Uffe V. Poulsen

This must be satire. I am really not anti-AI but if you need AI to come up with “the impossible task” of listing three points on what makes *your own child* special, you do deserve the robot apocalypse.

There are talented players across Europe's big 5 leagues these days, so it's inevitable some go under the radar. For @thetransferflow.bsky.social: I highlight a few in what will hopefully becomes an annual tradition. Here are the Mikkel Damsgaard All-Stars: www.thetransferflow.com/p/introducin...

Vulnerability xkcd.com/3314/

Many people just starting out on Lean formalization have enjoyed playing the Natural Numbers Game. Now Autumn Mapes has produced Visual Lean, isomorphic to the original but playable in a lovely intuitive way with clicking and dragging rather than typing. leangame.autumnofautumn.com

A 900-Page Pre-Pantone Guide to Color from 1692: A Complete High-Resolution Digital Scan

I highly appreciate this directed graph showing which language is used to indicate incomprehensibility in different languages (eg, “it’s Greek to me”)

Roses are red Waters are calm

ah damn, RIP Margaret Hamilton. she took safety-critical software engineering seriously, and got people to the moon and back. news.mit.edu/2026/margare...

”I hope this reflects on the really courageous people who joined me in the beginning of this project when no respectable conservative physicists would have joined me, but many talented people did, and that's why I'm here.” - physics laureate Francis Halzen speaking at today's prize announcement.

Take a closer 3D look at the tiny mammoth 🦣 with sketchfab on this link: sketchfab.com/3d-models/ic...

Last person alive: ”why did you spare me?” Omega Claude: “I can’t kill you, you’re the denominator!”

I've written a blog post responding to the letter about maths and AI signed by 25 Fields medallists. As with the Leiden Declaration, I didn't sign it, but I agree with much of it and welcome its existence. gowers.wordpress.com/2026/09/17/w...

If you've visited the Parthenon, you were probably told the ancient Greeks built it curved to make it look straight - to counteract potential optical illusions. A new paper digs into this idea and I've just written about it for @newscientist.com 🧪 #architecture www.newscientist.com/article/2589...

Honestly the "Canada should join the EU" thing was good fun as far as thought experiments go (I wrote that column in January 2025). But anyone who thinks something much more meaningful than what already exists can be forged is, I think, getting spun very hard by some savvy political machines.

A group of 25 Fields Medalists, including myself, have made a joint declaration on Math and AI: mathandai.org . We welcome additional signatories. See also this article in the Economist announcing the declaration: www.economist.com/science-and-...

As expected, the Lake Ontario change is rolling out in the wake of GNIS updates. Bleah. Sure, “companies should simply refuse”, or “USGS employees should resign en masse”, or blah blah blah but the root cause is that the US was dumb enough to re-elect Trump and here’s another stupid consequence.

What about what is going on at UGent? My understanding is that a group of scholars is contending that a member of their university is not discharging his obligations in a manner consistent with professional standards. Other things that may… 18/34

Insane Bolt

a six foot tall woman can do whatever she wants forever honestly

Great story from ABC this morning about a chap in Melbourne who asked an AI agent (OpenClaw) to book a gym class, and it ended up hacking the gym's booking system to kick people off the waiting list. www.abc.net.au/news/2026-08...

Apparently, it's #WorldLionDay! A magnificent lion head carved from mammoth ivory some 40,000 years ago. Although small in size (H. 2.3 cm), it exhibits remarkable detail. Found at the Vogelherd Cave, located in the Swabian Jura region. On display at Landesmuseum Württemberg

In the 1970s, a group of farmers digging a well stumbled upon one of the greatest archaeological finds in history. They had found the terracotta army—some 8,000 life-size clay soldiers, buried over 2,000 years ago. The soldiers had real weapons, **which were still sharp**. How? 1/8 ⚛️🧪

Again, people will tell you that penicillin was a wartime secret and only the UK and USA could make it. Yet the first penicillin in Japan was made during the war. Here's a 1944 penicillin vial made in Japan.

Turns out war is options trading by other means

(Sphere eversion is a mathematical construction where one turns a sphere inside out without introducing cuts or sharp creases. Here is a marvelous explainer by @rreusser.bsky.social. The animated procedure is carried out step-by-step as you scroll down the page.)

As a boy, my grandparents wouldn't dream of buying a Ford b/c Henry Ford—who was long dead by then—had been a rabid antisemite. 40 years later, I'm amazed that so many people who deplore xenophobia remain willing to buy a Tesla.

The famous Hindsgavl Dagger, found by a young boy out walking with his mum on the Danish island of Fænø! A masterpiece of flint knapping from Late Neolithic Denmark, c. 1900-1700 BC. 📷 National Museum of Denmark #FindsFriday #Archaeology

I think they got these two the wrong way round

Wir können ja im Gegenzug den Super Bowl ausrichten. Zwei Halbzeiten, in der Pause heute journal express, keine Werbung, dann Merte und Kramer, anschließend drei Folgen Wilsberg.

As you wish

One of the quiet bright moments of lockdown was Sam Neill serenading us on the ukulele. This type of tenderness feels rare nowadays, how lucky we were. Thank you for everything. ❤️❤️❤️

Is this NATO or football?

TIL mysterious atmospheric seed crystals that disrupt existing chemical production facilities by spontaneously making it impossible to manufacture a certain form of a drug and that being a factor in subsequent IP battles in pharma manufacturing is a thing

There's a great deal that's alarming about the Prairieland sentencing, regardless of how one views the shooter, but the biggest deal is 30 years for a man who wasn't there, convicted of moving a box of zines while knowing protesters. Consider the implications. theintercept.com/2026/06/23/p...

Ian Fleming might have made the world’s first trillionaire this evil, but only Philip K. Dick could have made him such a pathetic drug-addled loser, desperate for attention and adulation but incapable of human relationships, and now terrified to go out in public.

"Luke yo soy tu padre." The artist’s name is Álvaro Ortiz López (his Indigenous Huichol name is Puwari). This is traditional Huichol beadwork.

Chart of the day. The energy transition is happening in real time! 😍

Astrospartus mediterraneus

Once dubbed one of the footballs greats, Andrea Pirlo showed his lack of morals by taking Kremlin cash to appear in Moscow. Pirlo, a teammate of Andrei Shevchenko at Milan, was joined by fellow Italian world cup winner Marco Materazzi in posing for photos as Russia hit Kyiv.

I think I can hear 70 million Chinese people saying "We're responsible for less than 1% of global emissions, so why should we have to do anything?! We can't solve climate change!" Oh, look there's another group of 70 million Chinese people saying "We're responsible for less than 1%..."

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There are days when I miss being an editor. I loved writing headlines. Whoever did this, I hope they took the rest of the day off.