A new knot invariant that “uniquely identifies more than 97% of the knots with 18 crossings. By comparison, the Jones polynomial, one of the most widely used invariants for cataloging knots, identifies about 42%, and the Alexander polynomial only about 11%.”

A great write-up in Quanta:

https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-powerful-new-qr-code-untangles-maths-knottiest-knots-20260422/

The paper itself is fun and fairly accessible. It’s also full of questions for the future!

“A Fast, Strong, Topologically Meaningful and Fun Knot Invariant” by Dror Bar-Natan, Roland van der Veen

https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.18456

As I’ve said in another post, I don’t have a job right now and I’m having more expenses than usual because I recently moved house and bought a new bike (previous one was stolen and insurance didn’t cover it).

I’ve dedicated hundreds of hours to work on eza and Tab Center Reborn and keep the projects healthy and alive, and dozens to make thorough bug reports and sometimes small contributions to other projects.

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