Author | Lightnews

Sean Laverty @seanteachesmath.bsky.social · 12h

Is the travel impact of NFL Europe less than that of NFL itself because once the teams get to Europe the fans at least take public transit?

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Sean Laverty @seanteachesmath.bsky.social · 13h

Pitch ‘Universities rebrand as centers of developing Autonomous Intelligence.’

We still use AI to brand, but maybe the dummies throwing billions at this don’t read the fine print carefully and some universities accidentally get well-deserved money for helping develop actual people and their skills.

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Sean Laverty @seanteachesmath.bsky.social · 2d

I know HOAs get a bad rap, but so should moving to a treed neighborhood and relentlessly cutting down trees.

Sean Laverty @seanteachesmath.bsky.social · 2d

Maybe I should have posted pictures of misbehaving chickens last night.

Here they are behaving.

A white Cochin hen carving a pumpkin by pecking the eyes while a New Hampshire ref measures the situation.

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Sean Laverty @seanteachesmath.bsky.social · 2d

Whoa.

Sean Laverty @seanteachesmath.bsky.social · 2d

Wait. There was more? I still don’t know who was on the floor.

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Reposted by Sean Laverty

Jonathan Cohn @jonathancohn.bsky.social · 3d

I fully believe in the corporate death penalty and believe we would be a better world if OpenAI lost its corporate charter and was forcibly dissolved.

www.cnn.com/2025/11/06/u...

ChatGPT encouraged college graduate to commit suicide, family claims in lawsuit against OpenAI | CNN

A 23-year-old man killed himself in Texas after ChatGPT ‘goaded’ him to commit suicide, his family says in a lawsuit.

www.cnn.com

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Sean Laverty @seanteachesmath.bsky.social · 2d

I though they got rid of his wax statue.

Seth Abramson @sethabramson.bsky.social · 3d

This is officially one of the strangest pictures in American history, and I do not doubt that it will be considered iconic a hundred years from now.

100% serious here.

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Sean Laverty @seanteachesmath.bsky.social · 3d

I do think you (eventually) get a powerful understanding of things through it, but that’s hard to deliver in a semester in competition with everything else.

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Sean Laverty @seanteachesmath.bsky.social · 3d

But I figured that was a good book to have on the shelf. If not for the student, for a friend, parent, bother, cousin, neighbor.

Ehh, you know what, maybe I’ll write the blog post I started in March 2020.

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Sean Laverty @seanteachesmath.bsky.social · 3d

I felt ok asking students to buy a book which, at the time, was running for about $10 on (sorry) Amazon. I arranged to have links to the original series available, and that would get them far enough. I try to avoid requiring books, and honestly that was the last time it was even recommended.

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Sean Laverty @seanteachesmath.bsky.social · 3d

But seriously, after reading ‘The Joy of X’ series off and on in grad school and thinking, “it would be fun to teach a class about that someday. Reading along and talking about what came up.” I finally decided to give it a try. That semester.

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Sean Laverty @seanteachesmath.bsky.social · 3d

Here is how I failed at that class.

It was Spring 2020.

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Sean Laverty @seanteachesmath.bsky.social · 3d

I don’t know sometimes you just want to inspire a little curiosity and ‘will this be on the test?’ and ‘this class is a prerequisite.’ ruin things.

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Sean Laverty @seanteachesmath.bsky.social · 3d

But we always (it sure seems) assume everything (here ‘math detail or ‘rigor’ (?)) is equally important to everyone, but nobody has time for anything, nothing works, and creativity is exhausting and disappointing.

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Sean Laverty @seanteachesmath.bsky.social · 3d

Yeah. It’s a lot to think about. I like the idea of accepting that graphs exist and spot checking important properties. Even painfully deeply, but the algebra, intervals… we seem to make things so hard sometimes.

I think today I butchered least squares/chain rule/ optimization, so who am I to say.

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Sean Laverty @seanteachesmath.bsky.social · 3d

Can we stop pretending that curve sketching and algebra of limits are important parts of calculus?

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Sean Laverty @seanteachesmath.bsky.social · 3d

Real-world examples but easy, please.

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Sean Laverty @seanteachesmath.bsky.social · 3d

We’re destroying the wrong Amazon.

The BMJ @bmj.com · 3d

Populist opposition to climate action makes extreme weather events more likely.

Despite the fear and disruption that populists stoke, we mustn’t lose sight of the need to act, write Juliet Dobson, @drsophiecook.bsky.social, @kamranabbasi.bsky.social
#BMJClimate
www.bmj.com/content/391/...

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Sean Laverty @seanteachesmath.bsky.social · 3d

America bans solar panels.

Mark Lemley @marklemley.bsky.social · 3d

Australia has so much electricity from solar power that it is going to start offering free electricity to everyone for at least three hours during the day as the wholesale price of power goes negative

electrek.co/2025/11/04/a...