Michael Barany
@mbarany.com
Historical and cultural theories about maths and science theories. Fields Medal killjoy. Scotland enjoyer. formerly @mbarany on birdsite and intermittently @mjb@mathstodon.xyz on fediverse
Pinned
Michael Barany
@mbarany.com
· Apr 17
Reading Between the Lines in the Barany Lab: Lessons on Written and Unwritten Science and Mathematics - International Journal of Peptide Research and Therapeutics
Purpose I reflect on my childhood experiences in the Barany Lab and connect them to several findings and themes from my subsequent career researching the history and culture of science and mathematics...
doi.org
I wrote a little essay in honor of my dad's retirement, "Reading Between the Lines in the Barany Lab" (open access) doi.org/10.1007/s109...
Reposted by Michael Barany
Reposted by Michael Barany
and also younger students, as long as we're fantasizing
My only and best higher ed idea is that Britain needs to find a way to offer university courses to retirees
'Record numbers of Swedish retirees are enrolling in a university run “by pensioners for pensioners” amid increased loneliness and a growing appetite for learning and in-person interactions.' 1/2
December 26, 2025 at 10:36 AM
and also younger students, as long as we're fantasizing
Reposted by Michael Barany
‘Tis the season to read “Father Christmas Executed” by Claude Lévi-Strauss! varenne.tc.columbia.edu/texts/levstc...
December 25, 2024 at 1:44 PM
‘Tis the season to read “Father Christmas Executed” by Claude Lévi-Strauss! varenne.tc.columbia.edu/texts/levstc...
Reposted by Michael Barany
Historians, philosophers and sociologists of science, technology and medicine are all very familiar with the near impossibility of teaching outside our narrow school/college in UK HE. I may even eventually be made redundant because I was put in a very narrow pigeonhole.
Lol I can’t even teach cross-college modules at the same uni (because budgets are held by colleges and apparently we compete rather than collaborate), the idea of fully blended portable modular learning between unis would make smt expire.
"One can’t help but think that the UK higher education sector as a whole, is, at times, mired in orthodoxy, constantly reaching for solutions that maintain the status quo or preserve the time-honoured campus experience."
December 23, 2025 at 9:41 AM
Historians, philosophers and sociologists of science, technology and medicine are all very familiar with the near impossibility of teaching outside our narrow school/college in UK HE. I may even eventually be made redundant because I was put in a very narrow pigeonhole.
Reposted by Michael Barany
I think it’s really important we do *not* attribute this failure to “fossilized thinking” on the part of academics, but on the part of business studies-led management teams who value “internal markets” over education.
December 23, 2025 at 8:47 AM
I think it’s really important we do *not* attribute this failure to “fossilized thinking” on the part of academics, but on the part of business studies-led management teams who value “internal markets” over education.
Reposted by Michael Barany
We've got a book of toxic wallpaper that can kill (arsenic I think). It was made as a reference to avoid toxic wallpaper but I guess when they made it they didn't think about the fact that the samples were also toxic
Archivists/librarians please share the coolest thing in your collections that will never be digitized.
I live in the heart of California gold country. One of the richest mines ever in CA is nearby. Opened circa 1860 closed 1942. A local foundation has preserved the records on site. I know not a stitch has been digitized and am confident no more than 2 pro historians have ever been in there.
December 22, 2025 at 1:18 PM
We've got a book of toxic wallpaper that can kill (arsenic I think). It was made as a reference to avoid toxic wallpaper but I guess when they made it they didn't think about the fact that the samples were also toxic
Reposted by Michael Barany
isolating us from communities of people who know things is a primary project of the chatbot
December 22, 2025 at 7:18 AM
isolating us from communities of people who know things is a primary project of the chatbot
cool fact: any even year can be written as the sum of three or more prime numbers
a lot of people are aware that you can factor
2025 = 45²
i'm honored to announce the factorization
2026 = (45-i)(45+i)
2025 = 45²
i'm honored to announce the factorization
2026 = (45-i)(45+i)
December 21, 2025 at 1:42 PM
cool fact: any even year can be written as the sum of three or more prime numbers
Bring. Back. The. Index. Cards.
If this is already the normal procedure everywhere, i.e. a google scholar import, universities’ library catalogues will be useless tomorrow.
When viewing the fake article in Google scholar on my university network, there is a link to access the article via my uni's library. That link sends me to a library page that makes fake article appear real... Turns out library page is made programmatically from info on Google scholar 🤦
December 21, 2025 at 1:03 PM
Bring. Back. The. Index. Cards.
Reposted by Michael Barany
Professional societies keep beclowning themselves buying into a lie about what an LLM "summary" is. They are inherently counterfeit: not an epistemic product of the ideas in the source, but summary-shaped text linguistically based on *other* works (in the training corpus) that use related language.
This is one of the reasons I remain horrified by seeing @historians.org suggest "ways to use gAI" that included this:
December 21, 2025 at 3:23 AM
Professional societies keep beclowning themselves buying into a lie about what an LLM "summary" is. They are inherently counterfeit: not an epistemic product of the ideas in the source, but summary-shaped text linguistically based on *other* works (in the training corpus) that use related language.
Reposted by Michael Barany
Closing out my year with a journal editor shocker 🧵
Checking new manuscripts today I reviewed a paper attributing 2 papers to me I did not write. A daft thing for an author to do of course. But intrigued I web searched up one of the titles and that's when it got real weird...
Checking new manuscripts today I reviewed a paper attributing 2 papers to me I did not write. A daft thing for an author to do of course. But intrigued I web searched up one of the titles and that's when it got real weird...
December 19, 2025 at 5:20 PM
Closing out my year with a journal editor shocker 🧵
Checking new manuscripts today I reviewed a paper attributing 2 papers to me I did not write. A daft thing for an author to do of course. But intrigued I web searched up one of the titles and that's when it got real weird...
Checking new manuscripts today I reviewed a paper attributing 2 papers to me I did not write. A daft thing for an author to do of course. But intrigued I web searched up one of the titles and that's when it got real weird...
Reposted by Michael Barany
just rebuilt my teaching website as plain html5 with a stripped down css, and pretty happy with the result: study.histsci.scot
Study.HistSci.Scot
Course materials and resources for teaching and learning the history of science, based in Scotland.
study.histsci.scot
December 18, 2025 at 1:42 AM
just rebuilt my teaching website as plain html5 with a stripped down css, and pretty happy with the result: study.histsci.scot
Reposted by Michael Barany
🚨 I’ve been keeping this under wraps until published and it’s out today.
Do judges with background in law enforcement act differently at bail time? Our groundbreaking NYC study estimates that when they set bail, it is a full 32% higher on average compared to other judges. Check it out and share.
Do judges with background in law enforcement act differently at bail time? Our groundbreaking NYC study estimates that when they set bail, it is a full 32% higher on average compared to other judges. Check it out and share.
Judicial Professional Background and Pretrial Detention Outcomes | Journal of Law and Courts | Cambridge Core
Judicial Professional Background and Pretrial Detention Outcomes
www.cambridge.org
December 18, 2025 at 10:42 AM
🚨 I’ve been keeping this under wraps until published and it’s out today.
Do judges with background in law enforcement act differently at bail time? Our groundbreaking NYC study estimates that when they set bail, it is a full 32% higher on average compared to other judges. Check it out and share.
Do judges with background in law enforcement act differently at bail time? Our groundbreaking NYC study estimates that when they set bail, it is a full 32% higher on average compared to other judges. Check it out and share.
just rebuilt my teaching website as plain html5 with a stripped down css, and pretty happy with the result: study.histsci.scot
Study.HistSci.Scot
Course materials and resources for teaching and learning the history of science, based in Scotland.
study.histsci.scot
December 18, 2025 at 1:42 AM
just rebuilt my teaching website as plain html5 with a stripped down css, and pretty happy with the result: study.histsci.scot
Reposted by Michael Barany
This highlights the absolute necessity of faculty, staff, and student mobilization. You need to confront your board directly. Don’t stand on the sidelines and watch them silently as they do this stuff.
December 14, 2025 at 8:25 PM
This highlights the absolute necessity of faculty, staff, and student mobilization. You need to confront your board directly. Don’t stand on the sidelines and watch them silently as they do this stuff.
more power to any Dean who makes the case that their discipline-specific standard for AI is refusal, and AI refusal will be what they integrate into the curriculum
It's hard to overstate how impossible this demand is from Purdue's administration to implement these AI requirements by next fall. We are nowhere close to understanding what AI proficiency means or what it looks like in education.
www.forbes.com/sites/michae...
www.forbes.com/sites/michae...
December 14, 2025 at 4:58 PM
more power to any Dean who makes the case that their discipline-specific standard for AI is refusal, and AI refusal will be what they integrate into the curriculum
Reposted by Michael Barany
One argument I used to make to my students about why it was important to learn history (and historical thinking) is that someone was always going to be trying to tell you things were natural or had always been this way and that you needed to be able to see that as an exercise of power.
December 7, 2025 at 10:09 PM
One argument I used to make to my students about why it was important to learn history (and historical thinking) is that someone was always going to be trying to tell you things were natural or had always been this way and that you needed to be able to see that as an exercise of power.
Reposted by Michael Barany
December 10, 2025 at 2:43 AM
Reposted by Michael Barany
I recently wrote up a description of the book and its argument, if you are curious about its extremely counter-intuitive argument — that Truman was perhaps the most anti-nuclear president of the 20th century: doomsdaymachines.net/p/the-most-a...
"The Most Awful Responsibility"
My new book on Truman and the bomb will be released on December 9!
doomsdaymachines.net
December 9, 2025 at 12:04 PM
I recently wrote up a description of the book and its argument, if you are curious about its extremely counter-intuitive argument — that Truman was perhaps the most anti-nuclear president of the 20th century: doomsdaymachines.net/p/the-most-a...
Reposted by Michael Barany
fun fact: if you create a big panic in your organisation and require everyone to attend 3 million meetings after sleepless nights — your employees will be less good at their jobs
December 8, 2025 at 7:40 AM
fun fact: if you create a big panic in your organisation and require everyone to attend 3 million meetings after sleepless nights — your employees will be less good at their jobs
Reposted by Michael Barany
my one very sincere piece of business advice to universities:
it takes *a lot* of indignities to kill the goodwill of people who choose to work at universities but managing to do so is not something to be proud of
it takes *a lot* of indignities to kill the goodwill of people who choose to work at universities but managing to do so is not something to be proud of
December 8, 2025 at 7:49 AM
my one very sincere piece of business advice to universities:
it takes *a lot* of indignities to kill the goodwill of people who choose to work at universities but managing to do so is not something to be proud of
it takes *a lot* of indignities to kill the goodwill of people who choose to work at universities but managing to do so is not something to be proud of
Reposted by Michael Barany
the reason its bad to run universities like businesses is that almost all businesses fail on any reasonable timeline of evaluation.
hudson's bay made it the longest and even they only got to about half an oxford of longevity
hudson's bay made it the longest and even they only got to about half an oxford of longevity
They claim financial exigency, but then turn down $4 million pledges to keep the PhD programs open and disregard financial analyses that point to the real problem—bad real estate deals, spending on consultants, and their own salaries 2/2
December 6, 2025 at 5:42 PM
the reason its bad to run universities like businesses is that almost all businesses fail on any reasonable timeline of evaluation.
hudson's bay made it the longest and even they only got to about half an oxford of longevity
hudson's bay made it the longest and even they only got to about half an oxford of longevity
Reposted by Michael Barany
honestly the most hurtful part of this announcement was the repeated supposed commitment to respecting everyone’s ‘dignity’ while announcing the closure of a campus on said campus in the middle of a teaching day
It's official: 400 redundancies and a campus closure. At-risk staff will get a letter next week. Absolutely no serious consideration of any of the union's counterproposals.
Please share widely.
Please share widely.
December 2, 2025 at 4:57 PM
honestly the most hurtful part of this announcement was the repeated supposed commitment to respecting everyone’s ‘dignity’ while announcing the closure of a campus on said campus in the middle of a teaching day