"In contrast, Locke lived at a time when it was still possible for a well-educated man to master many branches of knowledge. The polymath was still a reality: John Locke, though primarily a philosopher, was a qualified doctor, and wrote on theology, political theory, and education. His herbarium (a collection of 3,000 flowers) preserved between sheets of his pupils' exercises, and now housed in the Bodleian Library at Oxford) is possibly the oldest surviving collection of English wild flowers."

Jeffreys M V. John Locke. Br Med J 1974; 4 :34 doi: doi.org/10.1136/bmj.4.5935.34 @earlymodern @histodon @histodons @philosophy

attribution: Rijksmuseum, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons. Page URL:commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fil

If you're reading this post here on #Mastodon you probably understand the importance of using social media a little more slowly, a little more mindfully.

This week's newsletter is a bit of a guide to doing just that:
themarkup.org/hello-world/2024

@bibliolater @science I’m gonna have to read the Carl Sagan version of this paper….

"We propose to conceptualize science-related populism as a set of ideas which suggests that there is a morally charged antagonism between an (allegedly) virtuous ordinary people and an (allegedly) unvirtuous academic elite, and that this antagonism is due to the elite illegitimately claiming and the people legitimately demanding both science-related decision-making sovereignty and truth-speaking sovereignty."

Mede, N. G., & Schäfer, M. S. (2020). Science-related populism: Conceptualizing populist demands toward science. Public Understanding of Science, 29(5), 473-491. doi.org/10.1177/09636625209242 @science

#speculative #traders have amassed a $8.7bn bet across London and New York #cocoa futures contracts that prices will continue to rise, the largest ever in dollar terms, according to positioning data from the CFTC.

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@StevenJV Being able to read multiple books at a time is an impressive feat. I have great difficulty trying to read two books at a time, never mind three.

A quick primer on how to measure all the mass in the universe:

1. Map the cosmic microwave background
2. Look for distortions caused by gravity
3. Reconstruct the mass that caused that gravitational pull

(It took 6 years to make a preliminary measurement; better ones are on the way.)

arxiv.org/abs/2308.11608 #science #space #astronomy #astrodon

"A peer-reviewed medical journal has published strange AI-made images, despite them containing imaginary words and letters as well as a very unusual rat." youtu.be/OqjpK70BOZg @science

Some geometry problems are easy to state but hard to solve! For any triangle, can an ideal point-sized billiard ball bounce around inside in a 𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑜𝑑𝑖𝑐 trajectory - a path that repeats?

The answer is "yes" for acute triangles, and this has been known since 1775. It's also "yes" for right triangles. But for obtuse triangles, nobody knows!

In 2008, Richard Schwartz showed that the answer is "yes" for triangles with angles of 100° or less. He broke the problem down into cases and checked each case with the help of a computer. Then progress was stuck... until 2018, when Jacob Garber, Boyan Marinov, Kenneth Moore and George Tokarsky showed the answer is "yes" for triangles with angles of 112.3° or less.

Beyond that we're stuck.... except for triangles with all 𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑎𝑙 angles (measured in radians). For them too the answer is "yes".

The picture here is from

George Tokarsky, Jacob Garber, Boyan Marinov, Kenneth Moore, One hundred and twelve point three degree theorem, arxiv.org/abs/1808.06667

and for more check out this article on Quanta:

quantamagazine.org/the-mysteri

Mathematical billiards are fascinating objects… and you don’t need to look into very complicated shapes to find intriguing problems. A new post on @QuantaMagazine is doing a marvellous job in giving a glimpse of this: quantamagazine.org/the-mysteri

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