Robert McNees @mcnees Twitter profile

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Robert McNees

4 years

Oh wow, if you like books maybe pick up a copy of my wife’s achingly beautiful novel about the love affair between Eleanor Roosevelt and Lorena Hickok?

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Last Seen Profiles

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

4 years

Somehow I’ve lucked out and have an 8yo who thinks secretly reading under the covers past her bedtime is an act of rebellion, and it hasn’t yet occurred to her that her flashlights never seem to run out of batteries.

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

1 year

Let me explain one reason why this is a potentially serious problem. First, you should know that when I search google from an incognito window it gives me the right answer: just shy of 14 billion years, the current scientific consensus among cosmologists and astronomers.

Robert McNees

@mcnees

1 year

Welp, @google is done.

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

1 year

This means Google is using tracking info – what it thinks it knows about me – to decide which answer it should serve to a question *where there is clear scientific consensus on the answer*. You can see the problem here.

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

6 years

The 6yo figured out she can sneakily stick a note on someone’s back. But she doesn’t know they should say things like “kick me,” so they just have space facts on them.

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

1 year

If, based on your browsing, google decides you are anti-vaccine, and you do a search about how to protect your kids from measles, how will it respond? Will it present the medical consensus, or point you to a "study" that hasn't been around long enough for serious review?

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

4 years

So many nice dad compliments (which I really appreciate) but my wife is in on it too. It takes teamwork to maintain this ruse.

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

5 years

What the Nobel Prize fails to mention here, and fails to mention every year, is that both Burnell and Hulse were 24 year old grad students when they made their discoveries. Hulse is a man, so he got the prize. But Burnell is a woman, so the prize was given to her supervisor.

The Nobel Prize

@NobelPrize

5 years

Happy birthday to Russell Hulse who was awarded the #NobelPrize in Physics for discovering a new type of pulsar (word created from ”pulsating star”). Coincidentally the first pulsar was also detected #OTD in 1967, by Jocelyn Bell Burnell.

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

4 years

Thanks to everyone who mentioned headlamps. We actually put one out where she'd see it, and she gave it a try, but she prefers her trusty LED flashlight.

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

1 year

Obviously google searches shouldn't take the place of advice from trusted experts like medical doctors, or, in the case of the age of the Universe, cosmologists. But it also shouldn't make things worse in an attempt to show you what it thinks you want to see.

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

5 years

If things seem a little more dystopian than usual, it’s probably because BLADE RUNNER happens in two days.

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

9 months

*takes off glasses* *pinches bridge of nose* *very deep sigh*

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

7 years

Wholly owned by the NRA. •John McCain: $7.7m •Richard Burr: $7m •Roy Blunt: $4.6m •Thom Tillis: $4.4m •Cory Gardner: $3.9m •Marco Rubio: $3.3m •Joni Ernst: $3.1m •Rob Portman: $3m •Todd Young: $2.9m •Bill Cassidy: $2.9m

Opinion | The Congress Members Receiving the Most N.R.A. Funding (Published 2017)

Thoughts and prayers and the N.R.A.: Here are the top career recipients of N.R.A. campaign money.

www.nytimes.com

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

4 years

My 8yo has discovered Google Docs, and now instead of playing video games she is obsessed with word-processing and experimenting with different templates and making things like a resumé for our dog.

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

1 year

Now, there may be another explanation for why I am getting the wrong answer in a regular window, and the right one in an incognito window. I have a google scholar profile, so maybe it thinks I want to see new research.

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

4 years

At what point is something too literal to be a metaphor.

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

1 year

But I don't like the idea of google giving one answer when it can see certain info about who I am, and a different answer when it can't, to a scientific question where there is definite consensus.

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

7 years

This Blade Runner-esque photo of Toronto is by Lucan Coutts. It's getting a lot of shares without acknowledging him as the photographer. Here's his instagram:

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

1 year

Hmm, I also get the correct result with a typo in the query. Here it’s “how.old” instead of “how old”

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

6 years

He died doing what he loved.

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

6 years

Everyone completely rejecting Nazis and fascists.

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

1 year

Or maybe this is just a coincidence, and repeated searches will give different answers as some other variable (location, etc) changes. I don't know, that's why I said "potentially" in the first tweet.

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

5 years

Happy palindrome day, whether you write the date DD/MM/YYYY or MM/DD/YYYY or even if you put the year first for some weird reason. 02/02/2020 is the only such date this century. The last one was over 900 years ago, on 11/11/1111. SO DON’T WASTE IT.

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

7 years

Good to see that they're updating the Richard Scarry books.

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

1 year

That would suggest (to me, a non-expert) that it isn’t based on what it knows about me. Both searches are from a regular window. Still, I’d expect a lot less variation in when it serves untested research and when it serves the consensus answer here.

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

1 year

Never fails. It's the posts where I don't take the time to choose my words carefully, that take off. In the second tweet I should have said "This could mean" rather than "This means." Hopefully this is clear from subsequent posts offering other explanations.

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

7 years

When you are a very tiny mouse living in an old used book store.

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

6 years

Did I miss @thehill ’s tweet about Laura Ingraham setting a dangerous precedent by using her platform to attack and bully kids?

The Hill

@thehill

6 years

"David Hogg's attempt to end Laura Ingraham's career sets dangerous precedent"

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

9 years

I can't not respond to this kind of comment. http://t.co/Ft4t0Dztzl http://t.co/3JcHHoMyZH

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

6 years

Here’s something weird to wrap up your Sunday evening. In 1981, Dragon magazine published AD&D character stats for Bugs Bunny (15th level illusionist) and other cartoon characters.

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

3 years

Lynn Conway, electricial engineer and computer scientist, co-architect of the VLSI design revolution, and transgender activist, was born #OTD in 1938. She invented Dynamic Instruction Scheduling at IBM, but IBM fired her when they learned she was transitioning. Photo: Lynn Conway

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

4 years

Carl Sagan passed away #OTD in 1996. In his final interview he left us with two messages that are still relevant today: one emphasizing the importance of a science literate public, the other a warning about how hard it is to extract ourselves when we’ve been conned.

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

1 year

@ThaDrkness This is a recent proposal that lucked into a bunch of media coverage but hasn't been scrutinized yet. It drastically revises an existing result supported by a tremendous amount of evidence. That doesn't mean it's wrong, but being recent doesn't make it right.

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

8 years

Good grief, I couldn't believe how spot-on that Carl Sagan quote was. I had to check to make sure it was accurate.

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

7 years

If the event of a tie, the Queen calls the Wild Hunt and drives a pack of ravenous Corgis through Parliament. Whoever lives the night, leads

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

7 years

When you should be asleep but Twitter.

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

1 year

Welp, @google is done.

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

6 years

Boy’s family forced to sell pumpkins to cover medical costs in richest country in the history of the world.

CNN

@CNN

6 years

A diabetic boy needed money to afford a service dog. His family's pumpkin sale raised the funds.

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

8 years

Flashback to last Spring, when I told my E&M students they could use one side of a piece of paper as a final exam formula sheet.

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

6 years

The 6yo asked me about pianos and jazz this morning, so I played “Take Five” for her. She listened intently to the whole thing. When it was over I asked her what she thought, and she said “Did you know that teeth are a special kind of bone that can fall out of your body?”

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

8 years

Ted Cruz stood on the Senate floor and read "Green Eggs and Ham" for *21 hours* because Congress was going to give people health care.

Patrick Svitek

@PatrickSvitek

8 years

. @TedCruz predicts Dems will now become "obstructionists at a level we've never seen." They'll "filibuster absolutely everything they can."

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

4 years

Sister Mary Kenneth Keller was born #OTD in 1913. She designed Beginner’s All Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code — BASIC — with John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz, and was the first woman in the US to earn a PhD in Computer Science. 10 PRINT “HAPPY BIRTHDAY” 20 GOTO 10

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

6 years

Nestlé paid $200 last year — less than most people’s annual water bills in Flint — to pump 130 million gallons in Michigan, and their bottled water made $8 billion worldwide.

Nestlé

@Nestle

6 years

@squidpod Hi, we don't steal water. We care deeply about preserving the high quality & quantity of water supplies in Ontario, and continually monitor our groundwater withdrawals to ensure that there is no adverse effect on the watershed or the associated ecosystem:

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

4 years

Maybe the best “forgot to sign into the fake account” post I’ve ever seen.

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

6 years

Astronaut and former Detroit Lions wide receiver Leland Melvin was born #OTD in 1964. Here he is in the greatest photo that the US space program has ever produced. Image: NASA

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

6 years

And why *those* pictures? Why not these?

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

9 years

If Kyle Smith doesn't like people criticizing his dumb @carrieffisher column, maybe he should quit writing.

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

4 years

Friends, NASA did not discover a parallel universe where time runs backwards.

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

6 years

This pearl-clutching revisionist history when a right wing media figure has to face some consequences for being awful. Good grief.

Robert McNees

@mcnees

6 years

“I mean, it’s getting to where you can’t even attack kids advocating for positive social change after they survived a brutal massacre without facing some sort of consequences, this oppression of conservatives has to stop.”

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

2 years

Why would NASA even make a planet like this.

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

6 years

Late night dungeons and dragons controversy.

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

5 years

[7yo sitting on the couch reading a book about the human body] 7yo: "Dad, can I ask a question? Me: "Sure" 7yo: <trying to be serious> "Does BM stand for Butt Molecules?"

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

8 years

It turns out the trick to doing the right thing is just standing up and doing the right thing.

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

4 years

I just finished teaching a summer course fully online, from beginning to end, and though I am still collecting my thoughts I definitely think what I liked most about the online format is how it doesn’t contribute to the spread of a virulent pandemic and potentially kill people.

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

5 years

LRT: Here are stars orbiting the 4 million solar mass black hole at the center of the Milky Way. This isn’t a simulation, it’s 21 years of observations. S0-2 hits a max speed of ~3% the speed of light. Data/Viz: Prof Andrea Ghez, UCLA Galactic Center Group / W.M. Keck Telescopes

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

6 years

“I mean, it’s getting to where you can’t even attack kids advocating for positive social change after they survived a brutal massacre without facing some sort of consequences, this oppression of conservatives has to stop.”

Scott Greer 6’2” IQ 187

@ScottMGreer

6 years

The Left is once again weaponizing corporate power to shut down conservatives

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

8 years

If Comey hadn't made his announcement, and Clinton won MI, WI, and PA by a point or two, no one would be criticizing her campaign strategy.

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

2 years

They stole the electron? Is he positive?

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

5 years

Carl Sagan was born #OTD in 1934. He was a planetary scientist, a dedicated and gifted science communicator, and a tireless advocate for the humanizing power of science. Image: NASA

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

6 years

And I am reportedly in talks with Hulu and Amazon Prime Video to replace my @Netflix subscription if Netflix gives this anti-science quack a bigger platform.

Netflix Is Reportedly in Talks With Gwyneth Paltrow For a Goop Show

We hope they've got a good fact checker.

www.sciencealert.com

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

6 years

The mathematician and astronomer August Ferdinand Möbius was born #OTD in 1790. He is best known for devising a surface that not even the @nytimes could find a way to both-sides.

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

7 years

DM: Global warming ravaged the village's crops GOP: I cast "Detect Lie" on climate scientists DM: What? GOP: I attack the scientists #GOPDnD

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

4 years

The Voyager 1 spacecraft, 7.25 million miles away and speeding towards Jupiter, looked homeward #OTD in 1977 and captured the first picture of the entire Earth and Moon together in the same frame. Image: NASA / JPL

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

8 years

Twitter just informed me that attempting to disenfranchise voters is not a violation of their Terms of Service. @jack @Support

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

3 years

Personally, I would like to see more reliance on nuclear and renewables, and less dependence on things that can set the ocean on fire.

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

4 years

Police are rioting across America.

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

7 years

There aren’t two sides to the science.

CBC Politics

@CBCPolitics

7 years

The new U.S. ambassador to Canada says when it comes to climate change she believes in "both sides of the science"

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

8 years

Please be Andy Kaufman please be Andy Kaufman please be Andy Kaufman please be Andy Kaufman please be Andy Kaufman please be Andy Kaufman

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

4 years

8yo: I’m bored Me: Why don’t you make something? [one hour later] 8yo: I made my doll a small apartment

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

7 years

Grace Hopper was a Navy Rear Admiral who led the team that invented computer programming language compilers. She has both a supercomputer and a Naval destroyer named after her.

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@z3lIus

7 years

Name a bitch badder than Taylor Swift 😍😛😤

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

3 years

As bishops arrange a political scheme to deny communion to Joe Biden, remember that the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast gave Bill Barr their “Faithful Christian Laity” Award on a day that fell between two Federal executions he scheduled, a month before the 2020 election.

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

7 years

@PreetBharara @MikeOkuda I mean if lawyers are known for anything it’s spending huge amounts of their own money on their clients, with no expectation of reimbursement.

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

8 years

If only there was a group of highly trained, impartial experts who all agreed on the answer and were desperately trying to explain it to you

Anthony Scaramucci

@Scaramucci

8 years

I am not a climate change denier. I have said publicly that I don't know the answer. I am for clean air and clean water.

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

5 years

Jocelyn Bell Burnell transformed astronomy when she made the first observation of a pulsar #OTD in 1967. She and advisor Antony Hewish initially dubbed the object LGM-1 (“Little Green Men”) for its regular signal, but soon identified it as a rotating, magnetized neutron star.

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

3 years

Dog done got the bubble wrap again.

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

4 years

Here comes a thread of very chill views of Lake Michigan.

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

2 years

I don’t know which is worse: getting physics updates from this account, or from the person they are quoting.

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

2 years

By age 30 you should have, over the course of your life, had about 5 x 10²³ neutrinos pass through your body like you weren’t even there.

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

4 years

Recently told the 8yo she should always replace the toilet paper when it runs out. Just found this in the bathroom.

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

4 years

Every day I get an email inviting me to edit a pet resumé, a menu for a cookie store, a Hogwarts acceptance letter for her friends, a real estate listing for a haunted house, an ad for a computer car that makes you food while it drives, etc.

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

3 years

Mathematician Emmy Noether was born #OTD in 1882. She made groundbreaking advances in abstract algebra, and her eponymous theorems articulated the deep connection between symmetries and conserved quantities in physics. Image: Public domain, photographer unknown

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

5 years

[very solemn] Me: I’m sorry, but Cookie Monster died. Kid: What!? Me: Yes, I’m sorry. Kid: Did he...what happened to him? Me: The good news is he will always be with us.

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

2 years

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

5 years

Your core algorithms are built to feed escalation, and half your footage is violent in one way or another. You won’t make any sort of meaningful change if it costs you clicks and views, so don’t pretend otherwise.

YouTube

@YouTube

5 years

Our hearts are broken over today’s terrible tragedy in New Zealand. Please know we are working vigilantly to remove any violent footage.

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

8 years

@saladinahmed Where have I seen Pence before.

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

5 years

You’ve gotta be knee-deep in the dumbest crimes for John Bolton to stop war mongering long enough to say “I want no part of this.”

Peter Baker

@peterbakernyt

5 years

Breaking: Bolton instructed aide to report Giuliani pressure campaign to White House lawyer. “I am not part of whatever drug deal Rudy and Mulvaney are cooking up,” Bolton said, according to testimony to House investigators. @npfandos

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

5 years

Why is the sky blue? I see a few people talking about this. You can go into lots of detail — there’s tons of physics to dive into — but let me see if I can give an explanation you haven’t heard before. I’ll sketch out an Effective Field Theory explanation of why the sky is blue.

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

5 years

The great mathematician Katherine Johnson, whose trajectory calculations allowed US astronauts to orbit the Earth and land on the moon, passed away this morning at the age of 101.

Katherine Johnson Biography - NASA

Biography by Margot Lee Shetterly

www.nasa.gov

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

4 years

Carl Sagan was born #OTD in 1934. He was a planetary scientist, a dedicated science communicator, and a tireless advocate for the humanizing power of science. This passage of his has weighed heavily on me for the last four years; a little less so this morning. Image: NASA

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

2 years

Oh my god. I don’t think I’d ever heard about this.

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

5 years

On the right: v = 0 On the left: v = 0.8c

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

2 years

Happy birthday to astronaut, author, professional football player, and STEM educator Leland Melvin ( @Astro_Flow ), born #OTD in 1964. Here he is in the greatest photo ever produced by the US space program. Image: NASA

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

3 years

Astronomer Vera Rubin was born #OTD in 1928. Her work on galactic rotation curves became one of the main pieces of evidence for the existence of dark matter, and she deserved a Nobel Prize for it. #BirthdayVeraRubin Image: Vassar College / Emilio Segrè Visual Archives

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

4 years

This video is a misrepresentation (images from another rover) with some fake (the wind sound) thrown in for good measure. The fact that it’s still up and being widely shared is a slap in the face of folks who work to provide accurate and engaging sci-comm.

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

7 years

POTUS: “And I’ll tell you another thing, we’re going to make it safe to say Merry Christm-“ [Aide whispers in his ear] “I regret to inform you that I’ve somehow caused Christmas to be canceled in Jesus’s hometown.”

The Hill

@thehill

7 years

Nazareth mayor cancels Christmas celebration over Trump's Jerusalem decision

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

8 years

RIP Vera Rubin. Her work on galactic rotation revealed a fundamental problem and revealed existence of Dark Matter.

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

1 year

@ThaDrkness Until it has stood up to extended scrutiny from scientists, it is not appropriate to present it on the same footing as the scientific consensus. Folks may not realize that models like this get proposed, examined, and rejected on a regular basis.

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

8 years

Voyager 1 is 11 billion miles from Earth, receding at 38,000 mph. It must feel pretty good about that decision.

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

6 years

Good luck and endless red pens to Goop’s incoming fact checker.

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Robert McNees

@mcnees

6 years

I’m a professor of physics. I don’t know any scientists who think Jordan Peterson is the serious intellectual his acolytes make him out to be. I know lots of scientists who see that he is a dangerous jerk with no real understanding of the science he carelessly misappropriates.

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