Chad Orzel
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orzelc.bsky.social
Chad Orzel
@orzelc.bsky.social
Physicist, professor, author of books about science for non-scientists. Longer-form stuff at https://chadorzel.substack.com/
Reposted by Chad Orzel
Me tracking which movie is on which streaming service
November 25, 2025 at 7:59 PM
Some thoughts on how negative stereotypes are actually mostly a plane-with-red-dots-dot-jpeg situation:
open.substack.com/pub/chadorze...
Awkward Nerds and Dumb Jocks Are Notable Because They're Unusual
On the persistence of unflattering stereotypes
open.substack.com
November 25, 2025 at 4:34 PM
Charlie the pupper is bemused by me doing the thing where I go through a draft talk and say all the words to an otherwise empty room.

Also, he isn't completely convinced by my presentation of the Everett Interpretation of quantum mechanics.
November 25, 2025 at 2:34 PM
Reposted by Chad Orzel
Movie premise.
Nine Russian “volunteers” killed their escort after deciding not to go fight in Ukraine. Taken straight from prison to the front under contract, they murdered the convoy driver en route and are now on the run in Leningrad region. Russian police are actively searching the outskirts of Kudrovo.
November 25, 2025 at 12:33 AM
Reposted by Chad Orzel
Definitive Stars Wars ranking:

1. Yojimbo
2. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
3. Metropolis
4. Casablanca
5. Spaceballs
November 24, 2025 at 10:19 PM
Reposted by Chad Orzel
my haters have become my waiters at the table of success. I'm receiving terrible service, they're spitting in everything.
November 24, 2025 at 9:59 PM
Reposted by Chad Orzel
If the Yankees weren't profitable (lol), the Steinbrenner family would immediately sell the team for several billion dollars. Never believe anything any owner says about money ever.
November 24, 2025 at 7:20 PM
It really just feels Not Right to be getting "Black Friday" subscription sales from UK-based magazines.
November 24, 2025 at 10:49 AM
Reposted by Chad Orzel
Really important to stress that the Crown Jewels of the US higher education system were never the Ivies or elite SLACs (other countries have equivalents of these) but the well-funded, large, cheap, and excellently staffed public state university systems bringing high quality education to the masses.
One of the bragging rights that the US ed system had in the 20th century is that we didn't have education tracks. Essentially, any kid could go to a CC or state school & major in whatever they wanted to (obviously an oversimplification). I fear this aspect of the American dream is dying.
November 23, 2025 at 5:18 PM
Reposted by Chad Orzel
maybe the best hitting pitcher in baseball history
November 23, 2025 at 4:01 PM
It's dark beer season, MFers:
November 22, 2025 at 10:06 PM
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INCARNATE WORD HAS THE BEST TD CELEBRATIONS
November 22, 2025 at 8:45 PM
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62 Years Ago Today:
November 22, 2025 at 3:00 PM
Reposted by Chad Orzel
These days, kids have to learn about lanthanides and actinides on the street. This wasn't always true.
November 22, 2025 at 5:12 AM
Evergreen tweet.
These people are all awful.
November 22, 2025 at 3:58 PM
This is an amazing sentence: "The Peekskill Meteorite Car ("PMC"), a 1980 red Chevy Malibu, is one of the two most famous objects struck by a meteorite (the other, Ms. Ann Hodges, died in 1972). "

meteoritecar.com
The Peekskill Meteorite Car Official Website
The official website of the Peekskill Meteorite Car, the most famous object to ever be struck by a meteorite.
meteoritecar.com
November 22, 2025 at 2:39 PM
Reposted by Chad Orzel
This is a really good overview of asteroid-impact risk (and what we as humans have been doing to mitigate it).
OK, so. Below a certain size, the atmosphere takes care of the problem--objects below 10 meters in size, say, are going to give a great showy fireball but not do any damage on the ground unless you're really personally unlucky, like the teenager who owned this car.

meteoritecar.com
The Peekskill Meteorite Car Official Website
The official website of the Peekskill Meteorite Car, the most famous object to ever be struck by a meteorite.
meteoritecar.com
November 22, 2025 at 2:23 PM
Reposted by Chad Orzel
Look! A planet! It has clouds made of xenon. What a good land.
November 22, 2025 at 11:37 AM
Reposted by Chad Orzel
JD Vance Cries In Bathroom After Trump Uses ‘Piggy’ Nickname On Someone Else https://theonion.com/jd-vance-cries-in-bathroom-after-trump-uses-piggy-nickname-on-someone-else/
November 21, 2025 at 7:00 PM
It's been a banner week for people yelling about educational reforms, mostly because they disagree at the level of not-clearly-stated fundamental premises: open.substack.com/pub/chadorze...
Educational Reform Standoff
This week in smart people arguing past one another
open.substack.com
November 21, 2025 at 5:26 PM
Reposted by Chad Orzel
The only hypothetical trade for Anthony Davis that actually makes sense to me is Paul George and change for AD. You can't count on Embiid or AD to stay healthy, but if you have BOTH of them, you can essentially bank on always having *one* great center who can play. It's brilliant.
November 21, 2025 at 3:12 AM
Reposted by Chad Orzel
Jacob Rees-Mogg & his nanny look like the villain & his sidekick in a Bond movie directed by Wes Anderson
November 20, 2025 at 11:24 PM
Reposted by Chad Orzel
I want a hard target search of Jason Bourne’s pants
Another day in the damn Jason Bourne Response Suite. I'm wearing a blue dress shirt and a headset and just absolutely getting reamed out by a veteran character actor re: him "needing eyes" or whatever. No sense of when or if we're ordering lunch. I tried to get a coffee and Joan Allen glared at me.
November 20, 2025 at 11:25 PM
Reposted by Chad Orzel
November 20, 2025 at 8:35 PM
We used to have proper mascot fights in this country: www.sfgate.com/collegesport...
What really happened the night Oski beat up the Stanford Tree
"I must've been 18 beers deep at that point. I was in big trouble."
www.sfgate.com
November 20, 2025 at 5:03 PM