Thony Christie (he/his/him)

Culture is part of the unholy trinity—culture, chaos, and cock-up—which roam through our versions of history, substituting for traditional theories of causation. – Filipe Fernández–Armesto "Pathfinders: A Global History of Exploration"

Greenland is not a 13 year old gir.

And here is the link to the review andreawulf.com/2026/05/23/the…

An allegory of the continent America, pictured riding atop an armadillo, from a late 16th-century Dutch print: publicdomainreview.org/collection/ame…

@dschwa8059 @historyrock_ It’s a purely subjective matter of personal taste

@historyrock_ Of course.

Is Stairway to Heaven a better song than Gimme Shelter by The Rolling Stones?

@ianfmusgrave @brandilwells The distance was absurd because of the star size that it implied

@rmathematicus @brandilwells His actual words was the distance was absurd (star size was also an issue but star distances were important)

There’s no such thing as a light year.

@ianfmusgrave @brandilwells Brahe's problem was not the distance but the implied size of the stars if they were so far away given their apparent observed diameter.

@brandilwells It's the distance light travels in a year, it exists. You, like Tycho Brahe, may be appalled that the sphere of fixed stars is over 7 times further way than the sphere of Saturn, but they are much much further.

Every fucking time.

@VoxCentrist @triggerpod Egypt, India, China, Mesopotamia…

@triggerpod Mostly correct except at the end he says the Greeks were unique in having all forms of art and didn't inherit it from anywhere. I don't think that's true. We know the Egyptians had all forms of art too. Plays, music, etc.

This story is so devastating to me. So it’s ADHD (formerly autism) & low IQ is it? They had had a high enough IQ to separate one of the girls from her phone/tracker,enough IQ to film it,enough IQ to post it enough IQ to stay calm & well behaved in court. I stand with the girls

This 1790 satirical print, "The Female Philosopher, smelling out the Comet," reflects the public mockery pioneering astronomer Caroline Herschel faced. Despite Georgian-era sexism, Herschel broke barriers as the first woman to discover a comet and receive a scientific salary.

@Plantagenet1455 She was neither the first woman to discover a comet nor the first to receive a scientific salary

@scientus @marysia_cc Not in Germany

@marysia_cc Albrecht Durer, famous yet still underappreciated.

Albrecht Dürer (21 May 1471 – 6 April 1528) The Great Piece of Turf

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@woodenh3arts A mixture

To people who speak multiple languages what language are your thoughts in

@LongFormMath In the sixth century CE, Bramagupta had no problems with negative numbers

Prominent mathematicians as recently as the 17th century were proving amazing things, yet were still uncomfortable with negative numbers. Cardano called them “fictitious.” Pascal said that subtracting 4 from 0 is “utter nonsense.” Descartes had mixed feelings but called negative roots “false.” Leibniz said they are just a tools to guide one’s thinking, or an indication that the question with poorly formed.

@RobJLow @JDHamkins De Morgan rules!

@JDHamkins This duality is why I always avoided giving 'and' higher precedence than 'or' in propositional logic expressions (and deprecated the use of . and + in Boolean algebra).

Please enjoy this essay I wrote some time ago on logical duality in propositional logic. open.substack.com/pub/joeldavidh… #InfinitelyMore

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I went on holiday and never went back again

@DernKala You manage to pack more total crap into nineteen words than I thought possible. Galileo was neither killed nor jailed but sentenced to house arrest in his villa in Tuscany. That was for saying that the Sun was at the centre of the cosmos!

Galileo was killed or jailed by the church for saying the sun was not the center of the universe iirc