This spoiler, in addition to the humorous shirts and verse, includes some that are in dead earnest, inspired by a feeling of outrage.

Spoilers for Shirts

My other car is an A-10 refers to the Fairchild Republic A-10 Thunderbolt II, commonly known as the Warthog, an extremely effective ground support airplane.

My other car is an SR-71 refers to the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird, colloquially known as Blackbird, a Mach 3+ strategic reconnaissance aircraft retired by the US Air Force in 1998.

"Which part of $(γ^{μ} (i ℏ \partial_{μ} - \frac{e}{c} A_{μ}) - m c) ψ = 0$ don't you understand?" asks about the Dirac wave equation for the electron with minimal coupling to the electromagnetic field.

The DOX diagrams are puns on the nomenclature in organic chemistry for benzene rings with two radicals; they are designated as ortho, meta, or para depending on whether the radicals are adjacent to, separated from, or opposite to each other.

Vyacheslav Viktorovich Volodin is the 10th Chairman of the Russian State Duma. On 6 July 2022, Volodin warned that Russia could demand back Alaska, which I view as stupidity above and beyond the call of duty.

We may take a lot of naps but we’re still woke. refers to the GOP’s demonization of racial justice. The design was created at the request of my wife Marianne Gelfand Metz.

The only Trigonometry I ever needed to know refers to Leonhard Euler ’s formula $e^{i θ} = cos θ + i sin θ$

"Which part of $R_{μ ν} - \frac{1}{2} R g_{μ ν} + Λ g_{μ ν} = \frac{8 π G}{c^{4}} T_{μ ν}$ don't you understand?" asks about the field equation , with a Cosmological constant , of General Relativity .

The Hessian matrix $(\begin{matrix} \frac{\partial f^{2}}{\partial x^{i} \partial x^{j}} \end{matrix})$ is the matrix of second partial derivatives. Its trace, ∇⋅∇ƒ, often occurs in wave equations of scalar fields. Not to be confused with the Jacobian matrix, $(\begin{matrix} \frac{\partial f^{i}}{\partial x^{j}} \end{matrix})$ or with the Wronskian determinant, $| \frac{d^{i - 1} f_{i}}{d x^{i - 1}} |$ . The caption My father's manse has many Hessians is a play on words based on a sentence in the Christian scriptures, John 14:2

$\int \frac{1}{c \cdot cabin} d cabin$ is a pun on the word log and the word sea. $\int \frac{1}{x} d x$ is the natural logarithm of x, or log x, Usually written as ln to indicate a base of e. so $\int \frac{1}{cabin} d cabin$ is log cabin and $\int \frac{1}{c \cdot cabin} d cabin$ is log cabin over c (sea), or houseboat.

A large cardinal in set theory is a cardinal number whose existence has to be stipulated by an axiom. The Hebrew letter ℵ and the greek letter Ω are conventionally used to designate a cardinal number and the first uncountable ordinal number , respectively. The nomenclature ℵ_Ω refers to the Ωth transfinite cardinal, counting from zero. Technically 2^Ω is not a large cardinal, but it is large enough for purposes of the joke.

Sophie Germain, Sofia Kovalevskaya, Olga Aleksandrovna Ladyzhenskaya, Maryam Mirzakhani, Amalie Emmy Noether, Karen Keskulla Uhlenbeck, and Maryna Viazovska were female mathematicians; Emmy revolutionized Abstract Algebra. Her definition and exploitation of ideals alone would have made her a giant of mathematics — her work was, in a word, ideal. The web version also lists Claire Voisin. David Hilbert and Felix Klein were German mathematicians who championed her. Mirzakhani and Viazovska won the Fields Medal (2014 and 2022 respectively), the only women to do so. Mirzakhani also won the Clay Research Award in 2014. Uhlenbeck won the Abel Prize in 2019, all roughly equivalent to a Nobel Prize. Ladyzhenskaya was shortlisted for the Fields Medal in 1958; a prize in mathematical physics is named after her. Voisin won the Crafoord Prize in 2024, the first woman to do so.

Emmy is the cover girl, not for her eponymous theorems connecting symmetries to conserved quantities — those she might have considered throwaways — but because her contributions to abstract algebra changed the landscape of mathematics permanently. The title is a deliberate slap in the face for misogynists. The obvious message is yes they can; the more subtle one is that women’s historical scarcity in mathematics reflects the obstacles society put in their path, not any lack of ability — Emmy herself lectured for years unpaid and under Hilbert’s name because Göttingen would not grant a woman a faculty position. Hilbert is widely quoted — via Constance Reid’s 1970 biography, with the exact wording varying by retelling, and no primary source I could verify — as retorting to the objecting senate, the Senate is not a bathhouse. True or embellished, the line has outlived its skeptics.

The shirt grew out of a long-running joke between me and a friend about the delicious irony of a book with that title being written by such distinguished mathematicians. Assuming the joke was too obvious to have gone unmade, I spent years searching for such a shirt — and found nothing. I eventually concluded that if I wanted to own one, I would have to design it myself. This shirt was also the occasion for switching print-on-demand providers: the previous publisher refused the design on the grounds that it was offensive; CafePress accepted it.

Тварь (tvar’) literally translates as “beast” or “creature,” but its connotation in Russian is considerably harsher than that literal gloss — a fitting epithet for the people behind the Bucha massacre.

The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) has a tradition of publishing humorous Requests For Comments (RFCs) on April Fools Day. RFC 1149, A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers, is a classic from 1990. The text of the shirt gives a whole new meaning to the concept of dropped packets. Sponsored by People Eating Transmission Animals (PETA).

Small Czech refers to Antonín Leopold Dvořák and Bedřich Smetana , Czech composers of the 19^th and early 20^th century. Musically they were not small Czechs but giants. Representative works include Dvořák’s Symphony No. 8In my youth numbered No. 4 in G major (I would never deny that Symphony No. 9In my youth numbered No. 5 in E minor (“From the New World”) is a beloved masterpiece, but IMHO No. 8 is better), his cello concerto, and Slavonic Dances; and Smetana’s Má vlast, especially Vyšehrad (the high castle above Prague) and Vltava, and the comic opera The Bartered Bride.

Paul Joseph Goebbels was the Nazi Minister of propaganda. The stylized GOP elephant refers to the US Republican Party . Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin was a Lieutenant Colonel in the KGB and the director of the FSB before becoming dictator of Russia. Prominent GOP members defended President Trump's love affair with Putin and the January 6^th insurrection.

Butcher of Bucha (Puta is a vulgarism, not a typo) depicts Vladimir Putin in reference to the Bucha massacre of March 2022, in which Russian forces killed hundreds of Ukrainian civilians. This is a cry of pain, not a humor shirt.

Party of Treason depicts the GOP elephant flanked by Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Minister of Propaganda, and Vladimir Putin, former KGB Lieutenant Colonel and current dictator of Russia. The shirt refers to the January 6, 2021 insurrection and to prominent GOP members’ defence of President Trump’s Russia ties and sympathy for Putin. The Goebbels photograph is Bundesarchiv Bild 146-1968-101-20A, CC BY-SA 3.0 DE. The Putin photograph is from kremlin.ru, CC BY 4.0. The GOP elephant is public domain.

There is a thing one says, “Look, this is new!” is based on Qohelet (Ecclesiastes) 1:9–10. The verse reads, in the affirmative: “There is a thing that one says, ‘Look, this is new!’ — it has already existed for ages, which were before us.” There are echoes of this in the famous Santayana observation, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” The shirt displays verse 1:10; the web version also includes 1:9 (“there is nothing new under the sun”), the more familiar formulation.

Support our troops, not the brass is a political shirt demanding that Congress fund adequate care for veterans and lower-ranking personnel. The Kipling references — Tommy Atkins and The Last of the Light Brigade — illustrate that the gap between rhetoric about supporting troops and actual funding for their welfare is not new. Plus ça change… (Rudyard Kipling)

Duma Dork refers to Vyacheslav Viktorovich Volodin, Chairman of the Russian State Duma. On 6 July 2022 Volodin warned that Russia could demand back Alaska, a claim widely regarded as geopolitical bluster. The shirt uses a portrait photograph of Volodin.

Woke is a verbal pun: the shirt depicts four sleeping kittens with the caption We may take a lot of naps but we’re still woke — a response to the GOP’s demonization of racial justice awareness. The design was created at the request of my wife Marianne Gelfand Metz. Available on CafePress; the kitten photograph is used under a Creative Commons license (license verification pending).

A man’s P should exceed his V paraphrases Robert Browning’s poem Andrea del Sarto: Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for? P and V are semaphore operations (from Dutch proberen and verhogen, informally remembered as “Please” and “Velcome”) for requesting and releasing access to a serialized resource. The benzene ring diagram is a chemical pun on metaphor, with an extra e to suggest semaphore.

Para DICE is a companion to Ortho DOX and Para DOX. As with DOX, the benzene ring nomenclature (ortho, meta, para) is used as a chemical pun. Para DICE places a pair of dice in the para position of a benzene ring derivative.

Spoilers for Songs

Donald Verbeck is a parody of Johnny Verbeck , ridiculing the lies Donald Trump , J D Vance , and other Republicans told about Haitians in Springfield, Ohio stealing and eating cats, dogs and ducks.

GOP Treason is a parody of "I'm in Love with a Wonderful Guy" and "I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair" from Rodgers and Hammerstein 's musical South Pacific and reflects my reaction to Republican defense of Donald Trump's Russia ties and sympathy for the January 6 insurrection .

Michael Kent Braun is a senator who, among other things, spoke against Loving v. Virginia. although he later tried to walk back his comments. The verse is a parody of The Coasters' 1959 song Charlie Brown.

Lying “Fake News” is a complaint about Donald Trump’s big lie. The verse is a parody of “On a tree by a river” (“Willow, tit-willow”) from Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic opera The Mikado.

My Favorite Things is a parody of My Favorite Things from Rodgers and Hammerstein 's musical The Sound of Music , dedicated to all the fen who appreciate filk. It has references, explained on a separate page, to stories by these fantasy and science fiction authors:

The covers shown include magazines containing the original versions of some stories,

PUT Process is a parody of Mañana (Is Soon Enough for Me), recorded by Peggy Lee in 1947. The humor will only be intelligible to those with experience using SMP (System Modification Program) to maintain IBM operating systems. SMP ran on OS/360 and OS/VS (and their successors); separate manuals were published for each generation. The song predates its successor SMP/E (System Modification Program Extended), which is bundled with z/OS today. The incorrect supersedes in the TSO Command Package and the JES2 prerequisites present only in the comments are real, and were not funny at the time, but the symptoms were invented for humorous effect and scansion. Sterling Forest was the IBM development site in New York responsible for JES2. These days the Program Update Tape (PUT) has been supplanted by the RSU, but the fundamental things still apply, as time goes by.

Wouldn’t It Be Loverly? is a parody of the song Wouldn’t It Be Loverly? from the musical My Fair Lady (music by Frederick Loewe, lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner). The original is Eliza Doolittle’s fantasy of modest comfort; the parody substitutes an academic mathematician’s fantasy of a Clay prize, a named chair, and a thesis beyond reproof.

Anatevka is a parody of the song Anatevka from the musical Fiddler on the Roof (music by Jerry Bock, lyrics by Sheldon Harnick). The original is a nostalgic lament for the shtetl; the parody takes a different view: the exile to America was not a loss but an escape from persecution, and the shtetl is not worth the nostalgia. The parody is in Hebrew and English; the English translation does not attempt to retain the meter.