χle Ormsby
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motivickyle.bsky.social
χle Ormsby
@motivickyle.bsky.social
Numbers and shapes at Reed College. Mathematician, parent, spouse, runner, 𝔣𝔯𝔞𝔨𝔱𝔲𝔯 enthusiast. He or they.
We must endure our thoughts all night, until
The bright obvious stands motionless in cold.

poets.org/poem/man-car...
Which lines of poetry live rent-free in your head?
December 7, 2025 at 8:49 PM
MAA workshop on accessible course materials with @mitchkeller.phd and @oscarlevin.com! Free for AMS and MAA members. events.zoom.us/ev/AjygoFh_y...
Accessible course materials: a practical guide
events.zoom.us
December 7, 2025 at 8:18 PM
Reposted by χle Ormsby
I've never been interested in solving precisely stated hard problems. To me, the interesting part of math is finding beautiful structures that help us understand reality better - and clearly explaining them, so more people can use them.

If AI can ever do that, I'll enjoy talking to it.

(2/n)
December 7, 2025 at 10:45 AM
Hell yeah Ursula K LeGuin exhibit at Oregon Contemporary.
December 6, 2025 at 9:02 PM
Is "Mane Attraction" a better name for a horse, or a hair salon?
December 6, 2025 at 7:39 PM
Reposted by χle Ormsby
Indefinite Hyperbolic Numerals
forty-leven
squillion
umpteen
steen
umpty
umpty-ump
umpty-steen
zillion
skillion
jillion
gillion
bazillion
umptillion
kazillion
gazillion
kajillion
gajillion
bajillion
Collected by Stephen Chrisomalis
www.futilitycloset.com/2025/12/05/e...
Extra Large - Futility Closet
Which is bigger, a jillion or a zillion? No one’s quite sure, though we all use these terms pretty readily. In 2016 Wayne State University linguistic anthropologist Stephen Chrisomalis cataloged the f...
www.futilitycloset.com
December 6, 2025 at 4:30 PM
People are posting positive male role models and I'd like to nominate Gene Wilder's Willy Wonka, but he didn't even set his Oompa-Loompa slaves free in his last will and testament, so I can't.
December 5, 2025 at 10:59 PM
This diagram should win some kind of prize for mathematical illustration. From arxiv.org/abs/2305.08471. 🧮
December 5, 2025 at 10:27 PM
Ten Thousand Years of Solitude
@zachweinersmith.bsky.social poses a fun activity: add “hundred” to a book title.

A Tale of Two Hundred Cities
Lord of the Hundred Flies
The Hundred Brothers Karamazov
A Hundred Hundred Years of Solitude

www.smbc-comics.com
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - Hundred
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - Hundred
www.smbc-comics.com
December 5, 2025 at 10:01 PM
um... my math-art collaboration just received a $30k grant? 😮
December 5, 2025 at 6:31 PM
Whenever we encounter donation requests from well-funded institutions I've already paid for services (looking at you, University of Chicago), my son and I enact Shevek's imitation of a "beggarman" from The Dispossessed: "Money... give me money...!"
December 5, 2025 at 5:46 PM
Reposted by χle Ormsby
y'all I was approved for extra time accommodations today and it was super easy! I just lived with undiagnosed ADHD for 30 years, dropped out of school twice, suffered a lot of academic trauma, spent untold amounts on mental health treatment, and then took 16 months to fill out the paperwork!
December 5, 2025 at 3:51 PM
Reposted by χle Ormsby
I'd rather say

"The group of all rotations of a ball in space, known to mathematicians as SO(3), is itself a ball with each point on its surface glued to the opposite point."

If you're gonna scare people, I feel you might as well scare them with a puzzle they can actually chew on.

(5/n)
December 5, 2025 at 3:32 PM
After staring at this plot for too long, I have convinced myself that

log(x) = lim_{m→0} (xᵐ-1)/m

is not such a bad definition of the natural logarithm. www.desmos.com/calculator/b...
December 5, 2025 at 3:01 PM
Reposted by χle Ormsby
I would kill for this.
December 5, 2025 at 1:54 PM
The negative of G is H because GH is (often) silent.
last night my daughter asked whether there were negative letters, like negative numbers. what a good fuckin question
December 5, 2025 at 3:22 AM
Just splurged on a huge air fryer / toaster oven / dehydrator. What should I air fry first?
December 5, 2025 at 3:00 AM
Reposted by χle Ormsby
“Is this some sort of divine creation by the mathematical gods, or is there a deeper
reason why 𝑀𝑔 exists?”

Charming images from this article by Jarod Alper

www.ams.org/journals/not...
December 4, 2025 at 3:34 PM
Reposted by χle Ormsby
Note how beautiful illustrations made by an actual (maths) artist are! The author is chessapig on tuiter, also known as Elliot Kienzle
chessapig.github.io
December 4, 2025 at 4:50 PM
Reposted by χle Ormsby
in the uk is it called meths
December 4, 2025 at 5:15 PM
Reposted by χle Ormsby
Woman or gender minority curious about the mathematics of waves? 🌊👋
Keen to spend a life-changing week at Princeton IAS this May, for a lecture series on "Waves, Wave Packets, and Their Interactions"?

Good news! Apply by ⏰ Feb 6 for the Women and Mathematics program! www.ias.edu/math/wam/wam...
WAM 2026
Waves, Wave Packets, and Their InteractionsMay 17-22, 2026Uhlenbeck Lecture Course:Lecturer: Monica Visan, UCLATerng Lecture Course:Lecturer: Dominique Maldague, Cambridge University and UCLA
www.ias.edu
December 3, 2025 at 10:03 PM
Reposted by χle Ormsby
Thanks @graveolens.bsky.social. It's taken two and a half years to get to this point. I'll make a post about it once we add a few more examples.
December 4, 2025 at 11:35 AM
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory

(And yes, the Gene Wilder one. Now I hate you for even having to ask.)
Ok, I have to ask. What's a movie that if someone doesn't like you'll hate them?
December 4, 2025 at 1:31 PM
Reposted by χle Ormsby
It fits right in there.
www.desmos.com/calculator/q...
Desmos | Graphing Calculator
www.desmos.com
December 4, 2025 at 1:40 AM
Why did the author's novel being with a period?
Why did the felon’s prison term begin with their release?
.
.
.
Their sentence was commuted.
December 4, 2025 at 12:24 AM