August update

Hello patrons,

First off, I want to express a bit of guilt for not having any new videos out this month. Knowing that the current pace of output probably does not live up to the spirit of the generous pledges you all have made, if any of you would like a refund on the pledges for the last month or two, feel free to DM me and I'll happily process it, no hard feelings taken.

Galois saga status

Wheels have been turning on the Galois project, though I'll admit to being less efficient than I probably could have been. This month I did about 8 different filmed interviews with various mathematicians, with the aim of inserting a few snippets through this first video to communicate to the audience how both the story of Galois and his legacy have a very special place in the culture of math.

The interviews did not disappoint, and there's some great material there, but the way things interviews shaped up did end up changing my plans for chapter 1 a bit. The ensuing rewrite set me back on my timeline, but for the most part, the artwork continues to progress nicely, and Vince has written some great new music for the series. From here on forward, it's mostly a matter of continuing to chug away at the visuals.

There's also been parallel work underway for future chapters, which for the most part should be smaller and easier to take on than the first one. So if all goes well once the first one is out, there should be a halfway decent cadence of new videos to follow.

SoME2

The second Summer of Math Exposition is now coming to a close. The submission deadline was two weeks ago, and since then the peer review has been underway, which is honestly one of the best parts of the whole event. That's just about to wrap up, which means soon I'll be setting aside time to look at the top 100 entries to select some winners and award prizes, with the help of a few invited guest judges in the math communication community.

I've tried to hold off from looking at entries until I jump into official judging, but from the few that have surfaced on my radar organically in the last few weeks, I'm very excited for the outcome here. Even if it's half as successful as it was last year, it would be tremendously worth it.

Huge kudos goes to James Schloss for helping to coordinate and organize all of this, and keeping tricky pieces of logistics like the peer review program running smoothly.

Looking forward to what's to come,
Grant