Tom 7

@ptrschmdtnlsn @matt_levine Ha! Unfortunately ultrahumans cannot be merged further without psychological harm. Not coincidentally, I read @matt_levine ’s column almost every day. I do often feel impressed at his fluency, but I would not wish a daily format on anyone!-

My dream: Somehow, @matt_levine and @tom7 get merged into one chimeric ultrahuman with levels of dry wit never before achieved by one human, *plus* extremely strong technical skills. Oh, and then they magically publish with the cadence of Matt, but production values of Tom.

@ptrschmdtnlsn Maybe we can get Locksmith YouTube to make thousands of padlocks and keys for their secret santa

Congratulations to @tom7 on successfully running a secretest santa: youtube.com/watch?v=4pG8_b… I have some ideas for running one with *no* math, via generic 2PC/MPC. In particular, using Yao's garbled circuits, by mailing little boxes with locks on them, and keys inside. I think with maybe a thousand tiny boxes and a few thousand padlocks being mailed back and forth a few rounds you can probably accomplish the required MPC, if you really minimize the circuit. I'd do the 1-out-of-2 OTs by mailing folks pairs of boxes, and requiring them to mail back one from each pair, still sealed, or something. (If you delay mailing the sealed ones back until the end, it's maybe oblivious enough, and is evidence of not cheating, but maybe this needs more thought.) In lieu of the usual ZKP schemes to transform from honest-but-curious->malicious, I'd probably just either not care about that, or ask folks to film some key steps. You might be able to figure those details out. Overall, I've really liked the idea of doing 2PC/MPC with just locks and keys, and I think this would be a great application. (Likewise, FHE is equivalent to having glove boxes (of the kind where you can reach into the gloves to manipulate the contents), with trap doors where you can put in new objects, and also the key for the glove box is inside of itself. You could imagine building physical FHE boxes for some protocol too!)

My social media team told me that the best way to get “likes” is to upload your video late Christmas Eve, and “x” about it just one time mid-Christmas day. Also, make sure to include at least two group theory lectures youtube.com/watch?v=4pG8_b…

@pimanrules 🤮

They're finally doing this, but in the worst way imaginable 🙃 youtube.com/playablesbuild…

@qntm I liked this book!

GLOWING WASHINGTON POST REVIEW LET'S GO washingtonpost.com/books/2025/11/…

Spoilers

@notch Math, what hast thou donest? (My friends helpfully suggested that we can call the “other” cube the L-∞ hypersphere for clarity!)

In his latest video, @tom7 pointed out that the unit cube and the unit circle treat the word "unit" completely differently, and that fact is living rent free in my head now. Thanks, Tom. Thomks.

@theswoderman Prince!

@tom7 RETURN OF THE KING

Descry my newest movie, which is about boring math, in the sense of boring a hole through one cube with a same sized cube, or one icosidodecahedron with its same-size self, or previously unknown polyhedra, and other platonic fetishes and horrors: youtu.be/QH4MviUE0_s

@dwrensha Crew or equipment visible in shot

I have a cameo in this one!

@im_walkin_here @nicbarkeragain If you really care about accuracy you keep an upper and lower bound and manipulate them together. “interval arithmetic” is the thing to look up. Harder than it sounds to keep the bounds under control, but it can be practical for sure

@im_walkin_here @nicbarkeragain Yes! I think arbitrary precision rationals are pretty common for numerical computing. (I was trying to find new solutions… I’m not aware of whether my solutions are any better than the best known before, but that would not be surprising!) libgmp has built-in “mpq” type for ex

Anyone know of examples of actual fractional arithmetic being used in software to reduce accumulated error? e.g. storing both numerator and denominator of something like 1/3 seperately, and doing algebraic multiplication rather than reducing to a single float.

@RadishHarmers @tikhonjelvis Only a little! Always up for a citation of my influential research, though

@tikhonjelvis @tom7, are you still on here?

Many people have commented on how ridiculously stupid this is, but I would like to point out that it also accidentally includes (as a typo) an infamous math joke.

@sedatesnail That’s just because he’s a master of disguise

ok also, our local Pittsburgh celebrities include both @tom7 AND Tom Savini. (... to be fair, I've never seen them in a room together)

my biggest complaint about Pittsburgh: there's a suburb called "Mt. Lebanon", and another called "Mt. Nebo", and I feel like that should be a nickname for Mt. Lebanon, a sort of Edward-Ned situation, and it's not

@tinaun Thanks! That’ll teach me to install updates. Hopefully it is working again now.

@dwrensha Equality on functions? Next they’ll be comparing abstract types!

``` fn id<T> (x : T) -> T { x } fn main() { let x : fn (u64) -> u64 = id::<u64>; let y : fn (u64) -> u64 = id::<u64>; assert_eq!(x, y); } ``` What happens when you run this Rust program?

@grahamsmith I listened in the hopes of being embarrassed for you, but it was pretty good! I do want to slap their band photo though

not sure why i'm embarrassed. i guarantee you nobody i know has ever heard of this band nor ever will

i can't imagine being more embarrassed to like a band's music a lot than i am to like SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE (i don't think they render the band name in all caps, but it totally seems like something they would do. because it's really irritating)

@Rainmaker1973 Next do cat and cation

Seals vs sea lions

@bppcomplete Upon reflection, I find this one to have “so bad it’s good” nature!

@tom7 I saw this mailer where they used square root signs instead of checkmarks and thought it might be up your alley

@Rainmaker1973 It’s sad that nobody attended his concert :(

Performing the pause theme for Goldeneye on N64 [📹Greg Hersey / gherseydrums] twitter.com/i/status/17462…