@alanbeattie.bsky.social every historical recollection a confession: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/apr/23/hairdryer-or-lighter-french-police-look-at-claim-of-sensor-tampering-to-win-weather-bets

@mjd only the intro chapter, which is awesome. From what I can recall, the actual contributions/chapters were fairly dull. Anyhow, next to the matrix calculus section in all good libraries.

@mjd perhaps my favourite chance discovery in a library (while looking for a book on matrix calculus): the Soviet Academy of Science's conference volume, "Karl Marx's Mathematical Manuscripts". Its introduction quotes his correspondence with Engels. They get really exercised by the possibility of dividing by something close to zero. I *think* these (pre-Cauchy?) concern led to a strong tradition in non-standard analysis in the USSR & China.

@conitzer I'll let you know when we have an earthquake here in Japan.

@pozorvlak @mjd thanks. I really am naïve here, though: what allowed new paradigms like OOP that Knuth missed?

@mjd a naïve question: what were the main reasons he was wrong? My naïve guess: as computers became more powerful, compilers became more capable, allowing higher layers of abstraction in programming languages?

@josh the person I knew best in this category was born in Switzerland to parents who had been South Vietnamese when they fled. She was stateless: no South Vietnamese citizenship to inherit, as no South Vietnam; no Swiss citizenship, which is based on 'blood' rather than birth. She was also uniquely gifted.

@gleick any idea whether the colloquial name for the eventual conglomerate, 'Ma Bell', is derived from his wife's name?

@mjd I'm mostly wondering if there's a lower bound on the size of the body of water that he gets stuck in.