Abhiram Natarajan

postdoc at University of Warwick, UK

[Andrea C. Love, PhD @dr_andrealove]

Chemophobia is the irrational fear or aversion of chemicals. It leads people to believe that chemicals are harmful at any level.

Common statements include:

•I only want natural ingredients
•Vaccines have too many chemicals
•I can't pronounce those ingredient names

1/

[Abhiram Natarajan @abhiramn]

@BooleanAnalysis Purdue Math has Eric Samperton

[Abhiram Natarajan @abhiramn]

@SpencrGreenberg Nice work. I recommend this very clearly conducted study of "Indian" astrology as well - https://t.co/siY97X6yYx

[Manchester United @ManUtd]

Your 2023/24 FA Cup winners...

🏆 MANCHESTER UNITED! 🏆

#MUFC || #FACupFinal

[Abhiram Natarajan @abhiramn]

@JamesLucasIT @TheReaderapp Unroll

[Abhiram Natarajan @abhiramn]

@CoimbatoreJain @vishalmisra naan bread

[Abhiram Natarajan @abhiramn]

@PrisonersLemma @_onionesque Chaunsa is outstanding. Curious about Dasheri and Langra. I recommend both Banganapalle and Raspuri as must try's.

Both in the UK and USA, the best I've had is the Gir Kesar variety (amongst the readily available ones).

[Abhiram Natarajan @abhiramn]

@mariotelfig @threadreaderapp unroll

[Peter Prickett | TheBeardedCoach @PeterPrickett]

R9 time.

Following on from my observations of Erling Haaland's goals and his astonishing 38 one touch finishes I have watched three seasons of Ronaldo (R9) goals.

Starting with Barca, then Inter and on to Real Madrid, after his injuries.

Here is what I saw.

[Abhiram Natarajan @abhiramn]

@prof_grimmer Nice! Would you expect the same things for SGD as well?

[Science girl @sciencegirl]

How different colours look at depth

📹 Kendall Roberg

[Abhiram Natarajan @abhiramn]

@cutezu_ Whenever the question is "should I type up my notes", the answer, perhaps sometimes a burdensome one, is always YES, PLEASE DO!

[Andrej Karpathy @karpathy]

# on shortification of "learning"

There are a lot of videos on YouTube/TikTok etc. that give the appearance of education, but if you look closely they are really just entertainment. This is very convenient for everyone involved : the people watching enjoy thinking they are learning (but actually they are just having fun). The people creating this content also enjoy it because fun has a much larger audience, fame and revenue. But as far as learning goes, this is a trap. This content is an epsilon away from watching the Bachelorette. It's like snacking on those "Garden Veggie Straws", which feel like you're eating healthy vegetables until you look at the ingredients.

Learning is not supposed to be fun. It doesn't have to be actively not fun either, but the primary feeling should be that of effort. It should look a lot less like that "10 minute full body" workout from your local digital media creator and a lot more like a serious session at the gym. You want the mental equivalent of sweating. It's not that the quickie doesn't do anything, it's just that it is wildly suboptimal if you actually care to learn.

I find it helpful to explicitly declare your intent up front as a sharp, binary variable in your mind. If you are consuming content: are you trying to be entertained or are you trying to learn? And if you are creating content: are you trying to entertain or are you trying to teach? You'll go down a different path in each case. Attempts to seek the stuff in between actually clamp to zero.

So for those who actually want to learn. Unless you are trying to learn something narrow and specific, close those tabs with quick blog posts. Close those tabs of "Learn XYZ in 10 minutes". Consider the opportunity cost of snacking and seek the meal - the textbooks, docs, papers, manuals, longform. Allocate a 4 hour window. Don't just read, take notes, re-read, re-phrase, process, manipulate, learn.

And for those actually trying to educate, please consider writing/recording longform, designed for someone to get "sweaty", especially in today's era of quantity over quality. Give someone a real workout. This is what I aspire to in my own educational work too. My audience will decrease. The ones that remain might not even like it. But at least we'll learn something.

[Abhiram Natarajan @abhiramn]

@PrisonersLemma @eig Curios... do you upload the image and ChatGPT produces the tikz, or do you have to ask explicitly?

[Abhiram Natarajan @abhiramn]

@mahdi_tcs @ShriramKMurthi As you said, the issue is because some expositors choose to write it in that clickbaity way. In their defense, if they wrote it as Z(1, 2, 3, ..) = -1/12 where Z is Zeta func. regularization summability (I would call this reasonably unambiguous), NO CLICKS!

[Abhiram Natarajan @abhiramn]

@ShriramKMurthi @mahdi_tcs If by 'they' you mean the people calling math a farce, then here's how I'd like to troll such people -- your problem is that you call it math, and not maths (:smug expression)

[Abhiram Natarajan @abhiramn]

@lorisdanto Thesis a great idea.

[Abhiram Natarajan @abhiramn]

@mahdi_tcs Agree with the order. Just FYI, I place Limca (https://t.co/Bg70OxktEj) higher than Fanta. Try it if you sometime... you're welcome.

[Abhiram Natarajan @abhiramn]

@latifnasser Thanks for sharing. Inspired to hear the work you put in to track down all this information.