Christopher D. Brown
@prof-brown.bsky.social
Assistant Teaching Professor of Physics
(views are solely my own & do not reflect my employer in any way)
PhD in Physics. Background in Biophysics - currently interested in PER & pedagogy, esp. surrounding A.I. as a learning tool.
(views are solely my own & do not reflect my employer in any way)
PhD in Physics. Background in Biophysics - currently interested in PER & pedagogy, esp. surrounding A.I. as a learning tool.
Pinned
Sickle cell disease causes red blood cells to stiffen when they deliver their oxygen to the rest of the body. This rigidity causes the blood’s effective viscosity to rise. We can measure that difference in viscosity by observing the capillary flow of blood through *really* thin glass tubes (1/3) 🧪⚛️
Reposted by Christopher D. Brown
The fact that a private institution of higher education capitulated to the state by allowing it to oversee its curriculum and appointments is abhorrent. Academic freedom means the right to select students, appoint faculty, conduct independent research inquiries, and determine what should be taught.
July 24, 2025 at 8:46 AM
The fact that a private institution of higher education capitulated to the state by allowing it to oversee its curriculum and appointments is abhorrent. Academic freedom means the right to select students, appoint faculty, conduct independent research inquiries, and determine what should be taught.
Reposted by Christopher D. Brown
How is the top University in the Bluest state in the US reacting to Trump’s attacks on Academic Freedom in the form of the “Anti-DEI order? The answer is: NOT good. A thread 🧵 about how the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa is responding to these attacks.
March 2, 2025 at 1:43 AM
How is the top University in the Bluest state in the US reacting to Trump’s attacks on Academic Freedom in the form of the “Anti-DEI order? The answer is: NOT good. A thread 🧵 about how the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa is responding to these attacks.
Reposted by Christopher D. Brown
Perhaps there is another way we should think about the economy.
February 28, 2025 at 1:53 PM
Perhaps there is another way we should think about the economy.
Reposted by Christopher D. Brown
And here's the link to Don't Just Do Nothing. Not my work, I just thought it was really helpful and wanted to share with people.
itsgoingdown.org/dont-just-do...
itsgoingdown.org/dont-just-do...
Don’t Just Do Nothing: 20 Things You Can Do to Counter Fascism
Jewish anarchists weigh-in on how people can organize and act in the changing terrain. For a zine PDF, go here. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to desist from it. ...
itsgoingdown.org
February 25, 2025 at 4:56 AM
And here's the link to Don't Just Do Nothing. Not my work, I just thought it was really helpful and wanted to share with people.
itsgoingdown.org/dont-just-do...
itsgoingdown.org/dont-just-do...
Thinking about a lot about generative A.I. lately from the perspective of student/educator interactions. Regardless of how you feel about it, the cat's outta the bag & we live in a brave new world that's shoving A.I. down our throats everywhere we turn.
So what about our students?
[1/x] 🧪🎢
So what about our students?
[1/x] 🧪🎢
February 24, 2025 at 9:30 PM
Thinking about a lot about generative A.I. lately from the perspective of student/educator interactions. Regardless of how you feel about it, the cat's outta the bag & we live in a brave new world that's shoving A.I. down our throats everywhere we turn.
So what about our students?
[1/x] 🧪🎢
So what about our students?
[1/x] 🧪🎢
Reposted by Christopher D. Brown
Oh yes, Homer’s famous “Tes Thdpssssps.”
👍🏻
👍🏻
February 20, 2025 at 3:51 AM
Oh yes, Homer’s famous “Tes Thdpssssps.”
👍🏻
👍🏻
Reposted by Christopher D. Brown
Student: Wow you seem to know all my mistakes before I make them.
Me: Yes I've made them all hundreds of times.
Me: Yes I've made them all hundreds of times.
Alt text image description: "The expert has failed more times than the beginner has even tried"
#academicsky #education #persist 💪🏽🤓
#academicsky #education #persist 💪🏽🤓
February 19, 2025 at 4:09 AM
Student: Wow you seem to know all my mistakes before I make them.
Me: Yes I've made them all hundreds of times.
Me: Yes I've made them all hundreds of times.
Reposted by Christopher D. Brown
Media not standing outside with this person during an attack on press freedom is baffling. If this happened to a colleague of mine I’d stand outside in the rain with them and catch pneumonia before I played into the hands of a small man having a tantrum you didn't use his preferred name. Come on.
For a third straight day, an AP reporter was blocked from attending an Oval Office event, I'm told.
February 13, 2025 at 7:58 PM
Media not standing outside with this person during an attack on press freedom is baffling. If this happened to a colleague of mine I’d stand outside in the rain with them and catch pneumonia before I played into the hands of a small man having a tantrum you didn't use his preferred name. Come on.
Chilling on multiple levels.
Reprehensible.
Reprehensible.
The number of people surprised by the long list of words NSF is targeting makes me think many of you all have not seen this: www.commerce.senate.gov/services/fil...
February 4, 2025 at 1:43 PM
Chilling on multiple levels.
Reprehensible.
Reprehensible.
Anti-science policy, plain and simple.
Put another way:
This is doubleplus ungood.
Put another way:
This is doubleplus ungood.
BREAKING NEWS: CDC orders mass retraction and revision of submitted research across all science and medicine journals. Banned terms must be scrubbed.
Goes beyond MMWR +other CDC pubs. Applies to research already submitted to top medical journals.
Take a look.
open.substack.com/pub/insideme...
Goes beyond MMWR +other CDC pubs. Applies to research already submitted to top medical journals.
Take a look.
open.substack.com/pub/insideme...
BREAKING NEWS: CDC orders mass retraction and revision of submitted research across all science and medicine journals. Banned terms must be scrubbed.
Any unpublished manuscript mentioning certain topics, including gender and "LGBT," must be pulled or revised.
open.substack.com
February 2, 2025 at 12:46 PM
Anti-science policy, plain and simple.
Put another way:
This is doubleplus ungood.
Put another way:
This is doubleplus ungood.
Reposted by Christopher D. Brown
If the FAA director got fired over a business beef AND there was an air traffic controller hiring freeze despite huge shortages AND a chaotic blitz to hollow out federal bureaucracy, and then within a week the first American airliner crashes in 16 years, you would be insane not to talk about it all.
January 30, 2025 at 3:20 PM
If the FAA director got fired over a business beef AND there was an air traffic controller hiring freeze despite huge shortages AND a chaotic blitz to hollow out federal bureaucracy, and then within a week the first American airliner crashes in 16 years, you would be insane not to talk about it all.
Reposted by Christopher D. Brown
"If you thought you had an opioid crisis before, baaayyybeeeeee, you ain't seen nothin yet!!!"
What the fuck is this? AI qualifying as a prescriber?
January 24, 2025 at 11:28 PM
"If you thought you had an opioid crisis before, baaayyybeeeeee, you ain't seen nothin yet!!!"
Reposted by Christopher D. Brown
This is happening to thousands of people fighting for their lives because in real life, government does a lot of good and important shit.
January 24, 2025 at 10:53 PM
This is happening to thousands of people fighting for their lives because in real life, government does a lot of good and important shit.
Reposted by Christopher D. Brown
Years of advocacy work undone in a matter of days. I have absolutely no words
UCAR and NSF NCAR join the ranks of other government-funded entities in closing their DEI offices.
An expected but still awful event that will only hurt the atmospheric sciences and future innovation that widely benefits society.
news.ucar.edu/133008/ucar-...
An expected but still awful event that will only hurt the atmospheric sciences and future innovation that widely benefits society.
news.ucar.edu/133008/ucar-...
January 24, 2025 at 11:53 PM
Years of advocacy work undone in a matter of days. I have absolutely no words
Reposted by Christopher D. Brown
“Sin, young man, is when you treat people as things.”
- Terry Pratchett, Carpe Jugulum
- Terry Pratchett, Carpe Jugulum
January 24, 2025 at 4:00 PM
“Sin, young man, is when you treat people as things.”
- Terry Pratchett, Carpe Jugulum
- Terry Pratchett, Carpe Jugulum
Reposted by Christopher D. Brown
This weird JWST trick lets us “see” dark matter
By using color inversion plus galaxy/cluster light models, scientists can find "excesses" of light.
Remarkably, they help trace out where the dark matter is.
bigthink.com/starts-with-...
By using color inversion plus galaxy/cluster light models, scientists can find "excesses" of light.
Remarkably, they help trace out where the dark matter is.
bigthink.com/starts-with-...
This weird JWST trick lets us "see" dark matter
It's not only the gravity from galaxies in a cluster that reveal dark matter, but the ejected, intracluster stars actually trace it out.
bigthink.com
December 30, 2024 at 5:46 PM
This weird JWST trick lets us “see” dark matter
By using color inversion plus galaxy/cluster light models, scientists can find "excesses" of light.
Remarkably, they help trace out where the dark matter is.
bigthink.com/starts-with-...
By using color inversion plus galaxy/cluster light models, scientists can find "excesses" of light.
Remarkably, they help trace out where the dark matter is.
bigthink.com/starts-with-...
Reposted by Christopher D. Brown
Punctuation matters. Way more than you think. Bad punctuation can be devastating.
Don't believe me?
Alright, then gather around, children, because I'm going to tell you a short true story about how not understanding ONE punctuation mark once cost a company millions of dollars in a lawsuit.
Don't believe me?
Alright, then gather around, children, because I'm going to tell you a short true story about how not understanding ONE punctuation mark once cost a company millions of dollars in a lawsuit.
December 24, 2024 at 1:35 PM
Punctuation matters. Way more than you think. Bad punctuation can be devastating.
Don't believe me?
Alright, then gather around, children, because I'm going to tell you a short true story about how not understanding ONE punctuation mark once cost a company millions of dollars in a lawsuit.
Don't believe me?
Alright, then gather around, children, because I'm going to tell you a short true story about how not understanding ONE punctuation mark once cost a company millions of dollars in a lawsuit.
Reposted by Christopher D. Brown
just blurted out in class "yes, you have to cite where you got your info. in a world in which lying loudly is the only thing that seems to get rewarded, citing your sources is an act of resistance" and folks, I really believe that.
December 19, 2024 at 3:35 PM
just blurted out in class "yes, you have to cite where you got your info. in a world in which lying loudly is the only thing that seems to get rewarded, citing your sources is an act of resistance" and folks, I really believe that.
Reposted by Christopher D. Brown
Overworked faculty: there's just too much on my plate, and no time left for the really important stuff
AI techbros: so hear me out--what if we automated your entire teaching process and then you can go to more meetings
AI techbros: so hear me out--what if we automated your entire teaching process and then you can go to more meetings
December 15, 2024 at 3:54 PM
Overworked faculty: there's just too much on my plate, and no time left for the really important stuff
AI techbros: so hear me out--what if we automated your entire teaching process and then you can go to more meetings
AI techbros: so hear me out--what if we automated your entire teaching process and then you can go to more meetings
Reposted by Christopher D. Brown
you KNOW when the astrophysicist in any piece of media reaches out and grabs a piece a paper he's about to fold that mf and stick a pencil through it
December 12, 2024 at 7:10 PM
you KNOW when the astrophysicist in any piece of media reaches out and grabs a piece a paper he's about to fold that mf and stick a pencil through it
Reposted by Christopher D. Brown
INTERSTELLAR IS A MOVIE THAT DESERVES TO BE SEEN ON THE BIGGEST SCREEN!!!
December 9, 2024 at 7:31 AM
INTERSTELLAR IS A MOVIE THAT DESERVES TO BE SEEN ON THE BIGGEST SCREEN!!!
And now onto grading purgatory…
🎢
Kinda amazing that even though my students have had aaaaaalllll semester to revise any and all reports (I’m radical: infinite revision!) some of these reports are only getting revised now, days before the end of the term.
To be fair, there’s a slew of factors..
🎢
Kinda amazing that even though my students have had aaaaaalllll semester to revise any and all reports (I’m radical: infinite revision!) some of these reports are only getting revised now, days before the end of the term.
To be fair, there’s a slew of factors..
December 9, 2024 at 12:50 AM
And now onto grading purgatory…
🎢
Kinda amazing that even though my students have had aaaaaalllll semester to revise any and all reports (I’m radical: infinite revision!) some of these reports are only getting revised now, days before the end of the term.
To be fair, there’s a slew of factors..
🎢
Kinda amazing that even though my students have had aaaaaalllll semester to revise any and all reports (I’m radical: infinite revision!) some of these reports are only getting revised now, days before the end of the term.
To be fair, there’s a slew of factors..
Posting a bit late but Friday’s Student Symposium was a success. 🙌🏼
Students from 4-5 courses across 3 cohorts contributed their final projects to the event. Posters, talks, demonstrations. Students, faculty, & staff sharing their experiences and ideas in a celebration of learning and growth.
Students from 4-5 courses across 3 cohorts contributed their final projects to the event. Posters, talks, demonstrations. Students, faculty, & staff sharing their experiences and ideas in a celebration of learning and growth.
December 9, 2024 at 12:06 AM
Posting a bit late but Friday’s Student Symposium was a success. 🙌🏼
Students from 4-5 courses across 3 cohorts contributed their final projects to the event. Posters, talks, demonstrations. Students, faculty, & staff sharing their experiences and ideas in a celebration of learning and growth.
Students from 4-5 courses across 3 cohorts contributed their final projects to the event. Posters, talks, demonstrations. Students, faculty, & staff sharing their experiences and ideas in a celebration of learning and growth.
Sickle cell disease causes red blood cells to stiffen when they deliver their oxygen to the rest of the body. This rigidity causes the blood’s effective viscosity to rise. We can measure that difference in viscosity by observing the capillary flow of blood through *really* thin glass tubes (1/3) 🧪⚛️
December 5, 2024 at 12:45 PM
Sickle cell disease causes red blood cells to stiffen when they deliver their oxygen to the rest of the body. This rigidity causes the blood’s effective viscosity to rise. We can measure that difference in viscosity by observing the capillary flow of blood through *really* thin glass tubes (1/3) 🧪⚛️