#a new way to see

[art-of-mathematics]

June Huh wasn’t interested in mathematics until a chance encounter during his sixth year of college. Now his profound insights connecting combinatorics and geometry have led to math’s highest honor.

June Huh often finds himself lost. Every afternoon, he takes a long walk around Princeton University, where he’s a professor in the mathematics department. On this particular day in mid-May, he’s making his way through the woods around the nearby Institute for Advanced Study — “Just so you know,” he says as he considers a fork in the path ahead, “I don’t know where we are” — pausing every so often to point out the subtle movements of wildlife hiding beneath leaves or behind trees. Among the animals he spots over the next two hours of wandering are a pair of frogs, a red-crested bird, a turtle the size of a thimble, and a quick-footed fox, each given its own quiet moment of observation.

“I’m very good at finding stuff,” he says. “That’s one of my special abilities.”

Huh, 39, has now been awarded the Fields Medal, the highest honor in mathematics, for his ability to wander through mathematical landscapes and find just the right objects — objects that he then uses to get the seemingly disparate fields of geometry and combinatorics to talk to each other in new and exciting ways. Starting in graduate school, he has solved several major problems in combinatorics, forging a circuitous route by way of other branches of math to get to the heart of each proof. Every time, finding that path is akin to a “little miracle,” Huh said.

One might say the same of his path into mathematics itself: that it was characterized by much wandering and a series of small miracles. When he was younger, Huh had no desire to be a mathematician. He was indifferent to the subject, and he dropped out of high school to become a poet. It would take a chance encounter during his university years — and many moments of feeling lost — for him to find that mathematics held what he’d been looking for all along.

After reading the article - he gives off much of the Ramanujan and overall unconventional and enthusiastic neurodivergent vibes. And it makes me happy to read.

[fandomsandfeminism]

Yall wanna hear a kinda funny, kinda sad story about my grandmother and hetero-normativity?

Ok, so... when my grandmother was in her 50s (I was an infant), she met a woman at the Unitarian Church. And, as can happen when you meet your soul mate, this event made it impossible for her to deny parts of herself that she had fiercely hidden her whole life.

All the drama- their affair being found out, the divorce with my grandfather, the court battle over who got the house, happened while I was a baby. Even in my earliest memories, it's just Mama Jo and Oma, and my grandfather lived elsewhere (first his own apartment, then a nursing home, then with us.)

But here's the thing- no one ever explained any of this to me. No one ever sat down and was like "hey, Rosie, so do you know what a lesbian is?" It was the 90s. It was Texas. I think my mom was still kinda processing all this, and just assumed that like... I was gonna figure it out. Don't mention it, let it just be normal. Like I think my mom thought that if she explained the situation, she would be making it weird? I dunno.

But like. In the 90s, in all the movies I had seen and books I had read, do you know how many same sex couples I had seen? Like. 0. Do you know how many "platonic best friend/roommates" I had seen? A lot. I had no context, is what I'm saying.

I literally thought this was a Golden Girls, roommates, besties situation until I was like...I dunno, 11? 12?

It was actually their parrot, an African Grey named Spike, imitating my grandmothers voice saying "Johanna, honey, it's getting late", that triggered the MIND BLOWN moment as I realized that *there's only one master bedroom and it only has 1 waterbed* when all the pieces finally clicked.

Anyway. I think it's a real important thing for kids to know queer people exist, for a lot of reasons, but also because kids can be clueless and it's embarrassing to have your grandmother be outted by a parrot because everyone just thought you'd figure it out on your own.

Anyway, here is my grandma and her wife, my Oma, after they moved to Albuquerque to be artsy gay cowboys and live their best life. They helped run a "Lesbian Dude Ranch" out there (basically just with funding and financial support. As Oma has explained "traditionally, most lesbians don't have a lot of money" so they wrote the checks and let the younger ladies actually run the ranch.)

[wanderer-clarisse]

early morning sunlight at Bag End

[catmask]

with that said there are characters that a fat maybe not canonically but they are spiritually. to me. they may not be drawn that way but i know whats true. ive seen it like a sort of prophet

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

i vote that next year instead of reading Dracula we do a Jeeves & Wooster Book Club. those two never got the rabid tumblr shipping fandom they deserved (disqualified for the sheer technicality of being published a century too soon). we must correct this injustice

[machinerot]

[floccinaucinihilipilificationa]

[brother-emperors]

something. about. the horror of being sent on an impossible (death) quest and obligations and hospitality politics. the trauma of not having a home, and then the trauma of being in a house that becomes actively hostile to you, one that would swallow you whole and spit out your bones if you step out of line. all of this is conditional, your existence continues to be something men want gone.

it's about going back as far as I can with the perseus narrative because there's always a version of a myth that exists behind the one that survives. the missing pieces are clearly defined, but the oldest recorded version of it isn't there! and there's probably something older before that!! but it's doomed to forever be an unfilled space, clearly defined by an outline of something that was there and continues to be there in it's absence.

and love. it's also about love. even when you had nothing, you had love.

on the opposite side of the spectrum, this is Not About Ovid Or Roman-Renaissance Reception, Depictions And Discourses On The Perseus Narrative.

edit: to add to the above, while it's not about Ovid, because I'm specifically trying to peel things back to the oldest version of this story, Ovid is fine. alterations on the Perseus myth that give more attention Medusa predate Ovid by several centuries. this comic is also not about those, either! there are many versions of this story from the ancient world. there is not one singular True or Better version, they're all saying something.

Perseus, Daniel Ogden

Anthology of Classical Myth: Primary Sources in Translation, edited & translated by Stephen M Trzaskoma, R. Scott Smith, Stephen Brunet

[inkskinned]

he says i hate everyone except you and that is addictive and that is kind of romantic and beautiful because you're young and you're kind of a sarcastic asshole too and you don't like bad boys, per say, but you don't really like good ones either. and you like that you were the exception, it felt like winning.

except life is not a romance book, and he was kind of being honest. he doesn't learn to be nice to your friends. he only tolerates your family. you have to beg him to come with you to birthday parties, he complains the whole time. you want to go on a date but - people are often there, wherever you're going. he's just so angry. about everything, is the thing. in the romance book, doesn't he eventually soften? can't you teach him, through your own sense of whimsy and comfort?

at first - you know introverts often need smaller friend groups, and honestly, you're fine staying at home too. you like the small, tidy life you occupy. you're not going to punish him for his personality type.

except: he really does hate everyone but you. which means he doesn't get along with his therapist. which means he has no one to talk to except for you. which means you take care of him constantly, since he otherwise has no one. which means you sometimes have to apologize for him. which means he keeps you home from seeing your friends because he hates them. you're the single exception.

about a decade from this experience, you'll type into google: how to know if a relationship is codependent.

he wraps an arm around you. i hate everyone except you. these days, you're learning what he's actually confessing is i have very little practice being kind.

[venommirror]

[art-of-mathematics]

That book sounds like it might be a gold mine for my neurodivergent brain!

His approach tends to try making it all more comprehensible and intuitive in a similar approach to my own - hopefully, my attention span will allow at least a tiny bit of focus to digest it without an overload of euphoric enthusiasm - (my must my brain absorb and dissect every information like that?) I look forward to indulging deeper in that book. I found the free pdf online https://umv.science.upjs.sk/hutnik/NeedhamVCA.pdf

(But I seriously need a print version to at least allow the haptic feedback of a physical version enhance my attention span by at least a tiny degree. - Why have good books to be so expensive.... I wish I were rich, so I could afford all the books I need to learn about what the world holds together in its innermost (referring to Goethe here...) )

[wispscribbles]

Unmasked & unguarded

[bittwitchy]

some new sad girl guy spring dialogue for sebby!

also bonus bc its summer 13 now and i already gave him a bouquet

[glowsticcc]

she looks like her apa now and i’m so normal :’)

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

No time to play. You are being sent away.

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[floweroflaurelin]

Huevember day 10: The Patron

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Let’s do terrible and beautiful things.

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I’M STILL REELING FROM LAST NIGHT’S EPISODE I had something totally different planned for Day 10 and I shoved it to the side and made this instead. Shaking and screaming,, I’m just lucky the colour of Delilah’s influence is green…. Losing my mind over here