As a CS professor, one of the things that I can never do correctly is the "partition" algorithm (part of quicksort). I can explain it at a high level to my students, but I can never implement it correctly on the first try. It has been driving me crazy for multiple decades now.

TLDR; The PSF has made the decision to put our community and our shared diversity, equity, and inclusion values ahead of seeking $1.5M in new revenue. Please read and share. pyfound.blogspot.com/2025/10/NSF-...
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Got to see the great @imwithherband.bsky.social last night in Austin with the great @ihamerly.bsky.social. Wonderful, wonderful music.

Thanks to the kind guy at the movie theater today. My family arrived late, I sat down next to him, and he moved his drink so I could use the cupholder. Shortly after that I spilled half of my bag of popcorn on him (none on me).

Study: How bricks are stacked impacts air quality in Bangladesh : Goats and Soda www.npr.org/sections/goa...

Minor pet peeve: audio advertisements that use the word "backslash" when reading out URLs.

Wallace Stegner, 1960 (excerpt): "We need wilderness preserved--as much of it as is still left, and as many kinds--because it was the challenge against which our character as a people was formed...

Do Rhode Islanders get tired of having their state regularly be a unit of area for size comparisons?

People talking about the USTR formula for tariffs... Their page explaining it has a constraint ε<0, and then it says ε=4...? ustr.gov/issue-areas/...

"Many of the people terminated on Tuesday work as program managers and experts who make decisions about funding by aligning research proposals with the right program and matching those proposals to the most qualified reviewers to assess them and make recommendations."

The Texas governor has called for legislation to prohibit professors from influencing hiring at #Texas public #universities. Will faculty search committees become illegal at TX public universities?

NSF review panels are frozen. NIH was frozen last week. This is harmful to young scholars.
www.npr.org/sections/sho...

My first real success at sourdough.

I’ve finally updated the documentation for the nondeterminism Python library (which helped me change the code slightly for the better too)! We are getting close to the 3.0.0 release, this time probably on PyPI too. github.com/aeporreca/no...

Back in May I had the bucket list opportunity to hike the Grand Canyon rim to rim. I keep thinking about it. Here's a picture two days before the hike, looking at South Kaibab (which wasn't part of our R2R route). Such a great trip. Masterminded by @mmastin.bsky.social

Synonym rolls are like cinnamon rolls but...

@mark-mastin.bsky.social don't put you in a box? Dude, we hiked the box back in May.