oh no
dude
666
so uh i was reminded of silly bands
recently you know those things that were
in last year where you'd be like hey
check out this wiggly thing around my
wrist it's like a bracelet except check
it out after i take it off it turns into
uh
ebola
no way it's just tangled up it's
actually uh the splash a dolphin makes
as it leaves this world because it's
about to be destroyed by aliens or maybe
it's just inside out it's obviously
cthulhu
or upside down i guess it's a hippogriff
anyway besides that they're awesome and
the ambiguity is fun they kind of
demonstrate one of the basic ideas of
topology all of these shapes are
topological circles and no matter how
you bend or stretch this thing it's
still essentially a loop and no matter
how you manipulate two of them you still
won't be able to get them linked
together like this without breaking one
nor will you be able to tie a knot in it
though you could probably do a pretty
convincing unknot a pretty cool way to
link them is like this and if you can
prove that there's no way to unlink them
without going around either my hand or
mine the rest of my body you might just
be a topologist let's just add some more
for good measure okay but as much as i'm
interested in questions like how to
predict what the inverse of a silly band
shape will be and what are some
topologically interesting ways to link
them i'm also interested in amusing
myself in stupid ways
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