Katie Mack
@AstroKatie
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Cosmologist, pilot, author, connoisseur of cosmic catastrophes. @TEDFellow , CIFAR Azrieli Global Scholar. Cis. She/her. Dr.
Waterloo, Ontario
Joined April 2009
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Pinned Tweet
Quick thread about my book, "The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking)", with FAQ.
#EndOfEverythingBook
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Kinda looks like the billionaires aren’t going to save us
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The term “pregnant people” includes pregnant women & also people who are pregnant but are not women. It doesn’t in any way erase/deny women; it’s just more inclusive. I am a woman. I have friends who are not women but can get pregnant. Language that includes them doesn’t hurt me.
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This is what is known to space scientists as an orbital burn
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If someone's political stance requires preventing scientists from informing you about your own planet, that's not politics, it's oppression.
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We got tricked by science fiction into thinking a futuristic city is all about flying cars and crystal towers and hologram billboards but what it really looks like is nice apartment blocks, good mass transit, pedestrian zones with shade trees and safe bike lanes.
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I can't believe we STILL have to remind people of this after A YEAR AND A HALF but:
If your pet appears on the Zoom, you are REQUIRED to introduce it so the rest of us may address it by name
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🌓🌎🌞 <-- lunar eclipse
🌎🌓🌞 <-- solar eclipse
🌎🌞🌗 <-- apocalypse
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Weekends are a constant battle between “I should do all the work I put off during the week!” and “taking time off is important to recharge!” but it’s okay because I usually find a nice compromise in which I lounge around feeling guilty and accomplishing nothing
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<physics has left the chat>
The tesla website claims that the new truck can pull "near-infinite mass" hhjjkhjslsl this company is so unserious
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Any president who would prefer civil war to being removed from office does not love their country and is certainly not serving it
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The point of Twitter verification is that for certain individuals/organizations it’s useful to be able to verify their statements are coming from them. (This is why so many journalists/reporters are verified.) It’s supposed to help combat disinformation, not be a status symbol.
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The perpetrator of the crime is not the one who gets to decide it's time to move on and heal
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Please do not fall prey to the idea that any activity that does not measurably advance your career is somehow necessarily harming it. You have only this one beautiful life; do not avoid living it for fear that your total productive output might be less than the theoretical max.
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Nothing exemplifies a complete failure to understand the point of science like demanding to settle a scientific issue through the medium of emotionally persuasive public shouting
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This is not the day after the election, this is the election. Mail-in ballots are not late ballots, they are ballots. The election & counting are working the way they were designed to work: all the ballots that were validly cast must be counted; they are votes. It just takes time
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Scientific evidence suggests human-caused climate change is making extreme weather events more common.
This is not a political statement.
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Christ, the problem is not ANXIETY about the virus the problem is THE VIRUS which is still actively spreading, potentially deadly, and which still has no effective vaccine or treatment. Not wanting to go out is RATIONAL right now. Stay home if you can. Protect yourself & others.
As COVID-19 lockdowns end, people are experiencing "re-entry anxiety" as they resume aspects of normal life. Here's what to do about it
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I will never forgive the entertainment industry for convincing so many people that persistence in the face of rejection is a successful courtship strategy or that a grand romantic gesture can substitute for actual two-way communication
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So, hypothetically… if you control every branch of power, kill a couple popular programs for no reason, then try unsuccessfully to use them as leverage & end up shutting down your own government… maybe you are bad at governing & shouldn’t.
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Academics: please, your recommendation letter does not need to include that the postdoc candidate is “a very pretty and pleasant girl” 😑
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Update: no longer true
“The flu kills more people” now only true if by “the flu” you mean the 1918 flu pandemic
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Existing as a woman on the internet is like if every time you sit down for a meal a stranger sidles up to you and explains in detail how to use a fork. (“Why are you being so hostile? I am just trying to help!!”)
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Poverty can be reduced by giving people money to improve their lives with; it’s been proven time and time again. But this solution is constantly resisted because it doesn’t uphold the oppressive notion that poor people naturally make bad choices and don’t “deserve” to be secure.
WOOOW. A Canadian research project gave homeless people $7,500 each — the results were 'beautifully surprising'.
Turns out: basic income for the homeless pays for itself. It's free money, because 'the project saved the shelter system $8,100 per person'.
'
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1) It already passed by harmlessly
2) It was more than 10 times farther away from us than the Moon
3) It’s so harmless NASA removed it from the potential impact list back in 2008
4) Please do not get astronomy news from TMZ
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Japan has 1700 miles of high-speed train lines that can go up to 200 mph. The system has been in use for half a century.
Virgin Hyperloop has completed the first test of its high-speed transportation technology with humans on board. The company's hyperloop pod traveled 500 meters (about 1,640 feet) and reached speeds of 100mph.
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Commentators online: Don’t worry about Covid! If you’re healthy & vaccinated it’s just a little flu!
Actual people I know: It’s day 14, still testing positive, fever is worse, can barely move, feel like death… [2 months later] still fatigued with brain fog but can jog sorta…
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If you see someone walking around outdoors wearing a mask even though the CDC says it’s safe to go without that’s a good opportunity to mind your own business.
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You can tell when someone actually wants to reduce abortion because they support the things that make it rare, like increased access to birth control and good sex education. If they oppose those things too, they just want to use babies as a punishment for having unauthorized sex.
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If Twitter had a reporting button for “incorrectly and condescendingly explaining an expert’s field of expertise to them,” it would save us all so much time
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Asking anyone to “not be political” right now is asking them to remove themselves from humanity and be indifferent to the lives of others.
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I don't want to tell billionaires how they should or shouldn't use their money.
I want society to be structured in such a way that single individuals never become so wealthy as to have the power to singlehandedly alter the course of society on a whim.
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[Cake voice]
We’re KEEPING our DISTANCE
We’re all QUARANTINED
We stay alone (ALL ALONE), for our friends in their time of NEED
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When people say “he started his multibillion-dollar business in a garage!” first I think that’s obviously a lie and second I think wouldn’t it be nice to have a garage
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“So I said, ‘Slow the testing down.’”
This is the most direct admission yet that the president engaged in intentional sabotage of America’s public health; that he is okay with people dying for his poll numbers.
"When you do testing to that extent, you are going to find more people, you will find more cases. So I said slow the testing down."
—Trump on trying to keep the number of reported COVID cases low
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It’s not really a “bailout” when it’s a public service operated by the government and you are the government
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Kind of astonishing to see both the US and UK governments light their own houses on fire based on some vague paranoid fear that someone else might want to come in
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@gary4205
I dunno, man, I already went and got a PhD in astrophysics. Seems like more than that would be overkill at this point.
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Depressing to see Covid denial follow exactly the same trajectory as climate denial:
> It’s not real
> It’s real but not bad
> It’s real & bad but there’s nothing we can do
> We could do something but it would inconvenience us (& mostly help the more vulnerable) so not worth it
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in case it’s not abundantly clear already ELON MUSK ISN’T GOING TO SAVE US HE’S A BILLIONARE TECHNOCRAT CEO WHO LIKES ROCKETS AND CARS, HE’S NOT ANTHROPOCENE JESUS
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Post-apocalyptic fiction did not prepare me for the fact that the pre-apocalypse is excruciating
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When I'm asked to give advice to students, the
#1
piece of advice I give is this:
Just because a subject is hard for you (math/science/etc), that doesn't mean you're "not cut out for it." You don't have to be a natural at your chosen subject. It's okay if you have to work hard.
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Wearing a face mask in public has been common in some parts of the world since LONG before covid was a thing and now that it’s become normalized in America I imagine many will continue to do it for various covid- and non-covid-related reasons and I don’t see how that’s a problem.
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Retweet if it's by absolute sheer meaningless luck that you weren't born in Syria with bombs falling all around you, desperate for refuge.
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First ever direct image of a black hole! The supermassive black hole in the galaxy M87 -- 6.5 billion times as massive as the Sun!
#EHT
#BlackHole
The image is better than I expected!
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In a functional society, school is education, not a lifeline, & healthcare is a public service, not a perk to be held ransom by an employer. As a nation we shouldn’t have to choose between forcing people into unsafe conditions & leaving them without vital support. But here we are
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The "personal choice" argument around vaccines gets especially hard to accept when the surge in hospitalizations among unvaccinated people is turning into an in-person DDoS attack on the entire US hospital system
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I’m not a journalism expert or anything but I’m pretty sure that if the “other side” is blatant fascism it’s okay to present just the one side
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SCIENCE: Exercising is good for you, you should do more of that
ME: That seems like a lot of effort
SCIENCE: …
ME: Isn’t there anything… easier… I can do?
SCIENCE: Get enough sleep?
ME: okay look-
SCIENCE: literally, just lie there, unconscious
ME: maybe we should start over
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The world is awful and Twitter is weird but I was with my 2.5-year-old niece at the museum today and when we saw the “wounded” dinosaur model illustrating predation she insisted on hugging it to make it feel better 😭❤️
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Public health experts: don't bring students to campus, there will be outbreaks
Profs: please don't require in-classroom teaching, there will be outbreaks
Staff: this isn't safe, there will be outbreaks
<outbreaks occur, campuses close>
Admins: no one could have predicted this
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I love watching convection cells on the Sun because I can see the exact same physics in a bowl of soup
This is the sharpest movie of the Sun ever made. Even at this fine resolution, the scale is enormous; each plasma cell here is about the size of Texas. via
@NatSolarObs
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Any organization that justifies bringing workers back into offices by touting their hand sanitizer and desk spacing is completely unserious. Show me your HEPA filters and ventilation system diagrams. Is your AC recirculated? Where is the air flow? What CO2 levels do you reach?
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Hey let’s pay *everyone* a living wage for their work and make wage gaps smaller and stop pretending that how much someone gets paid is some kind of indication of the moral value of them or their work rather than a result of enduring inequality and oppression in our society
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If an internet stranger comes into your mentions and is even the least bit irritating there is zero reason not to block them immediately; your life is too short for you to spend any of your precious attention on a random screen name that just showed up to antagonize you
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We don’t need any more commentators agonizing over why people are still (!!) wearing masks.
It’s to avoid getting sick.
Even if I’m 99.9% sure I’ll survive (not everyone is!), maybe I don’t wanna get sick? Or make others sick?
Not wanting to get sick is actually very normal!
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A surprisingly large part of having expertise in a topic is not so much knowing everything about it but learning the language and sources well enough to be extremely efficient in google searches.
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Was recently asked to do a TV thing, 4 hours, in studio.
Asked about ventilation in studio, they said they didn’t know.
Asked if studio crew could wear masks, they said no, not required to.
Asked if I could wear a mask, they said no.
So anyway I didn’t do the TV thing.
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Scientists: We built a machine that can measure the warping of space to 1/1000th the width of a proton
Politicians: Let's go with our guts
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Stating scientific facts about the atmosphere of our planet is not and must not be "politics." Reality should not be a political stance.
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Quick shout-out to those who do the smart and caring thing even when it's no longer legally mandated
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There is no such thing as “young, healthy people who don’t need health insurance.” Youth & health are temporary, accidents unpredictable
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"Grandpa, what did YOU do when Nazi sympathizers took over the White House?"
"I thought maybe I could get lower taxes by cooperating"
@GOP
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It is so weird to be so frequently put in a position by friends, organizations, even strangers, to explain why I don't want to get sick. Yes, I'm willing to take some very small, simple, easy precautions to avoid getting sick. On account of not wanting to get sick.
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It’s only a matter of time until employers realize the Myers-Briggs types are meaningless and then only a matter of a little more time until they’re replaced by Harry Potter houses
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What I want to see on Twitter: the tweets voluntarily tweeted by people I choose to follow, in order
What Twitter wants to show me: anything but that, apparently
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One of the proposals in the “Green New Deal” is to build high-speed train lines so flying is less necessary. This is not a radical proposal. In Japan, the Shinkansen covers distance approx LA-San Francisco in 2.5 hrs. At peak, trains every 10 minutes. The line was built in 1964.
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Having to prove you’ve been vaccinated against various deadly diseases prior to travel is a pretty common thing around the world; it seems very sensible to do it for a global pandemic that has killed almost 3 million people
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Right now, in the center of the Sun, there's a nuclear reaction converting hydrogen to helium, producing neutrinos, photons, & positrons. A neutrino from this reaction will pass through you just over eight minutes from now. The photons won't arrive for at least 100,000 years.
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@MargaretAtwood
No one is banning the word “woman.” Many organizations are — rightly — opting for precise language when talking about things that have to do with biological traits rather than gender identity. It’s not an attack on womanhood to NOT equate gender with specific biology.
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A good rule of thumb is that if you see a headline saying something “breaks the laws of physics” the headline is wrong
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I absolutely love that the Moon has gotten involved 🌕
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One downside of being an astrophysicist is hearing lyrics like "I am attracted to you like the Sun to the Moon" & involuntarily twitching
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Just FYI: the following are not compliments:
"Wow, you don't LOOK like a scientist!"
"Pretty AND smart!"
"A girl with a brain!"
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The Delta variant is essentially a new pandemic, but one that we’ve entered with incredibly effective weapons to fight it. We have a vaccine, we have masks, we know how it transmits and what kinds of environments are most dangerous. We don’t have to just let it tear through us.
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I’m not happy that ANY person has the power to launch nuclear weapons but I’m VERY happy that it’s no longer Donald Trump
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Me: High speed trains are not a revolutionary idea; maybe we could have them?
Reply Type 1: TRAINS ARE IMPOSSIBLE & FOR COMMIES
Reply Type 2: PEOPLE WILL STILL FLY AND THE WORLD WILL BURN; TRAINS ARE USELESS
Everyone else: the trains in other countries make me cry for America 😔
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He’s just a big jokester, see, and the joke is that he hates trans people and thinks public health is oppression, and he thinks all that is really funny because he doesn’t care if people die.
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In case you’re wondering how the radical-left indoctrination is going: once at the end of a full graduate-level cosmology course, a student told me that she really enjoyed the class even though, as a Christian, she believed it was all lies. 🙃
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I’m starting to lose faith in the traditional climate change mitigation plan of “only whatever is of exactly zero inconvenience to people with vast amounts of money”
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Refusing to support kids when they tell you they're transgender does reduce the chance they'll grow up to be trans but only by reducing the chance they'll grow up
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I’m not sure how widely this is understood. It’s not that the chance of getting sick is actually low now, it’s that our leaders have decided that it’s time for us to just be cool with getting sick a lot now, and we’re all being socially pressured to act like it’s weird not to be.
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The oil companies knew exactly what they were doing to the planet, so they lied to us and did it anyway. For a profit.
Prediction of the future from 1982 by
@exxonmobil
, along with data showing how it has actually evolved. Exxon's predictions were extremely accurate.
#ExxonKnew
@GeoffreySupran
@NaomiOreskes
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It shouldn't take a deadly pandemic to make it painfully obvious that tying health care to employment and then firing people who get sick is a terrible system.
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Initiating a “debate” about the rights and lives of oppressed and marginalized people to prove to everyone that you’re a supremely rational impartial being focused only on The Science is, in fact, astonishingly cruel.
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Climate inaction in government is not so much like yelling "fire" in a crowded theater as it is like seeing the theater is on fire and locking all the doors and telling us to remain calm for fear that we might ask for our tickets to be refunded
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I say this seriously and it is not a contested statement: the new CDC guidance is predicated on the assumption that you are *entirely okay* with catching Covid and passing it on to others. If you are NOT okay with that, you’re just a footnote in the new guidance.
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@mattxiv
The embodiment of someone who is incapable of understanding or caring about anything until it affects him, personally
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Anyone who would say "It only takes a moment to fire off an e-mail!" has a vastly different relationship to e-mail than I do.
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If someone tells you their pronoun is “they,” just use “they” when you refer to them. This is not difficult; they are literally telling you the word and it is not even hard to pronounce. It might take you some time to internalize it but with practice you will do fine, I promise.
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The Large Hadron Collider at CERN is the most complex & sensitive particle physics experiment ever constructed. If it hasn't found evidence for some kind of new "energy" that alters your "frequencies," some bracelet or sticker or crystal you buy for $36 is not gonna do it either.
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🚨 Twitter now has a tool for REPORTING COVID-19 MISINFORMATION. How it works:
1) Report tweet
2) Choose “It’s misleading”
3) Choose “Health”
4) Choose “COVID-19 information”
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I want America to be a country where Black Lives Matter and Nazi opinions don't.
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Here’s the thing. Pepper spray can kill. Rubber bullets can kill. Both are being used to “disperse” people who are peacefully exercising their first-amendment rights of speech *and assembly*. There’s no excuse for it, no justification. It’s violent, oppressive, unconstitutional.
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Reminder: never make fun of someone who is learning something new.
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Saying "I don't need to worry about catching COVID because I am young and healthy" is like saying "I don't need to obey traffic laws because I am driving a tank"
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Every time people like EM bring up how they want to create an "ultimate unlimited free-speech zone" they seem to forget that plenty of sites with that setup already exist (parler, gab, truth social), it's just that normal people don't want to hang out on them 'cause they're awful
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🚨 Some news from me! 🚨
I am ABSOLUTELY THRILLED to announce that, as of June 1, 2022, I will be joining the
@Perimeter
Institute for Theoretical Physics as the inaugural
Hawking Chair in Cosmology and Science Communication
(auto-CCs at YouTube link)
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Twitter REALLY needs a “report for public health misinformation” button because wow there’s a lot of harm being done on here
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Every time someone unfollows me for making a political statement I shed a single tear, and like the sulfuric acid rain on Venus, it evaporates before it has a chance to hit the ground
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Avoiding covid has become one of my most long-standing and (surprisingly) least socially acceptable hobbies
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