Adam Townsend

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...

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...

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...

10/10 great content, this is what social media should be for

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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...

#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

#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

#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

#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

#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

We're back for 2025! Let's gooooooo ❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️🎬🍿🤮

🦂🚨🦂 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

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...

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

Came to Bedford. Was not disappointed. #heighthunt

🚨 New Chalkdust alert 🚨 You can read about sudoku, potatoes and crossnumber's biggest secrets right now in issue 21! chalkdustmagazine.co...

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)

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.

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 😎

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.

What a great calendar!

All these people going around living their lives writing \frac{\partial y}{\partial x} all the time

#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

#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

#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

#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

#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

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...

#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

#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

#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

#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

#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

#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

#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

#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

#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

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...

Beret-wearing is the sign of a really good Christmas heroine. Only bettered by Vandervoord’s hat in A Christmas Exchange

#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

#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

Cometh Christmas, cometh the chocolate

Many thanks to all our collaborators!! (nobody else here on bsky??) Check out this fantastic @visualPDE implementation made by Ben Walker for our paper...

#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

#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

#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

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