The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey Into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred | 
Spending this rainy Saturday morning at the coffee shop working on my project that is due tomorrow.
Book rec: The Disordered Cosmos. Read this a few years ago. A great book about being a minority in STEM fields.
#chatterday2025
#gradschool
#rainydays
#coffeeday
Feminist Book Club delivery day! This month‘s theme is The Cosmos. 🪐🔭
pickThe stuff about quarks was way over my head, but mostly this was a book that made me want to join a protest or watch the night sky or both! It was partly a love letter to particle physics and partly a memoir.
pickCosmological physics from the POV of an outsider. We get all the goods here: astrophysics, BLM, racism in the scientific community and a searing take on inclusion in STEM (the author suggests that the driving force behind including diverse children/people in STEM is to benefit gov and not for inclusion sake). I love books like this that encourage me to think deeper about a wide variety of topics. Even if I didn‘t get the physics stuff 😆
bailedThis seems like a really good book: maybe it is for somebody who understands science, but that isn‘t me! I was attracted by the description of how it analyzes the intersections of scientific work, gender, and race, but I just wasn‘t able to follow it.
#Booked2022 #InvolvesanExploration
pickInformative and important read. I was delighted with the scientific chapters and the marvel that is our universe. The remainder of her book chronicles her thoughts and experiences as a minority in this country and within a scientific community dominated by white men. Much of it was intensely relatable as a WOC in a male dominated STEM-field.
#bookspinbingo
#August2022
@MerlinTheSlightlyAwkward
Been waiting on this for MONTHS and there will be no sleep this weekend 😍🌻📖🦾
She is so brilliant. And sassy. And strong. And is probably one of my new heroes.
#prescodweinstein #chandaprescodweinstein #STEM #physics #science #astronomy #cosmology #womenofscience #nonfiction #feminism
My summer has been zany and demanding - mostly in a good way. I haven‘t been able to sink my teeth into any books, but knitting a lace scarf has been my companion. Considering getting into this book, soon. #knittingandreading #readingandknitting
THANK YOU! ❤️ @Hazel2019
These beauties arrived today and my nerd heart is very happy. Cannot wait to dive in!
pickThis is such a beautiful and wonderful book. This is such an important book because the rampant sexism, racism, homophobia within her field is just as rampant in many other academic fields. Prescod-Weinstein is brave and brilliant, she gets into good trouble, and wants every child to have the same opportunities to dream. I couldn‘t stop listening, then there was this beautiful letter to her mother and it was all over. 👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻
I love astrophysics, and this seems to fit with so many important issues right now as well. This is my next pride month read.
#ChandaPrescodWeinstein #TheDisorderedCosmos #PrideMonth #LGBTQ
“Our current understanding of the universe suggests that the constituents of everything we have ever seen—the very stuff that we are made of—only makes up about 20 percent of the matter in the universe.”
Read this incredible book.
What do Radiohead, Black Lives Matter, and quarks have in common?? The Disordered Cosmos. This book is deep. It is poetic. It is particle physics at the intersection of gender and Critical Race Theory. I recommend EVERYONE read it.
This is a good reminder.
pickChanda Prescod-Weinstein examines not only her own work in particle physics but also how science happens in a settler-colonial context. This is the book I needed instead of my university‘s frustrating History of Science course. It‘s got me thinking about science from all sorts of different angles, and I know I‘ll be mulling it over for weeks to come. Read it. It matters. 4.5 stars
“What are the conditions we need so that a thirteen-year-old Black kid and their single mom can go look at a dark night sky, away from artificial lights, and know what they are seeing? What health care structures, what food and housing security are needed? What science communication structures? What community structures? What relationship with the land do they need?” Image: the Milky Way Center aglow with dust. NASA, taken w/the Spitzer telescope.
Current audiobook.
pickBeing a black, Jewish & agender femme particle cosmologist, Chanda Prescod-Weinstein has grappled with all the threads of her history, including misogynoir & colonialism‘s relationship with Indigenous knowledge. Her passion for ethical science makes my heart sing, while her journey to professional status has been harrowing. One of many cool things: the physics of skin—understanding melanin might help us build better, greener technologies. #Queer
Black lives are the stuff of stars and black lives matter. All of them.
Even for all its facts, Western science has struggled with acknowledging a core reality: humans are not the masters of our ecosystem, but rather are dependent on it.
In my view, to be an American president is to helm a sprawling system that does not understand freedom, even as it drones on and on about it.
Image of a stellar nursery is from the NASA website. I followed the author‘s instructions and typed “Hubble pillars of creation” into an internet search. Wow!
When a star goes supernova & converts from plasma to a neutron star, that is some combination of superfluids & solids quite unlike those found on Earth. Similarly I had to undergo intellectual phase transitions to conceive of what it meant to go from being a black girl who loved but did not understand particle physics to a queer agender black woman who loves(& is one of the chosen few who understands how much we don‘t understand)particle physics.
pickThis is a combination of a love letter and scientific sermon to Black people, as well as the queer, trans, and disabled, who dream of being as big and visible as the cosmos. Highlights the need of representation and diversity in STEM.
New books and new candles. Life is very good.
📚 🥰
“[I]n fact, it was demoralizing.... What I really wanted everyone to understand is that Black thoughts, like Black lives, matter.” #ARC
“They were first noticed in 1967 by Jocelyn Bell Burnell- when she was still just a grad student! - and her PhD adviser Antony Hewish. In 1974, Hewish was awarded a Nobel Prize for their work and Burnell was not.”
... quotes like this are why it‘s taking me forever to read this book. I have to take a moment to go be angry. #ARC
The love of physics, inequality in science and academia, Star Trek and a passion for ensuring we all get to enjoy the night sky - my star sign has thrown up a really interesting one this month! #stacked
https://lithub.com/the-astrology-book-club-what-to-read-this-month-based-on-your...
