@TomSwirly@toot.community

Tom Ritchford @TomSwirly@toot.community · Dec 19, 2025

@drahardja@sfba.social @goaty@meow.social

> Everything in math is made-up.

Strongly disagree, unless you consider, say, gravitation to be "made up".

The universe obeyed the laws of mathematics even before observers existed. We deduced mathematics by observing the universe.

For example, the number two is "the class of all sets of cardinality two", and it existed before humans, and had strong effects on the world.

sfba.social

Dave Rahardja (@drahardja@sfba.social) - SFBA.social

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Tom Ritchford @TomSwirly@toot.community · Nov 17, 2025

Replying to @TomSwirly@toot.community

@Routhinator@tenforward.social I should add that no one on my team uses AI, because the codebase is so big that AI gives very bad answers...

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Tom Ritchford @TomSwirly@toot.community · Nov 17, 2025

Replying to @Routhinator@tenforward.social

@Routhinator@tenforward.social Man, I have no idea (as someone who's been in the field for over 40 years). I worry if I lose my current job I'll never get another one. And AI is almost directly responsible for my paycheck, even though I don't directly work on it.

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Tom Ritchford @TomSwirly@toot.community · Nov 06, 2025

Replying to @ana@starlite.rodeo

@ana@starlite.rodeo Before I left Amsterdam, I noticed that "guy skirts" had become quite common at concerts, different cut to women's skirts, low hue values, looking very comfortable and stylish. Now we live in Rouen, a very progressive city. I know more queers here than in Amsterdam, but no guy skirts yet! (dunno if there's an official name for them). If I were less than 60, I'd be a trend setter, but I have settled into a style I like...

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Tom Ritchford @TomSwirly@toot.community · Sep 30, 2025

Replying to @fdroidorg@floss.social

@fdroidorg@floss.social Signed! Quibble: it's spelled "provenance", without the "i". 🙂 Thanks for doing this. It's not just the freedom to use our own gear the way we want it, it's the lack of desire to have American companies to tell us what to do.

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Tom Ritchford @TomSwirly@toot.community · Jan 25, 2025

Replying to @aral@mastodon.ar.al

@aral@mastodon.ar.al https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asymmetric_warfare Adjusting the respiration of a few key individual Americans would be far more effective than any form of stand-up warfare would be.

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Tom Ritchford @TomSwirly@toot.community · Aug 12, 2024

Replying to @theuni@social.tchncs.de

@theuni@social.tchncs.de @geospacedman@mastodon.social @vladimir_lu@hachyderm.io @larsmb@mastodon.online haha! People don't recognize satire on the internet, endless studies have shown...

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Tom Ritchford @TomSwirly@toot.community · Aug 10, 2024

Replying to @theuni@social.tchncs.de

@theuni@social.tchncs.de @geospacedman@mastodon.social @vladimir_lu@hachyderm.io @larsmb@mastodon.online Assuming you aren't joking: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nucleic_acid_sequence "The possible letters are A, C, G, and T, representing the four nucleotide bases of a DNA strand – adenine, cytosine, guanine, thymine"

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Tom Ritchford @TomSwirly@toot.community · Apr 16, 2024

Replying to @jpgaubier@techhub.social

@jpgaubier @adam_harvey Those index fingers seem unnaturally long...

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Tom Ritchford @TomSwirly@toot.community · Feb 13, 2024

Replying to @BBCRD@social.bbc

@BBCRD@social.bbc This is a very encouraging post. Your commitment to transparency and carefully explaining what's going on is also admirable. Hope to see you here for many years to come!

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Tom Ritchford @TomSwirly@toot.community · Dec 27, 2023

Replying to @martinvermeer@fediscience.org

@martinvermeer@fediscience.org @WGAvanDijk@mastodon.social @prettyhuman@piipitin.fi Forget about Mars, what about "Mars"? I'm referring to this story: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/51233/51233-h/51233-h.htm where they send people to "Venus".

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Tom Ritchford @TomSwirly@toot.community · Dec 13, 2023

Replying to @stillmoms@mastodon.social

@stillmoms@mastodon.social @mbonsma@mastodon.social Oops, I'm sorry, you're right - "proof" didn't appear in there, I thought it did. Yes, my standards are lower for non-proofs. 😃 I don't see a puzzle with long or thin shapes in it as being "unrealistic" though. One of the simplest non-trivial tiling puzzles are pentominos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentomino#Constructing_rectangular_dimensions which have both long and right angle pieces.

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Tom Ritchford @TomSwirly@toot.community · Dec 13, 2023

Replying to @stillmoms@mastodon.social

@stillmoms@mastodon.social @mbonsma@mastodon.social "Topologically complicated" might be simple as a bunch of long, thin right-angle pieces. The proof seems to assume that puzzle pieces are neatly bounded by small circles, which is very specific, you can think of all sorts of interesting puzzles where this would not be the case. If you're going to claim to have a proof, the conditions need to rule any edge cases where it doesn't work, or it isn't a proof.

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Tom Ritchford @TomSwirly@toot.community · Dec 12, 2023

Replying to @mbonsma@mastodon.social

@mbonsma@mastodon.social I saw the initial claim, disagreed, came here, this is the key point. You have some nice, orderly definition of jigsaw pieces which you haven't explicated in this thread which does not allow for topologically complicated pieces. For example, what if many piece have thin "tendrils" which are as long and as wide as the whole puzzle? (I won't even go into what might be possible with jigsaw pieces that aren't measurable sets, see the Banach-Tarski paradox!)

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Tom Ritchford @TomSwirly@toot.community · Jul 30, 2023

Replying to @SazeracLA@tenforward.social

@SazeracLA@tenforward.social That made me cry. Humans being decent, why is it so rare?

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Tom Ritchford @TomSwirly@toot.community · May 28, 2023

Replying to @Sfwmson@universeodon.com

@Sfwmson@universeodon.com @catvalente@mastodon.world never heard of this morally empty person, but he seems to be worth millions. Note how this dish rag blames his daughter, because he does not have the spine to take responsibility for his own actions.

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Tom Ritchford @TomSwirly@toot.community · May 18, 2023

Replying to @rbreich@masto.ai

@rbreich@masto.ai Infinite growth is the philosophy of a cancer. We live on a finite planet. Infinite growth means its death through exponentially growing consumption and exponentially growing waste.

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Tom Ritchford @TomSwirly@toot.community · May 11, 2023

Replying to @catvalente@mastodon.world

@catvalente@mastodon.world every day this week, I am contacting two companies that advertise on CNN to tell them that I will not do business with them for one year.

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Tom Ritchford @TomSwirly@toot.community · Mar 26, 2023

Replying to @fraying@xoxo.zone

@fraying@xoxo.zone Are you fscking kidding me? Up until now I thought that JKR was simply a bad writer who interpreted her personal dislike for trans people as a universal, but this brings her into a whole new zone of active and conscious evil.

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Tom Ritchford

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