@matthewconroy@mathstodon.xyz
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matthewconroy

@matthewconroy@mathstodon.xyz

I'm a mathematics teaching professor in Seattle. I taught discrete modeling for a bunch of years, but I'm back teaching calculus currently. I spend a lot of time making sound and visual art, often algorithmically.

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matthewconroy, (edited ) to random
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Grading exams: it pains me to see some of my Calc II students using the quadratic formula to solve (b^2-3b=0).

matthewconroy, to random
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For decades, I've experienced pain in my teeth after warming up inside after being out in the cold for a while (e.g., 30 minute walk). (The "cold" doesn't even have to be very cold: low 50s F can do it to me.) The pain can be pretty severe, and last for hours. I've mentioned it to numerous dentists, but none have had anything helpful to say. Today, I finally found a paper describing the phenomenon. It's nice to know people know it's a thing, at least. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5736355/

matthewconroy, (edited ) to random
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I made another chapbook/zine. Let me know if you'd like one and I'll send it to you!

matthewconroy, to TodayILearned
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Grading of five hundred twenty final exam problems will commence soon.

matthewconroy, to Ukraine
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I don't buy things very often, and almost never buy things I don't actually need, but after watching Unrest (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unrest_(2022_film)) I decided I really wanted a mechanical stopwatch and on ebay there are TONS of mechanical stopwatches and I won an auction for one (with a very low bid) and they sent me it from Ukraine and now I have it and it works and I can hear it and I love it.

matthewconroy, to poetry
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Walked home from the dentist with new gold in my mouth and poetry in my bag (thanks little free library people!)!

matthewconroy, to random
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My first linocut print in years. 4x5 inch block on 8x10 inch paper. January 2024. Let me know if you want one!

Several linocut prints with the words "you like art with words on it" in black.

matthewconroy, to random
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I read 49 books this year. Here are the one's I got the most out of. What did you read?

Damn Every Thing But The Circus, Corita Kent
Rescuers of Skydivers Search Among the Clouds: A Novel, Patrick Lawler
by Alison Knowles,Alison Knowles
Clock Without Hands, Carson McCullers
The Walk, Robert Walser
Holocaust Poetry, Hilda Schiff
My Name Is Asher Lev, Chaim Potok
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Jean-Dominique Bauby
As You Were: Big, Big Changes: a punk comix anthology, Mitch Clem
In the Field: The art of field recording, Cathy Lane
Ideal Cities, Erika Meitner
Unclay, T.F. Powys
Creatures of a Day: And Other Tales of Psychotherapy, Irvin D. Yalom
The Seventh Seal, Ingmar Bergman
Mark Tobey Art and Belief, Arthur L. Dahl
Footnotes and Headlines: A Play-Pray Book, Sister Corita
Feeding the Fear of the Earth, Patrick Lawler
Speech for Instance, Sidney Goldfarb
Floating City: Poems, Anne Pierson Wiese
Fernando Pessoa and Co.: Selected Poems, Fernando Pessoa
Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk, Legs McNeil
Overcoming Hypertension, J. California Cooper
Institute Benjamenta (Extraordinary Classics), Robert Walser
The reverent skeptic: A critical inquiry into the religion of secular humanism, John Wesley Robb
Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered, Ernst F. Schumacher
Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
The Soundscape: Our Environment and the Tuning of the World, R. Murray Schafer
Texts, Helmut Heißenbüttel
Signaletics, Emilia Phillips
On the Natural History of Destruction, W.G. Sebald
The Loser, Thomas Bernhard
Lillelord, Johan Borgen
Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
Austerlitz, W.G. Sebald
The Rings of Saturn, W.G. Sebald

Happy New Year!

matthewconroy, to bicycling
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Peanut butter, banana and molasses sandwich after a decent ride to finish the riding year. 2023 has been pretty bad for me in a lot of ways, but I managed to put in more km than any year since 2017, more hours and more climbing than any year since 2016 (things started going bad in 2017). I will endeavor to carry this momentum into 2024!

matthewconroy, to random
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"Low poly" self-portrait made using for a card deck project. I'd not done this before, and it turns to be a fun, near-flow activity. I'd be happy to make one for you if you send me an image!

matthewconroy, (edited ) to random
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How does a student get to the end of my second-quarter calculus course and still think that [ \frac{1}{x^2+2x+7} = \frac{1}{x^2}+\frac{1}{2x}+\frac{1}{7}, ? ]

matthewconroy, (edited ) to random
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I finished reading Fernando Pessoa's The Book of Disquiet today. It took me too long to get through it. I am disappointed. I like "overly wordy" writing, but this seriously needed an editor: it is far too repetitive and unfocused to be a good read (I know why it is like this, but still...).

Some good bits: "I have a tender spot - tender to the point of tears - for my ledgers in which I keep other people's accounts, for the old inkstand I use, for the hunched back of Sergio, who draws up invoices a little beyond where I sit. I love all this, perhaps because I have nothing else to love, and perhaps also because nothing is worth a human soul's love, and so it's all the same - should we feel the urge to give it - whether the recipient be the diminutive form of my inkstand or the vast indifference of the stars." (#7)

"Let's buy books as as not to read them; let's go to concerts without caring to hear the music or see who's there; let's take long walks because we're sick of walking; and let's spend whole days in the country, just because it bores us." ()

"To live strikes me as a metaphysical mistake of matter, a dereliction of inaction. I refuse to look at the day to find out what it can offer that might distract me and that, being recorded here in writing, might cover up the empty cup of my not wanting myself. I refuse to look at the day, and with my shoulders hunched forward I ignore whether the sun is present or absent outside in the subjectively sad street, in the deserted street where the sound of people passes by. I ignore everything, and my chest hurts." ()

matthewconroy, to mathematics
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The histogram for the second midterm in my calculus course is a little better than the one for the first midterm, but still weird.

matthewconroy, (edited ) to Seattle
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These tiny plants sprout in the space between my car's windows and the rubber gaskets that keep water from leaking into the car door via the window. These spaces appear to accumulate dust and dirt, and this is enough to allow moss and other things to grow. I very rarely drive my car (today was the first time since July). Any idea what kind of plant this is?

matthewconroy, to spiders
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Spent the day at the hospital waiting for my love to be discharged after surgery. Late in the day, the lights came on outside, and I could see that large spiders had cleverly created webs under the lights. Kind of crappy phone pic, unfortch.

matthewconroy, to philosophy
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Is God weird? Discuss.

matthewconroy, to rust
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Rust.

matthewconroy, to random
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Last Thursday, I gave my first not-small course midterm exam in a long time. It resulted in not the worst-looking exam histogram I've ever created, but pretty far from a happy one. Ugh.

matthewconroy, to books
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Picked up a copy of Auto-da-Fé by Elias Canetti from a free book box in my neighborhood today. Anyone read it and have opinions to share?

matthewconroy, (edited ) to books
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Just picked up a copy of Fernando Pessoa's The Book of Disquiet from a free book box while on a walk. Anyone have an opinion about it they'd like to share?

matthewconroy, (edited ) to photography
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Birthday self-portrait. Happy Birthday, everyone!

matthewconroy, to Cats
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I just got what I believe is my first message from a student telling me that their cat selected the wrong option in their online homework, and could they get the point back?

matthewconroy, to random
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I just finished watching "My Dinner with Andre" (for the first time). Let me know if you'd like to have a conversation with me.

matthewconroy, to Seattle
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I'm in my basement, windowless office, but I can tell something a little drastic weather-wise is happening in Seattle just now.

matthewconroy, to Seattle
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Seattle weather is telling me summer's over and I have to go back to work.

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