Dr. Courtney Gibbons (she/her/xlookup)

Back on Twitter, my most viewed tweet was a link to my "math pep talk"—a video I made for my students that now has 23K views 👀 m.youtube.com/watch?v=kenf... There's a lot to expand on in that video, like structural barriers to success in math. But I'm sharing it again anyway. #MTBoS

Instead of discussing racist comments from asshats, read about Iranian Fields Medal winner, Maryam Mirzakhani. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maryam_...

The news from Brazil and Serbia are great and show that you don't defeat the far right by copying it or trying to appeal to their supporters You do it by being uncompromising, showing the danger they pose and offering something different to the many crises people suffer from

Plants or bust.

#Marseille

The 5-year cancer survival rate is up to 70% SIDS deaths have decreased by over 50% 89% decline in tornado deaths All thanks to federal investment in science and OUR tax dollars at work!

I just realized I have more street cred than Yglesias. 🫠

💥 Some personal news 💥 Visual Algebra is finally DONE! I just sent off an 820-page pdf to the editor. Almost exactly 7 years after I started. The zip file that contains the 100+ plain text LaTeX files and nothing else is a whopping 5.4 MB. Now onward to Volume 2! #MathSky

In the interest of closing some terrifying gaps in my budget I am selling this piece which was used in the game/album Ancient Undead Spider Wizard

Blaise Pascal invented public transit in the 1660s. As the greatest mathematician of his age, he saw the math problem that only transit would solve. I wrote about this amazing story here. humantransit.org/2024/12/one-...

So I keep thinking about this. If the tensor algebra (skew commutative!) is a quotient of the exterior algebra where d^2=0, could a malassociative algebra come from a quotient where d(d^2)=0 or something like that? d(d^2)+d^2(d) = 0?

If you want a fun treat, look at powers of ten modulo 89. (Discovered by my Primes Against Humanity independent study students, incidental to a different argument)

“Weizenbaum understood ELIZA’s use of the first person to be a lie and warned his colleagues against it; Turkle agrees. “Whenever a program says ‘I,’ it’s a deception,” she writes. “That is the original sin of artificial intimacy.”” www.nybooks.com/articles/202...

Even if you deeply believe AI can be a tool for mathematics, that doesn't mean you have to be a tool for OpenAI (et al). Don't be a tool.

This is the way. Looking forward to seeing this energy and candor in the Senate.

"Please, I'm off the clock."

Zero is a natural number for tax purposes

I've read and cited Carolyn Marvin's book "when old technologies were new" many times. Good to know what historians of technology get up to once they retire. Love it!

"Releasing over 700 files at once is not a demonstration of scholarship, but a demonstration of power. We urge mathematicians to discontinue their work with OpenAI and to return to a vision of science that centers human understanding." www.ahmath.org/statements

If it didn't cost so much, I would go get my JD. I think it would just be a fun time. I like logic, I like knowing a lot of facts, I like precedents and knowing where they come from. I'm very hard to bore with technical material.

Call Me by Your Name for Tax Purposes [Sorry I don't watch movies really so I'm doing book titles, put me in meme jail]

I called my online pharmacy, and they said call volume is unusually high due to recent events, so answer me this: What does Kelly Clarkson and a mechanical bird have to do with pharmacy call center volume?!