Laurens Gunnarsen

@grosvenorpiano @ChopinInstitute Reminiscent of Cziffra! Amazing stuff.

This evening I'm back at the Chopin and His Europe Festival in Warsaw! Here's a clip of me letting my hair down at the end of my last recital here, the end of my encore, Liszt's Gnomenreigen. @ChopinInstitute

@zoink This is the single most important fact about Newton, as he himself acknowledged. When asked how he had arrived at this theory of universal gravitation, Newton answered, "By thinking on it constantly," which was doubtless the literal truth. His powers of concentration were immense

tell me again about how locked in you are

@PhysInHistory All of them, alas.

How many of these equations can you identify? ✍️

@gammaofzeta Thermodynamics is almost impossible to understand until you realize that it requires Cartan's theory of exterior differential calculus (and Frobenius' integrability condition) for its proper formulation. The best extant exposition of these ideas is in Bamberg & Sternberg, Vol. 2.

Pick one (poll) and, if possible, tell me why (comment section).

@AMAZlNGNATURE A king cobra.

Logically which animal could take on a full grown male lion?

@CaitlinPacific Only the last step seems the least bit intimidating.

If someone wanted to sleep with me, first he was going to have to read Slouching Toward Bethlehem, listen to me worry about some essay I was writing, take me out to dinner (not fancy, but not mall-ish), and to drinks the very next night, and then take control of the situation.

@CaitlinPacific Anyone who has ever worked in a hospital knows that the duration of life is as unpredictable as the manner of its conclusion. Having babies is for optimists and adventurers.

Having a baby at 21 is perfect and ridiculous, just like having a baby at any age is perfect and ridiculous. There’s no right time, no right amount of money, no preferred conditions. Life is long; have a family.

@littmath Chern's lectures were extraordinary: they always made everything seem not just clear but blindingly obvious. Your main reaction to the material he presented was always the same: acute embarrassment that you hadn't thought of it yourself.

after every talk I give, my wife asks me "how'd it go?" and i say "I think I made it too hard," and she says "you always say that." trying to keep this in mind as I write my talk for tomorrow

@LauraDeming Indeed, once you've learned to see the meaning of a thing, it can be (and often is) all but impossible to remember your former blindness to it. bit.ly/3YI2Gqn This is sometimes called the curse of expertise.

I feel like there's a phase of writing about an idea where you are totally in love with it and unable to see its flaws, and then there is a phase where it feels like a long-term partner - you are intimately aware of its flaws, its changed you, deeply, trying to explain it clearly is hard because so much is a long, slow, subtle story told over time - but at its core of course its still strikingly beautiful. It's then just kind of hard to remember how it would be possible to see it otherwise, and to write accordingly.

@CaitlinPacific Nostalgia is a poor substitute for patriotism.

No matter what happens, you were once part of the greatest idea in the history of the world.

@carhatcyborg Absolutely nothing. poets.org/poem/soul-sele…

I was accosted today by another woman in the subway asking directions in Mandarin. then she struck up a conversation even though I didn't really want to have one even though she was perfectly nice what the fuck is wrong with me

I was waiting for the NYC subway and some woman came up to me and started speaking Cantonese. I shook my head and said "putonghua", hoping I'd be off the hook. she then smoothly switched to Mandarin and then I had to try and help her even though I'm not even from here

@nguyenhdi Beethoven, Chopin, Brahms, Tchaikovsky ...

Counter-examples: Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters, George Eliot, Chekhov, Kafka, Flannery O'Connor, Van Gogh, Sargent, etc. People say all sorts of nonsense on this hellsite.

@phalpern Father of Edward and Matthew.

Physicist Louis Witten was born in April 1921, little more than a year after general relativity was confirmed and Einstein became world famous. Now, at the age of 104, he remains one of the oldest and most prominent researchers in that field. Happy 104th birthday Louis Witten!

@JoyceCarolOates Life is short, and regret is useless. I recommend catnip to Lilith. Catnip, and a lot of long, dreamless naps.

Lilith was clandestinely urged to "buy low, sell high" but seems to have mixed up the tip & "sold low, bought high"--should she report herself, or just try to forget?

@JoyceCarolOates Salutary reminder that markets, even when efficient, are very far from prescient.

poor Fitzgerald! like Emily Bronte, like Melville, like Van Gogh he'd died thinking he was a failure; all his books were out of print. as if the fate of a great talent is just to produce & die & subsequently generate billions of dollars for others, total strangers. life, weird, yes?

@darren_dyck Do your students find this assignment onerous?

Once again, getting students to memorize and recite 75 lines of poetry in my Intro. class is one of the best pedagogical decisions I've ever made.

@CaitlinPacific @MrDanielBuck "Love is a sport in which the hunter must contrive to have the quarry in pursuit." ~ Alphonse Karr

@MrDanielBuck The magic key (I have observed over many years) is to make your class appropriately rigorous but to devote much time to being an advocate for and a listener to your students.

“Just make class more fun and engaging!” Teachers are educators, not entertainers or clapping monkeys. Sometimes learning will be fun. Other times it will be dry and take lots of hard, cognitively demanding work that isn’t fun Often, the latter is more valuable

@elvislevel @jaycaspiankang Ouch.

@jaycaspiankang lol, the oligarchy won the last election. Face it, your country is garbage.

I said this on the pod. While I’m glad Bernie is doing this I wish he would be using the opportunity to anoint a successor. He can’t be the center of this energy anymore and he should bring someone with him to stuff like this. People will line up behind whoever he chooses.

@carhatcyborg Beethoven was a superb improviser -- clearly one of the best who ever lived -- but even he was better when he sat down and brooded tensely over every note. What occurs to you in the moment may be striking and fresh, but it is seldom optimal. And such things seldom cohere.

I have to admit that I'm a bit disappointed, because I really enjoy the learning process, but the actual music I could take or leave. I haven't yet heard anything I actually enjoyed listening to, rather than merely tolerated for the sake of study and dissection. it's a real shame

been trying to learn some jazz piano. it's anarchy!!! I can't tell what any of the chords are cuz they've removed half the notes and replaced them with different ones that they liked better, or whatever

@abakcus 10^2 + 11^2 + 12^2 + 13^2 + 14^2 = (12 - 2)^2 + (12 - 1)^2 + 12^2 + (12 + 1)^2 + (12 + 2)^2 = 5*12^2 + 10 = 5(12^2 + 2) = 5*146 = 5*73*2 = 365*2.