theoretical physicist reads: love, theoretically
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 5 ต.ค. 2024
- Please believe I have nothing against romance novels, just this particular romance novel.
I am going to hard pivot this channel into #booktube I just read The Chrysalids and it was so good.
Join me on Patreon --- / acollierastro
The year is 2033. Shooting for the Love Theoretically movie adaptation is about to begin. Screenplay written by Ali Hazelwood, completely faithful to the book. She was so excited they'd use her script in the movie. They ask Ali if she'd like to come tour the set. She scoffs, disgusted. How dare they. She's a *theorist*"
String theory couldn't destroy theoretical physics but jacks paper could
Probably inspired by Sokal's paper.
I am Jack's irresponsible paper.
@@shinemoon4673I am jack's paper's lack of critical review
Who's to say he wasn't a young string theorist.
I think fraudulent diploma mills in China are doing a pretty good job of it
Hmm, not sure the compliments "the sexism is realistic" and "the binding is nice" are enough to convince me to read this.
I need a third thing like "there aren't noticable typos" to really convince me
tbf binding _is_ the main selling point for a lot of romance novels...
Definitely not beating the 'Jenny Nicholson of Phsyics' allegations, and I am here for it
Jesus I’m glad I’m not the only one thinking it
lol I was also going to make this comment
I've seen every one of Angela's videos, never seen this comparison before, and am absolutely ROLLING at the accuracy lmfao
right?
The catch is that she's not very good at that you guys.
11:26 theoretical researchers are more excited than experimentalists about going to the lab. They get all the fun without the "shit I gotta align this again"
An experimental physicist thinks "what a lovely, compact formula" while a theorist thinks "oh, gosh, the geometry of this shit is completely broken in the corner cases this and this and that, let's just hack a new term one more time".
The "but my models are just theoretical!" absolutely killed me. What a ludicrous statement, like a scriptwriter being shocked that someone wants to turn their script for a movie into a movie, because 'it's just a script!'
The tattoos bit is amazing too, i love this channel
The idea that since the Theoretical Physics Apocalypse, all experimental physics has just been people banging rocks together trying to make Science™ through trial and error is really funny
I was literally in the process of commenting that this video has big Jenny Nicholson energy and then you hit me with the "this is published Reylo fanfic"
the book is like "there were two factions of science... and they were at war..."
and the reality is that the two factions are made of the same people
Everything changed when the theory nation attacked
And they are in superposition
theoretical physics is when you do a epic math, and experimental physics is when you wear a lab coat and goggles
Actually nobody is stopping you from doing math in a lab coat.
@@narfwhals7843 wait. Don't medical doctors usually do math in lab coats? At least in the hospital? Assuming this, medical doctors are often theoretical experimental physicists. Oh no...that would increase their power levels to unfathomable heights!
54:00
I 100% expected the complex harmonic motion example to just be one with air resistance and dampening added in so it stops after 2 swings
now *that* would be a hilariously accurate title
I was thinking along the same lines, but you beat me to it.😂
"His pendulum was afflicted with premature stabilisation"
I like how during the "compliment sandwich" portion of the video, the first compliment to the novel was just "The book seems pretty sturdy!"
As a librarian who uses Goodreads to help catalog books, I can only say that the regular Goodreads crowd is utterly unpredictable and actively makes looking for books to recommend to people confounding.
Goodreads is a crowd opinion, indeed. “Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.” (G. Carlin)
Always start with 1-star reviews.
Those are always far more revealing about the actual qualities of a book or a movie than positive reviews which are either worthless fan-praise, astroturfed boosting by author/fans/publisher/bots OR simply "if you can't say anything nice" 5-starring by people too polite and/or too casual to care.
1-star and 2-star reviews are done by people who care enough to either just vent hate (which usually tells you WHO hates such books and often also WHY) - or by people willing to spend time and effort to produce an in depth analysis and explanation of said book's faults.
@@d3nza482 This is really true of anything with reviews, not just books or movies. On Amazon you bet the first thing I check are the 1 and 2 star reviews- they are the ones who probably had to seek a refund or replacement and I want to know why! Works for books too but I think more people are willing to write a review for a book they genuinely liked than they are for a shop vac they bought and liked, so you can take some of the higher star reviews into account.
"Wait, are you serious? Are you really going to make my recipe? It's a purely theoretical recipe." hahaha I love it.
You know, they said it would never work between us
We're from completely different worlds
Me, an applied mathematician
And you, a theoretical physicist with a master's degree in applied mathematics
But I've been crunching the numbers of our romance and it seems we're uniformly converging to the same limit of real infinite love.
@@deltalima6703 "Sometimes, imaginary isn't enough", he very slowly and dramatically writes down, "i^2=j^2=k^2=-1", and after a moment, "ij=k, jk=i, ki=j". She then feels her feelings turning in a world free of gimbal lock, as she falls into his arms. "If I show you the Taylor expansion will you cosine the deal?". "Seems like a bit of a tangent. How about we start with Newton's method?", as he whispers into her ear, "y'=y*(2-x*y); my feelings can't be divided", as her reservations melt away...
XKCD already did this in a way that's actually cute.
It's probably harder to fall in love if you're in slightly different worlds than completely different ones tbh
NInja Sex Party!
had war flashbacks to homestuck when she asked if five acts in a story is possible
at least there werent any act act acts
not what i was expecting to see here, having war flashbacks of my own 😭
truly inescapable, i cannot fight it
Literally finished it last month, it was wild lol
What if a story had seven acts and the fourth and fifth acts were subdivided multiple times into a dozen sub-sub-acts and the intermissions between the acts were also separate acts with their own stories and then the seventh act was a single page
"Straight to jail, zero dollars, nasty." lmao
Sex joke in a classroom environment? Believe it or not, straight to jail.
I am a T1 diabetic and actually started having a hypo as I started to watch this video. So as my brain started to shut down and the “cog fog” descended and then Angela was talking about the heroine feinting from diabetes it all got, as the kids say, very meta.
Angela is making a teaching point here, I thought, and the teaching point is go to the kitchen and get orange juice and consume that instead of watching TH-cam in bed. So I did that and that is the story of how, at the risk of being melodramatic, Angela reviewed a terrible book and in doing so literally saved my life.
And now I am watching the rest of the video only this time with an adequate level of blood glucose.
Meanwhile I've been fighting a persistent high for over two hours from having some leftover pizza. Yes, Angela, constant stress can cause psychological harm. My doctor's office gives me annual screening questionnaires for depression and anxiety because of it.
Glad you’re ok
@@HebaruSanI’ve had those too. Good luck with your recovery
🫂🤔🌾
Diabetes is scary! Several family members of mine have it, one even developing juvenile diabetes. Seeing a diabetic have critically low sugar is right up there with seeing someone have a seizure in terms of sheer helpless fear. I'm glad this video prompted you to get some juice before it really spiraled!
> I’m trying to explain how stupid it is but it’s so stupid that I can’t explain how stupid it is.
Classic, I’ll be stealing this line.
59:34
Wow. The commentary about Emma Noether is pretty devastating. One one level it's professional malfeasance not to include such a beautiful piece of real life analogy, which is one of the reasons we read, which any author would be guilty of of, but for someone purporting to write 'steminist' lit, it's like giving someone 'ramen' that you made with spaghetti noodles.
It's Emmy, and in German the 'oe' in her surname Noether is pronounced the same as for the famous poet Goethe, whose name approximately rhymes with the last two syllables of the word 'frankfurter' in English (but not exactly in German). So just repeat the phrase "Emmy Noether conserved a frankfurter" and you are on the right track.
When the passage about his physics equation tattoos started I lost it. And your visual of it was even better
Pilot here. The whole thing with her declining to see the lab reminds me of being a pilot every time we get offered a tour of the air traffic control tower. It's like, a) we jump at the chance to at least check out the view and b) we don't hate ATC, we want them funded and well-trained because it makes our jobs easier. Then in return we offer ATC opportunities to do ride along flights to show our perspective. It's just bonkers to think anyone would turn that down.
Drake's formula is so comically long it just makes me crack up thinking about someone having a tattoo of it. I'm just imagining it like wrapping halfway around his body so you can't see all of it at once from any one angle
Drake's equation is long? I remember seeing an equation in Synge's book on general relativity that went on for five pages.
It's: N = R⁎ · fp · ne · f1 · ·fi · fc · L where every of the second letters is subscripted. It's not long. The problem with the Drake Equation is that it is very, very silly and is a way to invent a reason to presume an astonishing large high-end for the estimates of the number of possible alien civilizations. It is not serious, it is not scientific, and it is definitely not physics.
That’s muuuuch shorter than the Lagrangian of the Standard Model. Try to find enough skin to get THAT tattooed legibly. :)
there's a dirty joke about "welcome to los angeles and have nice day" tattooed somewhere private. just saying.
You can simplify the drake equation to just 👽 = 🤷♂️.
I read romance novels sometimes and Ali Hazelwood is bad - in the other book you mention of hers there’s a scene where the grad student sits on the professor’s lap DURING A LECTURE. IN PUBLIC. Now I’m no fancy pants science person working in stem … but this is incredibly unprofessional and gross.
Typical. Peppering a cheap story with outrageous elements to try make it interesting
I mean also wouldn't that obviously be noticed?
I can't believe you actually finished the whole book - it sounded painful. I'm an experimentalist whose partner is a theorist and to the shock of the whole physics community, we actually collaborate! The only issue I have is that I do actually sometimes shave a few slices of pecorino and eat them as a snack. When you started that part, I thought you were going to say that 5 lbs of pecorino at Whole Foods would cost more than a year adjunct salary - it's much better to get it at Costco (but that much would be hard to munch).
The book might have actually been good if it had used sex work as a metaphor for the adjunct market. I used to know a guy who referred to day laborers at the home depot as post-docs - they do good work at temp jobs for no money.
I also know more than a few people who do space things that have space related tats (like solar system maps), though my favorite nerd technical tat might be Adam Savage's ruler on his arm.
The strange thing is, people don’t faint due to diabetes because of a lack of insulin, rather because they’ve taken too much (encouraging low blood sugar, which leads to fainting and, in the worst case, a diabetic coma). I only know this as my son has type 1.
Statistically, for realistic situations, yes, you're absolutely right.
Except, lack of insulin for a long duration (we're talking multiple days, and the person would absolutely be very aware of it, what with the extreme unquenchable thirst and other symptoms), and so also high blood sugar for a long duration, could result in fainting and loss of consciousness (and the other type of diabetic coma).
Very rare for people who know they have diabetes and manage it even remotely well, but I suppose not impossible for someone who can't get sufficient access to insulin (really bad healthcare system). That's not supposed to be something to skimp on (at worst at least lower the amounts and go on aggressive low-carb diet, it will still have health issues long-term but less than insufficient insulin) but there are cases.
In practice this occasionally does happens with type 1 diabetes as initial discovery of the problem in children. Not all young kids will feel it's relevant to tell parents/adults they're feeling very thirsty and pee a lot for a few days. And not all parents/adults will consider it serious enough to consult a doctor if they're not familiar with the symptoms anyway. So a not-insignificant percentage of first diagnosis is when kids do faint, and blood sugar is checked as a part of the diagnostic process.
But, again with the bad healthcare system so high cost of basic necessity like insulin, this is a somewhat common (or, well, if not very common than at least much too common than it should be) point that keeps repeating in various romance/drama books and movies from the US. The first time I saw this I was really puzzled, it's the absolutely inverse of the problem I'd expect a diabetic to maybe sometimes have if they can't balance their blood sugar perfectly, but it's not a rare trope.
secretly a take down of bing bang theory and i love it
bing bang theory
I wouldn't exactly call that takedown secret, lol. But definitely here for it also.
clearly you've never taken a bite of pecorino cheese, because it is an incredibly powerful feeling and I fully relate to the character in that moment.
"It's just a list of words"- I'm going to start reviewing all books like this.
The little rant about Noether's theorem was included and Emmy Noether (who wasn't) had me laughing out loud.
Italian boi who lives in Italy here: I can assure people eat pecorino. I will go further: I actually go to grocery store to buy pecorino so I can eat that in slices. It can be eaten alone but it reaches its best with honey or chili jam (or some other type of jams).
You just changed my pecorino game forever...
There was a lot of stuff that went over my head here, but I laughed out loud at the comparison of simple and complex harmonic motion and its sexual implications
when it felt like the video was starting to wind up, conclusions had been drawn, opinions made - i went to close the window and go to the comments, only to find there was still forty minutes to go 😭 i was so happy
your videos are a constant blessing! thanks for making them
I feel like every time I'm skeptical about a video topic on this channel I end up loving it
I can't wait for your review of the 3 Body Problem, that thing is all the rage for a while now. Also I really really love how the frustration just builds like a kettle of boiling hot water.
The creepy behaviour of the main character of the second book absolutely made me mad. And it is portrayed as "romantic" 🤦 and the third book has idea like "only truly masculine manly men can make hard decisions". Yeah...
@@KateeAngel Wait what!?!? I read þe first one and it didn't seem nearly as bad, I was mostly stunned trying to comprehend all the ideas.
@@KateeAngel Well, traditionally hard science fiction and deep characters have not mixed too well. Think about the characters of Isaac Asimov. Pure cringe.
My advice for 3BP interested people is just to read Blindsight instead. It has similar themes/atmosphere but everything is 1000 times better and the prose is actually good and not terrible.
What I've heard is that the original 3bp is actually just as sexist as the other two, Ken Liu was just able to make slight translation shifts that covered it up. (Allegedly Ye Wenjie is portrayed in a super sexist manner.) The issue is more of a plot point than a portrayal issue in the 2nd and 3rd, so it wasn't possible.
This is exactly the type of content I subscribed for ♥️
From what I was told by one romance author I knew. It's common practice to make up a life story to go along with the pseudonym you use.
I’m 6 minutes in and so thankful I haven’t even heard of this book.
The complex harmonic motion section absolutely slayed me
I'm on your side btw,,, anticipation is an absolute killer
This channel is rapidly becoming a favorite on TH-cam - brava!
You have shown an incredible amount of perseverance, Angela. First, you get a Ph. D. in physics, and then you read and annotate this book. Kudos?
Genuinely love your bookshelf. I think there's a pretty big overlap with mine (Andy Weir, Terry Pratchett, James CA Corey, Adrian Tchaikovsky, Cixin Liu, etc.). I wish you'd do a series on some of your favorite (or least favorite) sci-fi, and what you thought of their sciences. Not... sure about this one tho (just started the video)...
Edit, to add random comment after watching the whole (great) vid: you can totally eat Pecorino Romano! I mean, it wouldn't be my first choice, but I will totally take a nibble after I've grated like 500 grams of the damn thing (that's more than 1 lb for my fellow Americans) to make like 1 portion of Carbonara or Cacio e Pepe (I'm exaggerating... very slightly)
Same! Love all of them besides Terry Pratchett too (just haven't read him he's probably good too). I'm waiting for the promised booktube pivot now
seconding this! would love to see acollier cover some of these faves from her perspective/style of comfort content
I’ve been gently nagging (begging) her to show us her bookshelf .. who isn’t dying to know what she not only reads but has decided to keep around?!
I got a small Chunk of cheese in my cheek right now as I read this
@deltalima6703, you are clearly desperate for attention, so I'm giving you some. It is generally easier and far more satisfying to get this kind of interaction from friends / people who you enjoy spending time around, but you probably won't have many of those people in your life until you put some more effort into not being an insufferable prick. Just because you're an edgy kid with delusions of grandeur who doesn't like their mom's taste in men doesn't give you the right to shit on things that other people enjoy; hopefully you won't need to be told these things after your prefrontal cortex finishes developing.
I'm not trying to be judgmental, I was once an insufferable prick just like you are now (hell, who am I kidding? I still have my moments,) so the good news is that you aren't a lost cause. I promise that you will want to try to stop yourself from saying the kinds of things that you did in the comment I'm replying to, though, if for no other reason than to spare yourself the future sleepless nights where you obsess over how unbelievably cringe you were and the fact that you were the only one who couldn't see it. Like, you really called the works of a widely-loved author dogshit while admitting that you've never even read his writing. People would respect you more if you just said "I'm lonely and want someone to talk to me."
I have a friend with the 'bra' and 'ket' symbols on each side of her collar bones. It's pretty sick honestly. Simple, aesthetically pleasing, and a nod to her interest in quantum.
On another note about tattoos: I once had a prof who legit said they'd let us bring any crib sheet with us into the final exam so long as we had it permanently tattooed on our bodies. This was a long-standing offer, something like 20 years, and honestly, I'm kinda surprised no one in that entire time ever took him up on it.
Fyi, I tried to read this book and got all of two pages in before I was certain that it wasn't for me. I'm so glad you did the horrible work of trekking on ahead to validate my initial impressions.
For a book about a woman in STEM that I'd actually recommend: "Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow". It's about a couple of friends set in around the 90's who played video games together as kids and eventually decide to start a video game company when they run into each other again in university. One of the friends is a woman, and the other is a man, and the book makes appropriate comparisons between how they're treated within the industry, and how they treat each other. The characters are all horrible at times, but it's in the kind of way that feels painfully informed by real life. And the references to video games of around that era is... this book is clearly a love letter to video games, and I'm here for it.
For a woman in STEM book there's also the Susy Gage professor/detective series: "A Slow Cold Death", "Not Easy Being Green", and "Degrees of Freedom". [full disclosure - I'm the publisher]
A heads up is that tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow’s author unironically refused to give credit in her book to the creator of a tabletop game that she ripped off for the main video game of the book. So in a book about plagarising women and not giving them enough credit, the book itself did that.
I kind of wonder if you take the tattoo seriously, you end up deliberating enough that by the time you're line "Yes - this one - this is the one I need tattooed permanently on my arm" you've stared at it long enough you've simply got it memorized 😄
@@thefaboo it's permanently imprinted.. upon your brain folds
@@bluewilliams4911 *shocked pikachu face*
lmao perfect video for February
I am neither the Barefoot Contessa, nor an Italian, however I love to have a few thin slices of Pecorino with a glass of sherry.
For me, as well as seasoning, it is very much an eating cheese.
That said, 5 lbs is completely insane and so is the author.
I agree, you can absolutely eat slices of pecorino. It's delicious. But 5 lbs is insane lol and it would definitely ruin her financially with the salary of an adjunct.
Wish books like these had more physics content, a love story based on Maxwell's equations and geometric algebra could be cool. Could be converted into a textbook as well.
Fascinating! I agree -- it would be interesting to incorporate academic culture & physics through themes and narrative or small in-group things rather than lists of buzzwords. Perhaps the time is ripe for a Maxwell's equation romance novel!
My emag class in college had a short sci fi story (think buck rogers) as the final exam that had you doing equations throughout to calculate transporter mishaps.
You should read Neil Stephenson's Baroque Cycle. There are some romance aspects in it.
You might like the Cosmicomics by Italo Calvino, they're a series of short stories, each based on a different (sometimes outdated) scientific theory.
In general it'd just be cool to have more stories that actually involve science, there's tons of unexplored potential here.
Didn't expect to finish this video feeling harassed about my cheese choices. Angela, please, listen to yourself. All cheese is eating cheese. That's why we make cheese. I'm going to go buy some pecorino and eat slices of it right now! :)
#allcheeseiseatingcheese
Rest of the video was based, informative, and hilarious as usual, thanks for making it! :)
Cheese!!!
I love you!
On the topic of physics tattoos: the best ones aren't equations, they're of less well-known phemonena, especially fluid mechanics ones. My high-school physics teacher had a really cool vortex shedding tattoo, and ive thought about getting a Rayleigh-Taylor instability one. "E=mc^2" never makes a good tattoo.
Never trust a caret
if anything, go E²=(mc²)²+(pc)²
but anything more visual is gonna be more interesting
Tattoo of the Carnot cycle.
my embarassing secret is i have read all her books and will continue reading these probably because i think they’re fun even if they’re factually bad
sex and a fun romp even if it’s stupid and poorly written is still sex and a fun romp
don't be embarrassed! people like what they like
@@acollierastro
I choose to be embarrassed that I like:
Homestuck
Women
Men
Bad Dragon
I refuse to feel embarrassed about liking:
fallout: equestria, the print edition
My little pony: friendship is magic
Adventure time
Snails
Rootbeer
Furries
Turtles
Guns
My friends
Brony music
I've read everything written by Jennifer Lancaster and Lauren Weisberger. Don't be embarrassed, and when you feel embarrassment start creeping up on you just remember that there are people who read Scott Adams, Jordan Peterson, or Ben Shapiro books. *On purpose.* That's how I comfort myself, anyway.
I get it and I support you, lilaroseg. I could read all of Robert Ludlum’s books and they are said to be factually bad by people who know literature.
"Pecorino" refers to a variety of italian cheeses made from sheep's milk. Pecorino Romano is one of these, and I am happy to eat it straight up. I will buy a small amount, maybe a 1/3 of a pound, and nibble on it over a day or two. It has a strong and pleasing flavor to me. I have no idea if other people do this, but I am convinced I am not particularly remarkable or peculiar. So to answer your implicit question, "Who does that?", I have to raise my hand.
Wouldn't the character never to that variety then? She's in Boston, but still most pecorino it's going to be a hard cheese. (I like it too btw).
my favorite Peccorino is Locatelli. and yes, I will eat honking chunks at a time. I also grate it and put it in my kale soup, on my pasta and pizza. It reminds me of my old world Italian granny and being in her kitchen.
Jack is a DnD nerd. That is the only way to make that astral plane tattoo make sense.
Or... Author doesn't know a thing about the things she's writing about.
@@d3nza482 it's obviously both. The tattoo as a dnd reference is definitely a result of 5 minutes of character research online. With dnd as one of the key words.
Oh and by the way he's so big and muscly, but oh not like he goes to the gym or anything like that!
There should be a "h-index" for measuring the weight of media on fanfiction. That RYLO stuff is still floating around is mindblowing to me.
I remember learning about Noether's theorem from a Google Doodle in like 2011 and being very confused by the technical definition. Thank you for explaining it in a way that I will absolutely remember going forward.
And thank you for letting me know that the 2-3 sentence explanation you provided surpasses anything I would learn from that book 🙃
your deadpan delivery of "because they never got therapy" before you can even begin to describe the plot. I'm in stitches
This book is in my Audible library, and I'm so glad I can watch this video instead of finishing it.
The way the video started out simple and became more and more of a wild rant is a good illustration of a complex harmonic oscillator. I was hoping you were going to break out the lasers on the book.
When the "she got published on the cover of Nature" part happened, my partner turned to me and said "I have met one person who got published on the cover of Nature. He got it framed and showed it to everyone. If a grad student got the cover of Nature and then applied for a job at any university ever, the moment they'd step in the hiring committee would go 'oh my god you got published on the cover of Nature!' and hire them instantly"
Thank you Angela! Noether's Therom, Local Thermo Dynamic Equilibrium, Flux, Pointing Vectors. I am now well versed in all things physics and am looking forward to my new career as a Professor of Theoritcal Physics.
omg finally a vid talking about books. i'll watch later after work. can you do your favorite scifi books next? i just finished reading Lilith's Brood and it's fucking amazing.
100% I want the wacky inflatable tubeman movements thanks
I need more reviews of books from you. Seriously... Even taking all the physics knowledge out, the way you addressed character motivations, backstory, plot, etc... was perfect.
But I will content myself if you do a list of your favorite books. Any genre.
I do have to say, while the type of psychological harm expressed in this book is... unlikely, diabetes (especially Type 1) can have severe psychological impacts. Like, a close friend of mine is a type 1 diabetic, and he was diagnosed when he was about 18 months old. Let me tell you, there is no good way to explain to a literal toddler that their parents are hurting them constantly (finger pricks, injections, etc.) because the toddler will literally die otherwise. Having your food constantly policed (because, again, you will die otherwise) is not great either. Things are better for him now that the associated medical tech has improved so much, but yeah, that leaves one hell of a psychological hangover.
sorry if this is weird but she says “i dont frot” in her “i dont do sex work” thing. i dint think she knows what that means i dont think cis women can do that idk
people usually use it to mean rubbing peens but I think the general meaning (which I've seen sometimes!) is just rubbing genitals together of any kind
i had the wlw connotation as well, from reading the wikipedia pages on sex as a teenager lol
@@ZERGSOMGit’s sword fighting. There is no more general meaning.
The author isn't a native speaker of English. She probably thought "frot" was short for "frottage", which the Oxford defines as, "the practice of touching or rubbing against the clothed body of another person in a crowd as a means of obtaining sexual gratification." This is stereo-typically achieved by the man standing behind the woman (such as on the bus or subway) and rubbing his "peen" between her butt cheeks. For women, they'll straddle a man's thigh and rub against it. I have no idea how "frot" came to mean rubbing peens, but I have long since given up trying to understand how kids co-opt words to express something they don't have another word for.
It is from the French verb 'frotter' which means 'to rub'.
"Hey! There's that thing I know!" had me laughing out loud. They probably annoyed their date/friends/roommate afterwards trying to make them ask "Hey, You know a thing, so can you explain theorists and experimentalists?"
Been waiting for the inevitable turn to booktube since the lotr video
I got so excited when I saw this title and thumbnail this is exactly the video I’ve been waiting for
i was so happy to see angela cover one of my other favourite long youtube video topics. that being mid romance novels
Hi Angela, from your criticism of this book i strongly recommend reading "Beyond Sleep" by Willem Frederik Hermans
It's not about physics, but about a geologist and it's certainly not romance and instead more literary fiction but it touches on most themes in this book far better.
(Spoiler's only for things that are already on the blurb on the back of the book):
1. Experimental vs Theorethical science: The central journey in the book is the main charachter (Alfred)'s attempt to prove a theory devised by his promoter (Dutch version of a doctoral thesis supervisor) laying bare the real tensions between theorethical and practical science without resorting to outlandish fictions.
2. The tension between advisor and student: Alfred questions repeatedly whether he is wasting his time and harming his career by following the (unconventional and controversial) advice/theories of his promoter.
3. Legacy of a passed scientist parent: Alfred is treading in the footprints of his father who was a geologist who died on the job. This actually affects Alfred's character and motivations in a very realistic way.
Besides dealing with these academic themes much better (even tough it was written many years ago) the book is also just incredibly good and one of the great masterpieces of the Dutch literary tradition (being considered for a Nobel prize in literature), it recieved a very strong English translation and has a lot of interesting things to say about academia, science, philosophy, nature, human relationships and Alfred's character.
You’re too kind. The author is NOT a scientist, let alone a physicist. She/he thinks really stupid puns and random words from The Child’s First Book of Physics is how Physicists talk. Keep in mind that there are a lot of men with female pseudonyms writing romance novels. Who knows who or what this author is, but just sayin’.
when the front-page article in Nature got mentioned, my thought was "lmao the author's just never heard of any journal outside of Nature and Science" but then the fact that Hazelwood _is_ a working scientist came into the picture. and that had me puzzled, but ultimately i think i can see where that choice might come from. writing for a general audience you can't expect every reader will know about the prestige levels of different journals, and it's far more likely they'll have at least heard of Nature or Science than Journal of Fuel Chemistry and Technology. it's like using the MoMA as a shorthand for the contemporary art world - even if that does mean that a reader with a bit of context will have a laugh when your protagonist who has work exhibited in the MoMA is currently doing $10 caricatures at a carnival (...though that would be a pretty good way to depict your protag starting the story just devastatingly washed up if that was your goal)
tbh learning that the author is a scientist really threw me for a loop on the whole thing. it sounds a novel written by someone who doesn't have any real knowledge about science but wanted to use academia as a backdrop to set their story in. (which like, honestly fair enough) but it's so strange to have someone who *has* lived in the setting they're writing and *knows* how it works, to wind up writing something that sounds as though it's from an outsider. like it has to be a choice, right? did she feel like depicting more realistic details wouldn't be interesting enough for the average reader? did she think her audience couldn't handle science ideas beyond "random jargon to make people sound smart"? where in the *goddamn* did she get the idea that the "astral plane" has anything to do with physics???
Hey that's really interesting - but they can't be a physicist, or know many physicists, right?
I don't get that at all though, as a reader I hate when books assume I'm stupid and dumb down things, if it's a book about a topic I don't know and I find a given concept interesting I'll look it up lol.
The general population knows very little about academia, true, but you can just... teach them (Especially with a book that sells itself as somewhat educational)?
It's such an easy concept to introduce, either lazily by info dumping or by integrating it into the dialogue, the characters are supposed to be working scientists after all, talking about journals you published to is super common in my experience.
I would say that the general reader wouldn't even know Nature or Science, so the author may as well just get a more realistic journal, like it's not gonna make a different for the majority of the audience but it's gonna be WILD for those who do
The Astral plane bit has to be from D&D, which that character apparently likes. But as for what such a tattoo would look like? No idea. The rest I think must be because the author has next to zero experience working in an academic environment. That seems very strange but it is possible. Anecdotally I've known scientists who basically don't know anything about their field because they actually hated it and just suffered through to graduation.
Last month around christmas time, I was chatting with my sister who flew to the east coast from the midwest, and while chatting she told me about how she sat next to the most interesting character. My sister has been writing a fantasy novel in her spare time for a few years and she told me about how the person she sat next to on the plan was a neuroscience professor who aparently wrote a TON of Reylo fan fiction; and got famous for writing about how fan fiction is belittled as a genre; so she took a bunch of Reylo fanfiction she wrote, changed all the names, published them and became a best selling author.
I am now a little stunned a month later I am hearing about this from your channel.
As for the "is she a professor" debate. My sister mentioned it and I didn't know she existed prior to that conversation, so unless she was inclined to a random aspiring author on a plane about something like that I imagine she probably is.
ive always wondered, do physicists actually know how insanely brilliant Noether was? They always talk about noethers theorem but (maybe this is my bias as an algebraist talking) noethers theorem is barely worthy of a footnote when compared to the amount of modern mathematical theory thats fundamentals come from what she did. I feel the need to stress that when people talk about noether as an example of a woman in stem they are almost always not giving her enough credit
i love very serious analysis of "silly" things like this! genuinely could watch anything you put out though, despite not having a STEM background at all (i'm in social work!)
You've always been funny but this review (and I'm only nine minutes in) might be the first time I've had actual LOL.
Ok so omg I want to watch every movie with you bc this is the level of analysis I like to do with materials
1:15:09 I worked on "VEEP" the tv show we Made like 20 Fake wheels of Pecorino cheese But set dressing also bought an entire Pallet of Cheese .Every one got Pecorino after the show wrapped.
24:06 Astral planes are also a thing in computing - it refers to unicode code points outside of the basic multilingual plane. I love Unicode.
Something ChatGPT would generate.
This is some of the greatest content I’ve ever consumed, science vs booktok is the boss battle we never knew existed
I don't love you .. but I really enjoy your content ... theoretically
Not because of diabetes ...
it's spelled diabeetus.
@@buriedintimeWilford brimly fortole your comming
@@qsquared8833Brimly was only 34 years old in Cocoon. He remains 34 to this day.
The point of shoving random buzzwords one finds by googling "physics terminology" in one's story is that it creates physics *vibe* for an uneducated reader without the author having to do any actual legwork and research. Romance has adopted basically every vibe to ever exist at this point: there are romance stories set in schools, universities, music bands, office spaces, diners, cornerstores, criminal organizations, historical settings, and whatever else. All of them have the same extremely rigid skeleton of character tropes and plot developments, and can be trivially transformed into one another by just swapping the palette of the appropriate buzzwords. The practice of "filing off serial numbers" mentioned in this video is exactly this kind of transformation: the author removes all the buzzwords that would tag the story into a particular fandom, and replaces them with buzzwords of a setting they got from throwing darts at the wall or pulling a piece of paper out of a hat.
I doubt the author of Love Theoretically wanted to write a science book, because that would require effort incompatible with her extremely prolific output, to put it nicely. I think it makes sense: she could spend a year learning the physics stuff herself and writing the book with actual science, and get some pointed praise from the physicists that read romance novels, or she could spend 3 months on the book with the appropriate list of buzzwords, with more or less the same sales figures because the vast majority of people wouldn't care for the difference. Just looking through the author's bibliography, it's clear she isn't a science communicator, she is a highly prolific romance story author.
It sucks that the book contributes to the ever-expanding landfill of the stories that make the reader feel smart (or stupid) without actually teaching them anything, but at the same time maybe asking writers to only ever evoke a subject if they actually know what they're talking about is too much. It's kind of a responsibility of the reader to be able to tell the difference between the subject books and the subject vibe books.
I could definitely eat an amount of pecorino. It is normally used for seasoning but it has a nice flavor that can be appreciated on its own. Eating five (5) pounds of pecorino however is liable to give you some pretty severe dehydration or headaches, and think of your poor kidneys... although if you're splitting it between two people I could see two and a half pounds of pecorino being manageable over the course of a day, terrible bloating and gas aside.
Cannot possibly express my delight at seeing this thumbnail and title
The best part of this video essay is AC's sendup of the fake antagonism between experimental and theoretical physics, and her vigorous defense of Emmy Noether and how she might have had a substantive place in a book like this.
I don't read the romance genre, but if AC writes a proper romance novel based on physics themes, I'll buy it. But I expect she would have to use a pseudonym. How will I know?
Loved your video! Haha I had a similar reaction to the previous book (Love on the Brain), because my background's in neuroscience and that's what that book is about. So much of the science just didn't make sense plus just like in this one the way academia works in that books was so strange (to the point that I seriously doubted that the author ever really worked in academia). I do read a lot of romance novels but still didn't really like these 😅. I really wanted to get why so many people love these novels, but I'll definitely skip any future books by the author 🙈
There's an old story about an accountant who goes into the office every day feeling nervous. Then he opens his drawer and reads a note that says debits on the left, credits on the right. Then he breathes a big sigh of relief and gets to work.
I don't get it 😅 would you be able to explain it to me?
It's referring to the character having to look up what Noether's theorem is before every class, like she'd ever forget.
Reminds me of the one about the personnel manager who is always seen to be checking a note in his desk drawer for inspiration. When he retires they find it and it says "2 N's, 1 L".
I read the expanse recently and I’d probably say I learned a lot. I can’t really point to much other than things that are moving fast have to slow down before stopping. But I felt smarter after.
About pecorino: although it is a hard cheese which is usually grated to sprinkle on pasta (as you say), or on risotto, in Italy when you buy it fresh it is actually a lot softer, and you can slice it thin and eat it on its own or just with some bread, maybe with a small bowl of fresh olive oil to dip the bread in too. The same is true with parmesan when it is fresh: I have been to a wine tasting in Rome where a large fresh parmesan was cut open to serve with bread, alongside the wines. Either pecorino or parmigiano are delicious when eaten in this way (assuming you like cheese), but I don't imagine it is so easy to get hold of the fresh stuff in the US (unless it is produced by some local artisan cheesemaker...).
I live in the UK but have lived in Italy, so whenever I go back there I try to buy pecorino and/or parmigiano as fresh as possible, just before leaving, to take some home with me.
Costco sells romano that's pretty soft when you get it. And way less expensive than whole foods.
I'm so glad you compared this to The Big Bang Theory, because the whole thing seemed like that but a romcom up to that point!
The first three seasons of BBT were basically three's company with some good physics jokes. After that they mostly gave up the physics.
I actually straight up eat parm/pecorino all the time, in little chunks with a good beer, it's not that weird lol
Small chunks sure, but they're talking about taking bites directly out of a block. That is weird.
I'm not a scientist but I couldn't imagine not being excited for an in person lab tour. Yes I DO wanna see the cool fancy specialized machinery and meet the people using it and learn what work they're doing with it.
I feel like when people write books like these they should have advisors to help make the science and academia side at least plausible. Also, I'm not a physicist of any stripe but I'm studying evolutionary biology and honestly seeing how something like adaptive landscapes or genetic hitchhiking actually work in a real experimental or observational setting would be soooo cool.
9/10!! Excellent Dr. Collier Epic Rant, would recommend. 1 point deducted due to short run time. Another 15 minutes of Angela's thoughts on Emmy Noether's significant life, work, and baffling absence from this book would have made a perfect round 90 minutes.. Keeping my fingers crossed for a Steminist Theory extended cut!!!😂
"Theoretical physicists can't work without data."
String theorists: "Hold our beers..."
I would hate this book and yet I enjoyed hearing you discuss it. Your humor is unique. Great post, thanks.
I love how the whole “theorists and experimentalists hate each other” idea “helped people understand Oppenheimer” when Oppenheimer VERY explicitly repudiated that idea.
Oppenheimer has multiple lines where he’s like “us theorists need experimentalists, theory can only take one so far”
And you are 100% right about pecorino.
Ty for uodating the channel name. The old one made me feel like i was having a stroke.
noo the chapter is called complex harmonic motion because the good bits are imaginary
The whole tattoo thing at 23:00 got me. Now I wish there were a Memento skit of a physics student piecing together how they studied for the final based on the various equations and notes tattooed on their body
I think I get the frustration. A missed opportunity to fairly communicate science to a crowd that would probably never encounter it.
I think you are right that the thing readers learned is (1) physics exists, (2) there are experimentalists and theorists, and (3) they hate each other. I’m hoping that they forget number three, because learning the first two is actually good (albeit the bare minimum).