Nathaniel Virgo

@nathanielvirgo

I research applied category theory / complex systems. I post sporadically about maths, science, random creative projects. they/them

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Nathaniel Virgo@nathanielvirgo· 2d

eclipse viewed

Nathaniel Virgo@nathanielvirgo· Jun 30

It's not even by a small amount!

Wikipedia's aggregated graph of voter intention polls from July 2024 to present, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_United_Kingdom_general_election

It shows the green vote share increasing rapidly from about 9% to over 15% in Apr 2026, but then dropping precipitously from May 2026 onwards, currently at about 12% and trending sharply downwards.

Nathaniel Virgo@nathanielvirgo· Jun 10

I was surprised to find there isn't an official petition.parliament.uk petition asking the UK government to stop using X dot com. Do I know 5 people who would support a petition along the lines of the image? You don't need any qualification other than being a UK citizen.

Petition title: Stop using X.com for all official purposes

What you want the UK Government or Parliament to do: Recognise the danger that X.com presents to Britain, in terms of the influence of a foreign actor and lack of political neutrality, and immediately cease using it for all official and promotional purposes by government and individual MPs.

More information about your petition: Since its purchase in 2022, X (formally Twitter) cannot be seen as politically neutral. Its algorithm actively promotes the personal views of its owner, and entire sections of British society have stopped using it due to the overwhelming prevalence of extreme right-wing ideology on the platform. Yet X is still used as the primary social media outlet for outreach and promotion by the government and many of its MPs, leading to an extreme bias in who the government communicates with.

Nathaniel Virgo@nathanielvirgo· May 31

Oh, I asked this and then immediately found such an image on Wikipedia. I could delete it, or I could let you enjoy these absolute classic pixel fonts. upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/co...

An image showing the classic Amiga Workbench fonts (Emerald, Diamond, Ruby, Garnet, Sapphire, Topaz, Opal, Courier), each in a choice of 2 or 3 sizes

Nathaniel Virgo@nathanielvirgo· May 26

This didn't work in Japan because of the humidity, but here in the UK it's surprisingly effective. Air cooling by evaporation.

A box fan stands in front of an open window. In front of it is a bowl of water, into which is dipped a wet towel, which is suspended in front of the fan by hanging it on a ruler, which is held in place by a precariously balanced book acting as a counterweight. The fan blows air past the towel, evaporating the water that it wicks up from the bowl. The cooling can be boosted every now and then by pouring a little water over the towel to wet the top part.

Nathaniel Virgo@nathanielvirgo· Oct 19

However, Lotka does give some other Boltzmann references where Boltzmann might have said it more explicitly.

Nathaniel Virgo@nathanielvirgo· Oct 19

For Boltzmann I was thinking of this passage, which is a translated transcription of a talk called "the second law of thermodynamics", given in 1886. It might not be as explicit as later authors, but it's clear he understood the point.

Nathaniel Virgo@nathanielvirgo· Oct 14

If I click on "following" I just see this, I don't see any of my other feeds

Nathaniel Virgo@nathanielvirgo· Mar 20

I think it's a limit (a slightly generalised pullback), the universal thing that completes this diagram

A commutative diagram showing
* [0,1]^3, meaning the product of the unit interval with itself three times
* its three projections into [0,1]^2
* inclusions of the letters G, E, and B into each of those unit squares
* the universal property of the maximal subset of [0,1]^3 such that its three projections lie inside the letters G, E and B

Nathaniel Virgo@nathanielvirgo· Feb 4

experiment in light and texture, possibly unsuccessful

An aperiodic pattern with a 5-fold quasi-symmetry. The pattern is related to Penrose tiles, but it's made of soft and curvy shapes that blend into each other rather than discrete tiles. It hopefully has the appearance of a multicoloured bumpy surface illuminated by a cold light from the top right.

The height map is just a sum of five sine waves, and I used torch.autograd to find its gradient, in order to try and fake the illumination. In both this and the previous image I'm outputting values in the oklab colour space and then converting to RGB.

Nathaniel Virgo@nathanielvirgo· Feb 1

first attempt

an abstract artwork that looks sort of like three moons aligned vertically, with a warm light shining from above, creating thin crescent shapes. Behind the moons a series of red beams extend down from the top and curve toward the viewer, as if we are entering hyperspace or something

Nathaniel Virgo@nathanielvirgo· Jan 2

I wrote an equation that I thought was great, so I drew a star next to it, but then I realised it was wrong, so I drew a sad face on the star, but then I realised it was right after all, and now I've got pages of notes about "the sad star equation".

some handwritten string diagram equations, one of which has a sad star drawn next to it

Nathaniel Virgo@nathanielvirgo· Dec 12

Go home mathematical typewriter, you're drunk