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Twitter, but for Math, with Toots

175 points| aqsalose | 8 years ago |blogs.ams.org | reply

29 comments

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[+] tonmoy|8 years ago|reply
In case you didn't get the Pi * z^2 * a joke (like me), the volume of a pizza with radius z and thickness a is = pi * z * z * a

Edit: formatting

[+] ue_|8 years ago|reply
Mastodon is a really great piece of software, at least from the point of view from a user like me, and I really wish more people would use it. There's so much content out there, so many things to reply to and see, from different corners of the fediverse.
[+] AlexMax|8 years ago|reply
I actually signed up for a mastodon and thought it was a pretty nice and funky environment for a week or so.

Then, I realized the full ramifications of federation and I realized that Mastodon was likely to go the way of IRC if it ever "caught on" with the masses, in that open federation was doomed to outside abuse.

I then realized that because of this, my account being on a friends' small instance that he put up on a whim was probably not a good idea. However, I had no idea which other instance to migrate to, considering that there are a billion of them and it was hard to get a flavor for what instances are like with no obvious way to get a public feed.

Now it's months later, my friends' mastodon has been taken down from lack of use, and I still don't have a clear idea of what instance I should use instead. I really don't want to have to create an account on a half-dozen different servers just to find out.

[+] kevinb7|8 years ago|reply
I wish I could see what people are tooting about without having to create an account.
[+] quadrature|8 years ago|reply
care to list some cool users/tags ?. I just got an account and have no idea where to look.
[+] 420dao|8 years ago|reply
put a math problem in a box and put it behind a login. this is more annoying than anything.
[+] farkob|8 years ago|reply
There is something inherently wrong with this I think. This trend with knowledge, like as any commodity, getting cut down into smallest intelligible or consumable piece and delivered that way is not suitable for disciplines like math. Sure twitter is good for memes, one liners, little nuggets of knowledge or headlines, and sometimes even tweet chains but math requires more context, more rigor, more attention by the consumer. Which is the opposite of Twitter.

Sure it can be used for link sharing, but in my opinion reddit offers a better kind of model for this with its structured comments section.

[+] Angostura|8 years ago|reply
The 500 character limit is actually quite liberating after using Twitter.