iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Matthew Aldridge @mpaldridge.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Seems like the LeedsTicketHub website may not have been prepared for the tens – maybe even dozens – of people who would be trying to access it this evening…

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Matthew Aldridge @mpaldridge.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

I learned a lot (that maybe I should have already known) from the Origin Story two-parter on Zionism, from 2023. podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/o...

podcasts.apple.com

Zionism Part 1

Podcast Episode · Origin Story · 10 July 2023 · 54min

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Matthew Aldridge @mpaldridge.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

The #LIFF2026 schedule is up: All of a Sudden, La bola negra, Coward, The Debut, Elsinore, Fjord, La Gradiva, A History of Concrete, Ink, A Long Winter, Look Back, Minotaur, Mouse, Paper Tiger, Rose, Sheep in the Box, Tender Loving Care, Wicker, Wild Horse Nine, … www.leedsfilm.com/whats-on?max...

leedsfilm.com

Leeds Film

The home of independent, international cinema. The 40th edition of Leeds International Film Festival (LIFF) is planned to place from 29 October — 15 November 2026.

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Matthew Aldridge @mpaldridge.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

First (proper) day of the new academic year / View from the office window

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Matthew Aldridge @mpaldridge.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

I wondered if recent advances in AI maths would lead to a proof of the Courtade–Kumar “most informative Boolean function” conjecture. And here we are: 1. arxiv.org/abs/2609.24184 (36 pages; a bit scary but I’ll try to find time to take a proper look) 2. arxiv.org/abs/2609.24931 (251 pages; lol)

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Matthew Aldridge @mpaldridge.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Bought a second-hand book off the internet. Should I be displeased, because it was advertised as having the dust jacket and it does not, or pleased, because it’s signed by the author which was not mentioned in the listing?

to Betsy & Jim
with much affection
Tony

July 15 1983
(The *first* copy of this book signed by the author!)

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Matthew Aldridge @mpaldridge.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

I agree with quite-a-bit-but-not-all of this of this essay.¹ proofsandprompts.com/2026/09/14/a... The attached image is of a very good bit. ¹ Also: the use of multiple footnotes in a blogpost is a bad format that is irritating to read.

In the course of this change, we will have to decide what to hold on to and what to throw away. Some things I would like to preserve: learning seminars; serendipitous conversations that spark an idea; students knocking on a professor’s door to chat about math. A robust community learning exciting new mathematics. Thousands of people that, together, slowly start to resolve their confusion.

I worry that much of what has been written on this topic, including some of my own past writing, focuses too much on trying to preserve the precise shape of the *institutions of academic mathematics*, rather than our values. How can we preserve the journal and peer review system? How can we protect the arXiv? How can we keep our role as gatekeepers?

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Gro-Tsen @gro-tsen.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

2026 mathematician grading student papers and doing admin paperwork while ChatGPT enjoys proving beautiful theorems:

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Matthew Aldridge @mpaldridge.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Since Yuja Wang is playing at the Last Night of the Proms on TV at the moment, I can take this opportunity to (again) recommend Janet Malcolm’s profile from 2016. www.newyorker.com/magazine/201...

newyorker.com

Yuja Wang and the Art of Performance

From 2016: Janet Malcolm on the piano prodigy known for the brilliance of her playing and for her dramatic outfits.

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Matthew Aldridge @mpaldridge.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Quite the flex for all 25 signatories of your open letter to have Fields medals. mathandai.org

mathandai.org

Declaration — Math and AI

Read the declaration and add your name.

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Matthew Aldridge @mpaldridge.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

New header image on Terence Tao’s blog.

We are not trying to meet some abstract production quota of definitions, theorems and proofs. The measure of our success is whether what we do enables *people* to understand and think more clearly and effectively about mathematics.

William Thurston, "On proof and progress in mathematics", 1994|

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Matthew Aldridge @mpaldridge.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

I suppose this is going to be the big maths discussion for the next few days (or forever): An announcement: mathstodon.xyz/@tristanbuck... An accompanying statement not really about the maths: cims.nyu.edu/~tristanb/st... More on the actual maths: terrytao.wordpress.com/2026/09/07/f...

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Matthew Aldridge @mpaldridge.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

You can argue about whether it’s actually a “suggestion”, but he did post the picture. truthsocial.com/@realDonaldT...

truthsocial.com

Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump)

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Jamie Douglass @jamesldouglass.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

Just don't get a penguin to do your due diligence. Expert swimmers, atrocious fact-checkers

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Matthew Aldridge @mpaldridge.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

Finally went to see The Odyssey at the cinema. When I got back to my front door, I realised I’d left my housekey in my office, so had to go back there. In total, took me almost two hours to get home; I am basically Odysseus.

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Ciaran @ciaranmcgurdy.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

...ok

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Anoosh Chakelian @anooshc.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

Amazing interview with Heston Blumenthal in our summer issue - by top interviewer Kate Mossman: www.newstatesman.com/culture/food...

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Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 14/10/2023

🌓🌎🌞 <-- lunar eclipse  🌎🌓🌞 <-- solar eclipse  🌎🌞🌗 <-- apocalypse

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Matthew Aldridge @mpaldridge.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

Was too disorganised to buy any of the special glasses, but here’s a piece of an old cardboard folder with some pinholes poked through it.

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Matthew Aldridge @mpaldridge.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

This years women’s Tour de France is already an all-time banger. Final stage tomorrow (a proper stage, not like the last stage in the men’s) and there’s currently 8 seconds in it.

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Matthew Aldridge @mpaldridge.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

Most things that look like “education problems” or “skills problems” are actually economic problems. www.ft.com/content/1c4a...

ft.com

To fix education, fix the economy first

Weak educational outcomes often owe more to economic performance than education policy

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Matthew Aldridge @mpaldridge.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

I think it was just a heavy fog.

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Matthew Aldridge @mpaldridge.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

What is this wet stuff coming out of the sky?

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Matthew Aldridge @mpaldridge.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

I've updated/corrected my blogpost: Feige's conjecture was actually proved *three* times on Monday. (The third proof is identical to the first two.) mpaldridge.github.io/blog/feiges-...

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Matthew Aldridge @mpaldridge.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

Roger Ebert on La Dolce Vita (esp. the last two paragraphs): www.rogerebert.com/reviews/grea... Geoff Dyer's book about Stalker (a film I don't like). Dana Stevens on watching films with her daughter: slate.com/culture/2015... Anthony Lane on Revenge of the Sith: www.newyorker.com/magazine/200...

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Matthew Aldridge @mpaldridge.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

1) It feels kind of morally like that, I agree. 2) I don't think it literally meets any formal versions of the SBJP I know (not identically distributed, don't have fat tails). 3) I think there are variants of the problem (eg. unequal means) where you *should* plan for multiple moderate jumps.

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Matthew Aldridge @mpaldridge.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

The University of Leeds rabbits have an Instagram account. www.instagram.com/campusrabbits

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Matthew Aldridge @mpaldridge.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

Take n independent nonnegative random variables, each with mean at most 1, and try to maximise the probability that their sum is at least n+1. The solution to this problem is Feige's conjecture, stated in 2005, and proved twice (largely by ChatGPT) on Monday. mpaldridge.github.io/blog/feiges-...

mpaldridge.github.io

Feige’s conjecture

Let $X_1, X_2, \dots, X_n$ be independent random variables, each with mean at most 1. We want to maximise the probability that their sum $S = \sum_{i=1}^n X_i$ is at least $n + \delta$ for some $\delt...

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Matthew Aldridge @mpaldridge.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

I agree we need be open-minded about what peer-review and the journal system will/should look like in the future, but “If the current system becomes unsustainable because of a flood of AI-generated content, I would regard that as a beneficial consequence of AI” is too accelerationist for my taste.

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Matthew Aldridge @mpaldridge.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

More on maths and AI: I also didn’t sign the Leiden declaration (leidendeclaration.ai) for similar reasons to those Timothy Gowers outlines here. gowers.wordpress.com/2026/07/26/t... (In rough agreement with most of the basic principles, but would want to be nit-picky about some particulars.)

gowers.wordpress.com

Thoughts about the Leiden Declaration

Last September I went to a workshop at the Lorentz Centre in Leiden to discuss mathematics and AI with historians, philosophers, computer scientists, AI researchers, and mathematicians of several d…

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Matthew Aldridge @mpaldridge.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

Last 12km of this year’s Tour de France were very good, imho.

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Matthew Aldridge @mpaldridge.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

Although my favourite slide from the talk was this one. (“I hate Jean Bourgain.”)

A 1991 paper of Bourgain, annotated by my much younger self.

Annotations include:

* Next to “one may see”: “I hate Jean Bourgain.”
* Next to “the usual way”: “???”
* Next to “We skip the details”: “AARGH!”

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Matthew Aldridge @mpaldridge.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

Interesting slides from Terence Tao’s talk at the ICM about AI and mathematics. teorth.github.io/tao-web/slid...

If the Working Hypothesis holds, then without suitable policy and cultural changes, significant “impedance mismatches” (or “proof indigestion”) will emerge all throughout this process:

* AI-generated proofs will accumulate waiting to be verified.
* Many verified AI-generated proofs will await a readable writeup.
* AI-generated proofs, even when required to be correct and well-written, will overwhelm our traditional peer-review system.
* And even the published proofs will be too numerous for the community to work into a definitive form.

In short, we will transition from an era of proof scarcity to an era of proof abundance.

Some signs of this indigestion are already occurring; in fact, strains were emerging even before the advent of modern AI.

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Matthew Aldridge @mpaldridge.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

“Thousands of litres of water” seems like … not very much water? A swimming pool is tens or hundreds of thousands of litres. A data centre that, on hot days, uses a tenth of a swimming pool of water seems fine to me.

Skeet:
Microsoft is planning to build three massive AI data centres in Leeds. It’ll drain thousands of litres of water from the River Aire and become the city's biggest carbon emitter. We can still stop the council's sign-off, but we need more voices. Add your name: you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/pr...

Link card:
Stop the Microsoft AI megasite in Leeds!
Microsoft wants to build three huge AI data centres at Skelton Grange. It would drain the River Aire and become the city's biggest carbon emitter. We can stil

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Matthew Aldridge @mpaldridge.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

Some good pieces I read over the weekend: – On Italy's privatised beaches www.theguardian.com/world/2026/j... – A journalist reads her own AI-slop biography and meets a writer of them www.nytimes.com/2026/07/16/t... – Some not-very-good Burnham announcements takes.jamesomalley.co.uk/p/is-andy-bu...

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Matthew Aldridge @mpaldridge.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

I understand why novelists/musicians/artists feel differently, but I *do* want the LLMs to hoover up my academic mathematical work – although, in return, they need to get better at crediting the work they build on. (Thought inspired by, but not directly responding to, cacm.acm.org/opinion/now-...)

cacm.acm.org

Now Is the Time to Give LLMs Access to the ACM Digital Library – Communications of the ACM

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Clément Canonne @ccanonne.github.io · 14/07/2026

Herman Chernoff, of Chernoff bound fame, passed away a few days ago at age 103. He was, truly, an outlier, and someone who left a deep mark in the field. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herman_...

en.wikipedia.org

Herman Chernoff - Wikipedia

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NANCY COMICS BY ERNIE BUSHMILLER @nancycomics.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

Nancy By Ernie Bushmiller June 04,1956

P1- NANCY IS RUNNING WHILE CARRYING HER CAMERA

P2- SUDDENLY NANCY STUMPED HER TOE ON A ROCK CAUSING HER TO DROP HER CAMERA

P3- NANCY HAS JUST LEFT A SHOP WHERE SHE HAD THE FILM IN HER CAMERA DEVELOPED , AND SHE IS PUZZLED BY A PHOTOGRAPH

P4- NANCY HAS TAKEN A CLOSE UP OF A VERY PLEASANT LITTLE SNAIL

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Matthew Aldridge @mpaldridge.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

Robert Caro is usually so courtly that it took me about four chapters to realise that “comfort station” means a public toilet – so I was a little taken aback by the language here.

Less dramatic than the injury toll—but wearing on the tens of thousands of subway riders who were never involved in a major disaster—was the daily toll imposed by calculated neglect. The floors of New York's subways were filthy, and the grime was mixed with scattered pages of newspapers, candy and gum wrappers and, for emphasis, an occasional blob of spittle or a smear of vomit that no one had yet wiped up. Subway walls were covered with verbal filth; the scenery amid which the New Yorker traveled around his city was a vast mosaic of FUCK and SUCK and COCK and CUNT.

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