There is something distinctly off about the metaphors in this to me. Some imagery has no clear purpose, or contradicts itself. For example:

1. Bombelli built "an engine", but then suddenly it's temporarily "a machete" to cut through the jungle, instead of an engine to go up slopes, or even an engine to power a bulldozer.

2. The real-numbers are an "oil well", and somehow it's important to inform the reader that its depths "belongs to the country because it is measured by the country's own rulers." Does this mean it "belongs" because of a fiat declaration by unnamed decision-makers that are never mentioned ever again? Or does that mean handheld rulers, which... are fixed integer markings? For rationals? What?

As I was looking for more examples to add, I noticed this at the end, which might explain it:

> This article was written with the assistance of Gemini 3 and Claude Opus 4.5.

________________________

Skimming anew with heightened suspicion, I found an algebra error, which is kinda-amusing in a piece about math that is substantially more complex--in both senses, hah.

Specifically, these parts:

> The race begins in 1572 [with Bombelli] [...] And between 1799 and 1831, three men [...] finally drew the picture.

> [Bombelli] encoded rotation 176 years before anyone drew the picture.

1572 to 1799-1831 is a range of 227-259 years, not 176.

That said, 176 does match the time in-between Bombelli and Euler, however the shifting metaphors don't match, because Euler never "drew a picture."

Instead, Euler *checks notes* re-engineered the DNA of imaginary numbers so that they could be citizens in the land of mathematics. (Talk about a dystopian immigration policy!)

Notably, that "land" is separate from the other "land" made out of rational-numbers with rulers that own deep oil-wells made of of real-numbers etc.