Thony Christie

@rmathematicus@historians.social
713 Followers
499 Following
3.7K Posts
Aging freak who fell in love with the history of science and now resides mostly in 16th century Nürnberg.
The Renaissance Mathematicushttps://thonyc.wordpress.com
“If he had lived, we might have known something”

The title of this post is Newton’s rather surprising comment on hearing of the early death of the Cambridge mathematician Roger Cotes at the age of 33 in 1716. I say rather surprising, as Newton wa…

The Renaissance Mathematicus

For those not up to speed with the latest AI jargon, I hope to clarify some things:

  • AI: Actually Indians
  • LLM: Low-cost Labor in Mumbai
  • AGI: A Genius Indian
  • GPT: Gujarati Professional Typist
  • API: A Person in India

Every time a company promises a revolutionary “AI” product, they just exploit cheap labor from India.

Book Review
Wilko Graf von Hardenberg, "Sea Level: A History" #histsci
https://thonyc.wordpress.com/2025/07/09/how-high-and-above-what/

Do you think it’s an overstatement to call these concentration camps? Read @AndreaPitzer

https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/what-s-in-a-name

What's in a name?

Defining concentration camps and how to stop them.

Degenerate Art
Book Review
Wilko Graf von Hardenberg, "Sea Level: A History" #histsci
https://thonyc.wordpress.com/2025/07/09/how-high-and-above-what/

@skyglowberlin @afbdijkstra

Judging by the pictures in Arjen's book I think it must be

@dbellingradt I'm those, who can't work in libraries
Some Internet friends write beautiful books, some even send me free copies, expect review later in the year @afbdijkstra
I feel like I know at least one person for each of these options...

My take: clothes are to be used until they rip apart.

#fashion #sustainableFashion

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Happy birthday to #astronomer Henrietta Swan Leavitt (1868-1921) who set the scale of our Universe. My portrait of Leavitt is printed in silvery lavender ink on Japanese kozo (or mulberry paper). Behind her is a line showing stellar luminosity (capital L with subscript sun-symbol, a circle with a dot) as a function of time (t). She is printed over constellations in gold (Cepheus, Cassiopeia, Draco, 🧵

#linocut #printmaking #WomenInSTEM #sciart #histstm #astronomy #constellation #mastoArt

Ursa Minor and Andromeda). ⁠

⁠ Henrietta Swan Leavitt was an American astronomer. In her day, women scientists were regularly hired to do menial chores. She was hired to count images on photographic plates as a “computer”. In studying these plates, in 1908 she was able to deduce a ground-breaking theory, which allowed Hubble’s later insight about the age and expansion of the universe. Her period-luminosity relation for Cepheid variable stars radically changed modern astronomy, an 🧵2/n

accomplishment for which she received little recognition during her lifetime.⁠

⁠Cepheid variables are a class of pulsating star. They are named for the star Delta Cephei in the Cepheus constellation. The relationship between a Cepheid variable’s luminosity and pulsation period is quite precise. It had not been obvious to tell whether a star was dim because it was less luminous, or whether it was merely further away. 🧵3/4

Swan Leavitt’s discovery lets astronomers use Cepheids as “standard candles”. They allow astronomers to determine distances to celestial objects and form the foundation of the Extragalactic Distance Scale.⁠

🧵4/4

https://minouette.etsy.com/listing/45186695

@minouette stop doing maori's bro

@trrektor what?

This makes no sense to me. Also, not a bro.

@minouette so those are not facial tattoos?

@trrektor Absolutely not.

If you’re going to go around chastising strangers for their artistic expression at least have the integrity to apologize when it’s made clear to you that you misunderstood and you’ve mistaken shading in a relief print for facial tattoos (which would have been a weird and irrelevant addition to my portrait of a American astronomer). The thing you’re criticizing never happened.