If there is something years of Xwitter has thought me, is to have a VERY low bar for blocking people.
If you have bad vibes from someone, chances are you are better blocking them on sight and continue with your life.
@franco_vazza Personal preference I guess. But if I don't want to interact with someone I also don't want them to read what I post. Hence, I block a lot and mute rarely.
@franco_vazza - if someone seems annoying, e.g stupid, but not actively malevolent, I mute them. But if they seem malevolent I block them, because I don't want anyone reading my articles to see them.
@johncarlosbaez@j_bertolotti
my cosmological simulations have never triggered such violent reactions! (only announcing I was going to quit twitter did...)
@franco_vazza
I once had a guy assaulting me for daring to talk about the concept of negative temperature. Blocked him VERY quickly 🤷♂️ @johncarlosbaez
@franco_vazza@j_bertolotti - I used to talk about negative temperature, how inverse temperature is more fundamental than temperature, how inverse temperature is analogous to imaginary time, how you need Planck's constant to give a specific value to the entropy of the classical harmonic oscillator, and other more or less well-known facts that are still guaranteed to shock and sometimes outrage newbies.... and also excite crackpots into propounding ideas that sound equally crazy but are, unfortunately, wrong.
Right now I'm mainly talking about harmony theory, so the worst thing that happens is some people start espousing weird tuning systems... which doesn't annoy me nearly as much! They're less angry and less crazy.
@johncarlosbaez
Weirdest one for me was probably the time I talked about the concept of retarded time in electrodynamics and someone got hugely offended by the fact I used the word "retarded" 🤷🏻♂️ @franco_vazza
@j_bertolotti@johncarlosbaez@franco_vazza Ehh, I don't entirely blame them...that word is seen as a pretty bad slur nowadays! I realize that the physics use of it is totally independent and predates the slur use of it - nonetheless I personally still find it pretty jarring to hear "retarded" come up in physics contexts.
@reedbeta
Anyone getting offended by me using a Physics term in a Physics context has the right of blocking me and never ever interact with me again. @johncarlosbaez@franco_vazza
@j_bertolotti@franco_vazza@johncarlosbaez
I took a lab class with Bob Pound, who loved to tell stories as he wandered around the lab helping students. One was about proving an unnamed Nobel Prizewinner (presumably Purcell or Bloembergen) wrong about the possibility of negative temperature.
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