Today we celebrate women in STEM. Meaning adult human females or anyone who identifies as a woman and lives as a woman who against so many stereotypes is a STEM professional. I am most proud to work as a member of the LISA consortium as a small part of the Fundamental Physics Working Group. I contribute my little bit to working out what physics will be tested by the Laster Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA). This is a space probe which will do the same thing as LIGO but at a much grander scale and looking at a different part of the gravitational wave spectrum. Work we do will inform fundamental physics for as long as human beings do fundamental physics. I am most proud to be a small part of this big team effort.


That’s my story. Here are other women and girls and supportive organizations.





As usual Anime was ahead of society in depicting that a woman can be a scientist and also be womanly. Bluma invented a time machine and a lot of other gadgets in Dragon Ball Z.

Mansplained by Freedom Convoy Supporters.

Lastly of course my day as a woman in STEM would not be complete without a dude who though very smart and educated in his area, law, feels free to mansplain a little to me… a theoretical astrophysicist. Like most of these events they are not done from a place of malice just dudes being dudes.

To ensure that a record of this interaction will endure for posterity have screen shot it. Now what David Freiheit @thevivafrei , Vivabarneslaw.locals.com , a vocal supporter of the Freedom convoy himself wrote is just fine. As Twitter goes you can’t say much more. The real issue is the followers under that who seem to think that because what he said confirms their biases, also his being a dude confirms their biases, that he knows what he is talking about here.

He’s anti vaccine mandates but people who are anti vaxx and anti-science, like many of his followers, don’t get the difference. So, they see his misunderstanding of science, with authority that they think just any old degree gives and they like.

In short, taking his advice about science would be like taking a scientist's advice about law. It would be foolish.


The reason the graphs are the same shape is due to the fundamental laws of how exponential growth and decay work. They well known science that science majors learn in Sophomore year calculus, physics, or chemistry class. Exponential growth and decay govern growth of bacteria, population boom and bust, or viral spread and viral die off. Don’t take my word for it.

Modeling Growth, Containment and Decay of the COVID-19 Epidemic in Italy Francesco Capuano*

A model confirmed by all the data we’ve seen it play out repeatedly.

Hopefully, politicians will not be like the ones from “Don’t Look Up”. Stay the course for just another 2 - 6 weeks depending on local conditions and we can beat this virus back into its corner. Follow the data, listen to the scientist who works with it for a living regardless of what is or is not between their legs.

If you like this article, please subscribe to my substack and check back at my long-standing blog at science2.0