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14 Dec, 8 tweets, 2 min read
Yes, we know, that’s one of the reasons hospitals in your part of Michigan are on the verge of collapsing under a fourth wave.
theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…
Ugh, the dripping condescension in that piece.
What a weird flex, to point out that you’re just going about life as if nothing has changed when anything less than a life-threatening trauma gets you turned away from your local ER.
To be fair, it’s not just the hospitals in that part of Michigan. A lot of hospitals across the state are in bad shape, to say nothing of the people who staff them.
But it’s true, I was there this past weekend, in a part of the state just like he describes, and no one was wearing a mask.
If only these hand-wringing coastal elites had your down-to-earth family values.
Idk, maybe I’m reading it wrong, but it’s seems like as much as anything the piece is about an untroubled attitude that comes from the sort of superior family values that easily triggered libs and people who use infant formula couldn’t possibly understand.
This is Minnesota, but what is happening in Michigan is no different.

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More from @mcnees

Robert McNees Profile picture
14 Dec
Happy #Quantum Day!

Max Planck presented work on blackbody radiation to the German Physical Society #OTD in 1900. His novel “quantum hypothesis” suggested that matter emits and absorbs light with frequency f only in discrete chunks of energy E=hf.
Image: AIP Image
Planck’s quantum hypothesis would revolutionize physics, but he initially thought it wasn’t real. He suspected that the interaction of matter and radiation was tremendously complicated but still governed by the physics known at the time — what we now call “classical physics.”
Invoking quanta of radiation to derive the blackbody emission spectrum was, it seemed to Planck, just a mathematical trick that somehow encapsulated all that complication.
Read 19 tweets
Robert McNees Profile picture
5 Nov
Freeman Dyson submitted a lovely little two-page paper to Physical Review #OTD in 1951, demonstrating that perturbation theory in quantum electrodynamics produces a divergent series. It's one of my favorites, an absolute classic of the field.
journals.aps.org/pr/abstract/10…
In QED we calculate physical quantities perturbatively, giving a series with increasing powers of a small number α ~ 1/137. So if we calculate the anomalous magnetic moment of the electron (classically it should be g=2) we get a series like:
g = 2 + (1/π) α + (0.656/π²) α² + …
This tells us that the actual magnetic moment of the electron is a little different than what we'd expect from classical considerations. The series above starts with the classical bit (g=2) and then all the subsequent terms represent various quantum mechanical effects.
Read 12 tweets
Robert McNees Profile picture
3 Nov
The very good girl Laika, a scrappy three-year-old stray from Moscow, was sent into space aboard Sputnik II #OTD in 1957. The first animal to orbit Earth, she became a national hero. This was cold comfort, since the mission wasn’t designed to return her to Earth. Image
The press referred to Laika as "Muttnik." Here she is with Mushka and Albina, who were also trained for the mission. Mushka might have gone to space instead of Laika, but she wasn't eating properly. Image
The plan was to give Laika a painless, fast-acting poison after about a week in orbit. This was the official Soviet account for several years afterward. But it wasn't true. Apparently, Laika died of overheating and asphyxiation somewhere between 6 hours to 4 days after takeoff
Read 7 tweets
Robert McNees Profile picture
29 Oct
The first message between two computers on ARPANET was sent #OTD in 1969. The “LO” of “LOGIN” was transmitted and then one of the systems crashed.

Charles Kline’s IMP Log: “Talked to SRI host to host.”
Image: UCLA Kleinrock Center for Internet Studies
They re-sent the “LOGIN” message an hour later, establishing a connection between UCLA and Stanford. So technically the first three characters transmitted over what would become the internet were “LOL.”
[12 hours after the first two computers connect on ARPANET]
xkcd.com/386/
Read 4 tweets
Robert McNees Profile picture
27 Oct
An #OTD about two groups of people WHO WERE LITERALLY AT WAR WITH EACH OTHER but still recognized that political differences are no reason to disagree about *science*.
John Hancock, seeking permission for a team of US astronomers to observe an eclipse, wrote to a British commander:

"Though we are political enemies, yet with regard to Science it is presumable we shall not dissent from the practice of all civilized people in promoting it."
And the British commander was like, "Yes, of course, we're at war but that's no reason to be weird about SCIENCE. Of course they can observe the eclipse. Lol, can you even imagine, people being weird about science just because they were FIGHTING?"
Read 4 tweets
Robert McNees Profile picture
15 Oct
The most energetic single particle ever detected, a cosmic ray dubbed the "Oh-My-God" particle, was observed by the Fly's Eye Cosmic Ray Detector #OTD in 1991. Its energy was about 3.2 x 10²⁰ eV ~ 51 J, equivalent to a baseball moving at almost 60 mph.
quantamagazine.org/ultrahigh-ener… Representation of a cosmic ray hitting the earth, with a sho
The "OMG Particle" should not to be confused with the “God Particle.” The latter is a terrible name that you should not use under any circumstances, while the former is a great name and all physicists are obligated to high-five whoever came up with it.
Also, the "OMG Particle" should not be confused with the "0mg particle," which is another name for a photon.
Read 21 tweets

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