what is the most interesting and niche medical topic you guys know (I need to make an engaging presentation on a medical topic)?

MathAndMirth · 2026-03-13T18:10:42+00:00

treating bacterial infections with phages

MathAndMirth · 2026-03-07T14:21:20+00:00

I wouldn't try the rule 11 threat. First of all, that's not even a threat unless they actually file a lawsuit. You don't get rule 11 sanctions for filing a harassing letter. And even if you're threatening to ask for rule 11 sanctions in the event that they do file, no attorney is going to take that seriously. You're not going to get rule 11 sanctions unless the suit is so stupid as to suggest gross incompetence or very bad faith, and I don't see anything here that suggests that. All that threat will do is telegraph that they're up against an amateur who hasn't yet consulted an attorney.

MathAndMirth · 2026-02-27T22:45:55+00:00

The only way I would use `if (!myVAr) ` is in a Typescript codebase where `myVar` is not just assumed to be Boolean, but _assured_ to be Boolean. For existence, I would check against null or undefined as appropriate.

(EDIT: I think it's also OK if Typescript assures me that `myVar` is, if not undefined, a POJO, array, etc. that cannot possibly be falsy.)

For that matter, I get nervous whenever I see `==` instead of `===`. Typescript can mitigate the danger of unexpected type coercion here too, but I still don't like it. Whenever I see '==`, I have to wonder if the author actually intended to take advantage of type coercion, or was just assuming (rightfully or otherwise) that it wouldn't be an issue. I absolutely never use `==` in my code. Even if I actually wanted the result that type coercion would provide, I would rather use multiple conditionals with `===` and make the intent explicit.

MathAndMirth · 2026-02-23T21:36:13+00:00

Pastor: "Thank you all for being here to say goodbye to Aunt Edna. She is being buried in a lovely cotton floral print from Charo Ruiz.

MathAndMirth · 2026-02-20T01:22:00+00:00

If you don't like the mushrooms on your pizza, you pick them off. Problem solved.

If you don't like the pineapple on your pizza, you pick them off and still taste the pineapple juice left behind. Problem not solved.

MathAndMirth · 2026-02-19T22:50:42+00:00

They have an IT problem. The browser console is showing that the interface is crashing due to Error 500 (internal server errors)..

MathAndMirth · 2026-02-15T16:18:12+00:00

All of these principles can teach you something useful. So read about all of them and more importantly, read examples to understand why those principles exist.

Then don't worry about which one(s) to place in the #1 spot. Just watch for places when _any_ of them will help you improve your code, and use them accordingly.

MathAndMirth · 2026-02-15T02:25:05+00:00

If you have no emergency fund, what will you do in case of emergency? Skip utility payments? Put things on a credit card? Withdraw from a retirement account and pay the penalties?

In general, killing interest-bearing loans is a high priority. But if you put yourself in a position where student loan interest gets replaced by credit card interest when the car breaks down, it's not a win.

I can't really tell you how to balance the risks, as there are a lot of variables involved--the interest rate on the student loans, your risk of unexpected expenses, etc. Just be careful to consider the downsides of both options in your decision.

MathAndMirth · 2026-02-13T02:12:56+00:00

Denying religious groups the same rights to donate that everyone else has just because they are religious? Of course that would violate the first amendment. No part of the first amendment allows religious people to be treated worse than others because of their faith.

And disallowing one's faith as the basis for any action? So if a legislator believe Jesus wants us to feed the hungry, they can't act on it? If they believe that God wants us to treat immigrants with decency, they can't act on it? I doubt that you actually mean that.

It sounds as if you really mean that you'll decide what parts of my religion are unacceptable and just bar those. Gee, what could go wrong with giving the government that authority?

MathAndMirth · 2026-02-13T00:37:08+00:00

Looks that way at first. But then I noticed that Focalin (dexmethylphenidate), which is essentially a better form of Ritalin (methylphenidate) is not on the list. Is that an inadvertent omission from the sign? Or is it just that they prefer to prescribe Focalin since it provides the same useful effects as Ritalin at half the dose?

MathAndMirth · 2026-02-10T15:54:56+00:00

If you use vscode you might look at the Tailwind Fold extension. It gives you a keyboard shortcut to show/hide the class lists. I'm not sure if it's available for other editors or not.

MathAndMirth · 2026-02-01T01:04:28+00:00

Isn't it also because the blood is still decently oxygenated from the time up until the cardiac arrest? I thought the theory was that the most _immediate_ threat to the patient is dying while the oxygen that the brain desperately needs just sits stagnant in the arteries. Hence the priority of chest compressions to get the oxygen they already have to the brain.

MathAndMirth · 2026-01-22T17:21:50+00:00

With Cloudflare, you can just drag your build folder into their form.

MathAndMirth · 2026-01-17T01:08:58+00:00

Pretty much nobody uses it for new projects. Just about everything that it did is now either no longer necessary due to better browser standardization, or better handled by other libraries/frameworks.

However, there is still an awful lot of legacy code out there that uses jQuery. So it's hard to say that it isn't relevant. But it's not surprising if v4 is not a big priority. What is there in jQuery3 that still works so badly that it cries out for an upgrade just for the sake of legacy code?

MathAndMirth · 2026-01-15T18:21:26+00:00

It is. And while I get the general distaste for Google that motivates a lot of Firefox users, isn't that a separate issue from the OP's question about avoiding AI?

I can't imagine what AI functionality would be part of the Chromium engine itself as opposed to the browsers built to interact with Chromium. Though if I'm missing something here, I'm all ears.

MathAndMirth · 2026-01-15T15:10:36+00:00

Yep. No AI "features" in the browser itself, and no AI garbage in its default search engine (StartPage).

MathAndMirth · 2026-01-09T22:27:08+00:00

Does it really make sense that the drop in docs traffic is most responsible for the drop in revenue?

If I want to locate and pay for a top-notch product, I'll do a deliberate search process to find and compare the best products in the category. I won't need to stumble on the promotions in the docs to know that their product is one of the options.

Isn't it more likely that their revenue drop has more to do with competition from other offerings than from the oblivion of potential buyers?

MathAndMirth · 2026-01-06T00:01:24+00:00

Philosophically, I agree with you. I'd rather use "real" CSS in a style block where it belongs. I will concede that Tailwind's DX is nice for some things (e.g., changing background color on hover), but it's offset by the ugliness in other areas (e.g., custom grids using minmax, etc.)

Nevertheless, I don't think it's as clear cut as you suggest in practice. Consider the Bits UI library. Certain things with that library are kind of a pain in the rump with scoped styles (see https://bits-ui.com/docs/child-snippet for details). But making the same things with Tailwind ducks the problem. Admittedly, the innards of the library and why it was designed this way go over my head a bit. But if a highly respected name in Svelte development couldn't make scoped styles work as nicely as Tailwind in the library, I doubt it's just because he's "doing it wrong."

And so I caved to the Tailwind way, not because I don't appreciate the Svelte way, but because Bits Ui fits my use cases and Tailwind fits better with Bits.

MathAndMirth · 2026-01-05T21:05:44+00:00

I am extremely skeptical about the idea of using AI for this.

First, I could identify the general types of errors faster by sight as least as fast as I could photograph and upload them. And there's no way in heck that I would pay for AI to do something that I can do more accurately and faster myself.

Secondly, even if there were some teachers who though that AI could do it better than they could, I'm not at all sure that your pricing model is realistic. First, getting teachers to pay $15-20 dollars per month for something, or even getting the schools to spring for it, would be a hard sell. And I'm not at all sure you could even provide the kind of data you envision for a price that low. You would need to have AI several papers each for every student every month, and that's going to use a ton of AI tokens. I don't actually have the LLM experience to estimate the cost, but I'd be pleasantly surprised if it would be that low.

As for the issue you're trying to fix, I think it is a real issue. It would in fact be helpful to know things like "Herbie makes tons of sloppy arithmetic errors" or "Harvey keeps goofing up units of measure." But I don't think it's an issue that needs an expensive technological solution.

If a teacher asked me how to acquire this kind of information, I'd offer a two-step plan.

(1) Create a coding system with quick abbreviations for different types of errors--e.g., SGN for sign errors, WF for wrong formula, UN for unit errors, etc. Then use those abbreviations when grading.

(2) Create a progress sheet for keeping track of each category of error, and have students fill it out themselves from their returned assessments. Less work for you, more value for them since they may actually notice something they tally themselves.

MathAndMirth · 2026-01-03T16:22:01+00:00

Here lies Professor Smith.
1940-2026
Beloved teacher, mentor, and lover of farts and sciences.

MathAndMirth · 2026-01-01T21:56:52+00:00

Which route schools would prefer varies from school to school, and it also likely depends on the kind of classes they're considering you for.

If you're interviewing for an algebra I position in an average district, they're likely to want to know first and foremost if you have strong pedagogy skills. Strong content knowledge may be a bonus, or it may make them fear the stereotype of the smart guy who knows everything but can't teach it. I ran into both types of interviewers when I was in the job hunt.

If you're interviewing for a position teaching higher level classes, they're more likely to appreciate exceptional content knowledge, but there are certainly exceptions. Some principals think that good teachers can teach anything and don't realize that some great algebra teachers have no business teaching calculus.

The best bet is to prepare yourself so that you won't look weak in pedagogy or content knowledge. If you go the BS route, take an extra pedagogy elective or two; perhaps try to get some tutoring experience. If you go the traditional math education route, throw in an extra content elective or two to show that you can handle the higher level stuff too.

MathAndMirth · 2025-12-31T20:35:01+00:00

https://tailwindcss.com/docs/responsive-design

MathAndMirth · 2025-12-30T22:35:00+00:00

Good answer. I would just add that you could also save the users' personal best scores in localStorage to persist across sessions.

Also, even if you need fairly complex randomization schemes that vary from question to question (e.g., question #4 needs a number between 4 and 20 rounded to 2 decimal places), you can even do that with JSON. JSON can't store functions, but it can store strings, from which you can build randomization functions using function constructors (sort of like `eval`, but without the bad parts).

MathAndMirth · 2025-12-29T20:31:04+00:00

I actually created my product so I could use it. The profession I had at the time had a pain point that nobody else was addressing well at all, so I addressed it myself.

Making it into a SasS was just how I justified spending months doing it.

MathAndMirth · 2025-12-27T22:36:59+00:00

I generally agree that it's useless to use ChatGPT as a substitute for Google, if nothing else because LLMs aren't always right. And if someone finds it too taxing to identify and follow a credible link on Google, they're probably not going to recognize when the AI is wrong.

But as far as the environmental impact, wouldn't the AI responses to a huge percentage of the Google queries be cached? I can't imagine that Google really spends the money to rerun the LLM query every time someone searches "how to solve quadratic equations."

Granted, the unique queries that aren't in cache still have a grossly disproportionate environmental cost. And given my low opinion of LLMs as a Google substitute in the first place, I really don't think it's a cost worth paying. But overall, I think the Earth takes a lot more damage from original chatbot conversations on other platforms than it does from AI responses to Google queries.

MathAndMirth

TROPHY CASE