We show that there exist $(d-1)$ -Ahlfors regular compact sets $E \subset\mathbb{R}^{d}$ , $d\geq2$ such that for any $t< d-1$ , we have $$\sup_{T} \frac{\mathcal{H}^{d-1}(E\cap T)}{w(T)^{t}}< \infty $$ where the supremum is over all tubes $T$ with width $w(T) >0$ . This settles a question of T. Orponen. The sets we construct are random Cantor sets, and the method combines geometric and probabilistic estimates on the intersections of these random Cantor sets with affine subspaces.

Suppose$μ$is a positive measure on $\mathbb{R}^{2}$ given by$μ$=$ν$×$λ$, where$ν$and$λ$are Radon measures on $\mathcal{S}^{1}$ and $\mathbb{R}^{{\mathchoice {\raise .17ex\hbox {$\scriptstyle +$}} {\raise .17ex\hbox {$\scriptstyle +$}} {\raise .1ex\hbox {$\scriptscriptstyle +$}} {\scriptscriptstyle +}}}$ , respectively, which do not vanish on any open interval. We prove that if for either$ν$or$λ$there exists a set of positive measure$A$in its domain for which the upper and lower$s$-densities, 0<$s$≤1, are positive and finite for every$x$∈$A$then the uncentered Hardy–Littlewood maximal operator$M$_{$μ$}is weak-type (1,1) if and only if$ν$is doubling and$λ$is doubling away from the origin. This generalizes results of Vargas concerning rotation-invariant measures on $\mathbb{R}^{n}$ when$n$=2.

We study the distribution of harmonic measure on connected Julia sets of unicritical polynomials. Harmonic measure on a full compact set in ℂ is always concentrated on a set which is porous for a positive density of scales. We prove that there is a topologically generic set $\mathcal{A}$ in the boundary of the Mandelbrot set such that for every $c\in \mathcal{A}$ ,$β$>0, and$λ$∈(0,1), the corresponding Julia set is a full compact set with harmonic measure concentrated on a set which is not$β$-porous in scale$λ$^{$n$}for$n$from a set with positive density amongst natural numbers.