Thread by @mikamckinnon

#SciSlam livetweet starts here, but I’m drinking Wallbangers so fair warning the coherently may drop dramatically.

5min from start to the first F-bomb which is exactly why I love performing at 19+ events

Sacrificial Slam by @watercomm, who brought props.

Way to set unreasonably high standards right up front, Alan.

He’s got a hat AND mysterious blue boxes. This is so cheating, @watercomm!

“This is half a litre of premium, sales-winning, Vancouver rap water.”
(chug! chug! chug! chug!)

Holy crap, daily water footprints are over 6k in Canada!

@watercomm is starting to fling 5L blue pompons everywhere. It takes 140L of water for a pint of beer!!

But he’s out of pompons and on to strips of blue felt that... flings very sadly

“A chocolate bar is 3600L of water.”
[Nooooooo!!!!]

You’re breaking our hearts, @watercomm. The audience is literally whimpering trying to postpone the chocolate reveal.

Check your water footprint: watercalculator.org

Jackie Seppelt is slamming on speculums. And she brought one with her.

“Who here likes vaginas?”
[whoo?]
“Who here likes healthy vaginas?”
[Whooo!!!]

Ahhhhhh, I have not had enough booze to handle the history of speculums. There’s mysterious vaginal discharge involved.

“Like most 8 year old boys today, doctors in the 1800s thought vaginas were really gross.”

And then it went on to miming awkward underskirt fingering.

Robert argues women would get turned on by speculums, and be inspired to impute, unchase thoughts.

“To personally respond to Robert’s argument, this feels EXACTLY like it looks like it’d feel.”

Annalee is slamming down on biologists terrified by statistics.

Turns out a yeast biologist working for Guinness beer was foundational to a bunch statistical concepts

“I’ve permanently borrowed [this book] from the UBC library. So don’t request it, I’m keeping it.”

Kimberly Dohms on GPS tracking common nighthawks.

“Common Nighthawks are not hawks, are not primarily found at night, and are no longer common.”

“These are not just fashion backpacks for nighthawks.”

omg, most Canadian moment of the night is on making an analogy to how tiny these tracking backpacks are:

“If you remember pennies, they weight about as much as a penny.”

Our hosts are talking about the heavy water neutrino cave buried in Eastern Canada.

“That’s why they had to go to Sudbury. They have a lot of abandoned mines, so they were like ‘Hey, can we use one?’ and they were like ‘for science? Sure!”

Awww, it’s @joshsilberg up next! How are we both in the same show yet NOT competing against each other?!

Dammit @joshsilberg that was a spectacular ode to jargon and I am so grateful I’m not in the same round as you.

(I’m gonna get his permission to post the vid because omg fabulous)

Ahhh, I can’t peel 140sec of vid out of a 5min source in a loud bar, but I’ve got permission so you’ll see that later.

He included the Mohs scale for me! That’s a real friend right there. 💚💚💚

I kicked off the All-Star slammers (aka, prior winners), so no tweets for that. Vid when I can pull it up, but it’s my lovestory with @NASAInSight, its seismometer, and the first marsquakes

“Pollen, like love, is in the air.” kicks off Cecilia Sierra-Heredia

“Pollen are like latinas at a party: the more the merrier.”

“...like a hockey stick. You’re familiar with that.”

I love Canadian scicomm snark.

Hosts:
“Do you suffer seasonal allergies?”
“I thought I just cried because I’m a student...”

Jessica Pigeau is slamming on why you (“yes, you”) should not engage in cannibalism.

“My roommate is about the same size as me, and is going to put up more of a fight than a jar of Nutella.”

(That’s on the increased risk of injury during food gathering if you’re eating people.)

“It’s when your brain is so bad at oragami that it kills you.”

That’s one definition of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease!

We’re now on the props-driven improvisational plausible-sounding bullshit portion of the night.

@watercomm has a water-purse in which he carries around paperwork on diseases transmitted by eating human brains, but you can FMRI Pokémon to get a hint on how they’ll evolve.

I just improved from pollen through romance novels (& under-representation of women in STEM) into Janelle’s glorious hats and the STEM of fashion

Jessica’s back gifting her mother speculums for Mother’s Day, driven by NASA sticjers, boxes, and tickets into budding plants.

Ahh, it’s time for the winners! Jackie won both General Slam & Audience Choice while Cecilia claimed the All-Star Slam.

I picked up a set of puffy science stickers. Mmmmm, stickers!

The first 86 seconds of my slam, in which I set up my unreciprocated love for a lander and its seismometer.

I really, really want the full lyrics to @joshsilberg’s set, but you can have the first chorus before we learned the lyrics to sing along.

SciSlam is time in Vancouver for the season, but #OdySci is just kicking off & Calgary is hosting its second-ever slam on June 6.

All the love to my Vancouver scicomm community that dives in to work hard & play even harder.

Next up for me? Pint of Science!

Dear Canada: @pintofscienceCA is in 25 cities (!!!), coming to Vancouver for the first time! See the full schedule & claim your free tickets here: pintofscience.ca

But if you’re outside Canada? @pintofscience started in the UK but happens worldwide. You may have one!