World's Worst Detective

World's Worst Detective

Latest essay

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What's the biggest number?
Mar 5, 2025

Today we'll address a question that has long occupied the minds of children, mathematicians, and child mathematicians: What's the biggest number? Child A: When I grow up, I'm gonna have a million dollars. Child B: Well, when I grow up, I'm gonna have a billion dollars. Child A: Oh yeah? Well, I'm gonna have a billion billion dollars. Child B: Well, I'm gonna have a zillion dollars. Child A: Ok, well, then I'm gonna have infinity dollars. Child B: Fine, then I'll have infinity infinity dollars. Child A: Well, I'm gonna have however many dollars you have, plus one! Whereas the dialogue above illustrates a naive, blustering approach to the question, we will investigate the topic with rigor in the name of science and progress....

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Latest stem

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Oct 24, 2026
Threes 0:00 / -:--

A very old idea (probably 2019 or 2021) where the trick is splitting sixteen 16th notes into five groups of three and one unexpected group of two. Not my best drumming but still fun!

Latest album rec

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Album cover for No Bad Memories
Album: No Bad Memories — The Avalanches
Released: Oct 16, 2026
RIYL: The 90s/00s
If you had to listen to one song: Together
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I was really looking forward to this album! I’m a big Avalanches fan and when I saw the album cover (shoutout to saxophonist Henry Solomon for doing this album cover first), I knew it was going to be a nostalgia trip.

I think “Together” is a great start to the album- it’s warm, bittersweet, head-bopping, and has a bit of Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared energy that surprisingly works. I also have to call out “Can’t Get Over Losing You”, which (besides the sample work) sounds exactly like something that would’ve come on the radio in 2009 after “Party In The U.S.A.”.

There’s some songs I like, and I’d say I like the album, but I haven’t really been coming back to any specific songs. I’ve read online that people feel the songs were too short and the transitions were a bit excessive on this record, and I can see that. I think artists always get accused of trying too hard to recreate their past success (kind of a Catch-22), but I do kind of feel like “Vida” was meant to be the “Because I’m Me” of the album, and “Magic Wand” was meant to be the “If I Was A Folkstar” (it literally has a line that goes “If I were a movie star”).

Even though it hasn’t really stuck with me in the way that I hoped, I’m still putting it on here because it’s worth a listen, for the experience if anything.

About

Hey! I'm Marcos, and I'm interested in math and logic, music, transit, games, language, and most things nyc. I'm not 100% sure where the "world's worst detective" moniker came from, but I feel like it started because of a quixotic investigation I undertook into the deaths of seven koi fish at my college. I have another website, but that didn't seem like the right place to dump all the things I want to put on the internet for nobody to read.