Motor Trend's le Carré of the Year

@nrr.corvidae.org

Mennonite-raised. I get told "no" a lot. I'm finishing a math degree I started 20 years ago. I pretend to be a maned wolf-shaped tree on the Internet. You've used stuff I've worked on. Trans rights are human rights. I'm @nrr1.618033989 on Signal.

Hey, psst, the 1987 Mel Brooks film "Spaceballs" is free to watch on YouTube. Sadly, his 1981 film "History of the World, Part I" is not, nor are his 1974 films "Young Frankenstein" and "Blazing Saddles." I'm sure there are others that are missing, but those are what come to mind.

"Why does he obsess so much over making sure the ship stays in tip-top shape?" "He broke it once. This is his way to atone for it." "Ah, is that what the 'She takes care of you; you take care of her' is all about?" "You could very well call it apologizing instead of atoning, I suppose."

I went out past Shoreline yesterday to go harass the coots, and something occurred to me. I don't mind that things have become orders of magnitude less useful over the past 20 years. I mind that they haven't, in turn, become orders of magnitude more hilarious.

Spectral theory is a neat niche in mathematics. Eigenvalue problems seem insignificant until you learn that solving linear ODEs is (more or less) an exercise in finding a linear differential operator's eigenspace. Then, spectral radii have implications for the convergence of numerical methods.

Current catus Back when Valérian was a kitten, he had problems staying on things without falling off. He's since dramatically improved. Laureline, meanwhile, whenever she's lost in the sauce and being an utter purrbucket, will happily fall out of my lap like it's nothing. Welcome to cats.

Current catus Valérian is very funny. I just spent the last couple of hours, give or take, on a video call, and he chose to curl up on the chair next to me. I pestered him for a good chunk of that time. Surely, he'd want little to do with me. Alas! He wants nothing more than to bunt my hand.

Current catus Crepuscular dipshit hours have resulted in a discovery: the wheel is a good outlet for zoomies. I can't tell who's running in it, and I don't want to change my observation of the system lest I impede the progress being made, but… I'll take it.

"In its most recent sixth edition, 'Proofs from THE BOOK' contains 45 chapters …" This sounds way more metal than it actually is. Each chapter is a presentation of another proof, more or less. The fact that we've only managed to catalog 45 of the Supreme Fascist's proofs is, frankly, underwhelming.

I will however comment on the fact that I'm honestly kind of over books being made into films and TV shows except under specific circumstances. Ishiguro's "Klara and the Sun" prima facie feels not especially great to see a trailer for, but we'll see, I suppose.

Oh, the actual assigned problems for Frobenius' method (that I just got last night, ha) don't go that hard at all. Find the regular singular points. Check that the roots of the indicial quadratic are real and that their difference isn't integral. Crank through the power series. Done.

One of the nice things about having whatever a Tablet PC is called these days is that I can still do math when I'm trapped supine by cats. OneNote on the left for scribbling, Drawboard on the right for reading and annotating whatever book I'm working through. It's rather comfortable!