Elbert E. N. Macau

Full Professor at Federal University of Sao Paulo (UNIFESP) at Sao Jose dos Campos, SP, Brazil. Research area: nonlinear dynamics, chaos, complex networks.

[Dailyscienceinfo @NatureScienceA1]

Extremely rare 'White Auroras' spotted over Norway.

The sky over Norway just did something it almost never does.
Photographers chasing the northern lights got the shock of their lives.

Instead of the usual greens and purples dancing overhead, the auroras turned ghostly white.

Pure. Pale. Almost glowing.

It's one of the rarest aurora displays on Earth.

Scientists say white auroras happen when multiple aurora colors overload the human eye at once, blending together until they appear colorless. The brain simply can't process all the wavelengths firing at the same time, so it surrenders and sees white.

Most aurora chasers go their entire careers without witnessing it.
Norway just delivered the impossible.

Cameras across the Arctic captured the eerie phenomenon lighting up the night like frozen lightning, leaving even seasoned skywatchers speechless.

Some called it otherworldly.
Others said it looked like the sky was bleeding light.

And for a few unforgettable minutes, the heavens above Norway turned into something nobody had ever seen before.

[Elbert E. N. Macau @ElbertMacau]

@BancoCentralBR , se é a autoridade financeira e regulatória brasileira quem opera o PIX, quem o fiscaliza? Quem impõe sanções sobre vazamento de dados é erros operacionais? #pix

[Elbert E. N. Macau @ElbertMacau]

Deixa ver se entendi: os louros sobre a posição americana em relação as organizações criminosas brasileiras são do @FlavioBolsonaro , mas o possível tarifaço recém anunciado, não? Interessante! #tarifaco

[Elbert E. N. Macau @ElbertMacau]

Independente de convicções ideológicas ou partidárias, o PIX é uma excrescência! É inseguro, susceptível a erros e operacionalizado pelo agente que tem o dever de fiscalizar o sistema financeiro. O BC deve olhar com seriedade a crítica sobre ele! #pix

[Massimo @Rainmaker1973]

30,000 hours of footage, equivalent to 3 years and 7 months, were filmed to capture the blooming of 77 types of flowers, and the result is spectacular.

[Ihtesham Ali @ihtesham2005]

An MIT professor taught the same math course for 62 years, and the day he retired, students from every country on earth showed up online to watch him give his final lecture.

I opened the playlist at 2am and ended up watching three of them back to back.

His name is Gilbert Strang. The course is MIT 18.06 Linear Algebra.

Every machine learning engineer, every data scientist, every quant, every self-taught programmer who actually understands how AI works learned the math from this one man. Most of them never set foot on MIT's campus. They just opened a free playlist on YouTube and let him teach.

Here's the story almost nobody tells you.

Strang joined the MIT math faculty in 1962. He retired in 2023. That is 61 years of standing at the same chalkboard teaching the same subject to 18-year-olds.

The interesting part is what he did when MIT launched OpenCourseWare in 2002. Most professors were skeptical. They worried that putting their lectures online would make their classrooms irrelevant. Strang did not hesitate. He said his life's mission was to open mathematics to students everywhere. He filmed every lecture and gave it away.

The decision quietly changed how the world learns math.

For decades linear algebra was taught the wrong way. Professors started with abstract vector spaces and proofs about field axioms. Students drowned in the abstraction. Most never recovered. They walked out believing they were bad at math when they had simply been taught in an order that nobody's brain is built to absorb.

Strang inverted the entire curriculum.

He started with matrix multiplication. Something you can write down on paper. Something you can compute by hand. Something you can see. Then he showed his students that everything else in linear algebra eigenvectors, singular value decomposition, orthogonality, the four fundamental subspaces was just a different lens for understanding what the matrix was actually doing under the hood.

His rule was strict. If a student could not explain a concept using a concrete 3 by 3 example, that student did not actually understand the concept yet. The abstraction was supposed to come last, not first. The intuition was the foundation. The proofs were just confirmation that the intuition was correct.

The second thing Strang changed was the classroom itself. He said please and thank you to his students. Every single lecture. He paused mid-derivation to ask "am I OK?" to check if anyone was lost. He never used the word "obviously" or "trivially" because he knew exactly what those words do to a student who is one step behind. He treated 19-year-olds learning math for the first time the way he treated his own colleagues. With patience. With respect. With the assumption that they belonged in the room.

For 62 years.

The result is something that has never happened in the history of education. A single math professor became the default teacher of his subject for the entire planet.

Universities in India, China, Brazil, Nigeria, every country with a computer science department, started telling their own students to just watch Strang's lectures. The University of Illinois revised its linear algebra course to do almost no in-person lecturing. The reason was honest. The professor said they could not compete with the videos.

His final lecture was in May 2023.

The auditorium was packed with students who had never met him before. He walked to the chalkboard, taught for an hour, and at the end the entire room stood and applauded. He looked confused for a moment, like he genuinely did not understand why they were cheering. Then he smiled and waved them off and walked out.

His written comment under the YouTube video of that final lecture was four sentences long. He said teaching had been a wonderful life. He said he was grateful to everyone who saw the importance of linear algebra. He said the movement of teaching it well would continue because it was right.

That was it. No book promotion. No farewell speech. No legacy management.

The man whose teaching is the foundation of modern AI just thanked the audience and went home.

20 million views. Zero ego. The entire engine of the AI revolution sits on top of math that millions of people learned for free from one quiet professor in Cambridge.

The course is still on MIT OpenCourseWare. Every lecture, every problem set, every exam, every solution. Free.

The most important math course of the 21st century is sitting one click away from you. Most people will never open it.

[Elbert E. N. Macau @ElbertMacau]

@astronomiaum Lula! Dentre esses, o melhor candidato, à anos luz dos demais!

[Elbert E. N. Macau @ElbertMacau]

Este plano de recuperação dos Correios com garantia do Tesouro Nacional e um verdadeiro escárnio para o contribuinte. Não vai resolver! O Correio precisa de um novo modelo de negócios, administração profissional e remuneração realística de funcionários.

[Tatiana Roque @tatiroque]

LAVOU A ALMA! A jornalista Natuza Nery desmascara a extrema-direita e faz um alerta: não basta eleger o presidente, é fundamental pensar no Congresso e eleger pessoas comprometidas.

[Elbert E. N. Macau @ElbertMacau]

Sou de um tempo no qual para ser diretor de um instituto de pesquisa renomado precisava-se ter carreira científica de excelência, experiência administrativa, conhecimento da area, reconhecimento internacional. Os tempos mudaram. Lamento!

[Elbert E. N. Macau @ElbertMacau]

Difícil entender a lógica do momento atual de nosso país. Há uma total reversão de valores. A competência e a experiência são deixadas de lado, substituídas pela inépcia e pela politicagem. Dessa forma, continuamos ladeira abaixo em direção a inexpressividade!

[Elbert E. N. Macau @ElbertMacau]

Ridícula é um verdadeiro acinte o posicionamento da ANAC sobre o absurdo das aéreas cobrarem por bagagem e assentos. Esse Sr deveria se preocupar tb com direito dos passageiros. https://t.co/GnGQUrJpla

[Elbert E. N. Macau @ElbertMacau]

https://t.co/hJu2hJZyiH

[GloboNews @GloboNews]

Após um relatório do governo dos EUA afirmar que a situação dos direitos humanos no Brasil “se deteriorou” e acusar tribunais de tomarem medidas “amplas e desproporcionais” que minariam a liberdade de expressão e o acesso à internet, Gerson Camarotti classificou o documento, divulgado nesta terça-feira (12), como “uma realidade paralela” que não condiz com a verdade: “Ataca o Brasil exatamente onde o Brasil é forte, em uma democracia consolidada. Aqui não existe censura, a gente está falando de imprensa livre”.

➡Assista ao #Edição18 na #GloboNews: https://t.co/D0egpiSFcT

[Elbert E. N. Macau @ElbertMacau]

@RogerioCorreia_ Que grande notícia! Que essa ação dela se perpetue!

[Ricardo.Matos50 🇾🇪🇵🇸 @zotam2]

Homenagem a jornalista como Daniela Lima, ex @globonews por ter saído da Globo!

[Humberto Costa @senadorhumberto]

BOLSONARO TAXOU O BRASIL! A BolsoTaxa é obra de traidor da Pátria. Inimigos do Brasil, inimigos do povo.

[Pedro Ronchi @PedroRonchi2]

Já viram algum político no mundo, que se diz patriota, botar boné de outro país que está taxando a própria Nação?