Michael Ball

@wtgowers @MatthewWielicki Evidentally curiosity and looking things up aren't strong points either ...

@MatthewWielicki Statistics not your strong point?

The UK just “smashed” its May temperature record… but here’s the part the Met Office conveniently leaves out: The PREVIOUS record was set in 1922. That’s 104 years ago. Long before SUVs, private jets, or modern CO₂ emissions. Heathrow Airport didn’t even exist yet. The area was literally farmland and small villages. So if a 1922 heatwave could produce nearly identical temperatures in a world with ~130 ppm less CO₂, maybe, just maybe, natural variability plays a much bigger role than the panic merchants admit.

@ImShahinyan Qe4. If queen captured, mate with the freed rook. Otherwise, either Qc6 or Qg6 depending on how black responds.

White mates in 2 How quickly can you solve this? 🤔

@sferguk Concerned? What sort of temperatures can they handle?

Still just the one egg this morning... Temp in the box at 07:51 is 30.9C already! 🥵🥵

@ImShahinyan Qc1. Only legal moves for black are to take the queen or the rook. Then Rd8 or Qc8 respectively are checkmate.

White mates in 2

@AcerFur What advances do you expect over the next 2 years?

it is interesting to me to see how surprised people are about the fact AI could obtain such a result lol my timeline hasn't really changed at all; I expected a result of this level basically a month or two later than it actually happened

@Ragdoll877 @RonFilipkowski @MeidasTouch Rather than thinking tribally, republican vs democrat, why not think for yourself? Treat each person as an individual independent of their political allegience, and engage only with their ideas and arguments.

@RonFilipkowski @MeidasTouch What happened to her? She’s talking like a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat! Get serious !!! MTG, that concept is pure Democrat 🐂💩. Stop putting such a Democrat concept out there as if Trump was going to do it! 🤬🤬🤬

Marge Greene says she is concerned that Trump is going to cancel the 2028 election to remain in power and will use an ongoing war as his justification.

I like to think that I have been a relatively measured voice on the impact of AI on mathematics, but this is incredible. So this is what it's like to become AGI pilled...

at this point it is completely untenable to believe anything along the lines of “AI can only spit out an average of the training data.” that was already only a very rough way of understanding older models pre-reasoning, it was already obsoleted by o1 which released in 2024, and now it should be obviously and conclusively dead even if you haven’t been paying close attention. recursive self-improvement has barely even started and we are already here. even with the recent erdos problem solves you could argue that those were cherrypicked out of a large database for being neglected by humans. that cope is no longer available now generalize the lesson: all other arguments that there is some essential human activity forever beyond the reach of AI are also cope, these are technical problems and the will and money and talent exists and is being deployed to solve them. artificial superintelligence is not a fairy tale. assume it’s coming and plan accordingly

An internal OpenAI model has disproved one of the most well-known Erdős problems: the unit distance problem. This is, without doubt, the most impressive achievement of AI in mathematics so far. openai.com/index/model-di…

AI has now solved a major open problem -- one of the best known Erdos problems called the unit distance problem, one of Erdos's favourite questions and one that many mathematicians had tried. openai.com/index/model-di…

If you are a mathematician, then you may want to make sure you are sitting down before reading further.

@mirexmoses Wondering why are there so many women in here and why do they look so similar

You walk into a restaurant and see this, what are you doing?

@AcerFur Rando on twitter or someone at Cambridge?

Got told for the nth time that my mathematical interests are elementary and “I’ll grow up eventually”… let me enjoy my century or two outdated maths

@EngNewForest Hopefully its back at sea by now!

@Michael14kBall It was several miles, without disclosing the particular location. It's possible some local weather on the day had just pushed it off course for a short period.

We had a surprise visit to a #NewForest stream recently. This #Razorbill was recorded on a trail camera probably resting after some weather pushed it off course. The Razorbill is a coastal seabird and would usually be found in marine or intertidal water. #WildlifeWednesday

On behalf of their client, Zara Sultana, Bindmans Media and Information Law Practise Group requires that I publish the following statement on X, and that such statement must be clearly visible and pinned to my profile for a continuous period of no less than 24 hours: “On 30 March 2026, I published a post on my X account addressed to Zarah Sultana in which I stated that she encourages and incites violence and is friends with terrorists. Those statements are false. I was wrong and offer my sincere apologies to Ms Sultana for the harm and distress caused to her.” It is my very great pleasure to do this, and I reiterate my sincere and repeated offer to meet with Miss Zara Sultana in person to resolve our differences.

@WriterHannahBT Done

swifts need our help again. Please send a quick email to Justin Chamberlin: justin.chamberlin@ravenht.org.uk asking him to liaise with Banstead Swift Group and help a pair of swifts who are trying and failing to get into their home due to a new flue pipe blocking it.

@meowdib @Kaju_Nut Yep. Saw David Tong and RIP and my soul left my body.

@Kaju_Nut You scared the fucking shit out of me bruh

RIP 😢

@littmath Whats your view on the brain? Approximately a Turing Machine?

FWIW I see no reason that e.g. curiosity, judgment, taste etc. cannot or will not be automated. I find it believable that humans will maintain an edge in some intangibles for some time. But it seems plausible they’ll be very intangible indeed.