This year, I gave a
@TEDx
talk called "Robots that Think on their Feet"
I told stories about making robots adapt to our world, and how they parallel my own adaptation to being marooned in Fiji on Survivor:
Thanks to
@TEDxFSU
for the awesome opportunity!
Gender-affirming care is a lifesaver for transgender youth.
So says the scientific evidence, as these major medical associations have recommended access to comprehensive gender-affirming care for transgender youth and issued policies and detailed guidelines for its use:
🧵
After five years as a professor, I am thrilled to announce I’ve been awarded tenure.
I’ve wanted to be a professor since I was a kid. Now I get to do it forever. Thank you to everyone who helped me get to this incredible milestone.
Sat down in a waiting room today wearing this Xmas gift.
Man 1: "Nice sweater. My wife loves Survivor."
Me: "Cool! I was actua.."
Man 2: "I think reality TV contributes to America's rise in violent crime."
Mercifully, they called his name just as he got to Middle East politics.
For those who know me from robotics or random science tweets, a few years back, I had an unforgettable adventure on
#Survivor
with 19 strangers.
I bring it up because our season (37) was released on
@Netflix
*TODAY*. Thank you to my castmates and the show for shaping my life.
This experiment of a fish swimming upstream is truly stunning. Why? The fish is dead. If you're streamlined and flexible, you can do a lot by doing nothing at all.
Beal et al. (2006). Passive propulsion in vortex wakes. J. of Fluid Mech., 549, 385-402.
I don't want to say that my "Survivor" experience has burrowed deep in my brain, but I just caught myself typing in a recommendation letter that the student's positive attitude will "help them make alliances."
It's
@gabbypascuzzi
's birthday today. It's also another important anniversary: the day I met one of the closest friends I ever had.
It was two years ago in LAX, waiting to fly to Fiji. We weren't allowed to talk for 5 days & we've wildly overcompensated ever since. Happy B-day.
So. Crazy story. Wednesday (tonight!) at 8PM ET/PT on CBS, I'll be on TV competing on
#SURVIVOR
. Yes- a deserted island, 20 strangers, a $1 million top prize... and one seemingly out-of-place robotics scientist.
How and why did this happen? Thread: 1/11
@survivorcbs
In 2019, I was in Fiji on a floating ocean restaurant with Mike White. We were lounging around when obnoxious instagrammers kept selfie-ing in our space. We were trapped onboard until the next boat arrived.
"I'm in hell" Mike muttered.
I swear I saw the origin of
#TheWhiteLotus
This is really sweet. When you take the risk of being yourself on national TV, you brace yourself and hope people appreciate what you bring to the show. I am so grateful that people are having as much fun watching as I had playing. Thank you.
#survivor
I was in the drive-thru today getting McDonald's w/ my mask on.
Suddenly, a woman pulls in front of me, phone camera pointed & shouts at me how masks don't work.
I'm disappointed. Had I just gotten lunch down the street, I could've unironically said "Ma'am, this is a Wendy's."
That was an all-timer of a
#survivor
climax.
All the stars aligned on the twists to unleash ticking-clock drama and a genuine dilemma of choice.
I suspect had Sabiyah not sac'd her vote, Kaleb and Emily would have won the deadlock regardless. But still, what a memorable finish
Congrats to everyone on
#SurvivorEdgeofExtinction
!
I think the lesson for future players is you have to *radically* adapt to the season, no matter how crazy the twists, like EOE. Strategies that would be genius in one season can be invalid in the next.
@survivorcbs
#survivor
I am honored to be nominated for
@FloridaState
University's 2019:
- Undergraduate Research Mentor Award
- Honors Thesis Mentor Award
- University Excellence in Teaching Award
I'm so glad students are enjoying the program as much as I am teaching!
@UnderGrad_FSU
@FAMUFSUCOE
Probably the most interesting post-
#Survivor
observation to make about the show is inferring the conversations that *must* have happened that weren't shown. Both
@kelleywentworth
and
@lolly_alexandra
were confident enough to not play their idol. Convincing assurances were made.
It's watch party night for
#Survivor
!!! 🥳
I gathered every Survivor contestant from the Tallahassee area for this raucous once-in-a-lifetime gathering!
@SurvivorCBS
. Booze. Special guest. Wish you could be here.
I am proud to have been awarded a Young Faculty Researcher grant in Robotics from the Toyota Research Institute (TRI).
A thread on our project with
@ToyotaResearch
:
A Sunday Science Reminder:
Everything single thing you eat is a chemical.
Water is a chemical. Salt is a chemical. Vinegar is an acid chemical. DNA is an acid chemical-it's in every fruit, every vegetable, & every meat... and everything else in your food? That's a chemical too.
Just finished my 100%-completion run of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
It's one of my favorite games for so many reasons. I hope they make a sequel someday.
Out shopping. Woman sees me and stares.
Her: "I know you from somewhere. Are you..."
Me: *Slight knowing smile*
Her: "... the lead actor in the Tallahassee Theatre Guild?"
Me: "Oh. No."
Her: "Aw dang. I swear you look just like him!"
Tonight we saw one of the highest stakes games of the Monty Hall problem in human history on
@survivorcbs
.
You can prove to yourself you are statistically TWICE as likely to win if you *SWITCH* boxes by playing over and over again here:
#Survivor
#Math
"Cheers to you all! 20 winners of the greatest social experiment on television!"
"Yeah! Woohoo!"
"Now for our first challenge. You all have just been poisoned. In this chest is the antidote. There are 19 doses."
#Survivor
#Survivor40
#Feb12
Best of luck to all the new
#survivor44
contestants tonight!
Tonight I'm editing papers with my students for a late-night deadline, so I'll watch you all tomorrow. I hope your experience is everything you hoped it would be.
Also, this is my paper editing face.
Um. This is an embarrassing question, but am I a trending topic? Or is does a major world religion happen to be trending right when the show is airing? Can someone who knows tweets explain?
#survivor
To my LGBTQ friends out there, please know that there are people that care about you -- myself included.
If you find yourself needing help, you can find free, confidential, 24/7 crisis counselors at .
I absolutely love that this is the header for the Twitter account of the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering where Christian is a robotics professor!🌴🥰🌴
#Survivor
#RHAP
@FAMUFSUCOE
@chubicki
Unreal.
I just gave a talk at my alma mater,
@BucknellU
, & my undergrad prof introduced me w/ my Survivor clip talking about puzzle algorithms.
Then he opened my final project from his coding class *FROM 2004* and ran my puzzle solver for the audience.
Still stunned & touched.
New season of
@survivorcbs
premieres tonight at 8ET/PT! To all the new contestants, congratulations! Do your best to enjoy this special time while the show is airing and remember that only you can truly understand your island experience. Treasure it.
#survivor
I wish to address a rumor that I was contacted and being considered for CBS' upcoming season of "The Challenge."
The Challenge is a TV show where "contestants compete in stunt-heavy, action-packed adventures" in an intense physical competition.
Thread.
*Car pulls next to me on the street, rolls down the window*
Driver: "Dr. Hubicki, if 'u[n]' is a unit step function, what's delta?"
Me: "An impulse function."
Driver: "Great. Thanks!"
*car zips away*
My life.
A subtle complexity from tonight's tribal:
Bruce's lost vote seems to have made a material difference in the plotting. It allowed for a blindside to happen with fewer votes.
#Survivor45
It was my privilege to talk to
@robcesternino
for 3.5 hours to dive deep on my
#survivor
game. Though somehow, in all those hours, I forgot some really important things. ADDENDUM THREAD:
I talked with a friend yesterday. One with a happy personality and a huge heart. What they said crushed me.
They said they no longer feel safe in this country. They feel unvalued and afraid. Because they're black.
We need to make a better world than this.
#BlackLivesMatter
Meant to dine in at Wendy's, but accidentally did Drive-thru out of habit. Too embarrassed to admit my mistake and eat my drive-thru food inside. Saving face by eating in my car instead. And tweeting about it.
Did you ever notice how wearing a mask that completely covers your mouth and nose makes you look awesome? You look equal parts sophisticated and mysterious.
But if you pull it down off your nose, it completely ruins the look.
Actual example conversation:
Gabby: "We're really not having any luck lighting this fire."
Me: "You know what would really help us?"
*turns directly to nearby camera lens*
"The savory taste of the 17 herbs and spices rubbed on every
@Outback
steak."
#survivor
@survivorcbs
My biggest regret is that when
@chubicki
and I openly opined in front of the cameras that Outback Steakhouse was our favorite restaurant in the hopes of getting a sponsored reward, we clearly should have been targeting Applebee’s.
Tonight,
#Survivor
celebrates 20 years on the air with a Special Retrospective at 8pm on
@CBS
.
20 years. In that time I finished high school, college, grad school & postdocs, started my lab, and even played Survivor myself.
Congrats to
@JeffProbst
& the whole
@SurvivorCBS
team!
Random
#Survivor
Story:
To make conversation on the island, I would talk about how I like to watch Vanderpump Rules. Perhaps too often.
Me: "I really got into Vanderpump Rules after the first seas-..."
Mike White: "Yeah. We know. You told us."
Leading up to my Survivor season airing, I was paranoid about avoiding leaking spoilers online. So much so I started posting photos of me only from years before being marooned.
That made it extra funny when internet sleuths used them to infer how long I lasted by my weight loss.
It was a tough sell because I wasn't wearing "the glasses." Thankfully, Emily had hard evidence: her Survivor 37 finale pass wristband in her travel bag.
Good question. It's not up to us. If it were, we'd all show up wearing 6 pairs of underpants, 3 bathing suits, 2 jackets, snow pants, and a shawl engineered from a thermal blanket.
Remember when
@chubicki
pushed through to win this epic Immunity Challenge? Relive the intense moments that made this competition one of the most memorable of last season:
#Survivor
#ThrowbackThursday
My quarantine life seems to careen wildly between manically doing work and catatonically not doing work while thinking about all the work I should be doing.
- The American Psychiatric Association:
- The American Medical Association:
It's beyond individual practitioners or individual studies. It's a body of evidence from piles of studies synthesized by a field of top experts.
@juryymanagement
The divide between "Social" and "Strategic" games is incoherent and meaningless. I did my best never to mention those concepts on the island.