Sipping the Monstrous Moonshine

A fabulous (& longish) intro to symmetry, "the Monster," "monstrous moonshine," etc. by Brandon Rayhaun (h/t Cliff Pickover):

http://tinyurl.com/o49s34p

(...it's made all the more timely by the recent release of John Conway's biography.)

Mathematicians Drunk on Moonshine... so-to-speak

 “Math is all about building bridges where on one side you see more clearly than on the other. But this bridge was so unexpectedly powerful that before you see the proof it’s kind of crazy.” -- John Duncan (Case Western Reserve)

Linking number theory and physics... Fantastic Erica Klarreich piece for Quanta Magazine on the Monster group, j-function, Monstrous Moonshine, Kac-Moody algebra, string theory, serendipity in math, and more... these are the sort of connections that are almost spine-tingling, they're so spooky (in a positive way):

https://www.quantamagazine.org/20150312-mathematicians-chase-moonshines-shadow/

The Monster That Lurks

Not sure which I love more about this Numberphile offering... Tim Burness's step-by-step explanation of the "Monster Group" (with it's almost 200,000 dimensions) or John Conway's sheer astonishment that it exists at all: