Tootfinder

So I’ll fly no more on Boeing
So high into the sky,
Though the fares be e’er so tempting —
For I just don’t wish to die.
For the engineering’s sketchy
And the workmanship is trash.
And the planes they sometimes wobble —
Then they tilt, and plunge, and crash.
Though the sky was made for soaring,
Like a hawk that circles high.
Yet I’ll no more board a Boeing —
For I’m not so keen to die.
Hugh Iglarsh

A Byronic Ode to Boeing
(Apologies to His Lordship ... and inspired by His Hackship Ted Cruz, chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, who

"I share your enthusiasm for conversation over food. I ran a fishing lodge for 8 years, people from all over the world came. I would eat dinner with a different group each night. I am unable to count the times that the sun set and midnight arrived with the food gone and only wine and conversation left. Conversation seems to be leaving society now in many circles."
conversation and dining has been superseded bu uber eats and social media,.
UGH!

Great minds run in great circles.

Dissecting Circles to Prove a Square: A Novel Geometric Proof of the Pythagorean Theorem Using Circular Segments and Area Decomposition
Luca Nathanael Chang
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.02896

Dissecting Circles to Prove a Square: A Novel Geometric Proof of the Pythagorean Theorem Using Circular Segments and Area Decomposition
The Pythagorean Theorem has been proved in hundreds of ways, yet it inspires fresh insights through geometry and trigonometry. In this paper, we offer a new proof based on three circles that circumscribe the sides of a right triangle. Rather than invoke coordinate geometry, the argument relies purely on classical Euclidean constructions, trigonometric identities independent of the theorem itself, and a careful analysis of the areas of circular segments. The key idea is to evaluate the area of…

john venn’s memorial window in gonville & caius college dining hall

Can you see circles or rectangles? And does the answer depend on where you grew up?
We may believe we see the world exactly as it is – but as studies of optical illusions show, it’s far more complex than that
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/

Simplicial Approach to Frobenius Algebras in the Category of Relations
Dominik Lachman
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.06193 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2509.06193

Simplicial Approach to Frobenius Algebras in the Category of Relations
Frobenius algebras in the category of sets and relations ($\mathbf{Rel}$) serve as a unifying framework for various algebraic and combinatorial structures, including groupoids, effect algebras, and abstract circles. Recently, a nerve construction of simplicial sets for Frobenius algebras in $\mathbf{Rel}$ has been introduced. In this work, we investigate the lifting properties of these simplicial sets, linking them to the algebraic properties of Frobenius algebras. We introduce $ε$-simplicial …

Going around in circles — Trump sets new deadline for peace in Ukraine, Graham again threatens with tough legislation: https://benborges.xyz/2025/08/21/going-around-in-circles-trump.html

Decoupling geographical constraints from human mobility
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-025-02282-7
Finally out, very cool work, congrats to the authors @…

Authorship Without Writing: Large Language Models and the Senior Author Analogy
Clint Hurshman, Sebastian Porsdam Mann, Julian Savulescu, Brian D. Earp
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.05390

Authorship Without Writing: Large Language Models and the Senior Author Analogy
The use of large language models (LLMs) in bioethical, scientific, and medical writing remains controversial. While there is broad agreement in some circles that LLMs cannot count as authors, there is no consensus about whether and how humans using LLMs can count as authors. In many fields, authorship is distributed among large teams of researchers, some of whom, including paradigmatic senior authors who guide and determine the scope of a project and ultimately vouch for its integrity, may not …

"Going around in Circles: Interrogating Librarians’ Spheres of Concern, Influence, and Control"
https://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2025/circles/
"The practice placing one’s anxieties into circles of concern, influence, and control can be found…

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on KEXP's #AfternoonShow
Billy Preston:
🎵 Will It Go Round in Circles
#BillyPreston
https://oldschoolscoundrels.bandcamp.com/track/billy-preston-will-it-go-round-in-circles-remix
https://open.spotify.com/track/0iifjjuozo6r5fh2GWI6Pq

High traction urban surface for #AbstractAug
#photo #photography #abstract

Why for all of us to take to heart?
Because we all need to remember that there are people in our circles for whom existence is resistance, which makes every single day a fight.
And we need to remember that it •matters• when we forcefully speak up for the humanity of others — or simply treat somebody who is vulnerable with basic decency and steadfast respect, in spite of the whole damned world.
And some days some little instance of one of those things — speaking up, decency, respect — that just feels like almost nothing in the moment might be the most important thing we do all day, and we won’t even know it.

Something I miss in the #Pixelfed & #Mastodon sofyware: the possibility to have lists (like the circles in Google ) and show some content really only for some close friends.
I don't wanna show everything to all and have more privacy. So I still need to send everything via Signal and co.

Lie algebra homology with coefficients tensor products of the adjoint representation in relative polynomial degree 2
Geoffrey Powell
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.03453

Lie algebra homology with coefficients tensor products of the adjoint representation in relative polynomial degree 2
The homology of free Lie algebras with coefficients in tensor products of the adjoint representation working over Q contains important information on the homological properties of polynomial outer functors on free groups. The latter category was introduced in joint work with Vespa, motivated by the study of higher Hochschild homology of wedges of circles. There is a splitting of this homology by polynomial degree (for polynomiality with respect to the generators of the free Lie algebra) and o…

ego_social: Ego networks in social media (2012)
Ego networks associated with a set of accounts of three social media platforms (Facebook, Google , and Twitter). Datasets include node features (profile metadata), circles, and ego networks, and were crawled from public sources in 2012.
This network has 168 nodes and 1656 edges.
Tags: Social, Online, Unweighted, Metadata

Top 'Drumbeat' players: Bo Nix, Omarion Hampton among those generating buzz https://www.espn.com/fantasy/football/story/_/id/45895626/2025-fantasy-football-rankings-draft-tiers-nfl-upside-drumbeat-players

Deep polarimetry study reveals double ring ORC-like structures
Sam Taziaux, Dominik J. Bomans, Christopher J. Riseley, Alec J. M. Thomson, Ray P. Norris, Aritra Basu, George H. Heald, Timothy J. Galvin, Bj\"orn Adebahr, Miroslav D. Filipovi\'c, Nikhel Gupta, Stas Shabala, Tayyaba Zafar
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.04981

Deep polarimetry study reveals double ring ORC-like structures
New observations with the current generation of advanced radio interferometers, such as ASKAP and MeerKAT, have led to the discovery of new classes of extended radio sources of unknown origin, including the so-called Odd Radio Circles (ORCs). These phenomena are detected exclusively in the radio continuum, with no clear counterparts at other wavelengths, making their physical nature and origin a subject of ongoing investigation. To better understand these objects, we study their radio continuum…

Car tires are polluting the environment and killing salmon. A global plastics treaty could help https://phys.org/news/2025-07-car-polluting-environment-salmon-global.html

Car tires are polluting the environment and killing salmon. A global plastics treaty could help
In the 1990s, scientists restoring streams around Seattle, Wash., noticed that returning coho salmon were dying after rainstorms. The effects were immediate: the fish swam in circles, gasping at the surface, then died in a few hours.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/28/well/family/mankeeping-definition.html?unlocked_article_code=1.bU8.e31i.sCu1yTlC5-PA&smid=url-share

Why ‘Mankeeping’ Is Turning Women Off
As male social circles shrink, female partners say they have to meet more social and emotional needs.

I would like to remind you that Neuronationalism, (which is just autistic fascism), is increasingly on the rise.
#Fascism #Autism #ActuallyAutistic

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on KEXP's #AstralPlane
Sand Circles:
🎵 Motor City
#SandCircles
https://sandcircles.bandcamp.com/album/motor-city
https://open.spotify.com/track/0Zk2m0vrTVpAdYqLNlvFfc

#NowPlaying Guided by Julian Cope’s “The Modern Antiquarian” and Aurbrey Burl’s “A Guide to the Stone Circles of Britain”, Llyn Y Cwn aka Ben Powell makes abyssal dark ambient soundscapes with site-specific field recordings from Wales and beyond. https://…

Llyn Y Cwn
Llyn Y Cwn is a field recording based dark ambient project with focus on atmosphere, immersion and environment. Ben Powell has been making electronic music since the 90s, drawing inspiration from his native North Wales landscape and his participation on Arctic research cruises. Llyn Y Cwn (Welsh - lake of the dogs) is a small lake at 715m in the Glyder mountain range of Snowdonia, North Wales.

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on #BBC6Music's #NickGrimshaw
Adam F:
🎵 Circles
#AdamF
https://cuck.bandcamp.com/track/adam-f-circles-album-edit
https://open.spotify.com/track/7I5ap6ekpgC2e5uEn6K75i

Nine circles of elastic brittle fracture: A series of challenge problems to assess fracture models
Farhad Kamarei, Bo Zheng, John E. Dolbow, Oscar Lopez-Pamies
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.00266

Nine circles of elastic brittle fracture: A series of challenge problems to assess fracture models
Since the turn of the millennium, capitalizing on modern advances in mathematics and computation, a slew of computational models have been proposed in the literature with the objective of describing the nucleation and propagation of fracture in materials subjected to mechanical, thermal, and/or other types of loads. By and large, each new proposal focuses on a particular aspect of the problem, while ignoring others that have been well-established. This approach has resulted in a plethora of mod…

Trump Circles Drop F-Bomb After 'Failure' Putin Summit: Wolff (Josh Fiallo/The Daily Beast)
https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-circles-drop-f-bomb-after-failure-putin-summit-wolff/
http://www.memeorandum.com/250817/p35#a250817p35

NFL Notes: Shedeur Sanders Trade Buzz Headlines Busy NFL Training Camp Rumor Mill https://raiderramble.com/2025/08/04/nfl-notes-shedeur-sanders-trade-buzz-headlines-busy-nfl-training-camp-rumor-mill/

@…
Image ID for linked post: a map of the east coast of the Mediterranean (what is now Israel & Palestine plus parts of several neighboring countries) with place names in Arabic, showing several green and yellow colored circles with numbers in them repenting counts of sites near those circles (presumably sites storing pre-1930 Arabic periodicals).
https://digitalcourage.social/@tillgrallert/115055906313868022

ego_social: Ego networks in social media (2012)
Ego networks associated with a set of accounts of three social media platforms (Facebook, Google , and Twitter). Datasets include node features (profile metadata), circles, and ego networks, and were crawled from public sources in 2012.
This network has 511 nodes and 35013 edges.
Tags: Social, Online, Unweighted, Metadata

Homotopy Type of the Space of Fibrations of the Three-sphere by Simple Closed Curves
Dennis Deturck, Ziqi Fang, Herman Gluck, Leandro Lichtenfelz, Mona Merling, Yi Wang, Jingye Yang
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.01185

Homotopy Type of the Space of Fibrations of the Three-sphere by Simple Closed Curves
We show that the moduli space of all smooth fibrations of a three-sphere by simple closed curves has the homotopy type of a disjoint union of a pair of two-spheres if the fibers are oriented, and of a pair of real projective planes if unoriented, the same as for its finite-dimensional subspace of Hopf fibrations by parallel great circles. This moduli space is the quotient of the diffeomorphism group of the three-sphere (a Fréchet Lie group) by its subgroup of automorphisms of the Hopf fibratio…

Edge Computing and its Application in Robotics: A Survey
Nazish Tahir, Ramviyas Parasuraman
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.00523 https://…

Edge Computing and its Application in Robotics: A Survey
The Edge computing paradigm has gained prominence in both academic and industry circles in recent years. By implementing edge computing facilities and services in robotics, it becomes a key enabler in the deployment of artificial intelligence applications to robots. Time-sensitive robotics applications benefit from the reduced latency, mobility, and location awareness provided by the edge computing paradigm, which enables real-time data processing and intelligence at the network's edge. While t…

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on BBCRadio3's #Unclassified
Rafiq Bhatia:
🎵 Circles for Satie
#RafiqBhatia

is everyone doing #FediCircles now? fair enough, I suppose.
https://data.natty.sh/fedi-circles/
(for the record, this isn't super accurate IMO :P)

is everyone doing #FediCircles now? fair enough, I suppose.
https://data.natty.sh/fedi-circles/
(for the record, this isn't super accurate IMO :P)

I notice that most people in my circles tend to gravitate toward OpenAI and Anthropic and tend to discount Google when it comes to Gen AI. This is pretty freakin' cool:
https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/08/google-improves-gemini-ai-image-ed…

Google improves Gemini AI image editing with “nano banana” model
Gemini 2.5 Flash Image is currently atop LMArena’s image-editing leaderboard.

Hexagonal 3-webs of circles with polar twisted cubic
Sergey I. Agafonov
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.12139 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2507.1…

Hexagonal 3-webs of circles with polar twisted cubic
The paper describes and classifies hexagonal circular 3-webs on unit sphere such that the polar points of the web circles lie on a twisted cubic, thus completing classification of hexagonal circular 3-webs with algebraic polar curves of degree three.

On the Piecewise Holomorphic Systems with Three Zones
Carlos Vinicius das Neves Silva, Paulo Ricardo da Silva
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.01377 https://arxi…

On the Piecewise Holomorphic Systems with Three Zones
We study piecewise-smooth systems with three zones, $\dot{z} = f_i(z)$, $i = 1,2,3,$ whose discontinuity set $Σ$ consists either of a pair of parallel lines or a pair of circles tangent to each other internally or externally. Each $f_i:\overline{\mathbb{C}} \to \overline{\mathbb{C}}$ is assumed to be a holomorphic function. We establish conditions ensuring the existence of limit cycles in such systems and provide lower bounds for the maximum number of limit cycle. Our approach combines the Mel…

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on KEXP's #MorningShow
Sunny Day Real Estate:
🎵 In Circles
#SunnyDayRealEstate
https://cielosciegos.bandcamp.com/track/sunny-day-real-estate-in-circles
https://open.spotify.com/track/7MtlureL5VXmDnyoUeBxsd

What is happening here ? Jamming maybe?
QTR85V #flightradar

Curves, points, incidences and covering
Arijit Bishnu, Mathew Francis, Pritam Majumder
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.21758 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2507.21758

Curves, points, incidences and covering
Given a point set, mostly a grid in our case, we seek upper and lower bounds on the number of curves that are needed to cover the point set. We say a curve covers a point if the curve passes through the point. We consider such coverings by monotonic curves, lines, orthoconvex curves, circles, etc. We also study a problem that is converse of the covering problem -- if a set of $n^2$ points in the plane is covered by $n$ lines then can we say something about the configuration of the points?

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on #BBC6Music's #6Musics90sForever
Adam F:
🎵 Circles
#AdamF
https://cuck.bandcamp.com/track/adam-f-circles-album-edit
https://open.spotify.com/track/7I5ap6ekpgC2e5uEn6K75i

⏱️ Poor man's bitemporal data system in SQLite and Clojure
#database

Fascinating. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jul/05/optical-illusions-see-world-perception

There’s a specific kind of cognitive dissonance that comes from watching a woman of color who seemed to have been intellectually reared in progressive circles endear herself to this iteration of the Republican Party
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/20

The One Thing You Need to Know to Understand Usha Vance
Usha Vance isn’t a mystery.

Can we cite Wikipedia? What if Wikipedia was more reliable than its detractors ?
Mohamed El Louadi
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.02462 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2…

Can we cite Wikipedia? What if Wikipedia was more reliable than its detractors ?
Wikipedia, a widely successful encyclopedia recognized in academic circles and used by both students and professors alike, has led educators to question whether it can be cited as an information source, given its widespread use for this very purpose. The dilemma quickly emerged: if Wikipedia has become the go-to information source for so many, why can't it be cited? If consulting and using Wikipedia as a source of information is permitted, why does it become controversial the moment one attempt…

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on KEXP's #Early
Black Whales:
🎵 Circles
#BlackWhales
https://blackwhales.bandcamp.com/track/circles
https://open.spotify.com/track/5fOKb0GN85d5VmpbAkX7ks

Apropos the leaving of Federal documents in a hotel printer ....
People tend to forget that many printers retain in their memory (which might be persistent across power cycles) that contains the contents of the most recent documents printed, scanned, or faxed.
It may not be obvious how to extract that data, but let's say that the powers that coerced all ink jet printers to print a unique printer-identifying pattern of small yellow dots and circles (hard to see with the human …

ego_social: Ego networks in social media (2012)
Ego networks associated with a set of accounts of three social media platforms (Facebook, Google , and Twitter). Datasets include node features (profile metadata), circles, and ego networks, and were crawled from public sources in 2012.
This network has 786 nodes and 14024 edges.
Tags: Social, Online, Unweighted, Metadata

Wow, Canterbury is getting absolutely hammered with lighting right now!

Revisiting Taxicab Apollonius Circles
Kevin P. Thompson
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.12058 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2506.12058

Revisiting Taxicab Apollonius Circles
The existence of excircles and an Apollonius circle for a triangle in taxicab geometry are connected to the concept of inscribed triangles.

i was put in charge of three grandchildren for a few hours yesterday so we headed straight to ben & jerry's to split a milkshake, then explored the state theater (and even sneaked into a movie but later got thrown out for horsing around on the escalator), then i gave a nickel tour of angell/mason/haven halls, then they chased squirrels on the diag which took longer than you might think, then we looked in all the windows in nickels arcade. it all went slowly and well.

How popular media gets love wrong
Okay, my attempt at (hopefully widely-applicable) advice about relationships based on my mental "engineering" model and how it differs from the popular "fire" and "appeal" models:
1. If you're looking for a partner, don't focus too much on external qualities, but instead ask: "Do they respect me?" "Are they interested in active consent in all aspects of our relationship?" "Are they willing to commit a little now, and open to respectfully negotiating deeper commitment?" "Are they trustworthy, and willing to trust me?" Finding your partner attractive can come *from* trusting/appreciating/respecting them, rather than vice versa.
2. If you're looking for a partner, don't wait for infatuation to start before you try building a relationship. Don't wait to "fall in love;" if you "fall" into love you could just as easily "fall" out, but if you build up love, it won't be so easy to destroy. If you're feeling lonely and want a relationship, pick someone who seems interesting and receptive in your social circles and ask if they'd like to do something with you (doesn't have to be a date at first). *Pursue active consent* at each stage (if they're not interested; ask someone else, this will be easier if you're not already infatuated). If they're judging you by the standards in point 1, this is doubly important.
3. When building a relationship, try to synchronize your levels of commitment & trust even as you're trying to deepen them, or at least try to be honest and accepting when they need to be out-of-step. Say things and do things that show your partner the things (like trust, commitment, affection, etc.) that are important in your relationship, and ask them to do the same (or ideally you don't have to ask if they're conscious of this too). Do these things not as a chore or a transaction when your partner does them, but because they're the work of building the relationship that you value for its own sake (and because you value your partner for themselves too).
4. When facing big external challenges to your commitment to a relationship, like a move, ensure that your partner has an appropriate level of commitment too, but then don't undervalue the relationship relative to other things in life. Everyone is different, but *to me*, my committed relationship has been far more rewarding than e.g., a more "successful" career would have been. Of course worth noting here that non-men are taught by our society to undervalue their careers & other aspects of their life and sacrifice everything for their partners, which is toxic. I'm not saying "don't value other things" but especially for men, *do* value romantic relationships and be prepared to make decisions that prioritize them over other things, assuming a partner who is comfortable with that commitment and willing to reciprocate.
Okay, this thread is complete for now, until I think of something else that I've missed. I hope this advice is helpful in some way (or at least not harmful). Feel free to chime in if you've got different ideas...
#relationships #love

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on KEXP's #VarietyMix
The New Eves:
🎵 Circles
#TheNewEves
https://theneweves.bandcamp.com/track/circles
https://open.spotify.com/track/0X6CUaH5BPJ05Sn6MDiBX5

City Features II 🌆
城市特征 II 🌆
📷 Pentax MX
🎞️Ilford FP4 Plus, expired 1994
buy me ☕️ ?/请我喝杯☕️？
#filmphotography

Harmonic maps from the product of the hyperbolic planes to the hyperbolic space
Kazuo Akutagawa, Yoshihiko Matsumoto
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.21384 https://

Harmonic maps from the product of the hyperbolic planes to the hyperbolic space
An existence result is shown for the asymptotic Dirichlet problem for harmonic maps from the product of the hyperbolic planes to the hyperbolic space, where the Dirichlet data is given on the distinguished boundary (the product of the circles at infinity).

Probabilistic Collision Risk Estimation through Gauss-Legendre Cubature and Non-Homogeneous Poisson Processes
Trent Weiss, Madhur Behl
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.18819 https://

Probabilistic Collision Risk Estimation through Gauss-Legendre Cubature and Non-Homogeneous Poisson Processes
Overtaking in high-speed autonomous racing demands precise, real-time estimation of collision risk; particularly in wheel-to-wheel scenarios where safety margins are minimal. Existing methods for collision risk estimation either rely on simplified geometric approximations, like bounding circles, or perform Monte Carlo sampling which leads to overly conservative motion planning behavior at racing speeds. We introduce the Gauss-Legendre Rectangle (GLR) algorithm, a principled two-stage integratio…

Why is no one in the press asking the Manhattan DA or NY State AG what they are gonna do about this
-- cause we know Trump’s SEC and US DOJ aren’t going to do anything about this,

I made an animation of the Villarceau circles moving across the torus, seen as a square with opposite edges glued together. (source and better quality here)

Another flowering tree I took on the same day -- some kind of 𝑃𝑟𝑢𝑛𝑢𝑠 aka sakura -- I found out they use the character 桜 for this in Japan but the different character 樱 in China although both have the same 木 on the left which means "tree"
#photo #photography

Head of Trump's economic council circles around questions on 50 percent tariff on Brazil (Cheyanne M. Daniels/Politico)
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/07/13/kevin-hassett-brazil-tariffs-00450411
http://www.memeorandum.com/250713/p41#a250713p41

ego_social: Ego networks in social media (2012)
Ego networks associated with a set of accounts of three social media platforms (Facebook, Google , and Twitter). Datasets include node features (profile metadata), circles, and ego networks, and were crawled from public sources in 2012.
This network has 1589 nodes and 99347 edges.
Tags: Social, Online, Unweighted, Metadata

Transverse Spheres in Flag Manifolds
Parker Evans, J. Maxwell Riestenberg
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.19306 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2507.19306

Transverse Spheres in Flag Manifolds
For some partial flag manifolds of semisimple real Lie groups, including many full flag manifolds, transverse circles are known to be locally maximally transverse. We complete the classification of all partial flag manifolds of split real Lie groups with this property. As a consequence, $\{7\}$-Anosov subgroups of split $E_7$ are virtually free or surface groups. On the other hand, using spinors, we find transverse spheres of arbitrarily large dimension in certain full flag manifolds of Carta…

How popular media gets love wrong
Now a bit of background about why I have this "engineered" model of love:
First, I'm a white straight cis man. I've got a few traits that might work against my relationship chances (e.g., neurodivergence; I generally fit pretty well into the "weird geek" stereotype), but as I was recently reminded, it's possible my experience derives more from luck than other factors, and since things are tilted more in my favor than most people on the planet, my advice could be worse than useless if it leads people towards strategies that would only have worked for someone like me. I don't *think* that's the case, but it's worth mentioning explicitly.
When I first started dating my now-wife, we were both in graduate school. I was 26, and had exactly zero dating/romantic experience though that point in my life. In other words, a pretty stereotypical "incel" although I definitely didn't subscribe to incel ideology at all. I felt lonely, and vaguely wanted a romantic relationship (I'm neither aromantic nor asexual), but had never felt socially comfortable enough to pursue one before. I don't drink and dislike most social gatherings like parties or bars; I mostly hung around the fringes of the few college parties I attended, and although I had a reasonable college social life in terms of friends, I didn't really do anything to pursue romance, feeling too awkward to know where to start. I had the beginnings of crushes in both high school and college, but never developed a really strong crush, probably correlated with not putting myself in many social situations outside of close all-male friend gatherings. I never felt remotely comfortable enough to act on any of the proto-crushes I did have. I did watch porn and masturbate, so one motivation for pursuing a relationship was physical intimacy, but loneliness was as much of a motivating factor, and of course the social pressure to date was a factor too, even though I'm quite contrarian.
When I first started dating my now-wife, we were both in graduate school. I was 26, and had exactly zero dating/romantic experience though that point in my life. In other words, a pretty stereotypical "incel" although I definitely didn't subscribe to incel ideology at all. I felt lonely, and vaguely wanted a romantic relationship (I'm neither aromantic nor asexual), but had never felt socially comfortable enough to pursue one before. I don't drink and dislike most social gatherings like parties or bars; I mostly hung around the fringes of the few college parties I attended, and although I had a reasonable college social life in terms of friends, I didn't really do anything to pursue romance, feeling too awkward to know where to start. I had the beginnings of crushes in both high school and college, but never developed a really strong crush, probably correlated with not putting myself in many social situations outside of close all-male friend gatherings. I never felt remotely comfortable enough to act on any of the proto-crushes I did have. I did watch porn and masturbate, so one motivation for pursuing a relationship was physical intimacy, but loneliness was as much of a motivating factor, and of course the social pressure to date was a factor too, even though I'm quite contrarian.
I'm lucky in that I had some mixed-gender social circles already like intramural soccer and a graduate-student housing potluck. Graduate school makes a *lot* more of these social spaces accessible, so I recognize that those not in school of some sort have a harder time of things, especially if like me they don't feel like they fit in in typical adult social spaces like bars.
However, at one point I just decided that my desire for a relationship would need action on my part and so I'd try to build a relationship and see what happened. I worked up my courage and asked one of the people in my potluck if she'd like to go for a hike (pretty much clearly a date but not explicitly one; in retrospect not the best first-date modality in a lot of ways, but it made a little more sense in our setting where we could go for a hike from our front door). To emphasize this point: I was not in love with (or even infatuated with) my now-wife at that point. I made a decision to be open to building a relationship, but didn't follow the typical romance story formula beyond that. Now of course, in real life as opposed to popular media, this isn't anything special. People ask each other out all the time just because they're lonely, and some of those relationships turn out fine (although many do not).
I was lucky in that some aspects of who I am and what I do happened to be naturally comforting to my wife (natural advantage in the "appeal" model of love) but of course there are some aspects of me that annoy my wife, and we negotiate that. In the other direction, there's some things I instantly liked about my wife, and other things that still annoy me. We've figured out how to accept a little, change a little, and overall be happy with each other (though we do still have arguments; it's not like the operation/construction/maintenance of the "love mechanism" is always perfectly smooth). In particular though, I approached the relationship with the attitude of "I want to try to build a relationship with this person," at first just because of my own desires for *any* relationship, and then gradually more and more through my desire to build *this specific* relationship as I enjoyed the rewards of companionship.
So for example, while I think my wife is objectively beautiful, she's also *subjectively* very beautiful *to me* because having decided to build a relationship with her, I actively tried to see her as beautiful, rather than trying to judge whether I wanted a relationship with her based on her beauty. In other words, our relationship is more causative of her beauty-to-me than her beauty-to-me is causative of our relationship. This is the biggest way I think the "engineered" model of love differs from the "fire" and "appeal" models: you can just decide to build love independent of factors we typically think of as engendering love (NOT independent of your partner's willingness to participate, of course), and then all of those things like "thinking your partner is beautiful" can be a result of the relationship you're building. For sure those factors might affect who is willing to try building a relationship with you in the first place, but if more people were willing to jump into relationship building (not necessarily with full commitment from the start) without worrying about those other factors, they might find that those factors can come out of the relationship instead of being prerequisites for it. I think this is the biggest failure of the "appeal" model in particular: yes you *do* need to do things that appeal to your partner, but it's not just "make myself lovable" it's also: is your partner putting in the effort to see the ways that you are beautiful/lovable/etc., or are they just expecting you to become exactly some perfect person they've imagined (and/or been told to desire by society)? The former is perfectly possible, and no less satisfying than the latter.
To cut off my rambling a bit here, I'll just add that in our progress from dating through marriage through staying-married, my wife and I have both talked at times explicitly about commitment, and especially when deciding to get married, I told her that I knew I couldn't live up to the perfect model of a husband that I'd want to be, but that if she wanted to deepen our commitment, I was happy to do that, and so we did. I also rearranged my priorities at that point, deciding that I knew I wanted to prioritize this relationship above things like my career or my research interests, and while I've not always been perfect at that in my little decisions, I've been good at holding to that in my big decisions at least. In the end, *once we had built a somewhat-committed relationship*, we had something that we both recognized was worth more than most other things in life, and that let us commit even more, thus getting even more out of it in the long term. Obviously you can't start the first date with an expectation of life-long commitment, and you need to synchronize your increasing commitment to a relationship so that it doesn't become lopsided, which is hard. But if you take the commitment as an active decision and as the *precursor* to things like infatuation, attraction, etc., you can build up to something that's incredibly strong and rewarding.
I'll follow this up with one more post trying to distill some advice from my ramblings.
#relationships #love

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on KEXP's #VarietyMix
The New Eves:
🎵 Circles
#TheNewEves
https://theneweves.bandcamp.com/track/circles
https://open.spotify.com/track/0X6CUaH5BPJ05Sn6MDiBX5

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on #BBC6Music's #Glastonbury
Adam F:
🎵 Circles
#AdamF
https://cuck.bandcamp.com/track/adam-f-circles-album-edit
https://open.spotify.com/track/7I5ap6ekpgC2e5uEn6K75i

ego_social: Ego networks in social media (2012)
Ego networks associated with a set of accounts of three social media platforms (Facebook, Google , and Twitter). Datasets include node features (profile metadata), circles, and ego networks, and were crawled from public sources in 2012.
This network has 307 nodes and 11283 edges.
Tags: Social, Online, Unweighted, Metadata

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on KEXP's #Early
Sunny Day Real Estate:
🎵 In Circles
#SunnyDayRealEstate
https://cielosciegos.bandcamp.com/track/sunny-day-real-estate-in-circles
https://open.spotify.com/track/7MtlureL5VXmDnyoUeBxsd

Counting Zeros of Complex-Valued Harmonic Functions via Rouch\'e's Theorem
Japheth Carlson
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.06721 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2…

Counting Zeros of Complex-Valued Harmonic Functions via Rouché's Theorem
Rouché's Theorem is among the most useful results in complex analysis for counting zeros of analytic functions. Rouché's Theorem also admits a harmonic analogue for counting zeros of complex harmonic functions. This analogue has previously been applied to closed curves of simple forms, such as circles, to count zeros (e.g., \cite{Brilleslyper}). We apply the harmonic analogue of Rouché's Theorem directly on non-circular critical curves to determine the total number of zeros of a family of co…

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on KEXP's #AfternoonShow
Sunny Day Real Estate:
🎵 In Circles
#SunnyDayRealEstate
https://cielosciegos.bandcamp.com/track/sunny-day-real-estate-in-circles
https://open.spotify.com/track/7MtlureL5VXmDnyoUeBxsd

ego_social: Ego networks in social media (2012)
Ego networks associated with a set of accounts of three social media platforms (Facebook, Google , and Twitter). Datasets include node features (profile metadata), circles, and ego networks, and were crawled from public sources in 2012.
This network has 1079 nodes and 46234 edges.
Tags: Social, Online, Unweighted, Metadata

Envelopes of lines, unfoldings and breaking symmetry
Peter Giblin, Alexander Wettig
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.16547 https://arxiv.or…

Envelopes of lines, unfoldings and breaking symmetry
We generalise the well-known ``embroidery'' envelopes of chords joining points at angles $t$ and $mt$ of a single circle in several ways. Firstly we allow $m$ to be rational (possibly negative) instead of integral, finding formulas for the number of cusps, points at infinity and self-intersections of these envelopes. Secondly we use two concentric circles instead of one, taking the chords to join a point of one circle to a point of the other. This construction allows the formation of different …

White Echinacea Flowers in the Prairie Garden in Front of the Vet Research Tower of which the facade is visible
#ithaca #cornell #photography

#Drumpf loyalist #SpeakerJohnson circles wagons, blocks Congressional action before #recess and further stalls release of any add'l #Epstein

#Copilot "Think Deeper" mode is much more useful than Quick Response. For coding, it has a "Senior Dev" posture (even alludes to it) including saying "ping if you've a question" and talking vague, defensive BS in circles.
That's a ✅ on ego and mumbo-jumbo parts of senior dev.
#AI #LLM #programming

ego_social: Ego networks in social media (2012)
Ego networks associated with a set of accounts of three social media platforms (Facebook, Google , and Twitter). Datasets include node features (profile metadata), circles, and ego networks, and were crawled from public sources in 2012.
This network has 851 nodes and 29357 edges.
Tags: Social, Online, Unweighted, Metadata

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on #BBC6Music's #CraigCharles
Adam F:
🎵 Circles
#AdamF
https://cuck.bandcamp.com/track/adam-f-circles-album-edit
https://open.spotify.com/track/7I5ap6ekpgC2e5uEn6K75i

Purple and white Cosmos Flower with a very narrow depth of field that turns the background into a psychedelic field of green and brown smudges and white sparkles
#photo #photography #flowers

ego_social: Ego networks in social media (2012)
Ego networks associated with a set of accounts of three social media platforms (Facebook, Google , and Twitter). Datasets include node features (profile metadata), circles, and ego networks, and were crawled from public sources in 2012.
This network has 168 nodes and 892 edges.
Tags: Social, Online, Unweighted, Metadata

Oh, one more thing... how is the tangent circle bundle of the 2-sphere (as defined in this talk) related to the Hopf fibration?
I could believe that they're the same, but I am running out of room to flip circles in my head... Pinging @… and @…
EDIT: apparently the tangent circle bundle of S² is ℝP³ ≃ SO(3), not S³, so this can't be the Hopf fibration (but S³ does double-cover SO(3), so I guess there's something there). Now to understand where the difference is...

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on KEXP's #VarietyMix
Angel Du$t:
🎵 The Knife
#AngelDu$t
#newRelease 🆕 single
https://wingsofanangel.bandcamp.com/album/now-were-standing-in-our-new-microcosmos-we-just-walk-in-circles-its-one-thing-if-we-make-the-same-mistakes-every-day-we-get-burned-and-then-we-get-full-of-fire-sometimes-i-wanna-take-a-knife-and
https://open.spotify.com/track/60v2KRbfgMFVzFVbbVzzUC

Fleabane flowers I also saw out in Shindagin Hollow State Forest
#photo #photography #flowers #bloomscrolling