TYWKIWDBI ("Tai-Wiki-Widbee")
"Things You Wouldn't Know If We Didn't Blog Intermittently."
30 April 2026
"Blind Faith" - a new Banksy
7 + 2 = x + 6. Can you solve for "x" ?
Certainly you can. Probably in less than 5 seconds, or you wouldn't be reading this blog.
But... one-fourth of incoming University of California San Diego freshmen taking a placement exam last year failed to solve for the x.
And... 3/5 of them failed to round 374,518 to the nearest hundred.
"... it is so jarring to read a lengthy new report from UCSD’s Senate-Administration Working Group on Admissions that says many students can’t answer simple math questions. “Between 2020 and 2025, the number of students whose math skills fall below middle-school level increased nearly 30-fold, reaching roughly one in eight members of the entering cohort,” it stated.Some 25% of students in need of remedial math training couldn’t figure out the answer to this equation — 7 + 2 = blank + 6 — the sort of problem that California first-graders are expected to master. And 61% were unable to round the number 374,518 to the nearest hundred — a basic task third-graders are drilled on..."
But the last cause on that list — high school grade inflation — is something that UCSD can’t fix. It is part of a far-reaching educational crisis that demands a much broader response.The report said even the students admitted in 2024 who were most in need of remedial support had high school math grade point averages of better than 3.6 — and the difference in such GPAs between the least and most prepared entering students was very small.
If you're interested, here is one Math Placement Exam from UCSD, which you can take at home privately and for free. It seems to start easy and get harder as you go along. I didn't see these particular questions on this particular placement exam.
Related: Over the years I have hired a number of bright young neighborhood high schoolers to help me with yard and garden chores, and I sometimes challenge them with math and geometry puzzles from the mathematics category of this blog to ponder while they walk in diminishing circles behind a mower, or to take home to work out. Last year I messaged a new puzzle to a high-school junior. The correct answer came back in a few hours. I told him I was impressed. He said he and his friends couldn't figure it out, so they plugged it into ChatGPT...
New word for the day: neuston (or pleuston)
Neuston, also called pleuston, are organisms that live at the surface of a body of water, such as an ocean, estuary, lake, river, wetland or pond. Neuston can live on top of the water surface or submersed just below the water surface. In addition, microorganisms can exist in the surface microlayer that forms between the top- and the under-side of the water surface.Neustons can be informally separated into two groups: the phytoneuston, which are autotrophs floating at the water surface including cyanobacteria, filamentous algae and free-floating aquatic plant (e.g. mosquito fern, duckweed and water lettuce); and the zooneuston, which are floating heterotrophs such as protists (e.g. ciliates) and metazoans (aquatic animals).The word "neuston" comes from Greek neustos, meaning "swimming", and the noun suffix -on (as in "plankton"). This term first appears in the biological literature in 1917. The alternative term pleuston comes from the Greek plein, meaning "to sail or float". The first known use of this word was in 1909, before the first known use of neuston. In the past various authors have attempted distinctions between neuston and pleuston, but these distinctions have not been widely adopted. As of 2021, the two terms are usually used somewhat interchangeably, and neuston is used more often than pleuston.
29 April 2026
Seeking address labels that support a charity
"86" explained
In the hospitality industry, it is used to indicate that an item is no longer available, traditionally from a food or drinks establishment, or referring to a person or people who are not welcome on the premises. Its etymology is unknown, but the term seems to have been coined in the 1920s or 1930s.
Iran's enriched uranium
"As the stockpile kept growing, the Obama administration began talks to curb it. In 2015, Iran and six nations led by the United States reached an accord that limited the purity of its enriched uranium to 3.67 percent and the size of its stockpile until 2030... Iran lacked a single bomb’s worth of uranium in 2018, when Mr. Trump withdrew the United States from the pact and reimposed a series of tough economic sanctions."
"Demand destruction" looms
In economics, demand destruction refers to a permanent or sustained decline in the demand for a certain good in response to persistent high prices or limited supply. Because of persistent high prices, consumers may decide that it is not worth purchasing as much of that good, or seek out alternatives as substitutes.
Oxford Economics has it modelled. Oil at $150 plus for four months, global inflation back at 7.7 per cent close to the 2022 peak, world GDP growth slowing to 1.4 per cent for the year. Australian recession sharpest since the early nineties. None of this is fringe analysis. This is the orthodox economic forecasting houses now openly publishing recession scenarios with a straight face.And the equity markets are still being held up by the AI fever dream. A handful of US tech billionaires playing a hyper-financialised game of chicken on multi-trillion dollar valuations underwritten by an artificial intelligence investment bubble that still has not delivered the productivity gains it promised, and is openly built on the premise of replacing every working person on the planet. When the energy shock fully filters through into demand destruction, into corporate earnings, into job losses across logistics, transport, agriculture and manufacturing, the unwind will not be gentle. Your super fund’s overweight position in Nasdaq tech is going to find out the same way it did in 2008.The convergence is the real fucking story. Energy shock plus inflation shock plus AI bubble plus a US president actively breaking the global trade system with tariffs plus a global central banking response that has run out of room. We are looking at conditions that could make 2008 look like a kindergarten scuffle. It is not impossible to talk seriously now about Great Depression two point oh. The brokers laughing that off three months ago are now on speed dial to their compliance departments.
28 April 2026
LIHOP and MIHOP return from obscurity
LIHOP ("Let it happen on purpose") – suggests that key individuals within the government had at least some foreknowledge of the attacks and deliberately ignored it or actively weakened United States' defenses to ensure the hijacked flights were not intercepted. Similar allegations were made about Pearl Harbor.MIHOP ("Make/Made it happen on purpose") – that key individuals within the government planned the attacks and collaborated with, or framed, al-Qaeda in carrying them out. There is a range of opinions about how this might have been achieved.
27 April 2026
The tornado in The Wizard of Oz (1939)
“Cyclone” is the word L. Frank Baum chose to describe the Kansas storm in his story, although he clearly meant “tornado.” Shortly after THE WIZARD OF OZ book first appeared in 1900, Professor Willis L. Moore, then Chief of the United States Weather Bureau, wrote Baum’s publishers to urge them to correct the inaccurate usage. He received a response from Frank K. Reilly of The George M. Hill Company, offering that the change would be made in the next edition. This, however, was never done, and any who purchase a copy of THE WIZARD OF OZ reprinting Baum’s original language will find that “cyclone” remains, again and again – as colloquial and as factually incorrect as ever. (MGM got around the issue in the movie by having Bert Lahr exclaim, in idiomatic fright, “It’s a twister! It’s a twister!” Later on, however, the screenwriters were loyal to Baum, and Judy Garland’s Dorothy explains to Toto, “We must be up inside the cyclone!”)
Manes
"Radiator thing on a basement pipe"
That's not going to do much to heat the space because a slant fin radiator is meant to move air by convection. The normal installation is down low near the floor, not up high. Also usually below a window. They work by heating the cool air that's coming off the window and falling down on them.














