iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Rowena Ball

Nalini Joshi @monsoon0.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

I will be giving the 2026 Moyal Medal Lecture today at 18:30 at the Macquarie University campus 👉🏼 www.mq.edu.au/faculty-of-s...

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Rowena Ball @rowena-mathscieng.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

There are 3 left-spiral (sinistral) snails and 6 right-spiral (dextral) snails. Sinistral snails are rare and were called Kings. The setting is a Christian basilica, so... Chiral codes were used in Australian Indigenous societies too, centuries before chirality was 'discovered' by Western science.

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Rowena Ball @rowena-mathscieng.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Or you could just get the kids to make your flyer

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Rowena Ball @rowena-mathscieng.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Through the misty arches... across the 150th meridian east... what lies beyond?

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Rowena Ball @rowena-mathscieng.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

What are they talking about, Bob Katter has lurked there for about 100 years

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Rowena Ball @rowena-mathscieng.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

This organisation would be hugely strengthened by active inclusion of a greater diversity of global mathematics, mathematical cultures, and mathematicians. www.ahmath.org

ahmath.org

AHM

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Rowena Ball @rowena-mathscieng.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Seems the Institute for Heritage and Human Mathematics that I founded in July at a conference I convened will be sited at Bundaberg. Mathematicians made redundant by AI and students will get day jobs picking strawberries and evenings make and disseminate human mathematics together. #mathsky

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Reposted by Rowena Ball

Railmaps @railmaps.com.au · 14/09/2026

The Moon and Venus are dancing tonight.

Venus and a crescent Moon in the evening sky.

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Rowena Ball @rowena-mathscieng.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

The old answer to that old question was that mathematics is the part of physics where the experiments are cheap. So mathematics used to be good value. Now we hear that a mathematics experiment costs 22 million dollars. Ha! Maybe the roles are now reversed!

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Rowena Ball @rowena-mathscieng.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

Get a life, ye AI losers. Give the real world a go. One student included "Samples of my conversations with Claude" in their honours thesis. *Honestly*. Gen-AI riddled grant applications and manuscripts to review and theses to mark and unsolicited CVs have become a torrential deluge. Heaven help us!

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Rowena Ball @rowena-mathscieng.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

O happy AI-free afternoon! O the treasures at the Lifeline Bookfair! What a delightful swag to come home with! There are literally barns full of books, and crowds of families and kids and loners and oldies buying them. No-one here is crafting AI prompts. www.lifelinecanberra.org.au/books/bookfa...

lifelinecanberra.org.au

Lifeline Canberra - Lifeline Canberra Bookfair

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Reposted by Rowena Ball

Rowena Ball @rowena-mathscieng.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

And socks. Ohh those all-male 4th year and graduate maths and physics classes! They stink! Don't those dudes ever change their socks or wash their feet? Or wash anything? No wonder the women avoid or drop out.

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Reposted by Rowena Ball

Ben Eltham @beneltham.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

AI is going to be one of the biggest issues in higher education in coming months. There is zero doubt vice-chancellors want to automate their teaching www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

theguardian.com

‘We have had enough’: thousands of University of Sydney staff walk off the job over AI and job security

Hundreds of university staff were stationed at picket lines, calling for stronger protections around the use of AI

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Rowena Ball @rowena-mathscieng.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

Excuse me, have we e-met? Ha! Thanks for the idea! To be deployed on all the whitesplainers, mansplainers, white supremacists, and the "I'm-not-a-mathematician-but-"s and other major and minor annoyances who spam my emails and msgs

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Rowena Ball @rowena-mathscieng.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

Could get tricky. If we are visited by aliens from another galaxy who are made of L-ribonucleotides and D-amino acids, then pub menus would have to include 'OC' (opposite chirality) as well as 'V' (vegan) and 'GF' (gluten-free) options on their menus, otherwise the aliens would starve.

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Rowena Ball @rowena-mathscieng.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

This researcher calls it the old gish-gallop

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Reposted by Rowena Ball

Railmaps @railmaps.com.au · 27/08/2026

I needn't have worried. Upon arrival, this beauty was sitting in the dock platform. I got off the South Mail (at right) and snapped this shot before boarding the Tocumwal connection which that that day was to be run by 2-car diesel set 606/706. 43 years ago today, August 27 1983 6 of n

A Streamlined 2-car diesel set in tuscan livery sits on the far side of the platform in the bay platform whilst the train from Sydney on which I had just arrived sits at right in the main platform.

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Rowena Ball @rowena-mathscieng.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

Shingles vaccine reduces the risk of shingles, too! Get the vaccine if you are eligible! Miserable, unpleasant disease for the unvaccinated – it attacked my poor colleague, who suffered terribly for months and it did irreversible damage to their eyes. Get the vaccine if you can!

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Rowena Ball @rowena-mathscieng.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

How to lay rails across the vast Murrumbidgee flood plain: Fell the enormous river red gums along the surveyed route as you go, and rearrange the logs into a trestle viaduct. The sleepers and some cross-timbers are sawn, but of outsized dimension! The rails are still in place. #railways #heritage

Timber trestle railway viaduct spans the vast Murrumbidgee river flood plain

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Rowena Ball @rowena-mathscieng.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

Speaking of which, it should also be career-ending to repeat the colonial lie that "Aborigines could only count up to three" (or 4, or 5, or variants of that lie). That always was deliberate misinformation that became embedded and to this day it is repeated – often in front of Indigenous students.

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Rowena Ball @rowena-mathscieng.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

We let our mathematics leak out all over campus at ANU!

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Reposted by Rowena Ball

Professor Asha Rao @asharao.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

The moon and Venus in the western sky (right) just now, from my backyard. I zoomed out to get the shot on the right. Is that Spica from the Constellation Virgo on the upper right? If no, than what? #nightsky #earthsky

The moon (bigger dot) and Venus (smaller dot) in the middle ground.
The foreground is a roof of a building with solar panels.
The camera is zoomed out to bring in the other celestial body - a bright dot about 5deg northeast of the duo.
Is that Spica?
Wish there was less light pollution so I could capture more.

A clearer shot showing the crescent moon and Venus in the middle ground of the picture. The sky, just after sunset is a beautiful purple blue.

Just below the two celestial bodies is the outline of the roof of a house, forming the foreground of the picture.

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Reposted by Rowena Ball

Railmaps @railmaps.com.au · 16/08/2026

Moon and Venus tonight

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Rowena Ball @rowena-mathscieng.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

Nalini is more renowned and accomplished than anyone who was in that Sydney Town Hall. Shame-job, @australianmuseum.bsky.social and Eureka prize organisers. #racism #EurekaPrize

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Reposted by Rowena Ball

Athene Donald @athenedonald.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

The University of Cambridge was shockingly slow to admit women to degrees: not till 1948. But briefly, from 1904-7, those who passed the exams could get a degree from Trinity College Dublin: Steamboat Ladies #womeninSTEM #histsci occamstypewriter.org/athenedonald...

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Reposted by Rowena Ball

Nalini Joshi @monsoon0.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

“The role of the @arc-gov-au.bsky.social is to give our best researchers the opportunity to follow their best ideas…” ministers.education.gov.au/clare/arc-25...

ministers.education.gov.au

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Reposted by Rowena Ball

Justin on eurostar @eurostarjustin.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

A bike ride before work. It was already 25⁰ when I got back just after 10am. It's going to be another scorching day on the iron road.

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Rowena Ball @rowena-mathscieng.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples were explicitly excluded from the census until 1971. I'll give you three guesses as to who will be fined most, be unable to pay the fines, then be criminalized, for not completing the census and you will be right first guess.

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Rowena Ball @rowena-mathscieng.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

Census night. For the first 70 years of the census 'Aboriginal natives should not be counted'. In ~1650 Chief Red Kangaroo of the Gamilarray-speaking Gunn-e-darr people, carried out a full census of his tribe. Based on the results, he began a successful campaign to unify all the Gamilarray tribes

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Rowena Ball @rowena-mathscieng.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

Who? Has anyone ever heard of this NZ PM? Did Peter Dutton get a name change and go to ground across the ditch? Where is Jacinda?

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Rowena Ball @rowena-mathscieng.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

Very true, but it gets worse. The flows of knowledge... wilful interruption, suppression or destruction of those flows never ends well. The consequences are not pretty. I gave a talk on this coupla weeks ago

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Reposted by Rowena Ball

Jodie Bradby @jodiebradby.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

Worried about H5 in Australia? This is an interesting dataset.

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Rowena Ball @rowena-mathscieng.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

😀'many mathematicians want to work with AI, others prefer to stay “AI vegetarian” or even “AI vegan.”' Bit ironic that those many mathematicians will be "AI paleo"! Beware all ye "keto" mathematicians tho – the keto diet is notorious for unintended and unforeseen consequences and side-effects!

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Rowena Ball @rowena-mathscieng.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

Too right. The snails in my letter box ate a piece of the password in my census letter. Is there a question about snails in the form? Do the household snails not want to be counted? Apparently you can flag down a wandering ABS field officer who will be carrying a yellow satchel and request a form.

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Rowena Ball @rowena-mathscieng.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

Just a rake of three Abt rack engines steaming through the Tassie wilderness, nothing special. #trains #railways

Three Abt rack engines all coupled and in steam on a test run near Queenstown, Tasmania

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Rowena Ball @rowena-mathscieng.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

When did school mathematics become re-branded as 'numeracy'? Why? Was it just because of some sort of imperfect rhyming ring with 'literacy'? #mathematics #mathsky

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Rowena Ball @rowena-mathscieng.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

The pleasure was all ours! Isn't it great to have maths visitors? The conference was a huge, exciting success – thanks entirely to Parisa and the other brilliant, generous invited speakers and the students! #mathematics

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Rowena Ball @rowena-mathscieng.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

'Managerial roles such as “associate pro-vice chancellor for education and student experience” have been created' These useless overpaid appointments are made at Oz universities. They are an insult to research and teaching academics at the coalface, who DO student education and experience every day

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Rowena Ball @rowena-mathscieng.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

More little fractal frosticles on the windscreen this morning, but fog has descended so not as sparkly as yesterday

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Rowena Ball @rowena-mathscieng.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

Oho, something new on an Aussie country pub menu! Galway Spice Bag: fried chicken, chips, McDonnell's curry sauce, onion, capsicum, Chinese sauce. So of course I absolutely had to order this culinary marvel!

Aussie country pub menu has got something new: Galway Spice Bag

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Rowena Ball @rowena-mathscieng.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

Before colonisation Aboriginal children played and 'lived' mathematics brilliantly. This account is from the early 1900s: "In far north Qld the Aboriginal youngsters would make their own fun. After making a dense black column of smoke, girls and boys would ‘spear’ long leaves into it. 1/n #mathsky

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Rowena Ball @rowena-mathscieng.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

Nearly jumped out me skin, office desk phone suddenly shrieked at me just now! Haven't heard a peep from it for years, nor used it, and it is covered in dust. Presumably the university just keeps paying a provider for this antiquated landline service that no-one uses.

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Rowena Ball @rowena-mathscieng.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

Shame-job, International Congress of Mathematicians. The organisers are a bloody disgrace. Did they not screen, train, and brief their security contractor? Is the ICM, and the IMU, completely clueless on how corrosive such continual aggressions are to the victims? #mathsky #racism #whitesupremacy

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Rowena Ball @rowena-mathscieng.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

Train getting longer as it goes along! Love it! Presumably the train would have to get shorter as it goes in the opposite direction, as it drops the empties off.

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Rowena Ball @rowena-mathscieng.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

`But young women may still get written out of a research team’s endeavours, when a male student is allowed to lay claim to a woman’s research – and which historian of science will be able to track that down, by whatever means?' You're on!

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Reposted by Rowena Ball

Nalini Joshi @monsoon0.bsky.social · 18/07/2026

The ceiling is almost equally beautiful

Looking up at the circular glass dome of the Solomon R. Guggenheim museum, through the middle space surrounded by spiral floors, showing two arrangements of 12 segments of glass panes.

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Rowena Ball @rowena-mathscieng.bsky.social · 18/07/2026

Another warm tropical winter morning in Canberra. Great fun it were, thoughtlessly stepping barefoot down the back to put the recycling out.

The temperature is minus 5 at 7:10 am in Canberra

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