Is ‘disgusting’ too harsh? No. Sort yourselves out.
I’m well aware that the answer to most of my “have you ever wondered…” thoughts is highly likely to be: “No. I have not. You weirdo.” But here we are.
This is my wonderful dad – the last of the Frys – who finally left us a few days ago. I don’t know if you can tell from the photos, but my dad was so British. He liked only fools and horses and pebble beaches and food without any flavour, like bread and butter pudding and gammon egg and chips. He spent his childhood hiding from the blitz in a cage under his kitchen table, and from teachers and policemen while playing truant from school. His youth, he spent covered in motorbike grease and oil, spray painting cars against a soundtrack of Pink Floyd. And his adulthood surrounded by women – an entire dynasty of female only descendants. Alzheimer’s isn’t the disease people like to pretend it is. It isn’t about losing your keys and thinking you’re in your childhood again. It’s so, so much crueller and more horrifying than that. But i remember him before, when my dad was smarter than at least half of the professors I’ve ever met, and more capable at building things and fixing things and inventing things than practically anyone. He was a man’s man in the quietest possible way. Not a big drinker or partier, he didn’t demand attention or make himself known. But when he had something to say, it would be razor sharp, insightful, and delivered with devastating precision. My friends called him the conversational samuri. He’d been born in the days when polio routinely robbed young men and women of their prospects. So he left school with no qualifications and ended up trapped in a blue collar job, fitting hydraulic lifts on trucks for decade after decade. Some would say it was a waste of his talent. I would say it was a waste of his joy. He came alive again once he retired. And then we had nearly fifteen years of unrelenting mischief before the Alzheimer’s took hold. Building rockets and forts and fires and dolls houses and rocking horses, watching fast cars and playing pranks and hiding and seeking and laughing and teasing and I loved every single minute of it. Goodbye dad, i had so much fun with you x 💔
This is my wonderful dad – the last of the Frys – who finally left us a few days ago. I don’t know if you can tell from the photos, but my dad was so British. He liked only fools and horses and pebble beaches and food without any flavour, like bread and butter pudding and gammon egg and chips. He spent his childhood hiding from the blitz in a cage under his kitchen table, and from teachers and policemen while playing truant from school. His youth, he spent covered in motorbike grease and oil, spray painting cars against a soundtrack of Pink Floyd. And his adulthood surrounded by women – an entire dynasty of female only descendants. Alzheimer’s isn’t the disease people like to pretend it is. It isn’t about losing your keys and thinking you’re in your childhood again. It’s so, so much crueller and more horrifying than that. But i remember him before, when my dad was smarter than at least half of the professors I’ve ever met, and more capable at building things and fixing things and inventing things than practically anyone. He was a man’s man in the quietest possible way. Not a big drinker or partier, he didn’t demand attention or make himself known. But when he had something to say, it would be razor sharp, insightful, and delivered with devastating precision. My friends called him the conversational samuri. He’d been born in the days when polio routinely robbed young men and women of their prospects. So he left school with no qualifications and ended up trapped in a blue collar job, fitting hydraulic lifts on trucks for decade after decade. Some would say it was a waste of his talent. I would say it was a waste of his joy. He came alive again once he retired. And then we had nearly fifteen years of unrelenting mischief before the Alzheimer’s took hold. Building rockets and forts and fires and dolls houses and rocking horses, watching fast cars and playing pranks and hiding and seeking and laughing and teasing and I loved every single minute of it. Goodbye dad, i had so much fun with you x 💔
This is my wonderful dad – the last of the Frys – who finally left us a few days ago. I don’t know if you can tell from the photos, but my dad was so British. He liked only fools and horses and pebble beaches and food without any flavour, like bread and butter pudding and gammon egg and chips. He spent his childhood hiding from the blitz in a cage under his kitchen table, and from teachers and policemen while playing truant from school. His youth, he spent covered in motorbike grease and oil, spray painting cars against a soundtrack of Pink Floyd. And his adulthood surrounded by women – an entire dynasty of female only descendants. Alzheimer’s isn’t the disease people like to pretend it is. It isn’t about losing your keys and thinking you’re in your childhood again. It’s so, so much crueller and more horrifying than that. But i remember him before, when my dad was smarter than at least half of the professors I’ve ever met, and more capable at building things and fixing things and inventing things than practically anyone. He was a man’s man in the quietest possible way. Not a big drinker or partier, he didn’t demand attention or make himself known. But when he had something to say, it would be razor sharp, insightful, and delivered with devastating precision. My friends called him the conversational samuri. He’d been born in the days when polio routinely robbed young men and women of their prospects. So he left school with no qualifications and ended up trapped in a blue collar job, fitting hydraulic lifts on trucks for decade after decade. Some would say it was a waste of his talent. I would say it was a waste of his joy. He came alive again once he retired. And then we had nearly fifteen years of unrelenting mischief before the Alzheimer’s took hold. Building rockets and forts and fires and dolls houses and rocking horses, watching fast cars and playing pranks and hiding and seeking and laughing and teasing and I loved every single minute of it. Goodbye dad, i had so much fun with you x 💔
A double-sided double agent… Printer Steganography, Reverse Engineering the Machine Identification Code by Peter Buck (2018)
Silver lining, the 100m dash is a couple centimetres shorter to run! The Measure of All Things: The Seven-year Odyssey and Hidden error that Transformed the World, by Ken Alder (2002)
David Hilbert. Thought experiment LEGEND. In his own (translated) words: David Hilbert’s Lectures on the Foundation of Arithmetic and Logic 1917-1933, edited by William Ewald and Wilfried Sieg (2013)
The study I’m referring to was 10 years ago now, but it confirmed an even earlier study that had the same result. Interpretation of diagnostic test results is so important, but SO easily misunderstood, even by those that rely on them most. And even small misunderstandings can have a big impact on our personal medical decisions. There is uncertainty in every aspect of medical care, we need to be comfortable with that, but the more informed we all are about what the numbers actually mean (and what they don’t), the more empowered our decisions can be. Medicine’s uncomfortable relationship with math: Calculating positive predictive value, by A K Manrai, G Bhatia, J Strymish et al (2014)
I couldn’t help myself sorry
Maths, yes Science, yes Cooking, less than yes Faking it with editing… flawless
Your shower thought for the day: Are numbers actually real? Do they exist outside of human thought?? What precisely IS “twoness”??? 🤯
Apparently “Does the inertia of a body depend on its energy content” has only 611 citations. Which makes me feel a bit better about some of my papers (looking at you Rate Effects on the Growth of Centres, EJAM, Fry, Smith, 2016)
Slowly sliding this across the table this New Year’s Eve 🎉🥂 Chronic uptake of a probiotic nutritional supplement (AB001) inhibits absorption of ethylalcohol in the intestine tract – results from a randomized double-blind crossover study, by A. Pfutzner, M. Hanna, Y. Andor, D. Sachsenheimer, F. Demircik, T. Wittig and J. de Faire (2022)
There’s something heartwarming about the result—a word that evokes an emotion that is absolutely universal to every human who has ever lived, yet one that can only be experienced by creatures with a biological body. Check out the study: A Minimal Turing Test by John McCoy & Tomer Ullman. And watch out for my video series with @samsunguk on how AI is transforming small businesses. #ad
Wishing you a holiday that is joyful, jolly, and undefeated 🎄💰
That is 13 microseconds of extra sleep a year. Win. Proterozoic Milankovitch cycles and the history of the solar system by Stephen R Meyers and Alberto Malinverno (2018)
Come for the facts, stay for the dancing pigeon impression 🕊 ‘Superstition’ in the pigeon. Skinner, B. F. (1948)
You can read Skinner’s own recollections of ‘Project Pigeon’ or as he describes it: “a crackpot idea, born on the wrong side of the tracks intellectually speaking…” Pigeons in a pelican, by B.F. Skinner (1960)
📐 Mathematicians, what’s the best piece of advice you’ve received? Mathematician, best-selling author, award-winning science presenter and host of popular podcasts and television shows, @fryrsquared joined the University of Cambridge as the first Professor of the Public Understanding of Mathematics on 1 January. Learn more about Hannah’s new role at Cambridge’s Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics @mathematics.at.cambridge, which was announced at the @isaacnewtoninstitute, through the link in our bio. #HannahFry #CambridgeUniversity #UniversityOfCambridge #Cambridge #Maths #Mathematics
I will never stop trying to make ‘Shark Potatoes’ happen A nice assessment of where we currently stand: Research Status of Deep-Sea Polymetallic Nodule Collection Technology, by B Liu, X Wang, X Zhang, J Liu, L Rong, and W Ma (2024)
When researcher, Eric Cadora, decided to map the prison population of New York he made a surprising discovery. Uncharted with Hannah Fry | Listen on BBC Sounds
Deep voice privilege
Working with @samsunguk, I get to hear all the juicy news about what’s up and coming – and now the new S25 Ultra is a reality. Lots of brilliant tech specs, but also some exciting on-device AI features that can work as your assistant to streamline your day to day, adapting to your preferences as they work. #TeamGalaxy #GalaxyUnpacked #AD
