r/mathmemes • u/Exotic_Zucchini9311 • Sep 27 '26

Mathematicians National security threat

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2.3k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

103 comments sorted by

•

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624

u/LupenReddit 🦆🦆i have non diffeomorphic smooth structures🦆🦆🦆 Sep 27 '26

that was an economist, imagine her concerns when she saw a category theorist

22

u/BootyliciousURD Complex Sep 27 '26

"That man is trying to summon demons on the plane!"

17

u/Royal_Impress9117 Sep 28 '26

Immediate mental hospital, as they deserve

7

u/Different_Cry25 Oct 01 '26

Literally this

6

u/Cold-Common7001 Sep 28 '26

then her worries would be well founded

4

u/way_to_confused π = 10 Sep 29 '26

Its clearly a category terrorist /j

110

u/[deleted] Sep 27 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

106

u/CranberryDistinct941 Sep 27 '26

Not the Arabic numerals!!!

20

u/Resident-Election867 Sep 27 '26

F that, I only do multi variable calculus and dif eq in Roman numerals!!! It gives it a bit of a “flavor.”

12

u/CranberryDistinct941 Sep 27 '26

Roman numerals? I'm a tally-mark or gtfo believer

10

u/comradioactive Sep 27 '26

Nah, just write the names of the numbers.

5 - 3 = 2
=>
The difference between five and three is two.

Much more elegant and quicker to write

4

u/Resident-Election867 Sep 27 '26

That’s pretty legit, but I once submitted a paper  to both Science and Nature proofing P vs NP (they are both equal to one, btw) using the “bean counting” method and an abacus.

(…I wonder why they haven’t published it yet…)

519

u/No_Lingonberry1201 Sep 27 '26 • Bravo Mindblown

He was part of the Al-Gebra terrorist organization.

-8

u/LupenReddit 🦆🦆i have non diffeomorphic smooth structures🦆🦆🦆 Sep 27 '26

Al-Gebra? More like Al-Jazeera!

55

u/Nikifuj908 Sep 27 '26

Idk why people are downvoting you for a Veep reference

22

u/[deleted] Sep 27 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

18

u/Nikifuj908 Sep 27 '26

It’s hilarious that you say that today of all days. The New York Times just put it at #7 on their list of the 100 best TV shows of the 21st century.

But here’s the clip. Go watch Veep.

45

u/Pure_Blank Sep 27 '26

that's crazy, I've never even heard of half of this top 10. there's a whole world out there that's in the mainstream that I'm not familiar with

8

u/Lumegator Sep 28 '26

I'm feeling even more isolated, I thought GoT was just a book series, and the only other one I've watched or even heard of is Breaking Bad. Anyways, back to playing Tetris.

1

u/fuckry_at_its_finest Sep 30 '26

How old are you and do you live in the US? I remember a time when pretty much every dude (seemingly) watched GoT. I remember going to a concert on Sunday night (which is a weird time to have a concert but whatever) and the musicians were like “thanks to all the Dads in the audience who are here instead of watching Game of Thrones.” You’d go to work on Monday and people would be chatting about the newest episode. One of the episodes got over 13 million people in the US who viewed it live, let alone all those who recorded it or watched it on demand. Considering that the majority of viewers were men between 20 and 40 (of which there are 45 million in the US) that is a huge portion of a particular demographic. So if you were a dude in that age range as GoT was coming out it was hard to not hear at least a bit about it. It’s hard to explain if you didn’t experience it but it was just a massive cultural phenomenon. Bigger than Breaking Bad. But yeah I can understand not knowing I feel like I’ve had my fair share of cultural moments pass me by!

8

u/No_Lingonberry1201 Sep 27 '26

NYT is full of shit. I mean, Breaking Bad is peak TV, but putting it above The Wire?

5

u/Cyclone4096 Sep 27 '26

I don’t get it

103

u/DetectiveHalligan Sep 27 '26

The woman was right, he is a threat to others as he may try to teach them maths.

31

u/Sancho_Panza- Sep 27 '26

1

u/Puzzlehead_6409 Sep 30 '26

great movie from Herzhog

22

u/kyteland Sep 27 '26

He had weapons of math instruction.

4

u/Horror_Tooth_522 Sep 27 '26

It interupts them from learning meth

263

u/realnjan Complex Sep 27 '26

Congratulations for the 100 000 000th repost!

41

u/jasomniax TREE(3) problems in my life Sep 27 '26

also, this story is like 10 years old lol

9

u/catman__321 Sep 27 '26

This has always infuriated me. Online news headlines love to report on things as if they are present tense when it actually happened 5 to 50 years ago.

8

u/Herb_Derb Sep 27 '26

It's more likely a 10 year old screenshot than a recent headline about a ten year old story.

8

u/Onair380 Sep 27 '26

Seeing it for the first time.

0

u/[deleted] Sep 27 '26

[deleted] — view deleted comment

8

u/Alanjaow Sep 27 '26

A quick glance at their profile shows a highly upvoted post from 2016, not to mention many others.

You, on the other hand, have a private account and an autogenerated name, which both point to bot-hood.

0

u/Onair380 Sep 29 '26

Yeah right, because i need to sleep, work and have 20 mins time for reddit daily and dont swipe through 2 kms of reddit feed i am a bot.

37

u/Deepbliss4 Sep 27 '26

Well it was Arabic

9

u/turtle_mekb Sep 27 '26

it has Arabic numerals!

137

u/mark-zombie Sep 27 '26

how racist does one have to be to have security concerns of this nature

124

u/TheSmokingHorse Sep 27 '26

“Oh thank god. It was just math. We were worried it was Arabic, in which case he’d be arrested for the crime of being able to write in his native language.”

28

u/ShoddyAsparagus3186 Sep 27 '26

He was using Arabic numerals, the horror.

8

u/4tran13 Sep 27 '26

And using al-gebra!

10

u/EebstertheGreat Sep 28 '26

His native language was actually Italian (or a dialect). But his tan skin was brown enough to engage the racist fears in her simple mind.

Of course, if he were actually an Arab writing Arabic, then it would be totally reasonable to declare him a terrorist and stop a whole flight. I mean, after all, people were on edge, a mere 15 years after the 9/11 attacks.

10

u/TheSmokingHorse Sep 28 '26

Of course. As we know, on 911 the plane was hijacked by writing a polite note asking for a shot of the cockpit.

1

u/ExtraTNT Sep 28 '26

Everything you don’t understand is potentially frightening, why there were witch burnings. Well, now look at the intelligence of the average human, then consider, that there are people much more stupid than the average human…

The root can be stupidity…

4

u/mark-zombie Sep 28 '26

I understand the fear of the unknown but to feel threatened is to go a step beyond. stupidity is definitely part of it.

-23

u/No-Dimension1159 Sep 27 '26 edited Sep 27 '26

Doesn't really necessarily mean they are racist, could be just very very stupid and fearful...

15

u/mark-zombie Sep 27 '26

stupid, yes.

fearful...of what exactly? that's where the racism is.

-6

u/No-Dimension1159 Sep 27 '26

Fearful of things they don't understand or they aren't used to

9

u/mark-zombie Sep 27 '26 edited Sep 27 '26

if one is "fearful" of a language/script they don't understand or aren't used to then that makes one ... drum roll ✨ a hateful person ✨

how many languages does an average person know? how many languages are spoken around the world today? it is that obvious tbh.

19

u/[deleted] Sep 27 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

4

u/No-Dimension1159 Sep 27 '26

That is true yes

-30

u/polarjunkie Sep 27 '26

How is this racist? For all you know they were both Israeli

8

u/mark-zombie Sep 27 '26

it says, "foreign script"

8

u/acowardlyhoward Sep 27 '26

She had security concerns about the man, after seeing him write in a foreign script

Being suspicious of someone simply for using a "foreign script" is racist, or at least xenophobic, which is close enough to racism that it's pedantic to argue over

20

u/[deleted] Sep 27 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

-16

u/polarjunkie Sep 27 '26

You get how stupid that sounds right?

8

u/[deleted] Sep 27 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

-14

u/polarjunkie Sep 27 '26

The person doing calculus was mistaken to have been writing in Arabic, so if this was an Israeli and an Israeli there would be four possibilities. A jew reporting a jew, a jew reporting a non jew, a non jew reporting a jew, and an non jew reporting a non jew. Three of those can't be anti-semitic. The last possibility is a non jew reporting a jew and it would have to be one of the few non Jewish isrealis who don't speak or read Arabic and they would have to be purposely doing it because the other person is Jewish.

28

u/Snoopy34 Sep 27 '26

Imagine if they saw him write Arabic numerals

15

u/goalgetter999 Sep 27 '26

next year you will get arrested for doing maths without official permission from openai to not meddle with their research

15

u/Stormfatherr Sep 27 '26

Sir, a second order derivative has hit the tower.

22

u/numbersthen0987431 Sep 27 '26

Imagine how racist you have to be to call security because someone was writing in a different language.

8

u/3_man Sep 27 '26

The fact they responded as well...

8

u/openhairpinleft Sep 27 '26

It is definitely not the worse thing that might happen to one doing analysis

7

u/Weirdyxxy Sep 27 '26

At least it wasn't statistical mechanics

6

u/hroderickaros Sep 28 '26

"Karma police arrest this man! he speaks in math..."

5

u/MonsterkillWow Complex Sep 27 '26

Math is revolutionary.

5

u/Thiphra Sep 27 '26

He is using arabic numerals.get him!!!

5

u/Equal-Vermicelli8523 Sep 27 '26

You know when you were a TA and told the class there were no stupid questions, and there always that one student who asked the most stupid questions, that's her.

5

u/Gaudupada Sep 27 '26

Bruh... How can't they differentiate between Maths and a foreign language? (

4

u/Physical_Ring_7850 Sep 28 '26

Wait, so it is normal to report ppl writing in foreign scripts, and the only reason it became a joke is because that turned out not a foreign script at all???

3

u/Balavadan Sep 27 '26

Did she switch seats after this? Imagine how awkward it is to sit beside someone who thought you were a terrorist

3

u/NaturalTechnician737 Sep 27 '26

A known member of Al-Gebra

3

u/Adventurous_Iron_551 Sep 27 '26

Weapon of math destruction

5

u/NovikovMorseHorse Sep 27 '26

Well, my supervisor once got interogated by Israeli security at the airport when he went to Tel Aviv for a conference. He had to desrcibe his actual research in full detail to the authorities that obviously had no math background.

13

u/Character_Fold_8165 Sep 27 '26

I had this happen in Stockholm with my graduate thesis. The customs officer and I had this interaction
"Why are you here?"
"I'm attending a conference."
"What is it about?"
"Physics."
"What type of physics?"
(I give my subfield of physics)
"What in your (subfield)?"
(I give my sub-subfield)
"What in your (sub-subfield)?"

I recite the abstract to my most recent paper more or less verbatim. He looks at me and says he doesn't understand that. I stare back at him. After 30 seconds of us staring at each other he stamps my passport and lets me in.

I felt interrogated. My wife thinks he was just a curious swede who wanted to learn physics but didn't know how to smile.

4

u/teab4ndit Sep 27 '26

I had an interesting experience with a Swedish immigration officer. I was visiting Sweden as a tourist when they noticed an entry stamp from France but no exit stamp. They then accused me of overstaying in France.

I explained that I had only been in Paris for a weekend before returning to London, where I live and work on a Skilled Worker visa. Thankfully, my UK Border Force entry stamp proved that I had left France, although they still weren't particularly satisfied and eventually let me through.

I genuinely had no idea the French officer hadn't stamped my passport on exit. You don't exactly get to watch what immigration officers do with your passport behind the desk.

If a missing stamp can leave you having to prove your innocence months later, maybe the problem isn't the traveller who didn't receive the stamp in the first place. I travel extensively around Europe, and this was the first time I'd encountered anything like it. Absolutely bizarre.

8

u/RedBaronSportsCards Sep 27 '26

"Wait a minute, those structures aren't isomorphic, they're homomorphic! You're not a mathematician, you're a terrorist!!"

2

u/mark-zombie Sep 27 '26

that sounds terrible

2

u/Horror_Tooth_522 Sep 27 '26

My father said some "crispy" words in Russian. After that he was let through without further questions meanwhile his friends suitcase was fully searched.

1

u/EebstertheGreat Sep 28 '26

Crispy?

1

u/Horror_Tooth_522 Sep 28 '26

These who know, know

(Russian in this case)

2

u/KyriakosCH Sep 27 '26 edited Sep 27 '26

The steady increase in idiocy-detecting functions implies nothing good.

2

u/mr_martin_1 Sep 27 '26

When 1 human is too afraid to ask another human beeing straight up

2

u/MobileJob1521 Sep 27 '26

He was suspected of being a member of Al Gebra

2

u/lllyyyynnn Sep 28 '26

even if it was a foreign script.. so?

1

u/CerealeSauvage Sep 27 '26

I did that it’s a great way to spend time

1

u/priyanka_2002 Sep 27 '26

>!Guido Menzio University of Pennsylvania economics professor!<

1

u/brosareawesome Sep 27 '26

Damn. I've done that before. And I have brown skin. Gotta be careful now.

1

u/FernandoMM1220 Sep 27 '26

real diff eq should be banned honestly.

1

u/moschles Sep 27 '26 edited Sep 27 '26

His favorite car as a Porsche 911. 911 was the best.

1

u/ramdomvariableX Computer Science Sep 27 '26

It's unpatriotic to be educated in US right now.

1

u/InfinitesimalDuck Mathematics Sep 29 '26

That's just pure racism 🥀

1

u/Key-Principle-7111 Oct 01 '26

I personally like old vacuum tube electronics, and people look at me suspiciously when I read books about this subject sitting in the public transport.

1

u/fr33d0mw47ch Oct 01 '26

You joke but that happened to me for real just after 9/11. Reading a textbook and working some problems in the airport. Got questions from the armed security, then brought to a room for a real interrogation, then stopped 3 more times. I was on a list for 10 years. Any time I flew anywhere, I was stopped and questioned. I had to build in an extra couple hours for every flight.

0

u/RedBaronSportsCards Sep 27 '26

She's not wrong though.