Post #1769254

2026-04-28 19:47 UTC

RE: https://mastodon.com.br/@xkcd/116480390342730879 There&#39;s honestly a certain element of truth in this. A mathematician specialising in topology once got chatting to a lady who was knitting, fascinated by the parallels, of which there are many. He approached her, very excited, a week later, with a whole new way of doing it. &quot;Yes, dear, that&#39;s called a purl stitch.&quot;

Replies (5)

@simonbp@social.linux.pizza 2026-04-28 20:44

@_thegeoff@mastodon.social The absolute classic in extragalactic ppl forgetting the solar system exists https://www.sciencealert.com/a-cosmology-professor-peter-dunsby-accidentally-announces-the-re-discovery-of-mars-astronomers-telegram

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@BashStKid@mastodon.online 2026-04-28 23:00

@_thegeoff@mastodon.social Isn’t that a Dirac story? (Possibly featuring Peierls’ wife as the knitter …)

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@scurvy_duck@hachyderm.io 2026-04-28 23:38

@_thegeoff@mastodon.social Mathsplaining

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@odr_k4tana@infosec.exchange 2026-04-29 08:03

@_thegeoff@mastodon.social reminds me of the economist "discovering" likert scale-type measurement in a paper in 2020-something.

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@johan@social.terbeest.org 2026-04-29 16:14

@_thegeoff@mastodon.social @ShaulaEvans@zirk.us When I was young I got very excited once when I came up with a sorting algorithm. Until a more senior dev looked at it and said: great, you invented bubble sort 😂 This is btw exactly what’s happening in tech over and over, made worse by LLM’s so now everyone can reinvent something 🙄

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