned that Oliver is 100% good dog.

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ꭓle Ormsby 𓆙 @e-infinity.space · 26/09/2026

Haha. The only way I can visualize an n-simplex for n large is to look at a picture of Kₙ and think "geometry" real hard. Also I had my numbers mixed up earlier: N=5 has 210 complexes; nonetheless, N=6 (with 16,353 complexes) now added!

N=6 simplicial complex Hasse diagram. It's big!

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ꭓle Ormsby 𓆙 @e-infinity.space · 26/09/2026

Now with the partition lattice Πₙ and poset of integer partitions Πₙ/𝔖ₙ as well! e-infinity.space/partition-la...

partition lattice of a set with 4 elements

orbits under S_4 -- now they're integer partitions visualized as Young diagrams

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ꭓle Ormsby 𓆙 @e-infinity.space · 26/09/2026

One like and I buy the mystery ceramic bug for $15. 🐛🐞🪲🦋

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ꭓle Ormsby 𓆙 @e-infinity.space · 26/09/2026

Route to future recreation in the forbidden region.

figure labeled COMPLEX VELOCITY SPACE

The plane shows a 'physical region' on the horizontal axis with hatch marks between -c and +c (speed of light).

On the positive axis, a dark line moves towards +c, hops over it, and then swirls around in a calligraphic flourish. The flourish has an arrow pointing downwards with text below reading "Rout to future recreation in the forbidden region."

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ꭓle Ormsby 𓆙 @e-infinity.space · 26/09/2026

Here's the full archive, which I think you can access without a Reed login: rdc.reed.edu/search?c=Nic... There are 26 sets of notes!

screenshot of first five entries in archive

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ꭓle Ormsby 𓆙 @e-infinity.space · 26/09/2026

Just discovered Nick Wheeler's handwritten lecture notes in Reed's digital archives. Who wants to learn special relativity? rdc.reed.edu/record/22856...

title page
Elements of Special Relativity
being a selection from some lectures on
THE CLASSICAL THEORY OF FIELDS
by
Nicholas A. Wheeler
Reed College
Fall~1966

algebraic theory of g-antisymmetric matrices

Dr. Zago checking the inertiality of his laboratory

complex velocity space
physical region on left
route to future recreation in the forbidden region

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ꭓle Ormsby 𓆙 @e-infinity.space · 26/09/2026

𝑃𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑡. Hey, kid. You wanna see some Hasse diagrams? e-infinity.space/viz/hasse-di... 🧮

finite topological spaces on 5 points up to homeomorphism, ordered by refinement

Tamari lattice of planar full binary trees

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ꭓle Ormsby 𓆙 @e-infinity.space · 24/09/2026

Oliver decided to join in my spouse’s active meditation this morning.[Audio on.]

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ꭓle Ormsby 𓆙 @e-infinity.space · 23/09/2026

Lovely. You might enjoy e-infinity.space/barycentric/.

Screenshot of linked app. A 3-fold barycentric subdivision of an equilateral triangle is partially "exploded".

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ꭓle Ormsby 𓆙 @e-infinity.space · 23/09/2026

A Reed student needs to write a thesis on why we call this the Canyon.

Reed Canyon with thin textured clouds and the first hint of autumn color in the trees.

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ꭓle Ormsby 𓆙 @e-infinity.space · 23/09/2026

If they did for milk, they can do it for eggs!

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ꭓle Ormsby 𓆙 @e-infinity.space · 22/09/2026

On the other hand, how about we don’t?

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ꭓle Ormsby 𓆙 @e-infinity.space · 20/09/2026

Waging battle against a transversality theorem for framed correspondences; coffee already internalized.

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ꭓle Ormsby 𓆙 @e-infinity.space · 20/09/2026

Let's do this. e-infinity.space/putnam/

PUT
NAM
e-infinity.space/putnam/
thu 9:10 / fri 13:40 in Lib 389

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ꭓle Ormsby 𓆙 @e-infinity.space · 18/09/2026

Maxine Calle (my undergraduate advisee) and @jacksonmorris.bsky.social (my PhD advisee) are both presenting in the Electronic Computational Homotopy Theory seminar next Thursday! Details at echtorc.github.io/echt-researc.... 🧮

24 September 2026 at 11:00AM (Eastern US time)

Maxine Calle (University of Bonn)

Title: Prime ideals in the Burnside Tambara functor

Abstract: The Burnside Tambara functor is the analogue of the integers in equivariant algebra, and it appears as the zeroth equivariant stable stem. In this talk, we will describe how to leverage recent advances in the commutative algebra of Tambara functors to compute all the prime Tambara ideals of the Burnside Tambara functor for any finite group G. This talk is based on joint work with David Chan, Sam Ginnett, David Mehrle, J.D. Quigley, Ben Spitz, and Danika Van Niel.

24 September 2026 at 10:00AM (Eastern US time)
Jackson Morris (SLMath/Vanderbilt University)

Title: C-motivic periodic self-maps

Abstract: The stable motivic homotopy category is filled with interesting periodic phenomena. There are many periodicities which are motivic analogues of those found throughout chromatic homotopy theory, which we call topological. There are also new periodicities which are less understood, which we call exotic. I will discuss work in progress in studying the interaction between topological and exotic periodicities in C-motivic homotopy theory. The primary method for studying these periodicities will be through explicit periodic self-maps of finite spectra.

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ꭓle Ormsby 𓆙 @e-infinity.space · 18/09/2026

Ugh, fine. Since you won't stop bullying me, here's the web app version: e-infinity.space/graph-poset-...

n=5 case of unlabeled graphs in linked web app

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ꭓle Ormsby 𓆙 @e-infinity.space · 18/09/2026

Sometimes you just need to make a 76"x50" poster of all 1044 unlabeled graphs on 7 vertices ordered by the subgraph relation. 🧮

detail of middle portion. you can see two rows of 9 graphs on 7 vertices and a bewildering number of covering relations.

the top 5 rows of the Hasse diagram with K_7 at the top.

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ꭓle Ormsby 𓆙 @e-infinity.space · 17/09/2026

Extremal set theory via linear algebra! This app uses determinants to produce a partition of the power set of {1,2,...,n} into chains of subsets, with each chain containing a subset of cardinality ⌊n/2⌋. This proves Sperner's theorem. e-infinity.space/sperner-chai... 🧮

Screenshot of app displaying chain partition of the powerset of {1,2,3,4,5,6}.

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ꭓle Ormsby 𓆙 @e-infinity.space · 15/09/2026

Oh to be Reed faculty in the late '60s, protest a College President candidate by purchasing a billboard with the candidate's photo captioned "Would You Buy A Used College From This Man?", and then depart in a huff, proposing a "College in Exile" with remote office hours conducted by puppet.

James K. Webb, 1934–2001

Jim Webb appeared on the Reed campus in 1965 as a new professor in literature and humanities and departed seven years later. His short career was memorable and controversial. Upon news of his death (April 26, 2001) from heart failure, former students, friends, and colleagues, including about 50 Reed alumni, gathered in Mill Valley, California, to hold an informal memorial service for "Spider God," as Webb was affectionately named in a 1969 film satire. An altar was created around such relics as a cup of coffee and a half-smoked cigarette, a carved (continued in page 26)

(James K. Webb continued from page 25)

staff, crystals, and effigies of Chihuahua dogs.

Webb was valedictorian of his high school in El Paso, Texas, and interstate champion for both essay writing and mental math in the early '50s; graduated magna cum laude from Harvard in 1956; took an M.A. at Columbia with highest honors; read Victorian literature as a Fulbright Scholar at Queen's College, Cambridge; and completed course work for a Ph.D. at the University of Connecticut. This impressive scholarship was, however, balanced by an infectious sense of humor and a great flair for entertainment.

Webb enlisted collaboration from certain colleagues and creative students in preparing a famous series of lectures on Victorian times, which combined paintings, photographs, lithographs, music, and living tableaux. He also inspired discussions on original and unprecedented topics: gay literature, the literature of war, and the politics of psy-chedelia. In the film Spider God he parodied many aspects of academic life and deliberately mocked his own role as cult leader.

In his last three years at Reed, Webb began to hold classes at his home on Knapp Street. There the inner walls were painted black, and the windows covered with wallpaper, and even daytime classes were conducted by candlelight. A loft was converted into a jail, with wrought iron doors, perhaps as a mocking alternative to what he considered the drab and oppressive facilities of learning institutions. Then, in 1971, Webb launched a protest against a proposed candidate for the Reed College presidency by renting a billboard beside a major freeway and filling it with an image of the candidate over the caption "Would You Buy A Used College From This Man?"

It was suggested to Webb that he was unlikely to be given tenure, because his presence on the campus could turn away potential contributors to the college. Webb responded with a proposal for a "College in Exile," which he would conduct in Mexico; office

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ꭓle Ormsby 𓆙 @e-infinity.space · 13/09/2026

I'm very happy to discover that a genuine Real Projective Game (under the name Projex — Projective Hex) exists! First player to build a noncontractible loop on the sphere model of ℝℙ² wins! math.berkeley.edu/~weilacher/P...

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ꭓle Ormsby 𓆙 @e-infinity.space · 11/09/2026

We're doing some spectral graph theory in my combinatorics class, so I built an app (with Claude) that lets you select or build a graph, and then the app computes the adjacency matrix (or Laplacian) and its eigendata. Please use responsibly. 🧮 e-infinity.space/graph-spectra/

Adjancency matrix data for the Dyck graph

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ꭓle Ormsby 𓆙 @e-infinity.space · 10/09/2026

A new Compact for Higher Education endorsed by the AACU, AAUP, and others: www.standupforscience.net/sufs-compact...

Eleven Affirmations

Upon this basis, we the American academic leadership endorsing this Compact, affirm the following:

With academic freedom comes the ability to answer our most vexing and uncomfortable questions, which can be challenging and inconvenient to various parties. This forms the basis of knowledge.

Knowledge has inherent value, and it is through the dissemination of that knowledge and its interaction with human experience that goods may be valued. These goods are not merely monetary, but also social, political, and cultural.

Knowledge is not inherently neutral, and can contain truths that may feel threatening to different parties at different times. It is more important to facilitate the development of knowledge, challenging it within the academic setting, rather than suppressing it, so that the consequences of that knowledge and its exploration may be better understood.

Maintaining higher education institutions as independent centers of thought requires protecting them from political forces that might form in opposition to the creation of knowledge. In general, the principle of institutional self governance must be preserved.

The experiences gained at educational institutions are not limited to workforce preparation, leadership development, and skills training, but also through one’s interactions with others, including with individuals from beyond our borders, which expands our perspective and broadens the possibilities of potential knowledge.

These experiences extend outside the immediate surroundings of the university or college to include their local communities and visitors traveling to and in proximity to campuses. It is no accident that America’s economic hubs for innovation and talent are centered around higher education institutions.

Effectively facilitating the interaction of knowledge and human experiences requires providing as many people as possible the opportunity to participate in the formation and documentation of knowledge, regardless of their social, economic, or racial background. It is therefore the responsibility of institutions to do the utmost to provide educational access to all who seek it and to ensure that all students have fair opportunities to learn and thrive in the safest and most supportive environment possible.

With the creation of public goods, including new knowledge, comes significant responsibility to ensure that these goods are deployed in ways that are consistent with the general welfare, including protection from harm and from violations of fundamental rights.

When the rights of those in institutions of higher education are violated, when knowledge is suppressed, then the goods created by the institutions are also suppressed. This extends broader harm to the rest of society. This includes the responsibility for providing for individuals’ physical safety on campuses.

From the creation of new knowledge we gain additional tools to navigate human experience, and through the rigorous, responsible, and informed use of those tools, the rest of society benefits.

As societies benefit from the products of knowledge derived in institutions of higher learning and independent thought, there is inherent value in public investment in these experiences.

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ꭓle Ormsby 𓆙 @e-infinity.space · 09/09/2026

Well that's a first for me: I'm trending on Hacker News.

20. A Topological Picture Book, Rendered

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ꭓle Ormsby 𓆙 @e-infinity.space · 09/09/2026

Huh. Thanks, facebook and Business Insider? www.businessinsider.com/openai-navie...

The big drama in AI land today is decidedly nerdy stuff.

But the hubbub highlights a concern everyone should care about: Can what you type into AI help train a machine that one day beats you at your own game?

On Monday, Tristan Buckmaster, an NYU mathematician, and Levent Alpöge, a mathematician who works at Anthropic, released papers claiming new results related to a famously thorny scientific question: Can the math used to predict the movement of water and air suddenly hit a breaking point?

Solving that problem could lead to a $1 million prize from the Clay Mathematics Institute. While the pair didn't claim to have achieved that particular breakthrough, Terence Tao, a well-known mathematician, called the work "remarkable" in a Mastodon post.

But it was the four-page statement that Buckmaster published alongside the findings, which included some explosive allegations involving OpenAI, that captured people's attention. He alleged that OpenAI learned of the pair's findings — and told him an internal AI model had made progress on solving the $1 million question.

On Tuesday, OpenAI formally claimed it had achieved a solution to the Navier-Stokes Millennium Prize Problem — "one of the deepest problems at the frontier of mathematics."

Buckmaster — who said that he and Alpöge used AI models from OpenAI and Anthropic to assist in their research — said he does not know whether OpenAI used the pair's data or chats. OpenAI said "no specific user data was accessed in order to solve this problem," but said it couldn't rule out that "de-identified data derived from their usage of our products helped improve our models."

The episode has set off a dispute over scientific credit, AI training data, and the paper trail behind an AI-assisted discovery. Scientific American said the drama has set up the "biggest day in math in at least two decades."

What is Buckmaster alleging about OpenAI?
Buckmaster and Alpöge concluded that they found examples where today's math doesn't accurately describe smooth air and water flows. They used several AI models, including Claude and Codex, throughout their work.

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Buckmaster said that after he told an OpenAI mathematician that he and Alpöge planned to post their work, OpenAI staff, including computer scientist Sebastian Bubeck, told him that their internal model had produced a proof of the Navier-Stokes question (the one that carried the $1 million prize).

Basically, Buckmaster and Alpöge were publishing work that could pave the way to achieving that bigger breakthrough. OpenAI, according to Buckmaster, signaled on the call that it had achieved that bigger breakthrough.

He also said he was offered possible publication arrangements and that OpenAI's Bubeck wanted Alpöge removed as an author because he works at the company's rival, Anthropic.

"I have not seen OpenAI's proof," Buckmaster wrote. "I do not know whether our data was used. I am not accusing anyone of anything. I am stating what I was told, when, and what was proposed to me. I am stating it because the alternative is to let a sequence of announcements say something I know to be false."

On Tuesday, OpenAI's Bubeck pushed back …

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ꭓle Ormsby 𓆙 @e-infinity.space · 09/09/2026

holy shit there are also Business Insider ads roasting mathematicians

The math community is heated over questions about credit and AI training data after a mathematician's allegations against OpenAI went viral.
(Credit: Getty Images)
#AI #math #OpenAI See less

[picture of white man at chalkboard]
You should care about the AI math breakthrough drama even if you're not a nerd

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ꭓle Ormsby 𓆙 @e-infinity.space · 08/09/2026

I think it does all right! Adding a preset to the web app now....

Kusner-Bryant paramateterization of Morin's surface

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ꭓle Ormsby 𓆙 @e-infinity.space · 08/09/2026

For the curious, here's the answer:

2.5 Corollary. Let u,v ∈Zn
2, and suppose that ω(u+v)=k (i.e., u and v disagree
in exactly k coordinates). Then the number of walks of length ℓ in Cn between u and
v is given by
1
(Aℓ)uv =
2n
n
i=0
k
(−1)j k
j
n−k
i−j (n−2i)ℓ
, (2.9)
j=0
where we set n−k
i−j=0 if j > i. In particular,
1
(Aℓ)uu =
n
i=0
n
i (n−2i)ℓ
. (2.10)

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ꭓle Ormsby 𓆙 @e-infinity.space · 08/09/2026

Now ready for you to enjoy: e-infinity.space/picture-book/ #MathArt #MathSky

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ꭓle Ormsby 𓆙 @e-infinity.space · 04/09/2026

I know it's wrong, but the temptation is too great — I have to pronounce 'Tomatometer' as if it rhymes with thermometer.

screenshot of Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer

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ꭓle Ormsby 𓆙 @e-infinity.space · 04/09/2026

The Calculus Chorus. I'm printing this out on 11x17 paper, taping it to the classroom wall, and pointing at it every day here on out. 🧮

The five questions
Ask these of every approximation we meet this semester.
1 What are you approximating?
2 What are the approximations?
3 What are the errors?
4 What are the bounds on the size of the
errors?
5 How can the error be made smaller than
any predetermined bound?
Math 111: Calculus After M. Oehrtman, CLEAR Calculus

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ꭓle Ormsby 𓆙 @e-infinity.space · 04/09/2026

Summer students presenting at the Reed President’s Student Showcase! 🧮

3-story atrium full of students presenting research posters

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ꭓle Ormsby 𓆙 @e-infinity.space · 02/09/2026

All this time, you lacked the Vitamin? And yet you persevered?

tumblr post

cordeliaflyte: My deepest darkest fantasy is that I collapse on the street and I am rushed to the hospital. They perform a bunch of tests and find out I am severely deficient in some kind of vitamin. Then I start taking the vitamin and I become the happiest cleverest person alive because all my problems were caused by this one deficiency

caracalliope: Moreover, everyone gathers around to be tremulously compassionate and discreetly admiring: all this time, you lacked the Vitamin? And yet you persevered?

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ꭓle Ormsby 𓆙 @e-infinity.space · 02/09/2026

How do you do, fellow leftists?

week 2
mon sep 7 Labor Day — no class ☭
break

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ꭓle Ormsby 𓆙 @e-infinity.space · 02/09/2026

It took me a moment to figure out the controls — the instructions say 'scroll' but I had to click and drag —, but it's very cool.

image of hyperbolic clock after dragging

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ꭓle Ormsby 𓆙 @e-infinity.space · 01/09/2026

One is never going to capture the artistry of Francis's 𝐴 𝑇𝑜𝑝𝑜𝑙𝑜𝑔𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑙 𝑃𝑖𝑐𝑡𝑢𝑟𝑒 𝐵𝑜𝑜𝑘 with mere algorithms, but I'm pretty stoked that my computer is now generating manipulatable 3d scenes that look like this. #MathSky #MathArt

quartic of genus 5 that looks hand shaded

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ꭓle Ormsby 𓆙 @e-infinity.space · 30/08/2026

Bioplastics, goat milk soap, and a video installation that smells at Paragon Arts on N Killingsworth.

Boy reading text for Meech Boakye’s Black Pool Party

Risograph art card from show. Fonts taken from porno mag covers.

Bioplastic with embedded organic material

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