anonymouscapybara

[anonymouscapybara]

[anonymouscapybara]

But then around 30 million years ago — halfway through the Age of Mammals, give or take — something happened. The nautiloids started disappearing. Fewer species, less diversity. Bit by bit they shrank back into their current small range. What happened halfway through the Age of Mammals? Well, here’s one clue: the nautiloids’ long retreat showed a pattern. It wasn’t everywhere and all at once. They disappeared first in the northern arctic regions; then in the Antarctic; then in temperate zones; finally across most of the tropics except that one small patch. This pattern suggested a culprit: a warm-blooded predator that evolved in the Arctic and then spread around the world. But… the armored cephalopod design had been around forever. They’d been living with predators for half a billion years. Sharks. Primitive armored fish. Not-so-primitive modern fish. In the age of dinosaurs, they had to deal with ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, and mosasaurs. Back in the Paleozoic, they were hunted by eight-foot-long giant sea scorpions. Way back in the Cambrian, they had to live with the anomalocariids. In the early Age of Mammals, there were primitive whales and sea-going crocodiles. The armored cephalopod design took them all in stride and kept going. So what happened?

[anonymouscapybara]

I have historically posted my annual mathblr roll call in late April, but I think it makes more sense to do it at the beginning of the year so it's clear which post is current. Accordingly, I now call the

🧮 𝟚𝟘𝟚𝟝 𝕄𝔸𝕋ℍ𝔹𝕃ℝ ℝ𝕆𝕃𝕃 ℂ𝔸𝕃𝕃 🧮

Reblog/reply if you are a mathblr and/or mathblr adjacent. And tag the other (at least semi active) mathblrs & adjacents you know of!

"What counts as mathblr? Do I count?" If you want to! Math shitposters! Math academia aesthetic blogs! Math studyblrs! Math related gimmick blogs! Unthemed blogs owned by people who happen to be math fans! I want them all! I'm happy to see CS, stats, physics, and other math-adjacent folks too if they like hanging out with the math crowd!

Bonus: link to the LCM- Least Common Mathblr discord server. Come hang out!

https://discord.gg/q4nzuEqgFv

[anonymouscapybara]

this is frying me so bad

[anonymouscapybara]

400 possible combinations of hyperparameters stand before me. But only one of them will train America's Next Top Model.

[anonymouscapybara]

‘Useful phrases for the murder mystery writer abroad’ my cartoon for this week’s Guardian Books.

[anonymouscapybara]

then they can introduce the Grothendieck group when everyone’s ready for it!

they should put a disclaimer at the beginning of elementary school math. “from 1st to 3rd grade we work in the semiring N.” y’know so kids don’t get confused by the lack of negative numbers

[anonymouscapybara]

they should put a disclaimer at the beginning of elementary school math. “from 1st to 3rd grade we work in the semiring N.” y’know so kids don’t get confused by the lack of negative numbers

[anonymouscapybara]

Greatest pun of 2025, legendary reach into the depths of time.

[anonymouscapybara]

There’s something contemptible about animals that are just tubes. Like hagfish, worms, snakes, etc. Like they’ve specialized down to the point where they’re not really anything but a digestive tract. Just a mouth and an anus, a geometrically efficient form for the consumption and processing of nutrients, all in service only of surviving another day to consume and process more nutrients.

And sure that’s all animals, all life. But at least when you’ve got other appendages going on you can do other stuff, it doesn’t seem like your whole existence is just eating and shitting. When you’ve got arms and legs and wings and antenna and shit, it seems like you could conceivably be engaged in some greater purpose, in play and joy and manipulation of the environment.

In the end all life is equally meaningless, but don’t remind me of your meaningless by being nothing but a tube. Put some cool ornamental stuff around the tube (which is all nevertheless just in service of the tube) so I can at least pretend to be doing other stuff too.

[anonymouscapybara]

So what was in it for the cultists in the Lovecraft stories? For your normal God or demon or whatever there's some sort of reward or benefit, or the very least some duty to society (ala the Vestal Virgins). What's in it for you if you're worshipping the Guy Who Barely Knows You Exist

[anonymouscapybara]

with 0 notes

the words of the prophets are written in tumblr posts

[anonymouscapybara]

haven’t heard of this before—what’s the story in question?

if you know anything at all about professional philosophy then you know that the husserl scholar story is completely made up lol

[anonymouscapybara]

"currying" you mean the fucking tensor-hom adjunction?

[anonymouscapybara]

i'm of two minds about lex luthor as an elon musk allegory. on the one hand, it feels like a counterbalance we so desperately need after so many years of mcu tony stark, and on the other hand, i think it's pretty important to the superman mythos that lex, whatever his other deficiencies as a human being, is genuinely brilliant, and not, like elon musk, an utter fucking moron.

[anonymouscapybara]

what will it be, boss? the comfort of misery or the pain of change?

[anonymouscapybara]

I know you wanted me away But I am called to be the first Pope from the USA I heard that there's a special place where God talks directly to me every time I pray

I'm having holy dreams, of ruling the Holy See Hear Santa Monica, her son is calling me Won't make the bishops proud, the USCCB Will see their bro in Christ, I know they're gonna scream

"God, what will you do? You once were our boy, then you went to Peru," oh Fathers I'm on the balcony In my vestments, they elected me as the