To those who are not aware of the fact: The main authors of this randform blog (Tim and Nad) are math Ph.D.’s. Since now quite a while we are very concerned about the fact that (pure) math research is increasingly put under high retrenchment pressure. So for example under the name of “shaping for excellence”, the University of Leicester will decrease its fundamental research capacity. For “pure” math this means: the University VC (=vice chancellor) proposes to cease research in pure mathematics and wants again to fire all researchers. It is claimed that this is necessary because: “…to ensure a future research identity in AI, computational modelling, digitalisation and data science requires ceasing research in Pure Mathematics in order to invest and extend activities in these areas.”
For those who know about the mathematics behind AI, computational modelling and digitalization this sounds not only absurd but rather like to cut one’s nose to spite one’s face. But it seems things are even worse that is this “triage” seems to be a pretense as they give no concrete plan “to invest or extend activities” but just to cut in fundamental mathematics research.
As a matter of fact this plan affects a high amount of female researchers. In fact by comparing with the list of academic staff (I count 39 academic staff members) and/or the list of group members in “applied math” and/or the list of women in mathematics on the equal opportunites web page it seems all women but 3 of Leicester’s math department are going to be fired.
New Music and CGI from Tim for the new trailer of Enigame 2021_1 – the escapism edition!
According to Tim the trailer is not supposed to be a new interpretation of the story of the Black Spider. The black spider is in this story a metaphor for the plague….
Tim had just finished the new trailer for Enigame 2020_2, which will -like the last puzzle hunt- be online only. Trailer 1 and Trailer 2 are on youtube.
In case someone tries to contact me via facebook, like in particular from the fashion hackdays group: my facebook account https://www.facebook.com/nadja.kutz.1 was deactivated, because it was probably hacked via a phishing attack. Reactivation seems only possible by uploading personal documents, which I won’t.
Tim and me hereby protest against the current plans to build a car gigafactory in Berlin’s vicinity as it poses a too big threat to Berlin’s water supply. There had been massive droughts in the last two years in Brandenburg and the factory is sought to use up as much water as over 75 000 people (for estimation: approx. the amount of people who arrived during the refugee crises in Berlin). Apart from this it is thought to be partially built into a high degree water protection area. We are joined in this protest among others by Nora and Theresa Lantez (website) who live much closer to the envisaged plant and for whom the impact on their living environment would be very direct and rather destructive. Here you can see Theresa dancing: Theresa Lantez in Bernau.
Both visualizations look pretty much the same apart from some visualization effects. But this is how the line in the above time range (here until Dec 18 in 2016) looks as of today in the new LISIRD app:
For those who are interested in what keeps us busy – here is one thing: Local politics and in particular Berlin traffic planning.
If you are able to endure german subscripts you might watch our attempt to convince people that their ideas of traffic load removal may have the opposite effect of what they think.
If not -Tim had only very few hours to work on the music but you might just enjoy his lofty kind of ambient electronica.
