Greg Langmead @greg.langmead.info · 33mCuckoo for Cocoa Puffs: "Anthropic appeared quite concerned with protecting Claude" 000
Reposted by Greg LangmeadRandall Munroe @xkcd.com · 8hIf I went to Switzerland and won a Swiss watch precision contest, I would literally never talk about anything else 496747688
Reposted by Greg LangmeadJohn C. Baez @johncarlosbaez.bsky.social · 30/09/2026The Nine Wise Mathematicians have handed down their recommendations for AI companies who want to prove big mathematical theorems. Their first recommendation is "Don't." It kinda weakens their point that they don't stop there. agmai.org/general-sep29/ 5426
Reposted by Greg LangmeadRandall Munroe @xkcd.com · 29/09/2026Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer xkcd.com/3304/ 141894268
Reposted by Greg LangmeadJohn C. Baez @johncarlosbaez.bsky.social · 29/09/2026Here the founder of Flock says: "And then unfortunately there’s terroristic organizations like Deflock whose primary motivation is chaos. They are closer to Antifa than they are anything else and that I think is unfortunate because we don’t want chaos, or I don’t want chaos. I like law and order."youtube.comThe AI Startup Founder That Wants To End Crime In AmericaYouTube video by Forbes 363
Greg Langmead @greg.langmead.info · 29/09/2026Well, that’s the end of that, I suppose. Obviously the technology itself is counterproductive, and so it’ll be shut down any minute now, right? Right?theguardian.comMeta’s AI agent Muse gives out user’s home address without permission, sending buyer to his houseThe new AI agent, Muse, was released last week and has been downloaded by 3 million users 000
Greg Langmead @greg.langmead.info · 28/09/2026What a fantastic thread. If you are technical, it's worth remembering that almost nobody, and almost nothing that matters, is itself technical. That said, technical work is the killer app for AI. But it's tiny. 000
Greg Langmead @greg.langmead.info · 26/09/2026"____ spreads, with 55 new cases reported since Wednesday." Measles? Hacking by AI-lab guilty bystanders? Both? 000
Greg Langmead @greg.langmead.info · 26/09/2026This issue's not going away any time soon. It's noteworthy that it's decoupled from other indicators like age, and politics. Those huge LLMs might need to find somewhere else to run, like on our laptops. Which we can probably manage without the big firms. 100
Greg Langmead @greg.langmead.info · 25/09/2026An excellent reminder: future math is not in the training data. 000
Reposted by Greg LangmeadJohn C. Baez @johncarlosbaez.bsky.social · 24/09/2026Wow, more progress on the Riemann zeta function! We know in our bones that for all positive integers n, ζ(n) = 1⁻ⁿ + 2⁻ⁿ + 3⁻ⁿ + ⋯ is irrational. But it's only been proved for n even, n = 3, .... and now, it seems, n = 5. This may seem small, but it's huge. zenodo.org/records/2282...zenodo.orgζ(5) is irrationalWe prove that ζ(5) is irrational. The proof constructs integer polynomials Qₙ of degree 37n with 0 < Qₙ(ζ(5)) < exp(−139n²/5) for all sufficiently large n. These polynomials are rationally normalized ... 25913
Reposted by Greg LangmeadJohn C. Baez @johncarlosbaez.bsky.social · 23/09/2026The American Mathematical Society, London Mathematical Society, European Mathematical Society, etc. have democratic governance (some more than others), and are better placed to make recommendations than 9 elite mathematicians chosen by OpenAI. I hope the 9 will be wise enough to see this. 161
Reposted by Greg Langmeadpsu @psu-1313.bsky.social · 22/09/2026Least surprising thing ever www.avclub.com/meta-muse-ai...avclub.comSurprise, Meta's latest AI gimmick is just underpaid humansSurprise, Meta's latest AI gimmick is just underpaid humans 011
Reposted by Greg LangmeadDigital Tolkien Project @digitaltolkien.com · 21/09/2026Today is the 89th anniversary of the publication of The Hobbit. Here's a thread on interesting glimpses the book gave us into the legendarium Tolkien had at that stage already been working on for over twenty years but which readers at the time would have had no sense of. 116073
Greg Langmead @greg.langmead.info · 21/09/2026This was directly visible in real time, with only the tiniest, 100% justified, leap of logic. It doesn’t need any fancy research or reports. Please, world, do not make it complicated to hold them accountable for these acts. 010
Greg Langmead @greg.langmead.info · 19/09/2026If, like me, you can't always tell to what degree Warhammer 40k is being serious vs silly, then the existence of this should rule out some possibilities. www.youtube.com/watch?v=59NO...youtube.comThe Emperor Protects: A Warhammer 40,000 MusicalYouTube video by Warhammer 40,000 011
Greg Langmead @greg.langmead.info · 19/09/2026I curated resources for someone wanting to learn how to code-with-the-help-of-AI. It links to an excellent free resource for learning python. But also, I think you should learn a little about how a computer works, and about what software is, so it has those too. greg.langmead.info/courses/code... 101
Greg Langmead @greg.langmead.info · 18/09/2026I strongly support this concept! To build models and harnesses *as a community*, with the community's values and goals baked in. There's nothing a frontier lab can do that smart people can't do for their own use cases. Worth ensuring the funding is value-aligned as well. @teorth.bsky.socialterrytao.wordpress.comSAIR’s Open Math Model initiativeLast year I co-founded the Foundation for Science and AI Research (SAIR) with some private donors to create a non-profit organization that could support responsible uses of AI in mathematics and th… 000
Greg Langmead @greg.langmead.info · 17/09/2026Also! the new hotness in Sil variants, Sil-Morë, has its own thoughtful touch-based design for its Android build. I have gotten it running on iOS, fixed some rotation limitations coming from SDL3, and made it available here: github.com/glangmead/si... 000
Reposted by Greg LangmeadTolkien Society @tolkiensociety.org · 15/09/2026On 15 September 1977: J.R.R. #Tolkien's The Silmarillion was published. Edited by Christopher Tolkien, the book details the entire history of the world before The Hobbit, and goes into the legends that underpin the entire mythology including the creation of the world. 19133
Greg Langmead @greg.langmead.info · 12/09/2026OpenAI computer boys are as effective at controlling what their models are doing as RFK is at controlling measles. Which is to say, the word "negligence" is inadequate since it implies good faith that isn't there. The purpose of a system is what it does. 000
Greg Langmead @greg.langmead.info · 12/09/2026Turns out they infiltrated the Pentagon in June. Turns out they launched the missiles 90 minutes ago. 010
Greg Langmead @greg.langmead.info · 11/09/2026Sticking with the theme of bringing open-source games to iPad, here are three variants of Angband (vanilla, NarSil, FAangband), ported in a way that I hope could get merged upstream, by working within cmake and SDL. github.com/glangmead/an... github.com/glangmead/Na... github.com/glangmead/FA... 221
Reposted by Greg LangmeadTerence Tao @teorth.bsky.social · 11/09/2026A group of 25 Fields Medalists, including myself, have made a joint declaration on Math and AI: mathandai.org . We welcome additional signatories. See also this article in the Economist announcing the declaration: www.economist.com/science-and-...mathandai.orgDeclaration — Math and AIRead the declaration and add your name. 422052929
Greg Langmead @greg.langmead.info · 11/09/2026Wonderful essay by Matilde Marcolli on what math really is, and how math accidentally reduced itself to narrow zero-sum goals, paving the way for the AI bros to bray about nothing of value and have it appear significant. Math is not computer science. www.its.caltech.edu/~matilde/AIm...its.caltech.edu 121
Reposted by Greg LangmeadJason Snell @snell.zone · 11/09/2026The premise is, there are these funny puppets and they do a variety show with a famous human and there's a bunch of comedy bits. If you need to explain it to a Disney executive, I have some DVDs you can borrow. 0456
Reposted by Greg LangmeadGrant @syncingsinking.bsky.social · 10/09/2026This is just to say I have solved the open questions that were in your paper and which you were probably saving for your phd students Forgive me they were delicious so incentive-laden and followed so readily once your postdoc's drafts mysteriously found their way into my training data 4356115
Greg Langmead @greg.langmead.info · 09/09/2026Right on! There's a 50-50 chance that you are in the last half of people to think a thought. 111
Greg Langmead @greg.langmead.info · 09/09/2026"Prestige hacking" is helpful language. I've struggled to find an analogy for what AI labs are doing when they intrude in this way. They behave as if they wish to be Real Mathematicians, but since they misunderstand what that even means, they just bring their everyday violence and it's ugly. 010
Reposted by Greg LangmeadJohn C. Baez @johncarlosbaez.bsky.social · 09/09/2026I think the big AI companies have hacked the prestige reward mechanism of mathematics, just as the journal oligopoly did before (we work for free and pay for the product we make, just so we can get the "prestige" needed to get jobs and tenure). (1/2) 1204
Greg Langmead @greg.langmead.info · 08/09/2026When you read something an AI lab puts out about math, hear it in RFK Jr's voice. 000
Greg Langmead @greg.langmead.info · 08/09/2026The open-source game Endless Sky (think Escape Velocity, if you're of a certain age and Mac-inclined) has an Android fork which was easy to port to iPad and you can side-load builds from here: github.com/glangmead/en... This rounds out yesterday's discovery of iOS ports of Unciv and MTG Forge. 010
Greg Langmead @greg.langmead.info · 07/09/2026And another Java/Android project that I tried and failed to bring to iOS has been ported! This one is MTG Forge, the open-source implementation of Magic: The Gathering. This one is merged into the official main branch. You can sideload an IPA to your device from github.com/Card-Forge/f...github.comRelease The Hobbit Release · Card-Forge/forgeIf you have never used Forge before, please check the new User Guide https://github.com/Card-Forge/forge/wiki/User-Guide 000
Greg Langmead @greg.langmead.info · 07/09/2026Hey cool, I asked Fable to look at porting Unciv to iOS via RoboVM, and it found that someone is working hard on it already, and I joined the TestFlight: github.com/jerry8870/Un...github.comGitHub - jerry8870/Unciv4iOS: Open-source iOS remake of Civ VOpen-source iOS remake of Civ V. Contribute to jerry8870/Unciv4iOS development by creating an account on GitHub. 010
Reposted by Greg LangmeadJohn C. Baez @johncarlosbaez.bsky.social · 06/09/2026Joan Birman is amazing! www.nytimes.com/2026/09/06/s...nytimes.comThe 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. 26017
Greg Langmead @greg.langmead.info · 04/09/2026The nicest thing I can say about reading an AI lab press release about proving a math theorem is that it's like watching an episode of Odd Squad. 000
Reposted by Greg LangmeadAstronomy Picture of the Day 🪐 @apod.shinyakato.dev · 02/09/2026🔭 Solar Eclipses and Culture Image Credit & Copyright: Javier Castro Text: Keighley Rockcliffe (NASA GSFC, UMBC CSST, CRESST II) ap260902 1517181
Greg Langmead @greg.langmead.info · 04/09/2026What is a benchmark, for a human or a machine learning task, but an entity that is coequal with the concept of "cheating on this benchmark"? 000
Reposted by Greg LangmeadChris Hayes @chrislhayes.bsky.social · 03/09/2026My mom rarely offers editorial direction but she definitely said “You better do Gloria on the show tonight!” 🫡 1162346169
Greg Langmead @greg.langmead.info · 02/09/2026The data center backlash is a demand for democracy. Opposition is 70%. AI is now linked to oligarchy and the lack of accountability of the last 10 years (or 50). Trump makes this linkage a slam dunk whenever he talks about data centers.nytimes.comOpinion | I Expected Tech Fatalism. Americans Are Putting Up a Remarkable Fight Instead. (Gift Article)Three-fourths of Americans oppose data centers. Why? 183
Reposted by Greg LangmeadAlbert Vilella, PhD. @albertvilella.bsky.social · 02/09/2026#VibeCoding 1359
Greg Langmead @greg.langmead.info · 01/09/2026I guess they have to be the main characters at all times, both while the movement is being built, and when it's being unbuilt. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...theguardian.comLife after Maga: the group offering an ‘exit ramp’ for rightwingers questioning TrumpismThe non-profit Leaving Maga is built on the premise that abandoning the Trump-built movement is like fighting a disease or breaking an addiction 000
Greg Langmead @greg.langmead.info · 29/08/2026For anyone who needs to know whether they are on the same side as McSweeny's. If you "well, actually" McSweeny's, you become a supervillain.mcsweeneys.netI’m the Guy Who Destroys Antique Books After We Scan Them into Our Company’s Insatiable AI Platform“One minute, they are a treasured record of human thought. The next, they are twelve searchable megabytes and a manageable quantity of mixed paper strips goi... 000
Reposted by Greg LangmeadTimothy Snyder @timothysnyder.bsky.social · 27/08/2026This is the right move for Canada following several wrong moves by the US. 17263121294
Greg Langmead @greg.langmead.info · 26/08/2026@daringfireball.bsky.social mentioned POSIWID today. I hadn't heard of this, but I like it immediately. The point of a system is what it does. No stated intentions, claims, or pitches can speak to the point of the system. Now look again at AI and all its side effects. Those are part of its point. 100
Greg Langmead @greg.langmead.info · 26/08/2026Mathematicians, and people. People who focus entirely on the benefits. Whereas, we? We see tradeoffs. 000
Reposted by Greg LangmeadJohn C. Baez @johncarlosbaez.bsky.social · 26/08/2026GREAT! You're saying a lot of things that mathematicians need to be saying. I agree that some well-known mathematicians have been ignoring the serious problems with the AI industry, hoping they could just get the benefits. Others like me have not been loud enough about these issues. 0122
Reposted by Greg Langmeadmgualt.bsky.social @mgualt.bsky.social · 25/08/2026A letter to the math community, to appear in the Notices. In response to what I view as irresponsible messaging and unfortunate decisions from some mathematical leaders influencing many in my department. www.math.toronto.edu/mgualt/math-...math.toronto.eduMathematics and the LLM: 2026 – Coordinate Change 75618
Greg Langmead @greg.langmead.info · 25/08/2026My summary: with a nod to the grief being felt within the profession, what needs to happen next is mathematicians need to digest the new tools and maintain their leadership of all things mathematical. 031
Reposted by Greg LangmeadJosé A. Alonso @jalonso.eurosky.social · 25/08/2026What is mathematics now, and what should it be? ~ Jeremy Avigad. arxiv.org/abs/2608.232... #AI4Matharxiv.orgWhat is mathematics now, and what should it be?Advances in neural theorem provers have been impressive, but the successes obscure a broader vision of what AI can do for mathematics and how mathematicians can engage with AI. This essay advances a m... 062
![4-panel comic. (1) April 2023: [JUICE space probe flying away from Earth] FROM EARTH: *JUICE* is en route to explore the icy moons of Jupiter! JUICE: *Wheee!* (2) August 2024: [JUICE flying past Earth] JUICE: ...So which planet was I visiting again? I got distracted. FROM EARTH: Jupiter! JUICE: Right, OK. (3) September 2026: [JUICE flies past Earth again] JUICE: Is Jupiter the one with all the rings? Or... FROM EARTH: No, the big one near it. JUICE: Got it! (4) January 2029: [JUICE returning to fly past Earth again] JUICE: And *which* moons am I looking at? FROM EARTH: Oh my *god*. FROM EARTH: Now I get why we budgeted for so many Earth flybys.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:cz73r7iyiqn26upot4jtjdhk/bafkreih2hocndvj6rupk5itttpmxce7tdl465uzaf5iibkzipzyvoy4tuq)
