Katie Mack

I am absolutely thrilled to present to you: How to Build a Universe (Theoretically Speaking) available for pre-order now, wherever you buy your books! www.simonandschuster.ca/books/How-to...

This talk will also be livestreamed on our YouTube channel. Get tickets here: www.eventbrite.ca/e/the-invisi...

Brazil’s results tonight are a big endorsement for the idea that every country should have a second “are you you sure about that” election a couple weeks after the first one for the important stuff

Things I enjoy in science fiction: * spaceships * artificial (or just somehow really different) intelligences * interesting social commentary Things I tend not to enjoy: * dark/gritty stuff (everyone is having a bad time & so am I) * sexism/bigotry/etc (this rules out a lot of "classic" sci-fi)

Are you a US citizen not currently living in the US? Now is a good time to vote! @votefromabroad.bsky.social has info about how to get your ballot

I voted! 🗳️ (absentee, online) Before I moved to Canada, I lived in Raleigh, NC. So as an overseas citizen voter, I'm a Wake County North Carolina voter forever (unless I move back to the States). If you're eligible to vote in the US midterms, I hope you voted too!

After sitting on the account for a few years, I finally set up an affiliate link on Bookshop.org -- if you use this link to pre-order my new book, you both support independent bookstores and give me a bit of an extra boost! bookshop.org/a/104234/978...

This 19th c lady’s multitool was found in the pocket(!) of an antique (1872) garment donated to the historic clothing archive at my employer. It features a button hook for fitted gloves and a tiny corkscrew. The corkscrew is too small for wine & was probably intended to open apothecary bottles.

It sounds like hyperbole to suggest the current administration WANTS measles to become common again but I can’t think of much they’d be doing differently if they didn’t want that. (I think some of them really are eugenicists who legit prefer disease spread to prevention; others just don’t care)

Every year, Research!America does a poll that asks, "Can you name a living scientist?" In January 2026, 76% of respondents said "no." Of those who said "yes," 5% named a scientist who was, in fact, dead. www.researchamerica.org/blog/can-you...

Last summer, Scientific American's owners were stalking the site, making sure it wasn't being too critical of Trump. This summer, the magazine was sold and gutted. I wrote about it for The Nation www.thenation.com/article/soci...

What’s the most unsettling book you’ve read? I answered this question along with several others for Nautilus Magazine.

"I think I found something but I can't be arsed to check, can someone else handle that bit but give me credit anyway?"

Behold: the UK/Commonwealth version of the cover of my upcoming book, "How to Build a Universe (Theoretically Speaking)"! You can pre-order this version from www.penguin.co.uk/books/458932... or from wherever you get books in the UK. Nerdy notes about the cover design to follow below.

SCOOP: 'Tommy' from the now-viral exchange with Abdul El-Sayed is Thomas Teepell, a former staffer for Republican Senator Josh Hawley with close ties to Christian Nationalist Sean Feucht. He's the son of a former Bobby Jindal staffer whose consultant work was instrumental in getting Hawley elected.

One of the many things I love about El-Sayed is that he's willing to engage with someone hostile if it gets them to admit the premises behind that hostility, to the extent that it becomes impossible to avoid the underlying bigotry. You want to go there, fine, but he's gonna make you own it.

We already have flying cars. They're called helicopters. They're really expensive and there are good reasons you have to have a pilot license and work with air traffic control to fly them. Putting jets on a sedan is not going to result in a better vehicle or transportation experience in any way.

Octopus is the easiest thing to cut out of your diet on moral grounds because it’s basically never around, probably has dreams and emotions and tastes like a tire.

This is why it's so important in your math classes to understand the difference between "if" and "iff." The comment below may be true as stated (if) but is obviously false as intended (iff).

Okay sorry I think we're done with "Tell me [] without telling me []." It had its time. It was always condescendingly smug but now it's also unbearably tedious; I think we can move on.

Is it bad if major defense contractors have their own foreign policies?

The part of this clip where he points out that gas was cheap the day before he started bombing Iran could be run on its own as an attack ad by the Democrats

If you missed the sign-up but would like to read this issue of my newsletter, you can find it online here: mackkatie.activehosted.com/social/c74d9... There's a subscription link at the bottom if you'd like to be on the list for future newsletters!

Merriam Webster out here fighting for its life

In about 15 minutes I'm going to send out the next issue of my e-mail newsletter, with dark matter news, cool neutrinos, dark energy, and a book cover reveal - UK edition! You can sign up here: mackkatie.activehosted.com/f/1