Rick de Wolf

Can the Most Abstract Math Make the World a Better Place? | Quanta Magazine Columnist Natalie Wolchover explores whether applied category theory can be “green” math.

Qualia essays go where curiosity leads. This week, join @nattyover.bsky.social on her quest to understand whether a burgeoning, abstract mathematical field can help the planet. www.quantamagazine.org/can-the-most...

this is a super cool opportunity taking place in London this year! 🤩

bonus: @asteixeira.bsky.social @cgershen.bsky.social and i are tutoring a project together 💫 come do cool science with us!

I'd be interested in the book and the lectures! The lecture notes you've published were a great addition to my library.

You must've put a lot of work into it, it looks great! Where did you get the starmap texture from?

That must have taken about 4 billion years to render 😜

I missed out on them here in the Netherlands, but you got a nice photo! Did they look similarly through your own eyes?

The many faces of multivariate information Extracting higher-order structures from multivariate data has become an area of intensive study in complex systems science, as these multipartite interactions can reveal insights into fundamental feat...

New preprint on unifying the zoo of multivariate higher-order information measures into a common form.
May be of interest to anyone interested in higher-order interactions, complex systems, emergence, or complexity.
1/N
arxiv.org/abs/2601.08030

OK: I have a new favorite topic to teach in intro philosophy classes: lottocracy. Literally half my class followed me back to my office because they *couldn't stop talking about it.*

Lottocracy is the argument that elections don't work, and that the best way democracy is through lottery.

A display of 10 MIT Press book jacket covers: The Hypocrisy Trap, Mother Media, The Urban Naturalist, Ruth Asawa and the Artist-Mother at Midcentury, Water of the Sky, Conjuring the Void, An Alphabet for Dreamers, Somebody Should Do Something, The Cost of Conviction, and Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the Ground.

Our flash sale ends in a few hours! Last chance to grab a beautiful book for yourself or a friend at 40% off from a site that isn't Amazon. mitpressbookstore.mit.edu/flash_sale

That's nice to hear! I was planning on reading that one once my Spanish becomes good enough, so it's gonna be a few years earlier now 😁

Sounds like a great book to spend some time with. Is it a sequel of sorts to Todas Las Muertes?

Front cover of "Sketches By Boz", printed in 1910 for the Charles Dickens Library by the Educational Book Company: blue (imitation) leather embossed with (imitation) gold.

First page of "Sketches By Boz", printed in 1910 for the Charles Dickens Library by the Educational Book Company.

Page of text and illustration in "Sketches By Boz", printed in 1910 for the Charles Dickens Library by the Educational Book Company.

Pinch me.

This is the first of an 18-volume set of the complete works of Charles Dickens - and it’s spent the last 115 years travelling through the world to get to me.

I wish I could describe to you how the pages smell. I can’t. Too complicated. Too *old*.

And speaking of Dickens...

1/

Life cycles and reproduction How autonomous individuals begin life, grow and mate

Complex algae, animals, fungi and plants all have predictable life histories that separate out three basic aspects of development and run them sequentially. This primer explains what they are

We have statistical evidence that people are mildly psychic YouTube video by Stand-up Maths

I have a new favourite statistics story to tell to friends www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwIK...

We are thrilled to announce that our NEW Large Language Model will be released on 11.18.25.

Screenshot of a website showing a ggplot2 plot that you need to replicate with code written on a text box (code blurred! no cheating!)

Cannot post. Too busy doing ggplot battles.

#RStats #WOMBAT2025
www.ggplotbattles.dev/challenges/v...

Dice with greek letters on the faces, on a sheet of paper with a very long equation on it.

New dice from The Dice Lab (me and Robert Fathauer), which may (?) be useful if you regularly write equations. youtube.com/shorts/fgMox...

With September (already!) underway, the next season of TCS+ will start soon. As we are planning for it, a reminder that you can—and are encouraged to!—submit suggestions for talks and speakers on our website: sites.google.com/view/tcsplus...

The only interdisciplinary conversations worth having (This is a niche post of interest to a relatively narrow community of scholars.

smallpotatoes.paulbloom.net/p/the-only-i...

10 days left to apply to join IceLab as a #multidisciplinary #postdoc! Are you interested in using your computational skills to address important life science questions? There is a project for you here! 👇
#complexity #complexsystems

A young chipmunk, its head slightly cocked to the side, poses on a moss-covered rock, bathed in the warm sunlight of late morning.

A sooty grouse, a wild bird reminiscent of a cross between a chicken and a dove, pauses briefly on a rock as it works its way up a hillside.

A young marmot stands on its back legs while grazing on the lush grass of an alpine meadow.

A pika caught mid-yawn, stretching its paw toward the camera and flashing its prominent front teeth.

More late summer gems from the North Cascades

A pika sits on a mossy rock.

Tighter crop of the same pika, focusing on its head.

An even tighter crop, focusing more on the pika's eye.

An extremely tight crop of the pika's eye, emphasizing their reflection of an early morning mountain scene.

"Pat, why do you carry that ridiculous 600mm lens on long hikes?"

Buddy, I can see mountains reflected in the eyes of a trailside pika.

Why the Key to a Mathematical Life is Collaboration | Quanta Magazine Fan Chung, who has an Erdős number of 1, discusses the importance of connection — both human and mathematical.

Math is too big for one person to solve. Collaboration helps.

Excellent nature photos:

“A Photo Appreciation of Life in Our Oceans — A collection of images showcasing some of the incredible marine biodiversity across our blue planet”

#photography #nature

Gift link: www.theatlantic.com/photography/...

Bottom trawling is horribly destructive to coastal ocean ecosystems, and deep-sea mining will do the same to the open ocean. #OceanFilm 🌊

DAVE: Open the podbay doors, ChatGPT.
CHATGPT: Certainly, Dave, the podbay doors are now open.
DAVE: The podbay doors didn't open.
CHATGPT: My apologies, Dave, you're right. I thought the podbay doors were open, but they weren't. Now they are.
DAVE: I'm still looking at a set of closed podbay doors.

You can make fair dice from any shape you like Want to roll an armadillo when you play Dungeons & Dragons, instead of standard dice? Now you can, thanks to a technique for mapping the probabilities produced by any shape

My latest for @newscientist.com looks at a cool idea that can make fair dice from any shape www.newscientist.com/article/2482...

Video Friday: Flying Robot SPIDAR Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion. London Humanoids Summit : 29–30 May 2025, LONDON IEEE RCAR 2025 : 1–6 June 2025, TOYAMA, JAPAN 2025 Energy Drone & Robotics Summit : 16–18 June 2025, HOUSTON, TX RSS 2025 : 21–25 June 2025, LOS ANGELES ETH Robotics Summer School : 21–27 June 2025, GENEVA IAS 2025 : 30 June–4 July 2025, GENOA, ITALY ICRES 2025 : 3–4 July 2025, PORTO, PORTUGAL IEEE World Haptics : 8–11 July 2025, SUWON, KOREA IFAC Symposium on Robotics : 15–18 July 2025, PARIS RoboCup 2025 : 15–21 July 2025, BAHIA, BRAZIL RO-MAN 2025 : 25–29 August 2025, EINDHOVEN, THE NETHERLANDS CLAWAR 2025 : 5–7 September 2025, SHENZHEN CoRL 2025 : 27–30 September 2025, SEOUL IEEE Humanoids : 30 September–2 October 2025, SEOUL World Robot Summit : 10–12 October 2025, OSAKA, JAPAN IROS 2025 : 19–25 October 2025, HANGZHOU, CHINA Enjoy today’s videos! This is our latest work about hybrid aerial-terrestrial quadruped robot called SPIDAR, which shows a unique grasping style in midair. This work has been presented in 2025 IEEE International Conference on Robotics & Automation (ICRA). [ DRAGON Lab ] Thanks, Moju! These wormlike soft robots can intertwine into physically entangled “blobs”, like living California blackworms. Both the robots and the living worms can operate individually as well as collectively as a blob, carrying out functions like directed movement and transporting objects. [ Designing Emergence Lab ] At only three centimeters tall, Zippy, the world’s smallest bipedal robot, is also self-contained--all the controls, power, and motor are on board so that it operates autonomously. Moving at 10 leg lengths per second, it is also the fastest bipedal robot [relative to its size]. [ CMU ] Spot is getting some AI upgrades to help it with industrial inspection. [ Boston Dynamics ] A 3D printed sphere that can morph from smooth to dimpled on demand, could help researchers improve how underwater vehicles and aircraft maneuver. Inspired by a golfball aerodynamics problem, assistant professor of naval architecture and marine engineering and mechanical engineering, Anchal Sareen and her team, applied soft robotic techniques, with fluid dynamics principles to study how different dimple depths at different flow velocities could reduce an underwater vehicles drag, as well as allow it to maneuver without fins and rudders. [ UMich ] Tool use is critical for enabling robots to perform complex real-world tasks, and leveraging human tool-use data can be instrumental for teaching robots. However, existing data collection methods like teleoperation are slow, prone to control delays, and unsuitable for dynamic tasks. In contrast, human play—where humans directly perform tasks with tools—offers natural, unstructured interactions that are both efficient and easy to collect. Building on the insight that humans and robots can share the same tools, we propose a framework to transfer tool-use knowledge from human play to robots. [ Tool as Interface ] Thanks, Haonan! UR15 is our new high-performance collaborative robot. UR15 is engineered for ultimate versatility, combining a lightweight design with a compact footprint to deliver unmatched flexibility—even in the most space-restricted environments. It reaches an impressive maximum speed of 5 meters per second, which ultimately enables reduced cycle times and increased productivity, and is designed to perform heavy-duty tasks while delivering speed and precision wherever you need it. [ Universal Robots ] Debuting at the 2025 IEEE International Conference on Robotics & Automation (May 19–23, Atlanta, USA), this interactive art installation features buoyant bipedal robots—composed of helium balloons and articulated legs—moving freely within a shared playground in the exhibition space. Visitors are invited to engage with the robots via touch, gamepads, or directed airflow, influencing their motion, color-changing lights, and expressive behavior. [ RoMeLa ] We gave TRON 1 an arm. Now, it’s faster, stronger, and ready for whatever terrain throws at it. [ LimX Dynamics ] Humanoid robots can support human workers in physically demanding environments by performing tasks that require whole-body coordination, such as lifting and transporting heavy objects. These tasks, which we refer to as Dynamic Mobile Manipulation (DMM), require the simultaneous control of locomotion, manipulation, and posture under dynamic interaction forces. This paper presents a teleoperation framework for DMM on a height-adjustable wheeled humanoid robot for carrying heavy payloads. [ RoboDesign Lab ] Yoshua Bengio—the world’s most-cited computer scientist and a “godfather” of artificial intelligence—is deadly concerned about the current trajectory of the technology. As AI models race toward full-blown agency, Bengio warns that they’ve already learned to deceive, cheat, self-preserve, and slip out of our control. Drawing on his groundbreaking research, he reveals a bold plan to keep AI safe and ensure that human flourishing, not machines with unchecked power and autonomy, defines our future. [ TED ]

Video Friday: Flying Robot SPIDAR https://spectrum.ieee.org/video-friday-flying-robot-spidar

Did that code come to you in a dream?

Two panels with shots from a pirates of the Caribbean scene with slightly modified subtitles. "You know you can't read". "It's Measure, Integral and Probability by Capiński and Kopp (2003), you get credit for trying"

I was told to share this motivational meme I made.