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Reposted by Matt Mack

New blog post: "Some invisible work that I do to accommodate my hearing loss for academic talks/conferences" matthras.com/2026/10...

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Matt Mack @matthras.bsky.social · 15h

New blog post: "Some invisible work that I do to accommodate my hearing loss for academic talks/conferences" matthras.com/2026/10...

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Matt Mack @matthras.bsky.social · 16h

I feel like I'd probably need to like, redo my entire home office 🤣

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Matt Mack @matthras.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

I'm checking out the Adelaide Film Festival offerings and one really stupid thing is that foreign language films will inevitably have English captions and thus will be more accessible to me than English-language films without captions 🙄

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Matt Mack @matthras.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

At the same time, not all maths problems one works on will necessarily be fun and interesting (I write this while grouching at my laptop to finish some computations). It's definitely nice to at least have the agency to choose at some points, though! 2/2

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Matt Mack @matthras.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

This is a good post by Tammy Kolda that's helped clarify my perspective on "struggle" within maths: To struggle in maths is normal, and part of learning is working through it, but I don't think it should be glorified. tammykolda.substack.... 1/2

tammykolda.substack.com

Stop Glorifying the “Struggle”

Mathematical mysteries are fun!

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Matt Mack @matthras.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Reminder to Self: Buy tickets earlier next time. There's a Nature Festival going on, two events I wanted to go to (including one today) for some reason I didn't anticipate there'd be limited seats + popularity and thought I could buy the tickets last-minute /facepalm

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Matt Mack @matthras.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

I use deck.blue, and have different feeds for different groups of people highly recommend.

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Matt Mack @matthras.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Subdividing by 60 to properly place all of them is making my eye twitch. What's the tempo?

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Reposted by Matt Mack

Chamaco Vaquero @vaquerovaquero.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

This! Also, learn how to use a microphone. Don’t point it in the other direction from your mouth or stand four feet away. Talk directly into it. Handhold it if necessary. It’s your friend, it’s not gonna bite you.

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Matt Mack @matthras.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Photoshopped a new maths pun: A "persistent" homology group.

A mathematical object "H superscript i j subscript p", which is common notation for a "persistent homology group" is pushing a round boulder up a hill.

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Matt Mack @matthras.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Hate being hard-of-hearing: I use a small square mic (Widex Sound Assist) to help me hear others e.g. across a table. But I have to explain it to everyone because people not clued in tend to stare at it with fear and think I'm secretly recording them. So frustrating.

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Matt Mack @matthras.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Regardless of whether AI labs decide to comply or not, I think this is a good step in at least communicating community norms and expectations that weren't as visible before. 2/2

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Matt Mack @matthras.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Advisory Group on Mathematics & AI just released a report: "Responsible Release of AI-Generated Mathematics": agmai.org/general-se... For onlookers+non-mathematicians, I think it's worth reading to get an idea of how maths as a discipline maintains standards for building knowledge. 1/2

agmai.org

general-sep29

Responsible Release of AI-Generated Mathematics September 29, 2026 Back to main page Download PDF At present, some frontier AI labs are testing advanced mathematical problems on proprietary models …

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Matt Mack @matthras.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Interesting for me to think about and apply this to (Aussie) maths academia as I know it.

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Matt Mack @matthras.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

The best way I can put it is that it reads to me as "Let's wax lyrical about what an imagined future will look like without talking about what needs to change about the current system." 2/2

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Matt Mack @matthras.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Finished Neagley S1, recommend watching if you want more Reacher. Highlight for me was the non-verbal communication, it's amazing how much can be expressed with subtle facial expressions & movement + sufficient camera time to let them sink in for the viewer.

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Matt Mack @matthras.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Random thought experiment in my head over the past few months: What is the minimum amount of information you'd need to teach a layman that LLMs are not 'magic'? Bit of maths (Markov chains), cognitive psych, communication/theory-of-mind models, what else?

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Matt Mack @matthras.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

I tried to drive a wedge into those having that opinion with: "But wouldn't you prefer that all layers be present in your mouth after a single bite?" but no dice 😂

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Matt Mack @matthras.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

As you've observed the original sandwich being a single unit cut into two, to you it would be "one sandwich cut in two". An outside observer only seeing the end result would see two sandwiches. 😇

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Matt Mack @matthras.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Very much an apt description. Was practising cello last weekend and trying to get my head around a new piece in a similar creative way. No dice so far, but I'll figure it out!

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Matt Mack @matthras.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Today I got primary school kids to argue over the definition of a sandwich while I continued to show them increasingly bizarre examples, including a cat between two slices of bread, and a full loaf cut in half with some ham & lettuce in the middle. #HoagieHomies Today was a good day 😁

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Matt Mack @matthras.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Finished watching Reacher S4. Enjoyed it, it's more of the same, but can see why some people are grumbling: Reacher got hurt a lot more, some "too convenient" happenings, spotted one inconsistency between scenes. Not offputting for me yet though, still happy to switch brain off.

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Matt Mack @matthras.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Grant Sanderson's (3blue1brown) guest post on Terry Tao's blog pretty much affirms and expands on my opinion of what's missing in maths academia: more maths communication overall, and especially towards different audiences.

terrytao.wordpress.com

If math is more than proof, we need to better celebrate the rest of it

[This is a guest post by Grant Sanderson. This blog post was initially written in a different file format and converted using AI. — T.] A sentiment echoing throughout the mathematics communit…

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Matt Mack @matthras.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Finished watching The Bear S1 after someone recommended it to me in terms of realism matching that of The Pitt. Gotta say, though, those emotions are much more raw! Working through Reacher S4 now that the whole season's out. Enjoying it but noticing more "slightly off" bits 😬

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Matt Mack @matthras.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Thought I was smart when I learnt I could write custom rules (via Google Apps Script) for deleting emails for my Gmail inboxes. Wrote one as a test, left it to trigger overnight. Next morning I realised I pointed it towards the wrong email inbox /facepalm

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Matt Mack @matthras.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

I do feel slightly guilty not going with the crowd, but my whole life has pretty much been in some odd middle (Asian diaspora, not white/Asian enough for either; hard-of-hearing, can't fully hear and engage, but not deaf enough for Deaf) so I'm not surprised I'm not taking a side here either.

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Matt Mack @matthras.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

It's been tough to figure out my thoughts + nuance, so I'm happy to see others express it. So far in my AI experimentation I'm restricting myself to free+local models and it really does help shave time off learning & coding that would be spent browsing textbooks + internet.

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Matt Mack @matthras.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Today's Foot-In-Mouth Moment: I ran into someone I occasionally meet while walking to/from work. Me: "How was the cruise?" Her: "It was lovely! But I got sick." Me: "Isn't that the norm?" /facepalm She ended up getting pneumonia (yikes!) but is almost back to normal now.

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Matt Mack @matthras.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Today I tried making banana bread in the rice cooker as I randomly saw on social media, ended up finishing it in the oven :( You basically need one of the more exxy rice cookers, your cheapo $50 Kmart one won't cut it.

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Matt Mack @matthras.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Teams is so frustratingly screen-space-inefficient for tuning into presentations delivered online, especially when I turn on live-captions. So many sidebars and menus that I want to hide, grrrrrr.

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Matt Mack @matthras.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

This past month I've been going through my chewing gum stash. Clicked for me yesterday that it was probably an anxiety uptick where the chewing helps calm me down. I was reminded of when I was crunching through nuts while writing up my Masters thesis for exactly the same reason.

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Matt Mack @matthras.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Something I'm finding frustrating with media training that I see in universities is that they're all catered towards traditional media, which is not necessarily wrong, they're just unable to provide insight/discussion on managing e.g. a social media account for communication.

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Matt Mack @matthras.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

"Please let it be some new interesting idea so that I can have hope annnnnnnnnd it's bunk." I feel that so much. I've learnt to direct my curiosity in other directions at least.

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Matt Mack @matthras.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

I've not seen mugs crack themselves vertically down the middle this cleanly. Different material?

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Reposted by Matt Mack

Peter Keep @mathprofpeter.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Ok but why did I write this? #HoagieHomies

Aside

Sometimes this theorem is called the Sandwich Theorem, since the upper bounding function and the lower bounding function act as the slices of bread, while the strangely behaved middle function acts like the toppings on the sandwich.

We choose not to use that naming convention in this text in order to preserve the flexibility of the definition of a sandwich. An open-faced sandwich is still a sandwich (in the opinion of the textbook author), but this result clearly doesn’t hold when we only have one bounding function.

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Matt Mack @matthras.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

I was randomly thinking of crocheting my own poster tube/carry-case a while back then I realised it probably wouldn't be sufficiently waterproof /facepalm Might still try though 🤔

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Matt Mack @matthras.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Made apple crumble (RecipeTinEat's) last night because I was stewing pretty hard over recent Maths+AI news.

Single tea dish with a hearty helping of apple crumble - oats, butter and brown sugar as a crust, with softened diced granny smith and pink lady cubed apples as filling.

Single tea dish with a hearty helping of apple crumble, next to it on top of a stove is an oven tray of the remaining apple crumble.

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Matt Mack @matthras.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

Something nice: Got an email from a past student on Saturday, she got into a summer vacation research scholarship that I recommended she apply to. Worth noting she's a mature-age student who initially exhibited the same lack of self-confidence I usually see in female students.

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Matt Mack @matthras.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

Even my audiologist knows consumers want to be able to modify their hearing aid settings but these companies have it locked down via their contracts or whatever. So stupid. 3/3

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Matt Mack @matthras.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

I can set custom programs via the phone app but just opening the phone and the app and changing the program is already a few too many steps. Plus, I can only switch to that program via the phone and not by pressing the button on my hearing aid. 2/3

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Matt Mack @matthras.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

One stupid thing about my (Widex) hearing aid is that if I want to change its default settings I have to pay $150 for an appointment for an audiologist to adjust. I got the volume bumped up a bit but now there are situations where it's a little too much. 1/3

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Matt Mack @matthras.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

Last boardgames session we played "The Mind: Soulmates", fun card game where players have to correctly put their number cards in order without knowing what others have. I highly dislike the jagged difficulty curve associated with the levels, though. boardgamegeek.com/bo...

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Matt Mack @matthras.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

Just watched movie Venom: The Last Dance (2024). It's more of the same, but it's exactly what I wanted whilst mindlessly preparing more psyllium husk capsules. 3/5 Also let me know if you're on Letterboxd, my username is the same on there.

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Matt Mack @matthras.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

the bigger picture & context on my work which would've been valuable to have had from the get-go. And now I'm a bit annoyed because maybe it should've been something I asked for earlier rather than blundering around with the details and not knowing what's next? 2/2

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Matt Mack @matthras.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

Seems like the only way to know what my supervisors are up to and/or have done is either read their (inscrutable-enough) papers or listen to them give a (digestible, but rare) talk on it. In the few times I did I've gotten a better understanding of... 1/2

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Matt Mack @matthras.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

TIL it's possible to just end up spending an entire day responding to corrections on an ethics application.

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Reposted by Matt Mack

Kate Littlejohn @kelittlejohn.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

I'm currently in the middle of PhD research that is showing unequivocally that this is not even close to a thing. Women are still massively underrepresented in the curriculum and almost every teacher I interviewed raised the manosphere's influence on male students as an explicit blocker.

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Matt Mack @matthras.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

One funny thing about Doctordle is that after I've done the psychiatric ones I let a (bipolar, AuDHD, agoraphobic, lotta other psychiatric bullshit) friend know of them and he usually guesses them in 1-3 because he's extensively read up on them and knows the patterns 😂

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