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Sep 24, 2020

i continue to have no idea why this is but it’s always been weird to me how much better physicists are than mathematicians at naming things. mathematicians study “riemannian manifolds” or “shimura varieties” or whatever and physicists study “lasers” and “black holes” twitter.com/liminal_warmth

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QC (in Berlin 7/29-??? w/ COVID

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@QiaochuYuan

Sep 24, 2020

i guess it’s kinda cute that mathematicians are so insistent on honoring other mathematicians by naming stuff after them but it gets old after awhile. there’s a lack of imagination to it. very few mathematicians who seriously try to name things good, except like conway

QC (in Berlin 7/29-??? w/ COVID

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@QiaochuYuan

the worst names in any scientific field i’m aware of are probably the ones in anatomy tho. “dorsolateral prefrontal cortex”? “thoracic vertebrae”? fuck off with that nonsense. it’s fucked up gatekeeping to give these high-falutin’ hoity-toity names to stuff everybody has

7:42 PM · Sep 24, 2020Twitter for iPad

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bespoke: “sonic hedgehog” protein

QC (in Berlin 7/29-??? w/ COVID

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@QiaochuYuan

Sep 24, 2020

i'm kinda with the "frivolous" crowd on this one actually

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Vertebrae aren't systematic per se, including the divisions eg thoraic vs cervical. The dorsolateral part is part of a systematic naming scheme, but the frontal part is named after the bone. So it's 50-50.

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I think the anatomy names are the most low-brow of them all. Not named after historical figures, doesn't require any imagination. Extremely literal, sounds high-brow because latin.

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They are very descriptive Latin. The cingulate gyrus is a ridge that looks like a belt. The fusiform gyrus is spindle-shaped, and the angular gyrus is you guessed it. Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex - up and to the side really frontal bark. Amygdala is almond shaped.

Anders Sandberg

@anderssandberg

Sep 24, 2020

The mammillary bodies do look like a pair of breasts on the bottom of the brain. Locus coeruleus really is blueish, and substantia nigra is dark. OK, there are some clunkers: zona incerta - I have no clue where it is.

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