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Adam Townsend

@pecnut.bsky.social
273 followers 100 following 43 posts

Mathematician by day, generally asleep by night. Chocolate fountains, sperm cells and bridge signs. @VisualPDE.com and @chalkdustmag.bsky.social. Probably listening to Radio 2.

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Reposted by Adam Townsend
London Mathematical Society @londmathsoc.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
We are delighted to announce the first cohort of LMS Outreach Lecturers who will deliver high-quality mathematical outreach to learners in primary, secondary and further education settings across the UK. For more details and to arrange a lecture ➡️ www.lms.ac.uk/news/lms-out...
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Reposted by Adam Townsend
The Beauty of Transport @thebeautyoftransport.com · 22/09/2026
A workthrough of the latest crop of railway station departure boards by @ryanbate.bsky.social on his Now Let’s Be Clear site. Have someone explain why you’re vaguely discomfited by them in ways you can’t explain yourself. nowletsbeclear.substack.com/p/lets-not-b...
nowletsbeclear.substack.com
Let’s not be clear.
I think they got a bit carried away...
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VisualPDE @visualpde.com · 20/09/2026
We've made some new changes to VisualPDE.com that we hope you'll like. Check out the simulation below of a 5-component "rock paper scissors lizard Spock" model, and see the news post about the changes here: visualpde.com/news/2026-09...
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Adam Townsend @pecnut.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
10/10 great content, this is what social media should be for
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Adam Townsend @pecnut.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
Some of these are great. My take: (1) Reserve currency symbolism should be consistent across time: all US dollars look like US dollars; Euros should look like Euros. Maintain Frutiger and horizontal layout. (2) For international currencies, you can't have people. Birds have great symbolism. [1/2]
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Adam Townsend @pecnut.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
👀
bbc.co.uk
Action to be taken on confusing low bridge signs in Rugeley.
A lorry driver's intervention prompts a rethink on rogue markings.
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Chalkdust @chalkdustmag.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
The Chalkdust dissertation prize is BACK! Send us an article draft based on your dissertation for a chance to win an article feature in the magazine, £100 and bragging rights forever. Details: chalkdustmagazine.com/blog/chalkdu...
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Reposted by Adam Townsend
Matthew Scroggs @mscroggs.co.uk · 15/12/2025
#NetflixChristmas Reviews 2025 #2: Haul out the Holly. A Hallmark Christmas film, but thankfully not one of the really cheap feeling ones. Has the other one from Mean Girls in it, who obviously goes to a small town to celebrate Christmas. 🎄🌨️📜🌨️🎄/5
Still from the film Haul out the Holly.
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Adam Townsend @pecnut.bsky.social · 15/12/2025
#NetflixChristmas Reviews 2025 #2: Haul Out the Holly. Single woman returns to parents' huge house for Xmas. HOA insists she decorates the street. Instead of leaving, she falls for HOA president. Painful. Talent wasted on the script. Clearly summer. Is it a spoof? Took me 3 days to watch. ☀️⚪️🍿💅🚯/5
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Alison @aaclarke4.bsky.social · 09/12/2025
#NetflixChristmas Reviews 2025 #1: Champagne Problems. Idk why but this reminded me of Emily in Paris even though main girl is competent at her job. Maybe it's because of the scenes where French people talk to each other in French. Anyway I liked it, nice Christmassy escapism. 🇫🇷🍾🥂🌲🎄❄️/5
Young white woman in a pinstripe suit holds up a glass of champagne as though making a toast. Setting is a boardroom meeting.
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Matthew Scroggs @mscroggs.co.uk · 08/12/2025
#NetflixChristmas Reviews 2025 #1: Champagne Problems. I've already forgotten the plot of this one. Although I do remember the montage of moments from earlier in the film about 2/3 of the way in - the sign of a true blockbuster. 🍾🥱😴😴😴/5
The poster for the film Champagne Problems.
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Adam Townsend @pecnut.bsky.social · 08/12/2025
#NetflixChristmas Reviews 2025 #1: Champagne Problems. Workaholic American goes to Paris; gets involved in a champagne business; falls for a Frenchman. It’s Emily in Paris + tinsel. Starts weak but side characters improve over time and I actually laughed at points. A strong start. 🇫🇷🥂🇩🇪🚄📚/5
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Adam Townsend @pecnut.bsky.social · 08/12/2025
We're back for 2025! Let's gooooooo ❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️🎬🍿🤮
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Chalkdust @chalkdustmag.bsky.social · 17/11/2025
🦂🚨🦂 New Chalkdust alert! 🦂🚨🦂 DNA origami, tracks and an interview with El Nombre feature in our AW25 issue! Plus all your favourite puzzles & columns. Read the entire new issue now at chalkdustmagazine.com
chalkdustmagazine.com
Chalkdust: Read Issue 22 now
A magazine for the mathematically curious. Issue 22 now available: DNA origami, tracks and an interview with El Nombre feature in our AW25 issue! Plus all your favourite puzzles & columns.
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VisualPDE @visualpde.com · 23/08/2025
We're working on some exciting new features for VisualPDE, but we want to hear from you! Whether you're a regular user or just tried it once, we'd love your feedback on how you use the tool. It’s a super short survey (promise)! 👇Fill it out here: forms.office.com/Pages/Respon...
forms.office.com
Microsoft Forms
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Katie Steckles @steckl.es · 07/05/2025
FYI: I'm part of the Finite Group, a friendly bunch of mathematicians with a free Discord community and monthly livestreams about cool bits of maths. Our next is 23rd May, when I'll be chatting with @Ayliean.bsky.social about maths & Rubik's cubes! Find out more and join at finitegroup.co.uk
Photos of the four people in the Finite Group, along with the FG logo
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Adam Townsend @pecnut.bsky.social · 21/04/2025
Came to Bedford. Was not disappointed. #heighthunt
Standing in front of a low bridge sign marked 1.4m 4’9”
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Chalkdust @chalkdustmag.bsky.social · 17/03/2025
🚨 New Chalkdust alert 🚨 You can read about sudoku, potatoes and crossnumber's biggest secrets right now in issue 21! chalkdustmagazine.co...
chalkdustmagazine.com
Read Issue 21 now! - Chalkdust
Sudoku, potatoes and crossnumber's biggest secrets finally revealed in our spring 2025 issue. Plus all your favourite columns!
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Matthew Scroggs @mscroggs.co.uk · 17/03/2025
I think Issue 21 is up there with the best issues of Chalkdust (and that's not just because I wrote an article for it)
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VisualPDE @visualpde.com · 13/03/2025
Want to put more of *you* into your mathematical modelling? Soon you'll be able to do this through your webcam and VisualPDE! More exciting things coming soon too! Let us know how we can support your science at hello@visualpde.com.
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Chris prior @oneofmanychris.bsky.social · 27/02/2025
Three excellent people and a great project. You will learn mathematical modelling and how to interact with our experimental colleagues, proper interdisciplinary science. Plus we do excellent cookies at lunch time meetings 😎
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Chalkdust @chalkdustmag.bsky.social · 13/02/2025
The shortlist for the Chalkdust Book of the Year 2024 is out now. View the list and vote for your favourite book at chalkdustmagazine.co.... We'll be publishing short reviews over the next couple of weeks, including notes relating to our four judging criteria: style, control, damage and agression.
chalkdustmagazine.com
Chalkdust Book of the Year 2024 - Chalkdust
We announce the shortlist of our favourite maths-themed books of last year
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Adam Townsend @pecnut.bsky.social · 05/02/2025
What a great calendar!
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Adam Townsend @pecnut.bsky.social · 13/01/2025
All these people going around living their lives writing \frac{\partial y}{\partial x} all the time
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Adam Townsend @pecnut.bsky.social · 25/12/2024
#NetflixChristmas Reviews 2024 #13: Our Little Secret. A disappointing end to #NetflixChristmas season. Lindsay Lohan’s bf’s sister’s bf is her ex-bf. They hide this to impress Kristin Chenoweth (wasted). LL gets stoned; everyone swaps partners. 🤷🏻‍♀️ Not silly enough. #BringBackHudgens2025. 🤫💍🤫🍬🍪/5
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Adam Townsend @pecnut.bsky.social · 25/12/2024
#NetflixChristmas Reviews 2024 #12: A Nonsense Christmas with Sabrina Carpenter. Sabrina sings some OK new Christmas songs and takes part in some OK sketches with guests. But it’s charming and she’s obviously a great singer, even if it made me feel very old. 🎶🎥🎄👩🏻‍🎤🪟/5
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Adam Townsend @pecnut.bsky.social · 25/12/2024
#NetflixChristmas Reviews 2024 #11: Carry-On. A cross between Die Hards 2 and 3. A TSA agent resembling Terminator 2 is blackmailed into getting a case on a plane. Starts well, but plot gets silly quickly. Worst is the belief you could have a car chase round LAX 😂. Watch Die Hard instead. 🇺🇸✈️🚨🎒🦠/5
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Adam Townsend @pecnut.bsky.social · 25/12/2024
#NetflixChristmas Reviews 2024 #10: Christmas as Usual. Uncomfortable: a Norwegian woman brings her fiancé home for Christmas but somehow her family don’t know he’s Indian and they are really weird about it. Supposedly a real story, but if I were the real woman’s family, I’d be mortified. 🇳🇴🌶️🕳️⛪️🥛/5
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Adam Townsend @pecnut.bsky.social · 25/12/2024
#NetflixChristmas Reviews 2024 #9: That Christmas. An animated adventure with a stellar cast that is less than the sum of its parts. Tired jokes. Strangely features lots of current Xmas songs. But agreed that Santa’s a Scotsman. Bill Nighy wears Reddit’s favourite watch. 🎅🏼🚌⛸️🔎🦃/5
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VisualPDE @visualpde.com · 24/12/2024
Coming soon: a modern take on an old paper by William Newman and Carl Sagan postulating a simple wave-like model of interstellar travel and colonization (link below). Now with inter-galactic heterogeneity, stochasticity, and more! ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citation...
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Alison @aaclarke4.bsky.social · 21/12/2024
#NetflixChristmas Reviews 2024 #999: Merry Christmas (Hindi) Starts almost as a romance (woman meets man, takes him back to her place), turns into Hitchcockian thriller when she finds her husband's dead body... then it disappears, then reappears again?? Great film, will leave you guessing. 😵😵😵😵😵/5
Setting is a carnival. Indian man holds pink candyfloss whilst an Indian woman looks at him sceptically.
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Matthew Scroggs @mscroggs.co.uk · 21/12/2024
#NetflixChristmas Reviews 2024 #8: Merry Christmas. Occasionally we stumble across a really good film while doing this: this is one of those. As usual, it starts meet cute but quickly turns into a Hitchcock-like thriller. 🎄🧸💃🔫🎅/5
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Adam Townsend @pecnut.bsky.social · 21/12/2024
#NetflixChristmas Reviews 2024 #8: Merry Christmas (Hindi/Tamil). An unexpected gem. Set in Bombay, a man back in town meets a woman at a restaurant and they hit it off. Then it turns into a completely different mystery movie. Great fun, if a little long (mostly the intro credits). 🍿👩🏽‍🍳🪑🦜💍/5
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Alison @aaclarke4.bsky.social · 21/12/2024
#NetflixChristmas Reviews 2024 #49: Hot Frosty. Romance didn't work for me, FMC was too maternal towards her supposed love interest, snowman was funny but too stupid to be a plausible. Best bit wwas Doug Judy and Boyle from Brooklyn 99, whole thing should have just been them. ☃️☃️☃️☃️💧/5
Lacey Chabert looks forward, frowning in confusion. Subtitle reads, "That is so funny. That looks like a girl I went to high school with.'
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Matthew Scroggs @mscroggs.co.uk · 21/12/2024
#NetflixChristmas Reviews 2024 #7: Hot Frosty. Snowman comes to life, doesn't walk in the air, breaks a window. The Pontiac Bandit and Boyle try to track down the window breaker. Snowman and the other one from Mean Girls fall in love, while the town falls in love with Snowman. ⛄💫🧍‍♂️🪟👮/5
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Adam Townsend @pecnut.bsky.social · 21/12/2024
#NetflixChristmas Reviews 2024 #7: Hot Frosty. OK this one is genuinely good. You know the plot: woman falls for a snowman come to life. He fixes everything. Played for laughs by a great cast. One to watch. ⛄️🧣🪚🧊👮🏾‍♂️/5
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Matthew Scroggs @mscroggs.co.uk · 21/12/2024
#NetflixChristmas Reviews 2024 #6: Twas the Text Before Christmas. Nana tries to text her granddaughter about Christmas, texts the wrong number, invites main character to Christmas anyway. Main character starts visiting them for every Christmas dinner, with a side order of rom com. 📱📲❄️🇯🇲💌/5
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Alison @aaclarke4.bsky.social · 21/12/2024
#NetflixChristmas Reviews 2024 #6: Twas the Text Before Christmas. Inspired by that Thanksgiving story, a wrong number text leads to a lonely woman spending Christmas with a strange family. This is a genuinely lovely film, the wholesome family dynamics work, the love story is well earned. 🌲🍷❄️☃️🥧/5
A young white woman with strawberry blonde hair and a camel trench coat holds up a pinecone Christmas tree ornament which she looks at with wonder.
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Adam Townsend @pecnut.bsky.social · 21/12/2024
#NetflixChristmas Reviews 2024 #6: ’Twas the Text Before Christmas. A woman with a fundamental misunderstanding of Australian seasons picks up a wrong call and gets a new boyfriend over many years. Cheap sets. Big decs. Watch her hair dye roots change dramatically during scenes. 📱👵🏼🥔🐶🇦🇺/5
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Andrew Krause @blindmath.bsky.social · 18/12/2024
Enjoyed chatting with Plus Magazine about @visualpde.com and broader 'interactive approaches to communicating science' with @bjwalker.bsky.social r.bsky.social and @pecnut.bsky.social t.bsky.social! Check out the podcast (and some virus transmission dynamics) below. plus.maths.org/content/adve...
plus.maths.org
Advent calendar door #17: Playing with VisualPDE
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The Maths Bazaar @themathsbazaar.bsky.social · 14/12/2024
Beret-wearing is the sign of a really good Christmas heroine. Only bettered by Vandervoord’s hat in A Christmas Exchange
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Matthew Scroggs @mscroggs.co.uk · 14/12/2024
#NetflixChristmas Reviews 2024 #5: Meet Me Next Christmas. Would've made more sense to me at the start if I knew who the Pentatonix were, but once it got going it was very entertaining. Doesn't take itself too seriously and is a lot of fun. The interlude scenes with the Pentatonix are fab. 👨‍🎤👨‍🎤👨‍🎤👨‍🎤👩‍🎤/5
A shot from the film "Meet Me Next Christmas" where the Pentatonix are saying "No, I know. We've been on Team Lames [Layla & James] when we could have been on Team Tayla [Teddy & James]."
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Adam Townsend @pecnut.bsky.social · 14/12/2024
#NetflixChristmas Reviews 2024 #5: Meet Me Next Christmas. A woman who flies in a beret goes on a Jingle All The Way-style mission to get show tickets to famous band The Pentatonix. Turns out her true love is Sinbad. Unbelievably long. Would watch the version that just contains the band. ✈️👩🏻‍🎤👜🎫🚕/5
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Adam Townsend @pecnut.bsky.social · 13/12/2024
Cometh Christmas, cometh the chocolate
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Kirsty Wan @micromotility.bsky.social · 12/12/2024
Many thanks to all our collaborators!! (nobody else here on bsky??) Check out this fantastic @visualPDE implementation made by Ben Walker for our paper...
visualpde.com
Nonlinearly elastic beams | VisualPDE
Exploring overdamped state-dependent stiffness
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Adam Townsend @pecnut.bsky.social · 11/12/2024
#NetflixChristmas Reviews 2024 #4: The Snow Sister. A sweet Norwegian mystery story you can take part in. A boy named after a month named after a general—or maybe Christmas—makes a new friend who cheers him up. Production values far higher than usual. Def worth watching at normal speed. ☃️👻⛸️🇳🇴😭/5
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Matthew Scroggs @mscroggs.co.uk · 11/12/2024
#NetflixChristmas Reviews 2024 #4: The Snow Sister (Snøsøsteren). Very sad. Looked like a kids film, but would have upset me way too much if I'd watched it as a child. A good film, but didn't make me feel very Christmassy. ❄️😭⛄😭👻/5
A girl in a red hat and scarf with snow on her saying "She lives on in your heart."
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Alison @aaclarke4.bsky.social · 11/12/2024
#NetflixChristmas Reviews 2024 #4: The Snow Sister. Incredibly sad Norwegian film about a bereaved child making a new friend, who has some secrets. Worth a watch but bear in mind it really is sad 😢 😢 😢 😭 😢/5
A child wrapped up warm for winter has his back to us as he says 'hi John's to another child. They are standing in a snowy street with Christmas trees all around.
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Matthew Scroggs @mscroggs.co.uk · 07/12/2024
Now that we've watched and reviewed 3 #NetflixChristmas films, we get to watch a bonus Christmas film that we know is good. This week, the bonus film is Let It Snow. If you have Netflix but haven't watched Let It Snow, watch it! 🌨️🐷🚗🍺🧇/5
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Matthew Scroggs @mscroggs.co.uk · 07/12/2024
#NetflixChristmas Reviews 2024 #3: The Merry Gentlemen. Girl is fired from show, goes to small town, parents' bar needs money so starts show with topless men, saves Christmas, falls in love, decides to not go back to New York. 2 cameos of other Netflix xmas films. Not amazing, not awful. 💰🕺💰🕺💰/5
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