Dear friends,

One of the nice things about being a parent that I think is highly underrated is learning about new stuff through your kids’ interests. For example, yesterday I learned that Bad Badtz-Maru’s hobby is “collecting pictures of bad guys played by movie stars”.

I had thought this was a “Portland Thing” (it’s very Portland) but no, it turns out that TUBACHRISTMAS® is a multistate phenomemon going back more than fifty years. You should probably start planning now if you want to participate in 2026.

Although I have often been involved in the “propagation of chaos” I am neither responsible for nor can I adequately explain the McKean-Vlasov process.

Speaking of the propagation of chaos, this is the kind of prank we need more of in the world.

The painting My Wife’s Lovers is a 6 × 8.5 foot painting that portrays 42 (of the possibly more than 300) Persian and Angora cats belonging to the American millionaire Kate Birdsall Johnson. The painting is now in a private collection but you can buy a pair of tights printed with the painting.

“Interlace … is a peer-reviewed open-access electronic-only journal that publishes high-quality original work at the intersection of mathematics and fiber arts.”

“Gillette died, leaving no wife or children, and his will precluded the possession of his home (Gillette’s Castle) by any ‘blithering sap-head who has no conception of where he is or with what surrounded’.” 

Marcel Duchamp’s gravestone in Rouen has the epitaph "D'ailleurs, c'est toujours les autres qui meurent" ("Besides, it's always the others who die").

The existence of places so cold that words spoken winter freeze solid and cannot be heard until the spring thaw is a recurrent trope.

Nomophobia is the fear of not having a working mobile phone.

Stay well!

Your friend,

Erin