Via MetaFilter, we get the chance to revisit our favourite seventeenth century admiral and polymath Prince Rupert of the Rhein through a geometrical conjecture of his, a wager unsettled mathematically at the time, which may have been disproven. Having whittled out two identical cubes, Rupert wondered if one could cut a square shaped hole in one of the objects and pass the other through it, without breaking the original structure—the unit cube. Extrapolated into triangle shaped holes in pyramids and other polyhedra (all the Platonic solids, hypercubes, etc) were later demonstrated to possess “Rupertness” and can be shoved through each other—regardless of material—the edges kept intact and will even accommodate a shape slightly larger. Not cutting corners exactly, this bit of transdimensional engineering, shadow-casting turns the two-dimensional square into a rectangle in relation to the three-dimensional cube. Demonstrating the property was a long-standing challenge but modelling has been made simple through 3-D printing—see also. Recent studies, however, have shown but nope that the title polyhedron, a truncated convex figure with ninety vertices, made specifically for disproving the supposed universal attribute, is said to be not Rupert
Tuesday, 2 September 2025
noperthedron (12. 693)
Sunday, 31 August 2025
from the shallows of wikipedia (12. 687)
Via Super Punch, we learn that the honest-to-goodness academic term for the kink that can sometimes occur in both naturally-occurring and manufactured helix-based structures, like in knotty Christmas lights or the twisting of a telephone handset cord, is tendril perversion—which the article’s header helpfully disambiguates from Japanese tentacle based erotica (don’t get them confused). Already established as the accepted turn of phrase by the time of Charles Darwin and contemporary botanists, the phenomena was noted as the invariable twist in the spiral of a growing vine or sprouting seedling, and was formalised as a way to describe the elastic geometry of breaking symmetry and chirality.
Wednesday, 30 July 2025
8x8 (12. 618)
eight limes, no more: a list is a map, a compass, a prayer—via MetaFilter
ะบะปััะตะฒัะบะฐั ัะพะฟะบะฐ: volcanic eruption in Russia’s far east sets off earthquake and tsunami warnings
windrunner: turbine manufacturer—in defiance of Trump’s claim that windmills are killing us—building world’s largest aircraft (see also) to transport huge blades to remote wind-farms
foredone: useless etymology and some very cromulent words

twin primes: pairs that only are separated by an even number in between grow rarer as one looks at greater ranges of values but no one knows if they run out altogether
evrรณpusambandiรฐ: Iceland considering resuming accession talks with the supranational body
this guy is taking people from the spa: Trump reveals to press-pool that falling out with Epstein was over him stealing staff
an oral history of atlantis: a conversation about metafiction with author Ed Park
Sunday, 27 July 2025
poisoning pigeons in the park (12. 612)
Language Log directs our attention to the obituary and encomium of the recently departed satirist noted for his nimble lyrics and insufferably cheerful accompaniment with a decidedly dark streak, Tom Lehrer (1928 - 2025)—dropping the act in the 1960s but going on to teach mathematics and musical theatre and was a regularly contributor of political lampoons for That Was the Week that Was and an inspiration for Randy Newman, Dr Demento and “Weird Al.” Relinquishing all copy- and performance-rights of his songs in 2022, Lehrer’s music is in the public domain and probably best known for his “Elements”—itself often repurposed for any given subject, set to the tune of Pirates of Penzance and the particularly maudlin “We Will All Go Together When We Go” about universal bereavement—an inspired achievement should someone drop the bomb. In keeping with the Log’s mission, here’s an orthographic track produced for The Electric Company. Much more at the links above.
Friday, 11 July 2025
7x7 (12. 571)
edge of eternity: Poseidon’s Underworld’s cinematic vacation to the Grand Canyon
the open-hearted many and the broken-hearted-few: the venerable and ongoing Leonard Cohen Files—via Metafilter

voulez-vous danser avec moi: the mambo scene of Brigitte Bardot and Dario Moreno from Michel Boisrond’s 1959 « Come Dance with Me? »
flatland: the four dimensional world of Alicia Boole Stott—see also
and if i haver: an endurance run of The Proclaimer’s I’m Gonna Be—via Web Curios
it happened here: a contemporary table-read of Stephen King’s what-if premise of Apt Pupil considered during a staycation from Today in Tabs—via ibidem
Friday, 4 July 2025
31/atlas (12. 557)
Spotted only a few days ago by astronomers in Chile at an associate observatory under the auspices of the international Asteroid-Terrestrial impact Last Alert System monitoring station that’s the future home of the Vera Rubin observatory, the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope which will be capable of scanning the entire sky of the Southern Hemisphere every few days as the largest digital camera ever constructed and watching for changes—including such interstellar interlopers—the inbound comet originating from another solar system is only the third such object passing through to have been verified.
Like the explosion in the discovery of gravitational wave phenomena, more visitors like สปOumuamua and Borisov are bound to be found, advanced imaging techniques underwritten by more data but now both enterprises are in jeopardy by funding cuts to NASA, sponsor to both. And while anyone can determine whether a trajectory is parabolic or hyperbolic or predict a collision course, a potential loss of telemetry seems of great gravity when it comes to such global studies and preservation for Earth and other knock on effects. Significantly brighter than the previous two encounters and traceable by amateur astronomers, the comet, posing no threat to Earth, won’t be visible at perihelion as it will be on the other side of the Sun then in October but at its closest approach to Mars, it may be detected by Martian rovers and satellites.
synchronoptica
one year ago: the introduction of the Caesar salad (with synchronopticรฆ) plus the waterfalls of Mount Cuvignone
twelve years ago: a trip along the Rhein plus a revolution in Egypt
thirteen years ago: the God particle plus national drinks
fourteen years ago: the passing of Otto von Hapsburg and the legacy of the Austro-Hungarian Empire
Sunday, 1 June 2025
6x6 (12. 502)
the chairs of dr who: the quest to identify as much seating as possible from the series’ first great age from 1963 to 1989—via Pasa Bon!

cowardcore: milquetoast Pride apparel collections—via Super Punch—see previously
the amalfi coast of japan: sites that compare themselves to more famous vacation destinations
all these worlds are yours, except europa—attempt no landing there; use them together, use them in peace: future missions to drill into the icy crust of the ocean moons—see previously
maxwell house: a fascinating omnibus of the cinematic commercial advertisements of Ridley Scott
catagories: ๐ฏ๐ต, ๐ณ️⚧️, ๐ณ️๐, ๐บ, ๐งฎ, ๐งณ, ๐ช, ๐️, Blade Runner
Tuesday, 27 May 2025
apparent magnitude (12. 492)
Realising I had taken for granted knowing what the unit of measurement was, or what exactly it was gauging, we appreciated this introduction and overview of the decibel—via Quantum of Sollazzo. Sort of like the distinction between mass and weight, sound intensity is measured in terms of pressures in pascals as the deviation from the ambient caused by an acoustic wave through a given medium, and the decibel as a way of expressing the ratio between two values logarithmically—with the silent partner being the threshold of human hearing. Originally stemming from a technique to measure and compare signal loss over telegraph lines and later telephone circuits, first expressed as loss per miles of standard cable, the new definition developed by Bell Labs was received favourably by operators and long-distance providers, named in honour of the communications pioneer Alexander Graham Bell. Still used chiefly to calibrate signal strength and fidelity as power passes through different exchanges across a network (mathematically, it is easier to process and account for the changes in transmission media and resistance by their additive properties rather than cumulatively by logarithms, which is incidentally the reason why older hardware and appliances last longer being over-engineered by dint of material and electrical tolerances calculated with a slide-rule and rounding up adding up to machines built to a more robust standard than for their planned lifecycle. Because humans perceive an increase in loudness exponentially rather than linearly (per studies in psychophysics known the Weber-Fechner laws that demonstrate gradual increases are likely to go unnoticed by the senses, the contrasted stimuli also seen to carry an effect in registering numbers and statics, in placebos—titration of all types through interoception and voting), the dB scale became a useful measure, as with the Richter scale for earthquakes and the Fujita scale for tornados, for when a in situ judgment might fail.
synchronoptica
one year ago: assorted links worth the revisit (with synchronoptica) plus the discovery of Troy
seven years ago: mythemes, a global weather service, the GDPR goes into effect, drowning does not always look like drowning, the founding of St Petersburg, ancient and modern trade routes plus a walk along the former inter-German border
nine years ago: the classified section, petty commodification, French-Canadien curses plus pizza as alimony
ten years ago: more links to enjoy, a supernatural dating society, the upcoming G-7 plus a new city in Mongolia
Saturday, 24 May 2025
sigils and signs (12. 486)
Having previously looked at other visual language compliers expressed through artistic elements and other than the usual strings of functions and conditions of coding, and very much reenforces overdue acknowledgement that the jargon of computing can act as a gatekeeper and that unnatural language can create an out-group (see also) for whom these incantations seem like wizardry, and given our preoccupation with secret signs, we were very much
intrigued by this mystical platform of magic circles, via Clive Thompson’s latest Linkfest (a lot more to explore there) under development by Denis M Moskowitz. The sampled, quicksort spell is a rendering of the Euclidean algorithm for calculating the greatest common divisor of two numbers—that which divides them both without a remainder—a benchmark test for the logic of a new programming language with an intuitively visual component. Moskowitz has also created a character set of glyphs or monograms after the chaos magic of Austin Osman Spare (previously here and here) whose seals unlock the basic grammar of coding. Much more at the links above.
Friday, 23 May 2025
11x11 (12. 481)
ฮฝ octantis: astronomers discover a tight binary star system with a lone exoplanet wedged in the middle
{sum free sets}: Cambridge graduate student proves an conjecture of Paul Erdลs on the limits of the additive property—via Damn Interesting
gorgoneion: the backstory of Medusa
market instability: complaining that negotiations have stalled, Trump threatens to impose a fifty-percent tariff on EU exports to the US
ambigram: more invertible messages—made by impossible letters (see previously here and here)
the old, old, very old man: the sudden death of super-centenarian Tom Parr in 1635 illuminates our long quest for longevity—see also
marked decline: the precipitous drop in the use of semicolons—with a quiz to celebrate its proper placement
urban renewal: arborists are planting giant sequoia (previously) in blighted Detroit neighbourhoods—via Kottke
pandemonium: when the pantheon of gods and goddesses came into the world, they already had company with a multiplicity of daemons acting through human agents
exchange programme: US Department of Homeland Security revokes Harvard’s ability to enrol foreign students
brown dwarf: in the distant past, Jupiter was nearly twice its present size with a much stronger magnetic field, revealed by the orbital dynamics of its constellation of satellites—see previously
Wednesday, 7 May 2025
7x7 (12. 438)
kanzlermehrheit: Bundestag selects Friedrich Merz chancellor after secure a majority in the second round of voting, averting a constitutional crisis
rococo and its discontents: McMansion Hell on Trump’s gaudy transformation of the White House—via Kottkefuzzy maths: an unsure calculator that produces a range of histograms to assess one’s unknown factors—via Pasa Bon!—from home economics decisions to the Drake equation
reaction time: a car brake engaged by one’s eyebrows
top billing: the movie poster and album cover art of Dick Ellescas that fuses Art Deco and Mod
architektonisches gesamtkunstwerk: the Junkerhaus of Lemgo articulated over the decades whilst the jilted artist awaited his betrothed who would never return—via Messy Nessy Chic—more here
habemus papam: first round of voting fails to produce consensus—plus live chimney cam
Monday, 28 April 2025
10x10 (12. 420)
america’s war: a special report from the Verge for the fiftieth anniversary of the Fall of Saigon
leaflet: an Art Nouveau study of botanical forms and their application in decor—see previously
mangajin: an appreciation of the month English-language publication for students of Japanese language and culture—full archives from the entire run from 1988 to 1997 here
do: inspirational words from artist Sol LeWitt to fellow creative pioneer Eva Hesse
chisanbop: the Korean technique of fingermath
i have to push the pram a lot: Monty Python and the Holy Grail at fifty
animal spirits: what felines, bovines, porcines, etc on the label say about wine quality
you wouldn’t right-click a car: US anti-piracy campaign filled with hypocrisy, including a stolen font—see also
bus error collective: a WSIWYG primer on oscilloscope music—via Waxy
worst one-hundred days: assessments of Trump first months in office for his second term—more here and here
synchronptica
one year ago: Pennsylvania 6-5000 (with synchronoptica) plus naming world wars
seven years ago: a corollary to the Bechdel test plus a visit to Stockheim
eight years ago: archaeology with trace DNA, Islamic gateways plus responding to nuclear extortion
nine years ago: crowd control robots, language acquisition plus a hand-held DNA sequencer
ten years ago: visiting FDR’s Georgia retreat, ribald limericks, assorted links to revisit plus pontoon bridges to alleviate traffic congestion
Thursday, 10 April 2025
9x9 (12. 381)
domestic box office: in response to escalating tariffs, China is curtailing the number of American films screened in the country
redeployment: decision to reposition US troops stationed in Poland causing concern
dixonary: improprieties in pronunciation among New Englanders
๐ฆ: the Latin alphabet expressed as hieroglyphics
now is a great time to buy—$djt: social media posts and a spike in options activity may indicate insider trading within the administration
ื₀: physicist Dominic Walliman charts out the fields of mathematics and how the academic informs application
from the gigantic bones displayed at roncesvalles: an adjective that should be brought part back into use
a man, a plan: US defence secretary floats idea of reopening mothball military bases from the 1989 invasion of Panama
trading floor: the history of the ticker-tape machine
Friday, 28 March 2025
quale and qualia (12. 344)
Having come to a similar epiphany at a point in life I considered fairly late and doubting maturity—but perhaps this sort of realisation needs time to incubate and couched in inexperience—that everyone was their own hero and main character, I found this curated list of introspective descriptors (with an invitation to readers to submit their own) from Marco Giancotti to be quite resonant. Although I don’t normal think to believe that my own subjective experience to be radically different from the next individual nor informed by some prodigious synthesis of sensations and neither compensated by recently coined conscious lacunas like aphantasia, imagination without mental images or internal monologue, the notion that we’re all naked aligned with the Emperor’s New Clothes is a really fascinating and engaging notion to ponder, nomothetic, broad generalisations versus the idiographic and the idiocentric. I like to think of myself capable of imagining in all these avenues and could accept that others do not but there is a measure of scepticism for divergence from the norm. Among the shared experiences that spoke to me, was a short interview with physicist Richard Feynman, as self-diagnosed with a benevolent form of arithromania, about how people count and calculate mentally in various ways. Much more—with growing contributions at รther Mug at the link above.
Thursday, 27 March 2025
9x9 (12. 340)
us agency for global media: Voice of America director files lawsuit over ordered closure—a federal judge issues a temporary stay
pecksniffian paragraph: Trump as a Dickens’ stock character over his sermonising on transgender military service members
entomological adultery: the 1912 Cameraman’s Revenge painstakingly animated by Wลadysลaw Starevicz
the memes have entered the chat: the internet responds to Signalgate (aka whiskeyleaks)
arts dรฉcoratifs: rediscovering Betty Joel, Britain’s forgotten maven of Art Deco design—part of a centenary celebration of the movement—see previously
the population of an old pear tree: an 1870 work by Belgian author Ernest van Bruyssel celebrating biodiversity and insect life
import/export: ahead of the planned tariff action for 2 April “Day of Liberty” Trump announces twenty-five percent duties on foreign cars and components, triggering retaliation
are you sure ms kerger—because he is red: NPR and PBS testify before congress with its federal funding at stake—see previously
synchronoptica
one year ago: anatomised police lineups (with synchronoptica), assorted links to revisit, a classic from U2 plus a Nordic Easter witch
seven years ago: the dynamic Cosmos, more links to enjoy plus Everything’s Coming Up Simpsons
eight years ago: backmasking and the Satanic panic, the show with the mouse plus the Bombay Sapphire distillery
nine years ago: Easter greetings, revisiting the Leipzig Panometer plus a canting dialect
ten years ago: Holy Blood, Holy Grail, even more links, poet Paul Verlaine plus affecting a holiday accent
Friday, 24 January 2025
12x12 (12. 179)
contraception begins at erection: Mississippi lawmaker has introduced a bill called ‘contraception begins at erection’ outlawing male masturbation, hoping to bring balance to the reproductive rights’ restriction that focus on women—via the New Shelton wet/dry
obayashi world: Japan’s most Lynchian filmmaker
so long and thanks for all the fish: Joan Ocean’s Dolphin Connection—via Web Curios
crass competing abstrusities: official, sanctioned transcription of US secretary of state Marco Rubio (้ฒๆฏๅฅฅ) changed—possibly as a way to get around the ban the Chinese government itself imposed plus other politicians’ names—see previously

she was nasty in tone, not compelling or smart: Bishop Budde won’t apologise for her appeal for mercy and hospitality
the birthright citizens’ brigade: a list of organisations pushing back against the slide to authoritarianism in the USdreiundfรผnfzig tage: how Hitler dismantled a constitution republic through constitutional means
xanthelasma: Florida man on diet of beef, cheese and sticks of butter oozes cholesterol from his skin—see also—via Miss Cellania
a catalyst for curiosity: Wikenigma documents the unexplained—via Kottke—those scientific and academic questions that evade a definitive answer, like the Collatz conjecture
you remind me of the babe: Robert Eggers to make a sequel for Labyrinth
unplanned pregnancy: as an encore to freeing all the January Sixth rioters, Trump pardons dozens of anti-abortion protesters, some jailed for violent tactics to block clinic access and intimidating doctors ahead of the Right to Life March
Tuesday, 21 January 2025
pangram (12. 170)
In recreational and trivial mathematics, a pandigital number is value that uses its digits at least once (usually without redundancy), the first of which in base ten radix is 1 023 456 789 (one billion, twenty-three million, four hundred sixty five thousand seven hundred eight nine) and chiefly have applications in fiction and commercial advertising to display a sample credit card or identification document or phone number—reserved in many cases so they are associated with any real individual. The smallest number in Roman numerals is 1444—that is, MCDXLIV. A pandigital number in base thirty-six notation (heexatrigesimal) would use all numbers and all letters—except zero. Despite their non significant nature in terms of maths, they do possess some interesting and unexpected properties, such as the zeroless palindromic pandigital number 12345678987654321 is the square of 111111111—called a repunit—that is a number with only one digit.
Saturday, 4 January 2025
pomega (12. 142)
Via Clive Thompson’s latest Link Fest, we are introduced to another chaotic twin of ฯ called ฯ—from the above script variant of pi, also called varpi—that represents the transcendental mathematical constant ratio of the perimeter to the diameter of Bernoulli’s lemniscate, analogous to the way pi defines a circle. The foci of the elliptical plane are equidistant in this figure which has applications in orbital mechanics (see previously). The curve having a shape similar to a figure 8 or the infinity symbol, ♾️, is from the Latin for something bedecked with hanging ribbons and occur in nature as often as the perfect circle. Much more from John Carlos Baez at Mathsodon at the link above.
Friday, 27 December 2024
mmxv (12. 116)
Numerically speaking, the coming year has some compelling arithmetic properties—albeit some are classified as amusing puzzlers without mathematical significance, though nonetheless worthy of exploration—foremostly being that it is a square that remains square if all its digits are incremented: itself a square (45²), the sum of three squares (5² + 20² + 40²) and the product of two squares (5² x 9²), the sum of a 9x9 multiplication table, and split as (20 + 25)² = 2025. Moreover by both American and European calendar conventions (because of the communicative property of addition) 24 July is a Pythagorean Day, with 24² + 7² = 25², like the last one on 16 December 2020. More from Futility Closet at the link above.
Friday, 29 November 2024
the thirteenth floor (12. 042)
Although acquainted somewhat with taboo numbers and avoidance of certain addresses, I hadn’t seen it in practice—admittedly applying my own form of lore and arithromania to disbursements when paying bills and try to have a figure four in there albeit mindful that auspicious dates, versions can deceive—and enjoyed this enlightening overview from Language Log in the form of a superstitious elevator panel, removing the fourth storeys as a homophone for death (ๆญป, sรฌ, sฤญ), or more specifically according to the Eighteen Level of Hell in Chinese mythology, as elaborated in Journey to the West, the association with the Mirror of Retribution, the literal “evil mirror platform” (ๅญฝ้ก่บ)—accounting for further omissions for those wanting to bypass the degrees of purgatory awaiting the ones dodging dharmic-for-karmic justice in this life. Much more at the links above.