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Terry Boon

@terryboon.bsky.social
313 followers 1.6K following 183 posts

Games & stories; maths & language; technology & risk; and thoughtful politics & law. Living in London, UK. Views my own, not representative of employer or anyone else, & reposts and follows are not endorsements. Also on Mastodon: @terryboon@hachyderm.io

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Terry Boon @terryboon.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
As a former mathematician now in banking: 😂 (At accountancy class, we got the internal rate of return of a project by solving a polynomial for the interest rate, which could have complex solutions - but clients might be unimpressed by "Go ahead if you can get funding at a rate better than (2+3i)%".)
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Terry Boon @terryboon.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Got started on @edconway.bsky.social's fascinating "Trade World" this afternoon, after enjoying the pre-publication posts at edconway.substack.com. (Now hungry for French sourdough, and still surprised at the round trip that British fish makes via China on its way to becoming British fish fingers.)
Cover of "Trade World" by Ed Conway. The cover image shows a container ship with containers labelled "bread", "clothes", and "cars".
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Matt Muir @mattmuir.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
@jonnelledge.bsky.social Hello man, in case you were still curious about all the AI botspam this is a good explainer of the current wave of the phenomenon (I have had 23 of these emails since Friday): tedium.co/2026/09/11/i...
tedium.co
The Worst Spam Emails: Inside iLands' AI Agent Hustle
iLands, a new AI agent-centric startup, is spamming creatives like me numerous times a day. What do its agents want? My job. Why? They need to buy more tokens.
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Terry Boon @terryboon.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
A fantastic take on "I am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General" for those who like their comedy about fonts and typography (and perhaps who are not *too* attached to Papyrus...) from @ellecordova.bsky.social: youtu.be/0Ck-NPqf2c8
youtu.be
Modern Day Typographer - Elle Cordova
YouTube video by Elle Cordova
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Terry Boon @terryboon.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Pea and ham soup always meant Finnish "hernekeitto" to me. But in Heston Blumenthal's "Is This a Cook Book?", I find a pea and ham soup-in-a-sandwich - filled with fresh petit pois bound with creme fraiche, topped with shredded smoked ham hock - which also looks tasty!
A tin of Jalostaja Finnish pea and ham soup.A photograph of pea and ham soup-in-a-sandwich from Heston Blumenthal's "Is This a Cook Book?" - a sandwich filled with a mixture of peas and creme fraiche, topped with pulled/shredded ham hock.
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Terry Boon @terryboon.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
MapSplit is interesting: an interactive web page where you drag a line wherever you like across the UK and see what percentage of the population is on either side (or explore other datasets or load your own) - from @puntofisso.bsky.social puntofisso.net/MapSplit/
Map of UK with a north-south line showing the line where c.50% of the population is either side - running approximately between the Isle of Wight and Newcastle upon Tyne. Generated by https://puntofisso.net/MapSplit/Map of UK with a east-west line showing the line where c.50% of the population is either side - running approximately through Birmingham. Generated by https://puntofisso.net/MapSplit/
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Stephen Bush @stephenkb.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
👇Great post this. Learning the recorder is a classic example of the importance of knowledge-rich learning that may seem pointless: it’s an easy, cheap way to provide children with the building blocks that allow them to learn to play many instruments quicker later.
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Terry Boon @terryboon.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
Contest where prize pot is *reduced proportionally to the number of entries*? Hofstadter looked at it with game theory (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platoni...), now @joeldavidhamkins.bsky.social with complexity, on way to neat analysis of "largest tweetable number": www.infinitelymore.xyz/p/largest-tw...
infinitelymore.xyz
The Largest Tweetable Number—Lectures on Infinity (lecture 4)
The paradox of the largest tweetable number. What is the largest number you can tweet?
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Jack Kessler @jackkessler.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
The jocks were right. Latin *is* a dead language. And it still haunts me. ✍️ www.linestotake.com/p/what-every...
Latin has landed me no jobs, earned me no social media clout and helped secure me precisely zero dates. It doesn’t even do anything for my University Challenge scores. Vaguely, I remember that Horace was a drunk, Virgil a propagandist while Ovid thought nothing of swapping a singular for a plural spelling just because it scanned better.

So, why do I recall with total certainty that “puella” is first declension, nominative, singular, feminine but that “templa” is second declension, nominative (and accusative), neuter, plural? Why do I know that “dirus” means dreadful while “dolor” means pain? Why hold on to grief?

Very occasionally, I get a hint of etymological satisfaction (from the Latin “satis” meaning enough). My favourite is probably placebo, the pill you swallow that has no strict medicinal value but can still make a patient feel better. Its literal translation is “I will please”.

But really, I cling to my declensions, conjugations and ablative absolutes not because they’re in any way useful but because they were so grimly tedious to learn that I’ll be damned if I’m going to let them slip.
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Joshua Grochow @joshuagrochow.bsky.social · 08/08/2026
"Puzzles reveal the limits of AI. The missing Aha! moments" by Cris Moore. Gift link 🎁. A more humanistic view on the value of solving problems ourselves. iai.tv/articles/puz... #MathSky 🧪
iai.tv
Puzzles reveal the limits of AI
<p><em>Puzzles compress the experience of insight into miniature, letting us watch understanding take shape in real time. Computer scientist <strong>Cristopher Moore</strong> argues that while AI can ...
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Terry Boon @terryboon.bsky.social · 08/08/2026
An exercise wheel, a magnetic sensor, a Python script to convert the data to a .FIT file, and an automated upload to Strava... all to track the running of little Mollie the hamster :-) www.reddit.com/r/SideProjec... (and more discussion at Hacker News news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4918...)
reddit.com
From the SideProject community on Reddit: I built a speed/distance tracker for my hamster wheel, which automatically records the data and uploads it to our hamster's own Strava account
Explore this post and more from the SideProject community
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David K Butler @davidkbutler.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
A #TryMathsLive just from my own head. I’m pretty sure that a continuous real-valued function with the rule that f(xy)=f(x)+f(y) has to be a logarithm. And I’m going to attempt to prove it.
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Terry Boon @terryboon.bsky.social · 02/08/2026
I liked this from SMBC. (Now wondering about the equivalent controversy for maths... Perhaps needing to accept or reject the Axiom of Choice, then bracing for the hard-to-swallow, sometimes bizarre results of either option?) www.smbc-comics.com/comic/legos
smbc-comics.com
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - Legos
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - Legos
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Phil Kenny @philkenny.bsky.social · 02/08/2026
A Heath Robinson machine masterpiece
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Michael Barany @mjb.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 29/07/2026
next Greek epic for hollywood treatment needs to be Euclid's Elements. overdue
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Tim Bale @timbale.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
OMG I could spend weeks and months here!
peter-guillam123.github.io
PlotLines - the classics, mapped
Every journey in the book, played out on a genuine period map - out-of-copyright novels and plays, followed stop by stop from Frankenstein to Shakespeare.
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Hetan Shah @hetanshah.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
‘Prescott had a tendency to misplace [the keys to his Ministerial red box]. On more than one occasion… he would try to smash his way back into the box with a coal chisel and a long hammer. Issuing Prescott with 16 keys was seen as the best solution.’ www.ft.com/content/b2bc...
ft.com
The makers of the little red government box
Who are the elusive craftsmen behind one of Britain’s most prized possessions, shared by monarchs, prime ministers and private collectors?
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Terry Boon @terryboon.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
When the cinema in St Albans reopened 12 years ago, it was named after the 1968 science fiction classic from Stanley Kubrick (who lived at nearby Childwickbury Manor) - so now, it will be possible to see #TheOdyssey at The Odyssey!
1968 poster for "2001: A Space Odyssey"Photograph of the Odyssey cinema in St Albans, Hertfordshire, UK.Movie poster for "The Odyssey" (2026)
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Max Hardy @maxjlhardy.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
The World Cup may be over but the Proms have just started and they’re basically the World Cup of music.
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CJ Bill @cjbill.bsky.social · 18/07/2026
You wouldn't believe the joke I have about Cassandra
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🏳️‍⚧️ Alexandra Merideth Erin [she/her] @alexandraerin.com · 17/07/2026
I started writing a joke about Polyphemus, but what if no one laughs?
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Lyndon Hood @lyndonhood.bsky.social · 18/07/2026
I have a joke about Lysistrata. Nobody gets it.
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Kit Yates @kityates.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
Sometimes the rules of sport induce some strange behaviours. But there probably haven't been many stranger football matches than the 1994 game between Barbados and Grenada. Why, with just a few minutes to go were Grenada trying to score in both goals? open.substack.com/pu...
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Will Oremus @willoremus.com · 12/07/2026
I set out to understand why AIs love negative parallelism. The answer wasn't just surprising—it was illuminating. www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...
theatlantic.com
The Most Famous AI Writing Tic Is Also the Most Mysterious
Why chatbots love “it’s not X, it’s Y”
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Terry Boon @terryboon.bsky.social · 12/07/2026
Happy to see #TomStoppard's "Jumpers" coming to Hampstead Theatre. Re-reading the script, reminded what a mixture it is: murder, academic politics, Radical Liberals sweeping to power, mankind on the moon - and George trying to work out his lecture on the nature of goodness, considering - Are God?
hampsteadtheatre.com
JUMPERS
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Ed Conway @edconway.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
🥵Why are so many Europeans/Britons unnecessarily sweating through a heatwave without cooling? Why are portable AC units so crap? The answers are both interesting and maddening. My latest on air conditioning👇 edconway.substack.com/p/the-missin...
edconway.substack.com
The Missing Pipe
A short history of how Britain chose the wrong heating system a century ago, and why we are unnecessarily sweating our way through a heatwave in 2026
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Ed Conway @edconway.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
🍌The Apple-Banana paradox🍏 The strange story of the world's favourite fruit. And why it tells you all sort of unexpected things about the world around us ✍️ edconway.substack.com/p/the-apple-...
edconway.substack.com
The Apple-Banana Paradox
Why the story of the world's favourite fruit is actually the story of everything
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Terry Boon @terryboon.bsky.social · 27/06/2026
"WordStar: A Writer's Word Processor" (www.sfwriter.com/wordstar.htman, 1996), interesting on the design/usability of the software, brought to mind the word processor *I* grew up with - Acornsoft's VIEW on the #BBCMaster, which one launched by typing (coincidentally) *WORD
sfwriter.com
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STABbins McGee (Halloween Themed) 🇵🇸 @stabbinsmcgee.bsky.social · 21/06/2026
I have a theory that the guy who started LEGO did so out of revenge after his parents were murdered by a foot.
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Ryan Whatever @silberwhatever.com · 20/06/2026
What should have been the third literary adaptation to finish the MUPPET CHRISTMAS CAROL and MUPPET TREASURE ISLAND trilogy?
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Terry Boon @terryboon.bsky.social · 24/05/2026
New Eclectic Stacks blog post: “Not X, but Y” is now a tell-tale sign of AI writing - but in Daniel C. Dennett's 2013 book "Intuition Pumps" he was also warning that the pattern could indicate a writer attempting a logical sleight of hand... www.eclecticstacks.com/post/not-x-b...
eclecticstacks.com
Not X But Y - a warning from the past
I was revisiting Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking (2013) by philosopher Daniel C. Dennett - and was interested see that years before constructions like “Not X, but Y” became an indicator o...
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Terry Boon @terryboon.bsky.social · 24/05/2026
London this summer has #Escher at Somerset House and #Bach at the Proms (including the fantastic Mass in B minor) - but without anything for mathematician and logician #Gödel, some might think it's somehow... Incomplete? #Hofstadter
"Relativity" (1953) by M.C. Escher - from Somerset House exhibition page https://www.somersethouse.org.uk/whats-on/mc-escher-the-exhibitionBanner image for BBC Proms 2026Cover of "Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid" by Douglas Hofstadter
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Dave Richeson @divbyzero.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
That feeling when you write a sentence you're pleased with! In this case: "Unlike Anna Karenina's unhappy families, all unhappy numbers are unhappy in the same way." Context: A number is *happy* if, when you repeatedly sum the squares of its digits, you end at 1. For instance, 7 is happy because
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Terry Boon @terryboon.bsky.social · 04/05/2026
Dave Brubeck Day prompted me to finish this brief blog post about musical pieces with variant time signatures - taking five (or not), rejoicing greatly, and being flown to the moon: www.eclecticstacks.com/post/unexpec... #DaveBrubeck
eclecticstacks.com
Take a number, any number - time signatures of the unexpected
“Fly me to the Moon” comes in two time signatures, I recently learned - the one which everyone knows (arranged by Quincy Jones for Frank Sinatra) in 4/4, and Bart Howard’s less familiar original in 3/...
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Terry Boon @terryboon.bsky.social · 10/04/2026
On the potential usefulness of initially "useless" research (featuring number theory, honey bees' algorithm for seeking nectar, and how some bacteria thrive in hot geysers), from @timharford.ft.com: timharford.com/2026/04/the-...
timharford.com
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Terry Boon @terryboon.bsky.social · 28/03/2026
A desk for people working at home with a cat: soranews24.com/2026/03/27/j.... But Hacker News comments suspect (rightly, I think) cats may ignore the features designed for them and will continue to expect attention at the keyboard where the human is working... (news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4754...)
soranews24.com
Japan now has a special desk for people who work at home with a pet cat[Photos]
The Neko House Desk understands who’s really in charge of your home, and helps you convince them to let you have some space too.
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Terry Boon @terryboon.bsky.social · 24/03/2026
I already liked "Birdhouse in your Soul" from They Might Be Giants. And after recent YouTube searches for music with alternative time signatures, it correctly suggested I might also like Charles Cornell's enthusiastic exploration of that song's *18 key changes*: youtu.be/vg2CkEgFgXk?...
youtu.be
The 1989 Pop Hit With 18 KEY CHANGES
YouTube video by Charles Cornell
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Terry Boon @terryboon.bsky.social · 22/03/2026
"Fly me to the Moon" comes in two time signatures, I now learn - the one which everyone *knows* in 4/4, and the less familiar original in 3/4 waltz - which why the rhythms in my book of piano jazz standards didn't match what I expected! Looking for other pieces with alternative time signatures...
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Erin Biba @erinbiba.bsky.social · 21/03/2026
Once you know the formula for narrative non-fiction it’s hard to enjoy reading it tbh because it’s often just watching a story check off bullet points in a specific order. Some people are great at making it feel organic but many, many people are not.
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Sameer Vasta @sameervasta.bsky.social · 13/03/2026
This is the best product review I’ve read: samhenri.gold/blog/2026031... It doesn’t matter if you’re interested in the MacBook Neo or not; this is the kind of essay that makes you think about the potential of technology and the joys of exploration.
samhenri.gold
“This Is Not The Computer For You” · Sam Henri Gold
Sam Henri Gold is a product design engineer building playful, useful software.
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Terry Boon @terryboon.bsky.social · 12/03/2026
"Why you should avoid radar charts in data visualization" by @eagereyes.org gives a nice explanation of why I often find charts more helpful: observablehq.com/blog/avoid-r...
observablehq.com
Why you should avoid radar charts in data visualization
Few chart types are irredeemably bad, but the radar chart definitely is. In this post, we share why radar charts are ultimately a poor representation of data.
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Jack Kessler @jackkessler.bsky.social · 06/03/2026
"They weren’t just sneakers — they were a signal." Forget em dashes and the sudden ubiquity of "quietly" as a modifier. The real giveaway a text is AI-assisted? Cadence. My newsletter, out now.
linestotake.com
How to spot AI writing
It's not just em dashes — it's the rhythm
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Gareth Hanrahan @mytholder.bsky.social · 03/03/2026
Greg: What was the wording on the task? Alex: Make Achilles invulnerable by dipping him in the Styx. Most invulnerable Achilles wins. Greg: Dip the baby. The whole baby. They’re not going to hang onto a heel or anything stupid like that. Alex: First, let’s see Thetis’ attempt.
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Rev. Dr. Everett Howe @ewhowe.com · 01/03/2026
Visited my Google Scholar page just when it hit an important milestone!
Citations        1728
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Rob Donoghue @rdonoghue.bsky.social · 22/02/2026
This is later than middle ages, but it reminds me of one very eye opening but of history for me. Years back, I had just bought the best laptop I had ever owned. I’d saved up for it, as it had cost a fair amount, but I was LIVING out of it. (This will make sense, I promise)
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Terry Boon @terryboon.bsky.social · 21/02/2026
More on slide rules (from paper cut-outs to 3D printing), and some of the unexpectedly sophisticated maths in this 1971 children's puzzle book, is now in my new Eclectic Stacks blog post: www.eclecticstacks.com/post/slide-r...
eclecticstacks.com
Slide Rules and Nut-Crackers
The discussion “Is there anyone here who still uses slide rules?” on Hacker News reminded me of the children’s maths/puzzle book Nut-Crackers (1971) I once had, with cut-out paper slide rule at the ba...
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Yourqueerprof @drcompton.bsky.social · 14/02/2026
#heartday #myfavorite
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Jason Moore @moorejh.bsky.social · 12/02/2026
I am ready and waiting for the call...
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Terry Boon @terryboon.bsky.social · 06/02/2026
"Slide rules - anyone still use them?" on Hacker News reminded me of children's maths/puzzle book "Nut-Crackers" (1971) I once had, with cut-out paper slide rule at the back. And I now spot it was an early book (the first?) from subsequently prolific mathematician & writer Ian Stewart!
Cover of "Nut-Crackers" by John Jaworski and Ian Stewart (1971). Cover illustration: a water-wheel is driven by an endless stream in an impossible ever-descending channel.Page from "Nut-Crackers" by Jaworski and Stewart, with a slide rule to cut out, with a range of 1-50 on each paper strip.
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Terry Boon @terryboon.bsky.social · 01/02/2026
Planning a dinner, reminded of the old saying on clocks & time - as I found a man with one recipe book may know how to roast pork belly, but a man with two may never be sure. (High heat first for the crackling, then low for the rest? Or the other way round? Or low heat all the way for *5 hours*?)
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