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the Australian stinging bush, also known as the “suicide plant” after stories of both humans and animals killing themselves to escape the pain it produces. When you touch this plant, the neurotoxin-coated hollow hairs covering it pierce your skin, causing an unbearable pain described as similar to being burnt with acid and electrocuted at the same time, and the only treatment is to soak the affected area of your body in hydrochloric acid and then remove the plant hairs with tweezers—carefully, because if they break off inside the skin, that only increases the pain.

— How to Invent Everything by Ryan North

It is unlikely that Daina would ever have thought up the idea of hyperbolic crochet had she been born a man, which makes her inventions a noteworthy artifact in the cultural history of mathematics, where women have long been underrepresented. Crochet, in fact, is just one example in recent years of a traditionally female craft inspiring mathematicians to explore new techniques. Together with mathematical knitting, quiltmaking, embroidery and weaving, the academic discipline is now known as “math and the fiber arts.”

— Here's looking at Euclid by Alex Bellos

Poincaré once received a letter from the French physicist Gabriel Lippmann, who brilliantly summed up why the normal distribution was so widely exalted: “Everybody believes in the [bell curve]: the experimenters, because they think it can be proved by mathematics; and the mathematicians, because they believe it has been established by observation.” In science as in so many other spheres, we often choose to see what serves our own interests.

— Here's looking at Euclid by Alex Bellos

In the 1970s, a fascinating (if brutal) experiment examined how important a sense of control was for elderly patients in a nursing home. Some patients were allowed to choose how their rooms were arranged and allowed to choose a plant to look after. The others were told how their rooms would be and had a plant chosen and tended for them. The result after 18 months was striking. The patients who had control over their rooms had a 15 percent death rate, but for those who had no control the rate was 30 percent. Feeling in control can keep us alive.

— Here's looking at Euclid by Alex Bellos

There is no practical reason to know pi to 72 digits, or to 35 digits for that matter. Four decimal places are enough for the engineers of precision instruments. Ten decimal places are sufficient to calculate the circumference of the Earth to within a fraction of a centimeter. With 39 decimal places, it is possible to compute the circumference of a circle surrounding the known universe to within an accuracy of a radius of a hydrogen atom.

— Here's looking at Euclid by Alex Bellos

A piece of wood was split down the middle, giving two parts—the stock and the foil. A value was marked—tallied—on the stock and was also marked on the foil, which acted like a receipt. If I lent some money to the Bank of England I would be given a stock with a notch indicating the amount—which explains the origins of the words “stockholder” and “stockbroker”—while the bank kept the foil, which had a matching notch.

— Here's looking at Euclid by Alex Bellos

our understanding of the passing of time is often logarithmic. I remember the years of my childhood passing a lot more slowly than the years seem to fly by now. Yet, conversely, yesterday seems a lot longer than the whole of last week.

— Here's looking at Euclid by Alex Bellos

The Munduruku and the children seem to be making their decisions about where numbers lie by estimating the ratios between amounts. In considering ratios, it is logical that the distance between five and one is much greater than the distance between ten and five.

— Here's looking at Euclid by Alex Bellos

The true voyage of discovery consists not of going to new places, but of having a new pair of eyes. —Marcel Proust (1871-1922)

— Elements of Computing Systems by Noam Nisan, Shimon Schocken

“They don’t hate us,” Bobbie said, her voice tired. “They’re afraid of us.” “Then why do they act like they hate us?” David’s father said with something like triumph. “Because that’s what fear looks like when it needs someplace to go.”

— Gods of Risk by James S. A. Corey

As Alan Kay once famously quipped to Steve Jobs, the Mac was “the first personal computer worth criticizing.”

— The Friendly Orange Glow by Brian Dear

“The elementary school system…turns out to be one of man’s most inventive forms of inexpensive babysitting. In spite of how we complain about the price.”

— The Friendly Orange Glow by Brian Dear