I'm an artist who turned tail and became a teacher—then geoscientist, working in mineralogy, sustainability and nonviolence.
Los Angeles, California
Joined June 2012
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If you are in another country and want to help with US:
Set up trade deals with co-operatives in the US. This will help create more co-ops in the US, and offset the influence of the horrible corporate culture here. Current US politics are an extension of their corporate culture.
Daniel S Helman, PhD retweeted
Sırbistan'da öğrenciler doğrudan demokrasi yöntemini seçim siyasetine taşıdılar.
Liderlere dayalı, yukarıdan aşağıya bir örgütlenme yerine, herkesin söz alabildiği öğrenci genel kurulları (plenum) oluşturdular. Kararlar tartışılarak, mümkün olduğunca uzlaşmayla alındı.
Bu yöntemi üniversitelerin dışına da taşıdılar. Mahallelerde, kentlerde ve köylerde yurttaş meclisleri (zborovi) kuruldu. İnsanlar kendi sorunlarını tartışmak, çözüm önermek ve birlikte karar almak için toplandı.
250 kişilik milletvekili aday listesini de şöyle oluşturdular:
1- Önce 250 adaylık kontenjanı, öğrenci sayılarına göre altı üniversite kenti arasında paylaştırdılar. Belgrad'ın listeye hâkim olmaması için diğer kentlerin de üst sıralarda temsil edilmesini sağladılar. Ardından her kentin kontenjanını fakülteler arasında dağıttılar.
2- Ülke genelinde 80'den fazla fakültede öğrenci genel kurulları toplandı. Öğrenciler kendileri aday olmadı ama her biri aday önerebildi ve neden o kişiyi önerdiğini açıkladı. İsimler tartışıldı, önce uzlaşma arandı, gerektiğinde oylama yapıldı.
3- Mevcut siyasi kadrolara kapıyı kapattılar. İktidar partilerinin mevcut ve eski üyelerini, iktidar adına görev yapmış siyasetçileri ve bürokratları, muhalefet partilerinin üst düzey yöneticilerini aday göstermediler. Böylece hem iktidardan hem de yerleşik muhalefetten bağımsız bir liste oluşturdular.
4- Fakülteler birbirlerinin adaylarını da denetledi. Önerilen bütün isimler ortak bir listede toplandı ve tüm fakültelerin incelemesine açıldı. İtirazlar öğrenci kurullarında tartışıldı. Adayın elenmesi için kurulların yarısından fazlasının veto etmesi gerekiyordu. Tek bir fakültenin itirazı yeterli değildi.
5- Elenen veya çekilen adayların yerine yedekler getirildi. Böylece profesörlerin, doktorların, bilim insanlarının, işçilerin, sanatçıların ve aktivistlerin yer aldığı 250 kişilik liste ortaya çıktı.
Daniel S Helman, PhD retweeted
Tehran’s Museum of World Art is a hidden gem that deserves way more attention. Housed in a single complex, it actually contains four distinct collections under one roof: World Art, Islamic Art, Antique Gems & Jewelry, and Iranian Money. Let me walk you through each one.
🧵 1/13
Daniel S Helman, PhD retweeted
In a little-noticed webpage update, the Environmental Protection Agency has announced a plan to decommission its online web archive at the end of the year, a move that would wipe tens of thousands of publicly available environmental resources from the web. motherjones.com/environment/…
Daniel S Helman, PhD retweeted
“You have 2 minutes to leave your home. If you don’t leave, we will shoot everyone.”
-Zionism, summarized in 16 words by Ahmad Imraish, from Hebron, Palestine.
Daniel S Helman, PhD retweeted
In 2007, a 16-year-old from Guilin named Hong Wang missed the single place Peking University's maths department held for her province, so she enrolled in earth sciences instead. She transferred into maths a year later, then doubted she was good enough for research and left to spend a semester at an architecture firm in Paris.
She came back to mathematics. In February 2025, she and Joshua Zahl posted a 127-page proof of the Kakeya conjecture in three dimensions, which grew out of a 1917 question about how little space a needle needs to turn and point in every direction. In July 2026, at 35, she won the Fields Medal, only the third woman to receive it.
She once doubted she could do research. Her proof settled a problem that had defeated several Fields medalists.
Daniel S Helman, PhD retweeted
BREAKING: Mary Peltola, candidate for U.S. Senate in Alaska, was traveling with her family when her vehicle was struck by another vehicle, requiring medical response.
Her events today and tomorrow are canceled.
We'll provide more details as they become available.
Daniel S Helman, PhD retweeted
Everyone needs to know what actually happened in Serbia.
Instead of students just protest against their government, the students organized themselves into a student list and ran in elections against their government—and they have just won.
Dear Serbia, congratulations on your victory; you have just opened a new door in protesting. This is history
Daniel S Helman, PhD retweeted
Brazil rejected Bolsonaro. Serbia's students beat Vučić. Machado is home in Venezuela.
What a day for democracy.
Daniel S Helman, PhD retweeted
Shady stuff happening in Brazil’s election, with certain pro-Lula areas experiencing public officials refusing to release 100% of bus fleets, meaning people can’t get to vote in time. Many domestic flights to Lula’s northeast bastions have been cancelled too.
Daniel S Helman, PhD retweeted
BREAKING: Taybeh, the last entirely Palestinian Christian village in the West Bank, is under a complete blockade by Israeli forces: no one allowed in or out.
I spoke with a resident of Taybeh who described the impact of the movement restrictions:
"You can’t plan your day. Checkpoints close suddenly and you get stuck and delayed and your day gets messed up. It’s frustrating, it wastes you time, you get emotionally and physically drained.
What bothers me the most is you’re no longer in control of your life becasue you’re no longer in control of your time, your route or your plans.
You start working out your day according to the closures, change appointments, cancel and postpone things you have to get done.
They control your movement, so they control you."
Daniel S Helman, PhD retweeted
In 1826, a poor 24-year-old from Norway named Niels Abel walked into the Paris Academy with what he believed was his greatest work. Cauchy, one of the most famous mathematicians alive and one of its two referees, barely looked at it, and the paper disappeared.
Abel went home broke and sick. Thinking it was lost forever, he wrote its main idea out again from memory in just two pages and called it simply "A Theorem." He died at 26.
Two days later a letter arrived offering him a professorship in Berlin.
His idea was that sums of certain integrals over a curve always collapse to a fixed number of them, and that number measures the shape of the curve. Riemann turned this into the idea of a surface's genus, its number of holes.
For the simplest curved case, elliptic curves, it means points on the curve can be added like numbers. That addition is behind Wiles' proof of Fermat's Last Theorem and the cryptography that keeps your phone and bank cards secure today.
The lost paper was found after his death, then lost again until 1952 in Florence.
Daniel S Helman, PhD retweeted
There were very few world leaders with the courage and principle to advocate for Julian Assange while the West relentlessly persecuted him for a decade for exposing their multiple grave crimes.
It won't matter to the average Brazilian voter in tomorrow's election (understandably so: most struggle to overcome basic deprivations), but Julian -- on the eve of Lula's last election tomorrow -- commendably recalls that Lula (for no real political gain) always crusaded for his freedom (Lula did the same for Snowden):
Lula vs. Bolsonaro: I was held in solitary confinement for 1,901 days for revealing the truth about the U.S. government's killings and espionage, including against Brazil and its industries. Out of power, Lula fought for my freedom. In power, Lula discussed my persecution with Pope Francis, who decided to meet with my family and offer help. After my release, Lula and I met in Rome to mourn the Holy Father's passing. Lula was kind to my children and asked for nothing in return. In contrast, Jair and Flávio Bolsonaro did nothing and said nothing. Yet without the ability to say no to Washington and Tel Aviv, there can be no domestic policy, only foreign instructions. Those orders are always the same: "Expand our theft of resources and wages, and keep your mouths shut about us murdering children." Sellouts will surrender everything in exchange for a cut, even their own tongues.
Daniel S Helman, PhD retweeted
Physicists in Okinawa have floated a diamond about a centimetre wide and pushed it up and down using nothing but the spins of electrons inside it, pumped by pulses of green laser light.
That object is roughly a hundred million times heavier than anything moved by spin force before. So, a quantum force now shows up directly on something heavy enough for gravity to matter.
Daniel S Helman, PhD retweeted
Here is a beautiful list! 125 free math textbooks, written by the mathematicians who teach the courses and shared on their own university pages. No sign-up, no paywall, no pirated copies. From high school algebra to graduate analysis. 👇
abakcus.com/book-lists/free-…
Daniel S Helman, PhD retweeted
tomorrow is the last ever Pythagorean theorem day that we will ever get to experience. There’s only ever been 12 of them ever in our lifetime. And they will never be one ever again. How fun!🙂
Daniel S Helman, PhD retweeted
In a little-noticed webpage update, the Environmental Protection Agency has announced a plan to decommission its online web archive at the end of the year, a move that would wipe tens of thousands of publicly available environmental resources from the web. motherjones.com/environment/…
