It must have been really exciting in 1925 when Heinz Hopf realized you could link two circles together, leading to the invention of chains.

After not getting chats on my phone I figured out that Google completed the arc of shutting down their chat app, incorporating chat into the gmail app, and discontinuing gmail chat and having users download a separate chat app.

This is basically the Michael Jordan of cookie spreads

My research has reached heights I never dreamed of. #jeopardy #mit #oreo

TRAGIC: Man forced to share bridge crossing experience with stranger of exact same walking speed.

In Pittsburgh, who up

Another fun knot untying is that some prime knots like 8_19 can untie into a composite knot if cut at the right place. I noticed this by looking at diagrams, then beatricesoh saw it in polymer simulations, and I *may* have seen it in DNA experiments but can't prove it.

Unethical science pro tip: if you upload a preprint, then change the name of the manuscript during peer review, once it's published your self-citations will count for double on Google Scholar.

Woohoo!
iopscience.iop.org/article/10.108…

Nature and Science appearances in 2024:
Me: 0
Otters: 2

Excited that our 65-author review paper on topology in soft matter has been published. Kudos to Luca Tubiana @[email protected] for spearheading the organization. I look forward to not being able to find any reviewers for my papers for the next five years.

sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

Which knot can untie in the most different ways? With knots up to 8 crossings, the 8_14 knot can be untied (by cutting part of it, and pulling out the part of the string near the cut) in five different ways, and has eight pathways to untie completely.

If you don't already know which is which, try to guess which sound-light name goes with which sound-light effect.

Cop: Excuse me sir, there have been reports of suspicious activity in the area. Have you noticed anything?

Me (holding a laser pointer, several open cans of tuna, and a bag of catnip): ...no.

Found some pretty wacky integral notation