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Michael Barany

@mbarany.com

610 followers 560 following 770 posts

Historical and cultural theories about maths and science theories. Fields Medal killjoy. Scotland enjoyer. @mbarany on birdsite and @[email protected] on fediverse

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Michael Barany @mbarany.com · Apr 17

I wrote a little essay in honor of my dad's retirement, "Reading Between the Lines in the Barany Lab" (open access) doi.org/10.1007/s109...

Reading Between the Lines in the Barany Lab: Lessons on Written and Unwritten Science and Mathematics - International Journal of Peptide Research and Therapeutics

Purpose I reflect on my childhood experiences in the Barany Lab and connect them to several findings and themes from my subsequent career researching the history and culture of science and mathematics...

doi.org

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Michael Barany @mbarany.com · 7h

I’m learning about “formative assessment” when asking students to complete assignments. I now add this to every problem set:
Please read the syllabus and complete each task as assigned. Cite all your sources and adhere to the word limit and deadlines. Show your thought process and understanding.

Michael Barany @mbarany.com · 1d

cost centre accounting model 👻

Michael Barany @mbarany.com · 1d

I guess iff is four words despite only being three letters

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Michael Barany @mbarany.com · 1d

TFAE

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Michael Barany @mbarany.com · 1d

I am voluntarily trying to stop you from being a person who publishes incorrect things and you choose to be that person anyway, why

Michael Barany @mbarany.com · 1d

exercise to the reader

Marjorie James Keenan @unenthusiast.com · 1d

In honour of spooky month, share a 4 word horror story that only someone in your profession would understand.

rm -rf ~/

hammancheez @hammancheez.bsky.social · 1d

"The chancellor approved it"

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Michael Barany @mbarany.com · 1d

this is why I don’t look forward to reading the books I referee after they come out: fine, you can take or leave the suggestions for improving your analysis that I spent a lot of time and care developing for you, but it’s just rude not to fix the actual errors I point out in the review

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Michael Barany @mbarany.com · 2d

real test of one’s cultural relativism bona fides

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Michael Barany @mbarany.com · 2d

these are apparently big in France

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Michael Barany @mbarany.com · 2d

never change, ai overview

link to policy 852 followed by overview saying that it doesn’t exist

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Reposted by Michael Barany

Ben Gross @bhgross144.bsky.social · 2d

Tatarchenko: By the 1970s, computers had become culturally familiar enough to serve as a vehicle for critique in USSR.

The computer could serve emblem of systemic dysfunction, failures of planned economy & shortcomings of the various human actors involved

#SHOT2025

Yes, I shared the repairman cartoon on the far left earlier, but now you can see the whole thing and Tatarchenko suggests it was the first time computers appeared on the cover of Krokodil.

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Reposted by Michael Barany

Michael Barany @mbarany.com · 5d

building of the first newspaper to call the Fields Medal a Nobel Prize of mathematics (almost certainly a joke that went over the journalist’s head), now a starbucks

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Michael Barany @mbarany.com · 2d

thanks @bhgross144.bsky.social for top class livetweeting #shot2025 , almost like the old days

Michael Barany @mbarany.com · 3d

ok but why was the club reading Hartshorne to begin with?

Reposted by Michael Barany

Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 4d

It is hard not to connect these observable features of “academic” work on AI to the collapse of faculty governance in universities. Even academics in the midst of *doing* academic work *about* their academic work write as if they have no real choices about the material context in which it occurs.

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Reposted by Michael Barany

Haunted Nick Seaver @nickseaver.website · 4d

AI aside, so much of this stuff is like “what if your students were irremediably stupid and incapable of learning”

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Reposted by Michael Barany

Michael Barany @mbarany.com · 5d

in other news I was not aware Claude Lévi-Strauss had his own shop

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Michael Barany @mbarany.com · 5d

here I’d expect to be told course packs are inaccessible, not screen reader friendly, expensive, bad for the environment, etc

Reposted by Michael Barany

Benjamin Tausig @burrata.bsky.social · 5d

Reverting to blue books for writing
assignments and paper for exams seemed hard, until it wasn’t. That’s been my new standard for a while.

I see no reason why course packs would be different. There are still places to print things, including on campus. Obv class size matters, but generally …

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Reposted by Michael Barany

Cara L. Lewis @carallewis.bsky.social · 5d

I'm contemplating options for next semester. Tired of students not reading online PDFs (or not reading them well) and wary of increasing LMS surveillance. Trying to figure out what's doable without the infrastructure of the college town copy shop.

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Reposted by Michael Barany

Sharon Machlis @smachlis.bsky.social · 6d

This is a professor at Rutgers who teaches a class on the history of anti-fascism. He also teaches about human rights. He has received multiple death threats and been doxed. He is relocating to Europe for his safety. This is where we are in the US now. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

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Reposted by Michael Barany

Mark Williams @mrfw17thc.bsky.social · 5d

Some would say it was foolhardy - maybe even deeply insensitive and cruel - to conduct a survey about a given university's 'Values' while a large section of its staff is in scope for redundancy.

'Still Employed' or 'Not Working Under Threat' are values, of course. Especially with Free Text options

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Michael Barany @mbarany.com · 5d

alternate universe where L-S theorised everyone was constantly MacGyvering

Michael Barany @mbarany.com · 5d

lol thought of tagging @nickseaver.website but then I thought nah he’ll see this, it has to be that way

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Michael Barany @mbarany.com · 5d

in other news I was not aware Claude Lévi-Strauss had his own shop

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