Owen Biesel

@owenbiesel

Math prof, dad, gardener, knitter, bike rider, community member, friendly introvert. he/him 🏳️‍🌈 Also on mastodon as @owenbiesel@mathstodon.xyz

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Bluesky

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Owen Biesel@owenbiesel· 7d

Today I illustrated a project idea from Stephanie Rose's "The Regenerative Garden: 80 Practical Projects for Creating a Self-Sustaining Garden Ecosystem." A solar-powered pump carries water directly to the roots in a vegetable bed, so that they get more water on sunnier days. #SolarpunkArtAugust

Pen and marker drawing of a solar-powered pump connecting a rain barrel to a small underground reservoir made from two terra cotta plant pots. A tomato seedling's roots have already wrapped around the water source.

Owen Biesel@owenbiesel· 7d

August 6th: Today's #SolarpunkArtAugust prompt is "community gardens." Here's a drawing from my memory of the last community garden I belonged to, in Minneapolis:

Marker and ink drawing of several 4-foot square garden plots, with a variety of vegetables and flowers growing in each one

Owen Biesel@owenbiesel· 9d

August 5 is "little free pantries": think of a food bank with more flexibility, but also the potential for spoilage, vandalism, and pests. These challenges are not insurmountable: there are flourishing free pantries maintained by volunteers who curate the contents (and help themselves too!).

Marker and ink sketch of a platform holding a small cabinet and a refrigerator. A large solar panel forms a tilted roof with a backup battery on the side of the fridge. The cabinet door is open, showing colorful packages and tins of shelf-stable foods.

Owen Biesel@owenbiesel· 9d

The prompt for today's #SolarpunkArtAugust is "little free libraries." In a post-scarcity world, everyone should have access to information and entertainment, and this little free library in our front yard feels like a little piece of that future reality.

Marker and pen drawing of a blue little free library in a bed of pink, orange, and blue flowers

Owen Biesel@owenbiesel· 11d

This is a t-shirt design I made for this year's "Rock to Rock" Earth Day group bike ride in New Haven, CT. The theme for submissions was "Mobilize for Climate and Community," which is very #solarpunk. I imagined this bike rider on her way to a protest, which the group ride was too, in a way.

Owen Biesel@owenbiesel· 13d

I made this drawing with pencil, then marker, then ink from a fine felt-tip pen, based on a photo of some of our houseplants upstairs. They wouldn't survive in our local outdoor climate, so they are only alive here because of the mutual relationship they have with us humans. #SolarpunkArtAugust

Photo of a sketchpad lying on mottled blue carpet. The sketchpad marker-and-ink drawing shows a wooden latticework with potted plants hanging in the spaces between the beams. The plants are different colors of green, and a little purple. Some pots are empty, and there are a few spaces in the lattice still to fill.

Owen Biesel@owenbiesel· 13d

This August I'm participating in the #SolarpunkArtAugust art-along! Here's the lineup of prompts for the month. I'll probably do watercolors or markers with pen details afterward (I'm no artist but I can still have fun and learn). I can't wait to see what you all make!

Hashtag: Solarpunk Art August

Daily art prompts

8/1: plants
8/2: protest
8/3: voting
8/4: little free libraries
8/5: little free pantries
8/6: community gardens
8/7: solar sprinklers
8/8: repair cafés
8/9: balcony gardens
8/10: urban gardens
8/11: bicycles
8/12: solar ovens
8/13: permaculture
8/14: disability rights
8/15: third spaces
8/16: LGBTQ+ families
8/17: intersectionality
8/18: pollinators
8/19: desert solarpunk
8/20: snowy solarpunk
8/21: tropical solarpunk
8/22: libraries (all kinds)
8/23: agrivoltaics
8/24: mini wind turbines
8/25: guerrilla gardening
8/26: public transit
8/27: warming/cooling centers
8/28: urban tree canopy
8/29: weather stations
8/30: heat pumps
8/31: intentional living

Owen Biesel@owenbiesel· Jun 21

Murderbot, welcome to The War on Cars.

When we exited the boat at its first dock in a transit station in the adjoining zone, we had been able to take (1) a pipe transport, (2) a tram to another transit station, (3) another pipe transport. We were moving relatively quickly then and I made the mistake of getting optimistic. Then we got to a border and found the only option was to rent a ground vehicle and drive across two unaffiliated zones because both had zero mass transport. Zero. Mass. Transport. This is supposed to be a civilized space station, in space, why the fuck am I driving a ground vehicle to get to a fucking port on a fucking—
(Emotion check: I am absolutely fine.)

Photo of the cover of "Platform Decay" by Martha Wells. From the glossy shine on the cover and plastic stickers visible peeking around the bottom of the spine, you can tell it's a library copy.

Owen Biesel@owenbiesel· May 23

Amazing! Reposting with alt text.

Screenshot of a social media post by Greenwich Police:

During the initial five-day speed study conducted prior to the program's launch, automated tracking recorded 36,922 individual speeding events across eight Greenwich school zones. This pre-program study was conducted without public awareness that speed monitoring equipment had been deployed, allowing for an authentic baseline measurement of speeding behavior in these areas.

The school zones included in the study were:

Brunswick Lower School
Central Middle School
Eagle Hill School
Glenville School
Greenwich Academy
Greenwich High School (two locations)
North Street School

After the public was notified that automated speed enforcement cameras would be installed in town, speeding violations immediately decreased to 15,319 events, demonstrating a significant behavioral shift through awareness alone.

Once the enforcement phase began and citations were actively issued, the number of speeding violations dropped even further to 2,863 events.

From the initial pre-program study to active enforcement, Greenwich experienced a 92.2% reduction in speeding violations within monitored school zones.

Owen Biesel@owenbiesel· Feb 17

Just today I decided to take my kid and a wagon to the New Haven Stop&Shop about 10 minutes' walk away, and found two sections of *completely* unshoveled sidewalk. One was at a Citgo gas station — a conflict of interest as they benefit from car dependency — and the other was under an overpass.

Photo of unshoveled sidewalk outside a Citgo gas station. Many, many footprints have trampled the snow, but it's nowhere near flat enough to get a wagon across — I tried.

Photo from under an overpass, showing a kindergarten-aged kid walking through a trench made by many footprints in the snow.

Owen Biesel@owenbiesel· Jan 6

Reposting with alt-text!

White and yellow all-caps text on a photo of sunny fields and trees: "Now is a good time to remind everyone that investing in renewable energy literally prevents wars."

Owen Biesel@owenbiesel· Nov 23

This expands out to (y^3 + 2y^2 + 4/3 y + 8/27) - (2y^2 + 8/3 y + 8/9) + (y + 2/3) - 1 or y^3 - 1/3 y - 25/27. A quick Desmos check shows I got this simplification right. 29/🧵

A screenshot of the graphs of two cubic functions: red and blue. The red function is the one we graphed before, with the root at about 1.75. The blue graph looks the same as the red graph, just shifted to the left so that its inflection point is on the y-axis.

Owen Biesel@owenbiesel· Nov 23

Plotting this cubic polynomial on Desmos shows a single real root at about 1.75488, which is really close to the values I observed for f(N+1)/f(N), so I think I'm on the right track. Can I find a formula for this value? (The other roots being complex will make diagonalizing extra fun!) 27/🧵

Desmos plot of a cubic polynomial. The only root is marked at x=1.75488.

Owen Biesel@owenbiesel· Nov 23

I like to use a spreadsheet for quick-and-dirty recurrence relations. I'll check the first interesting row by hand: e(4)=5, s(4)=3, and m(4)=4. 16/🧵

A screenshot of a google spreadsheet. The columns are labeled N, e(N), s(N), m(N), and f(N). The "N" column shows the positive integers 1 through 9, and the e(N), s(N), and m(N) columns start with their initial values 1, 0, and 1. The "e(2)" cell is selected to show that it calculates the sum of the "e(1)" and "m(1)" cells, as in the recurrence relations. The "f(N)" cells show the totals of the other three calculated columns: f(1)=2, f(2)=4, f(3)=7, f(4)=12, f(5)=21, and so on.

Owen Biesel@owenbiesel· Sep 17

This sunday is Sun Day: a pro-social, pro-solar day of actions around the world. I'll be going to a family-friendly E-bike / EV event I only just heard about today — you can find an event near you here! www.sunday.earth/events Hat tip: @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social 's latest newsletter!

A map of the continental US and southern Canada showing a dense sprinkling of colorful Sun symbols, one for each Sun Day event.

Owen Biesel@owenbiesel· Sep 6

It was a good haul at the library this morning :)

Photo of my hand holding three library books: "Bullshit Jobs" by David Graeber, "The Grid" by Gretchen Bakke, and "The Lost Cause" by Cory Doctorow

Owen Biesel@owenbiesel· Sep 3

Biked from work to my kid's school to pick her up for a swimming lesson across town. Here's my view of her school stuff, my bag of work stuff, and her wet towel drying in the milk crate zip-tied to the handlebars.

Photo from the perspective of riding a bike. Attached to the handlebars is a black milk crate with a pink backpack, a hi-vis bag, and a rolled-up beach towel. Ahead of the bike is a road intersection, and behind it, a large natural cliff rising against the horizon.

Owen Biesel@owenbiesel· Aug 18

Alignment chart for different ways to write nonabelian.
Lawful good: non-commutative
Neutral good: noncommutative
Chaotic good: non commutative
Lawful neutral: non-Abelian
True neutral: nonabelian
Chaotic neutral: non Abelian
Lawful evil: non-abelian
Neutral evil: non abelian
Chaotic evil: nonAbelian

Owen Biesel@owenbiesel· Aug 18

$The matrix product (3 4 \\ 8 7) (7 2 \\ 4 9) = (37 42 \\ 84 79), with the entries from the first matrix colored red (along with the matching tens digits in the product) and the entries from the second matrix colored blue (along with the ones digits in the product). Shown with the "Well yes, but actually no" Pirate Captain meme.$

Owen Biesel@owenbiesel· Aug 18

Spiderman pointing at Spiderman, but with seven Spidermans (Spidermen?) labeled "det(A)≠0", "columns form basis", "rank(A)=n", "No free variables", "Ax=b unique solution", "A invertible", and "0 not an eigenvalue."

Owen Biesel@owenbiesel· Aug 18

The aurora borealis part of the "Steamed Hams" Simpsons sketch, with the following dialogue:
Chalmers: You're saying there are exactly n complex roots for any nth-degree polynomial?
Skinner (labeled "Gauss"): Yes.
Chalmers: May I see them?
Skinner (labeled "Galois"): No.

Owen Biesel@owenbiesel· Aug 18

Three cats snuggling. The cat on the left looks happy and is labeled "midpoint sum." The cat on the right is also happy and labeled "trapezoid sum." The cat in the middle looks irritated at being squished and is labeled "definite integral."

Owen Biesel@owenbiesel· Aug 18

Photo with the heading "Correlation Vs. Causation"
Shown is a railing on a grassy beach with two seagulls. One seagull is perched on a straight section of railing. The other is at the bottom of segment bent into a V-shape, suggesting that the weight of the seagull bent the railing.

Owen Biesel@owenbiesel· Aug 18

Meme format "Depends on the context" with the following panels:
Clara: Is f continuous?
Doctor: Depends on the context.
Doctor: In the standard topology? No.
Doctor: In the discrete topology? Yes.

Owen Biesel@owenbiesel· Aug 10

Here's a photo of me from when I visited Minneapolis earlier this summer. I happened to come across the same style bus shelter, and wearing the same shirt, as in my profile picture. Please pardon my facial expression; I seem to have gotten worse at selfies since 2022.

Photo of me using my finger to indicate the square spiral pattern of a glass bus shelter. My face is showing excitement, I guess?

Owen Biesel@owenbiesel· Jun 9

I had a lot of fun trying to make a Venn* diagram with a kite-shaped region for kites, and a parallelogram-shaped region for parallelograms, and so on... It's a great exercise for people who feel like they "know this already"! *Euler, I know www.owenbiesel.com/2020/11/30/a...

A Venn diagram of quadrilaterals, where each region is shaped like the type of quadrilateral it contains. For example, a brown rectangle intersects a teal rhombus in a pink square, because the intersection of the set of rectangles and the set of rhombi is the set of squares.

Owen Biesel@owenbiesel· Jun 4

Here's one I saved — apologies, I can't remember the source:

A multiple choice survey question with options "None", "Mild", "Moderate", "Severe", "Extreme", and "Prefer not to say". The question is "Age".

Owen Biesel@owenbiesel· May 20

Just cancelled Paramount+ for this reason! The terms of cancellation say "You acknowledge and agree that cancellation of your subscription is your sole recourse if you have any dissatisfaction, issue or concern related to Paramount+, ..." Well okay then!

Screenshot of Paramount+'s "We're sorry to see you go!" survey. The "Other (provide feedback below)" option is selected, and the provided feedback is "The loss of CBS's editorial independence means the loss of its customers."

Owen Biesel@owenbiesel· May 16

Photo of a mug on a store shelf. The mug has a slogan, the bottom half of which is obscured by a sticker. The slogan and sticker together say "The future is / reduced for quick sale: $2"

Owen Biesel@owenbiesel· Apr 10

Uh, do we really fund pediatric medical research and presidential election campaigns out of the same pile of donations? Definitely not the *biggest* US issue right now, but still: what??