Okay, all right, so it's on 11, so we're gonna get started now. Thanks for joining. So this talk is going to be about the biggest explosions in the universe. So I'm gonna give you a quick introduction on how today's session will work and then we'll jump right in. So my name is Georgie and I'm an astronomer at Mount Stromler Observatory in Canberra. So I began studying astronomy in New Zealand in 2013 and now I'm working on my PhD here in Canberra, which means my job is to research things in space and try to learn more about them. So for the past few years, I've been studying a particular type of exploding object in space, which we will learn about later in today's talk. So my work involves computer programming, mathematical modeling, applying scientific methods, writing research papers and collaborating with scientists all over the world. So I'm also part of the Mount Stromler Observatory outreach team, which means I spend some of my time teaching the public about space like we're doing today. So for today's session, I'm gonna give a presentation that should take about 20 minutes and then afterwards we can have a discussion about some of your space questions. So make sure you put your questions in the Facebook live stream comments at any time and we'll answer them at the end of the talk. So there are lots of different things in space that are interesting. There are black holes and galaxies and planets and stars and maybe even aliens.  So first off, we should talk about what an explosion is. Most of us will have seen explosions on TV or maybe even in real life. And normally they're very loud and dramatic and there can be flames or big clouds of smoke and dust. But scientifically, we're going to loosely define an explosion as something that suddenly expands and releases energy. And often there's a lot of heat and gas involved too. So this picture shows a controlled explosion of 16 tons of TNT, which is an explosive material. So today we're going to be talking about really big explosions. So we're going to need to measure the size of these explosions and megatons of TNT. So a megaton of TNT is a million tons or a thousand million kilograms of explosive. That's about a hundred thousand times bigger than the explosion in this picture. So what we're measuring is the explosive force or the kinetic energy released in each explosion. But before we can talk about how big explosions are in space, we need to understand how big explosions can be here on Earth. So I want you to have a think about different things on Earth that can explode. And while you're thinking, we can watch another controlled explosion, this time with a hundred tons of TNT. So you can see we sort of have the initial explosion, which looks like a ball of flames, and then a shockwave, and then the big clouds of smoke and dust bellowing out. And that's similar to how things explode in space. But that wasn't even close to the biggest explosion on Earth. So let's see what we have. The most powerful nuclear bombs on Earth have the explosive force of 50 megatons of TNT. So that's over 500,000 times bigger than the explosion we saw in the picture and 50,000 times bigger than the explosion we saw in the video. The largest volcanic eruption in history exploded with a force of about 1,000 megatons of TNT. And the asteroid that hit the Earth and killed the dinosaurs had a force of 100 million megatons of TNT, which is absolutely huge. So now that we understand how big explosions are on Earth, we can start to have a look at explosions in space. So we're going to start with a relatively small explosion in space called a nova. So let's start with a white dwarf, which is a small star about the size of Earth, but with the weight of our Sun. So if you take all of the stuff in our Sun and cram it into a ball the size of Earth, we have a white dwarf.  So one white dwarf can have multiple nova explosions in its lifetime, but we're just going to measure the energy of one. So try and have a guess at how many megatons of TNT might equal a nova. Remember that the asteroid that hit the Earth and killed the dinosaurs had a force of 100 million megatons of TNT. So that should give you some idea. Let's see what we have. Wow, okay, it's a big number. So a nova has a force of 2 million quadrillion megatons of TNT. So that is 20 trillion times more powerful than the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs. So I'm sure you can all guess what would happen if a nova explosion happened here on Earth. It would be destroyed by Earth. So we're really lucky that these nova explosions only happen to stars in space. If you have any questions about nova, make sure to leave them in the comments because now we're going to look at some even bigger explosions in space. So what's bigger than a nova? The answer is a supernova. So I'm sure some of you could have guessed that one. Now, there are two different types of supernova that are both very powerful and we are going to talk about both types, but let's start with core-collapse supernova. So we want to start with between 10 and 50 copies of our Sun. And let's take all the mass of those Suns and squeeze it down into one mass of star called a supergine. So the insides of stars are basically factories that make heavier and heavier elements through nuclear fusion. This fusion releases energy, which provides pressure, pushing outwards to counteract the force of gravity pushing in to keep the star stable.  The air that you blow into that balloon stops it from collapsing just like the nuclear fusion stops the star from collapsing. So over time, hydrogen fuses to helium and then to carbon, oxygen, and silicon, and finally, silicon fuses into iron. But this is where it gets interesting. So iron is an extremely stable element and instead of giving out energy to provide pressure, it actually needs to absorb energy in order to undergo nuclear fusion. So this means that the pressure that was holding the star up against gravity disappears and it begins to collapse. But things can only collapse so much. So imagine you're trying to squeeze a big ball. You can only squeeze it in so much. Because these stars are so big, the core of the star reaches a critical density where you can't squeeze it down any tighter while the outer envelope of the core is still collapsing. When this outer envelope hits the extremely dense core, it bounces off it, kind of like the biggest trampoline in the universe and causes a huge shock wave. So the explosion of this shock wave is called a core-collect supernova. So here's a simulation of Cassiopeia A. This supernova exploded in the 1600s. So what we observe today is the supernova remnant, an expanding cloud of material left over from the supernova. So this explosion was probably about 10 million times more powerful than a nova. So if anyone is keeping count in units of TNT, that's 10 octillion megatons. And it's so bright that if one exploded in our Milky Way galaxy, it would be brighter than the moon at night, and we could even see it during the day. So these supernova remnants are important because they release all of these elements that were created in the star, as well as extra ones that were created in the explosion itself, out into space. Eventually, these materials can be gathered up to form new stars. So our sun is actually a third-generation star, which means it's made from leftover materials from lots of other stars, including core-collapsed supernova, like Cassiopeia A. And I chose to show Cassiopeia A in particular, so I think it kind of looks like an alien doing this. So that's why that one's my favorite. But now let's go back and see how core-collapsed supernova can pierce explosions on Earth. So we're not looking at just Earth anymore, we're looking at the whole universe. And yes, we can see that a nova is much bigger than any explosion on Earth, and a core-collapsed supernova is bigger than a nova. But as I mentioned, there's another type of supernova that is even bigger and cooler than a core-collapsed supernova. And that is thermonuclear supernova. This is what I look at in my research, and I think they're very cool. So let's take a look now at how they work. So this time, instead of starting with a massive star, we're gonna start with a white dwarf again. So I mentioned white dwarfs before, they're where nova explosions happen, but they can also have full-sized supernova explosions too. And in these cases, the white dwarf isn't alone in the sky, it has a friend, and they orbit very close together in a binary system. But because white dwarfs are quite dense, they have a lot of gravity, and they're actually able to pull the outer parts of their companion star off and consume them in a process called accretion.  So this causes a runaway burning inside the star that gets hotter and hotter and hotter. So once a white dwarf eats enough to be about 40% heavier than our sun, a critical point is reached where the burning inside the star is so strong that it explodes as a supernova. So thermonuclear supernova are about 40% more explosive than their core collapse cousins. So they are equivalent to about 14 octillion megatons of TNT. And not only are they more explosive, they are also, in my opinion at least, a lot more useful. So remember the cartoon that we just saw where the white dwarf steals star star from their companion star? It turns out that every white dwarf gets full at exactly the same point. So they always explode when they are 1.4 times heavier than the sun. So imagine blowing up lots of balloons and having them burst at the exact same size every single time. That's what this is like. And because they always explode with the same amount of fuel, thermonuclear supernova explosions are always the same brightness. And it turns out that this is actually very useful. So imagine you're on the road at night and there's a car coming towards you. When it's far away, its headlights don't seem very bright, but as it gets closer, the headlights seem much brighter. So the headlights haven't actually changed in brightness. The only thing that has changed is the distance between you and the car. And in fact, if you were very clever, you might be able to measure how far away the car is just by how bright its headlights are. And it's the same with thermonuclear supernova. Because we know how much fuel they explode with, we know how bright they should be. And we can compare this to how bright they seem in the sky to figure out how far away they are. So in this way, we can use thermonuclear supernova to make a 3D map of the universe. As we observe them exploding in distant galaxies all around us, we can start to figure out what's happening on the universe on its bigger scales. So in this way, thermonuclear supernova were used to make one of the most incredible discoveries in the 21st century. So imagine this balloon as our universe. The stars represent entire galaxies, each one containing billions and billions of stars and planets. The stretchy red rubber between the stars represents outer space, the emptiness between galaxies. And just like a balloon being blown up with air, our universe is expanding. It has been expanding since the Big Bang, 13.8 billion years ago. And when scientists began using supernova explosions to measure cosmic distances, they were able to measure the expansion speed of the universe for the first time ever. What we expected to see was the expansion of the universe slowing down as gravity began to pull everything closer together. Eventually we thought the universe might even start shrinking back down. But when scientists used supernova to measure distances to very far away stars, they found that supernova were much dimmer and so much further away than expected. This means that the expansion of the universe isn't slowing down, it's speeding up. This was absolutely crazy to scientists because it went against all of our theories. It would be like you throwing your keys up in the air and expecting them to come back down and instead they flew away up into the air. So the universe seems to be blowing itself apart and it's not just that things are moving away from one another, the entire fabric of space-time is being stretched with the expansion. So this phenomenon is called the exhilarating expansion of the universe and it was so amazing that the scientists that made the discovery won a Nobel Prize. But they couldn't celebrate too much because this discovery immediately led to another big question. Why is the universe behaving like this? So based on what we know here on Earth, it doesn't make any sense. Here on Earth, things don't expand for no reason. In fact, things tend to stick together, which is why you can walk around without flying off the Earth. For the expansion of the universe to be speeding up, there must be some mysterious force that is stronger than gravity over cosmic distances that is driving the expansion. This mysterious force is called dark energy. Now, scientists don't really know what dark energy is. It's just the name we give to whatever is causing the exhilarating expansion of the universe. You can imagine dark energy as the breath that is blowing up the balloon of the universe and causing it to expand faster and faster. And it was discovered using thermonuclear supernova. So to this day, dark energy remains one of the biggest mysteries in cosmology. This is actually what I work on as part of my research. I use thermonuclear supernova to measure the universe and try and figure out some of the properties of dark energy. So if anyone has any questions about how I do that, make sure to put them in the comments and now that we've taken a brief detour into cosmology, we actually have one last space explosion to look at. So let's have a think. What could possibly be bigger than a supernova? And that is a hypernova. So a hypernova is basically a super-sized, highly-energised core-collapsed supernova. So if you remember, a core-collapsed supernova was the one made from a very massive star that collapsed and went. But instead of collapsing to a very dense core, the stars that form hypernova keep collapsing into a black hole. So this rotating black hole has two jets on either side of it that shoot out into space like we see in the picture. It forms so quickly that the outer parts of the star don't have time to react.  Hypernova can be up to 100 times more explosive than supernova and are thought to be the source of some gamma ray bursts. So gamma ray bursts are explosions of the most energetic forms of light.  And this is actually very lucky for us because gamma ray bursts are probably the biggest explosions that we know of in the universe. But because their explosions are concentrated long beams, they're actually a very low chance of one ever hitting Earth. So with that reassurance, let's take a final look at all of the explosions that we've talked about today. So we have learnt that even the smallest explosions in space can be 20 trillion times more powerful than the biggest explosions on Earth. And the biggest explosions in space are over a thousand trillion times more powerful than those on Earth. We've also learnt how thermonuclear supernova is used to discover the accelerating expansion of the universe and the mysterious force of dark energy. So now if anyone has any questions, this is the time for us to answer them. If there's anything at all that you would like to ask about, make sure you put your questions in the common sections now. And we can have a chat about it. Otherwise, thank you all for listening. Okay, it looks like we've got a question. Can you tell us a bit more about your research into dark energy? Yes, I can. So the research into dark energy started in the 1990s, which is when this accelerating expansion of the universe was discovered. And it's still going to this day. So at the moment, the research is mainly led by a group called the Dark Energy Task Force, which are in charge of sort of thinking up these experiments that can be used to look at dark energy. So my job in particular is to work with another group called the Dark Energy Survey that runs one of these experiments. And our job has been to use a telescope in Chile to have a look out into the sky for five years and see if we can find any of these thermonuclear supernova that we use to measure these distances. And we've actually found quite a few. So I think the first discovery of the accelerating expansion of the universe used about maybe 50 thermonuclear supernova, and we have possibly up to 10,000. So what that allows us to do is to take the measurements that we use to say the universe is accelerating in its expansion, and we can really tighten those up. We can say exactly how much it is accelerating, and we can say when that acceleration sort of started, when it stopped, the history of the acceleration of the universe, because even though it's accelerating now, we don't think it's always been accelerating. It was at some point when it was softened down. So what that allows us to do is it allows us to, even though we don't know what dark energy might be, it allows us to at least understand how it behaves. And that means that scientists can come up with models for what it might be, and we can compare those models' behaviour to what we actually see with these thermonuclear supernova to see if they're the same thing. So at the moment, what we think it might be is just some inherent property of space. We think space might like to stretch, and it just might be doing it itself. There might be some sort of vacuum energy pushing it apart, the opposite to gravity, and that's what I'm trying to work on figuring out now. And the way that I can do that is through my background. I can see that we've got a question about my background. So I'm not sure. I'll start from a high school, I guess, because that's sort of where you start choosing your subjects. I took physics and mathematics through high school. I also took chemistry. But none of those things were that important. You can sort of, if you want to start studying astronomy, you can sort of pick it up from a university level without having a background in any of the sciences, because normally your first year of university will teach you all of that background that you need to know. So I actually did a double major bachelor's degree in applied mathematics in astronomy. And then that was in New Zealand at AUT. And then I moved over to Canberra, where I did my honours degree, my bachelor's degree in astronomy and astrophysics. And now I'm halfway through my PhD in astronomy and astrophysics. So that's a three to four year program. And at the end of that, I will be a doctor of astrophysics. And then I'll be able to work professionally at a university or a research institute as a researcher doing this full time. So hopefully that helps. I've just seen a funny question. What happens when our balloon pops? So this is actually one of the reasons why studying this stuff is so cool and so important, is because it's going to give us some idea about the fate of the universe. So human lifetimes are actually quite short compared to the universe. You think the universe is about 13.8 billion years old and I'm 25, so that's nothing on the universe. So we won't probably be around to see the end of it, but we can make some predictions. So just like we know that the universe started with a big bang, we think eventually it's going to do a couple of different things. It could, if the acceleration of the universe continues, keep expanding outwards and sort of get so far apart that it's called the heat death of the universe where everything's sort of too far apart that nothing can live anymore. Or the accelerating expansion of the universe might stop. We know it hasn't always been accelerating. And it might just sort of stay steady. It might sort of just stop expanding and hang out. Or it might start collapsing again. So it's not doing this at the moment, but eventually it could collapse back into what's called the big crunch. So we started with the big bang. We might end with the big crunch. But it might just sort of keep expanding and contracting and expanding and contracting. So this is one of the mysteries at the moment where we're not exactly sure what's going to happen. But the more we understand about dark energy, the better we'll be able to constrain these models. Okay, another question. Is there anything stronger than a hypernova? So a hypernova and the gamma ray bursts that accompany it are one of the biggest explosions that you can see in the universe. And if you want anything bigger than that, you're going to have to start redefining what you mean by an explosion. So when I think of an explosion, I sort of think of something that visually looks explosive. There might be flames or a big burst of light or something. But there are other things that can be sort of more powerful that maybe don't look like a traditional explosion. So the big bang is one of those. The big bang was a singularity that sort of not exploded, but the better term spread out into what the universe is now. So that would be more powerful than a hypernova. But also now, if anyone is familiar with gravitational waves, you get what you can see two black holes. So remember, hypernova contain a black hole. Two black holes, if they're in a binary system, they can actually merge. And because black holes have so much matter in them, they're so dense, when those two collide, it's like two really, really big trunks crashing together. So they don't have a typical explosion like we would see from a hypernova. They give off what we know as gravitational waves. So they're so powerful that they actually shake gravity itself. So that's a really cool new branch of science. It's completely different to what I do, but those would technically be more powerful than a hypernova. And it looks like we've got one more question. What is a nova like?  So the scientists that first discovered nova thought that they were seeing a new star appear in the sky, because what previously looked like just almost nothing, like a very tiny dot or maybe even an empty patch of sky, all of a sudden was super bright, like a big bright star was there. And they thought a new star had been born. But it actually wasn't a new star. It was just a nova explosion on the surface of a white dwarf. But because they're so bright, they shine so brightly, we can see them and they look like a new star. And it wasn't until we saw that there was a white dwarf there before that we thought, okay, this can't be a brand new star because there was something in its place before. It's got to be something else. And when there was a white dwarf left there afterwards as well, we can say, all right, something on the white dwarf has exploded into a nova just on the surface. But the white dwarf is still there. So that's how they're different from supernova. But in terms of what they look like, they're actually very similar to how a supernova looks and that they're just a big burst of light. The only difference is they're not quite as bright as a supernova. So hopefully that answers some of your questions. If there are no more questions, then we will wrap up. But thank you all for coming and listening. I hope you all learnt something about space explosions and a little bit about dark energy as well. So thank you all. Okay. Looks like there's one more final question. That's all right. We can do that. What made you interested in studying about space? So lots of people have very cool answers to this question. We do a lot of these talks here. So if you wanted to check out some of the other talks by Mount Stromler astronomers, they have some very cool answers to this question. Mine isn't that exciting. I didn't really... I wasn't that interested in space growing up and it wasn't until I got to university I was looking through the different courses that I could take and I saw that I could take a course in astronomy as an elective. So basically just like a fun option. And I'd never really done anything to do with astronomy before. I didn't really know anything about it, but I thought it sounded like sort of a fun option to go along with my applied mathematics degree. So I started taking the class. The class was held at night time and we got to go out to the planetarium, the Stardome Planetarium in Auckland, New Zealand, and use the telescopes and take amazing photos of stars and space and learn all about it. And I think that class is what really got me hooked. I became really, really interested. It was my most fun class, definitely. And there are so many different things you can do with astronomy. You know, there's radio astronomy, optical astronomy, which is where I work. Lots and lots of different things you can do with it. And there's also lots of ways to get interested in it. If you're younger than what I was. So I didn't start really learning about it until I was 18 and it was just that I got lucky that I took a class that I was really interested in. So hopefully that answers that one. And I think that will be it for us today. So thanks again all for coming along. Remember to check out some of the other talks that we are hosting.


You just watched a viral clip from the New York City Drag March and the Twitter user who posted that video pointed out that the crowd was chanting, we're here, we're queer, we're coming for your children and ads, they're not even hiding it anymore. Now the video was quickly picked up by Timcast and prompted outrage by conservatives like Charlie Kirk who chimed in saying, when they tell you who they are, believe them. Now when I saw the video for the first time, after being primed to think that the entire crowd was actually chanting, we're coming for your children, I assumed that they were being sarcastic and trying to mock conservatives who call drag queens groomers, but at the same time admittedly I did kind of roll my eyes at it because I felt irritated that there was ostensibly nobody there with enough self-awareness to realize that the optics of that are bad and it is going to be used to demonize the entire community regardless if they're just being sarcastic. The context doesn't matter, joke or no joke, it's going to be weaponized against everyone and this isn't something that I'm usually hypersensitive to like I personally like edgy jokes myself, but in the middle of an anti LGBTQ plus hate crusade where conservative propagandists are specifically smearing queer people as groomers and pedophiles, regular folks who watch that aren't going to automatically assume that they're joking, right? So the video was frustrating to me and probably to a lot of other people who just felt really why are you doing this? Why are you giving them ammunition, right? And I just want to emphasize here that I'm not usually one to engage in respectability politics and scold every single queer person who's not always on their best behavior in public because we're not monolithic, right? But maybe don't go out of our way to give the right ammunition especially when this smear in particular is being used to justify legislation that takes away the rights of drag queens, for example. The problem, however, with everything that I'm saying and everything that conservatives thought that they were saying is that the crowd was not actually chanting we're coming for your children. What we actually heard was just a couple of people very close to the camera's microphone who were chanting it, but in actuality the crowd itself was chanting we're not going shopping. Now this was explained by Marla Alpert in a TikTok who gave us the additional context and re-showed us the video and once you see what she says you view the video in an entirely different light so let's watch.  So this guy came to my comment section to tell me about this video.  Go watch that clip again the person saying we're coming for your children is the person behind the camera the person who posted it who's an agitator. Everyone else is shouting we're here we're queer we're not going shopping.  First of all I think the question that any actually critically thinking person would ask themselves is why would they be shouting we're coming for your children if this is some devious plot to get your children. Everyone knows groomers like to announce themselves rather than hiding in your churches. They're saying we're not going shopping because the message is anti rainbow capitalism and corporate pride. Especially this year where brands like Bud Light and Target have shown that they are not allies and then it's all just for profit. That's why they're saying we're not going shopping. Stay sharp buddy. Mind blown honestly. Now let's watch it again because now that we haven't been primed to assume that the entire crowd is chanting that they're coming for your children you can now see that most of the crowd in actuality is clearly chanting we're not going shopping. And you can only see about three people the guy behind the camera not included because you can't see what he's saying but you can hear two people one of them was the woman who screamed at the camera and another was the woman whose chest I had to blur out. I don't know if YouTube is going to be hypersensitive about that but she was in topless she had things covering her nipples but just to be safe you know I I blurred that out but the point is that she was one of the people who temporarily chanted we're coming for your children but if you look at the mouths of every other person and you listen closely they're saying we're not going shopping so let's watch it again now that we have the proper context. So up until this point it's obvious that the entire crowd is chanting we're not going shopping but right now is when the provocateur who is presumably the cameraman chimes in and chants we're coming for your children and I'm assuming this is so he can bait others into saying it. So now you just heard two other people say it one was the lady who yelled at the camera and the other was the lady with the brown hair who I blurred out so in total we have three people who are very close to the camera and given their proximity to the camera they give you the impression this is the whole crowd since they're so close and thus the loudest when in actuality this isn't what the entire crowd was chanting it's just a couple of people in actuality but at first glance you might think this is the entire crowd because these very loud people next to the camera are the ones who we see the most. I'll admit I didn't even hear anyone say we're not going shopping until I saw that TikTok which tells you how powerful priming is in fact I think that that video that tweeted in particular from the conservative who tweeted this is really giving us a master class in how priming works when somebody tells you to expect something from a clip that's the only thing that your brain is going to see because you've been primed to think about it in a particular way it's a psychological trick to get us to not observe the material that we're watching more critically we kind of shut off our brains temporarily and just accept what someone is saying and not necessarily watch it as critically or skeptically as we should but when you start to listen more critically you see that your first interpretation was completely tainted by the commentary of the person who shared this and that's not the only account who does this libs of tiktok does this too or strips away the context or makes it seem more nefarious than it is in actuality I mean visually if I told you that this dress was white and gold you'd probably be primed to look for those colors in particular if you hadn't already seen this image a million fucking times or if I told you that you're hearing yanny before playing the audio that we're about to listen to you'd probably hear that instead of Laurel see what I mean so because this person explicitly told us that they were chanting they're coming for your children they painted a picture for us that we might not have actually seen had we just watched the video without that commentary without them kind of I guess leading the witness with us being the witness in this instance if you will now we're not going shopping makes a lot more sense because it actually does date back to queer protests from decades ago when they were in shopping malls the problem is the context doesn't really make things better now because it's too late the video got millions of views on twitter and it even got picked up by mainstream media who seemingly made matters a lot worse for example in a write-up about the viral video by Tyler Kincaid of NBC News they tweeted out a quote from the article which reads the coming for your children chant has been used for years at pride events according to longtime march attendees and gay rights activists who said it's one of many provocative expressions used to regain control of slurs against lgbtq people now a lot of us who saw that tweet we're kind of scratching our heads because even though they're trying to provide readers with additional context and say no they're not actually trying to say that they're going to come after your children this is a warning there's a lot of questions that that quote leaves that aren't answered first and foremost who are the longtime march attendees and gay rights activists who told you that this is a chant that's been common at pride events for years because i've never heard that second of all what evidence do you have that that chant in particular has been used before because having people tell you that this is common is one thing but actually finding evidence that it is indeed the case is something that you would expect a journalist to seek out before making that statement in this climate where the riot is trying to portray all queer people as threats to children now to make matters worse the author knows that the crowd isn't actually chanting that so he actually wrote about this saying in the 21 second clip circulated by right wing web streamer channel dozens of people march in the streets and are clearly heard chanting we're here we're queer we're not going shopping but one voice that is louder than the crowd it's not clear who's or whether the speaker was a member of the lgbtq community is heard saying at least twice we're here we're queer we're coming for your children but wait a second were the people in the crowd who were chanting that just outliers or is this a common chant that has been said at pride for years perhaps the author misunderstood the people that he talked to because he does interview brian griffin who's the original organizer of the nyc drag march and brian griffin told him that you know sure more provocative chants are used not that one in particular but you know maybe the author just took that as okay so this one must be common too i'm not sure honestly furthermore the author spoke to an organizer of this year's march who like most of us assumed that the crowd was chanting that but didn't know the context and just assumed that it was a joke and they denounced it he continues an organizer for this year's drag march known as huckle fairy ken who also performs in drag as sister ladi da declined an interview request similarly citing fears for his safety in light of the backlash over the video clip but he said in an email that coming for your children chant was a bad joke that is being used to serve the interests of parasitic predatory political propaganda and policy we won't tolerate harm towards any child and advocate for the protection and encouragement of every child to be able to live their true authentic lives free from fear and persecution huckle fairy ken said and that's the sentiment that i saw online from a lot of queer people in response to this they just said not a good joke not a good time for that right because we all assumed it was real and that whole crowd was chanting that right until we found out the truth about this and got proper context but further down in the article we presumably get to one of kincaid sources but you can kind of see how maybe he misinterpreted what they said here because he writes again according to multiple drag march regulars the coming for your children variation has been used before and then his evidence in the next sentence is a different slogan quote last year gothamist reported people at the drag march chanted 10% is not enough groom groom groom then he says carla j the first female chair of the new york scale liberation front and a professor at pace university said it's a strategy to take the sting out of accusations lobbied against the lgbtq community but again this still doesn't really clear anything up because is she referring to the we're coming for your children line or the 10% is not enough line because both of these phrases believe it or not do have discernible differences saying that 10% is not enough is a joke that i've heard at least the variation of from queer people and their allies in response to new polls showing that more young people than ever identifies lgbtq plus so they might say in response to that man those are rookie numbers we've got to pump up those numbers and what they're doing is they are joking about this idea that gay people are recruiting kids and trying to turn them gay right and that is different than the we're coming from your kids because you can't turn kids gay that's not possible the recruiting line is very clearly satirical it's mocking conservative stupidity but in the gothamist article that he cited that provides additional context that is really important so for example they wrote the chance of drag march have always been cheeky and defiant and this year the traditional 10% is not enough recruit recruit recruit was updated as groom groom groom now it's still not a great joke to make in this environment to be fair to them they made that joke last year when the grooming discourse started to pop up but it's very different than we're coming for your children with no additional context right because if you just hear we're coming for your children well then that might sound more nefarious it's more nefarious for sure seemingly than recruit recruit recruit because queer people can't actually recruit kids and make them gay but the fear from conservatives is that queer people are going to sexually prey on your kids which is why we're coming for your children is actually a lot more nefarious and you might say that i'm grasping grasping at straws here looking for semantical differences but when every single thing that queer people do is hyperanalyzed and scrutinized to the highest extent by right wing propagandists these little details matter and understand that if conservatives actually had evidence that queer people and drag queens were a threat to your children they wouldn't have to try to find these obscure examples of one queer person saying something edgy or sassy they would just show the stats that demonstrate how much of a danger queer people are to children in the same way that we could provide you with evidence that priests are a danger to children but since queer people aren't actually a danger to children and they don't have those statistics well they do have to stoop to things like this and propaganda fills the void that is left by a dearth of statistics on their side about this but still the details are really important and this nbc author needs to clarify right so when people like benjamin dixon among others press the author of this article to be a little bit more clear and give us additional details perhaps about his sources or where he got this information rather than answering the questions he decided to just private his twitter account yeah so i understand this instinct to retreat if you feel like you're being attacked but the problem is that people were reaching out to kin kade in good faith trying to get him to be clear because if it is the case if he can prove that there's evidence that we're coming for your kids is a chant that's common at pride then we need to know about it so that way we can find out the proper context because this community is currently being smeared as pedophiles but if it is the case that he's misunderstanding these activists and that's really not something that's common at pride then we need to know that too so we can shoot down this myth we just need as much information as possible given the current climate where any and everything is being used against queer people but instead of actually answering questions he retreated which is not good so there's that now trying to be extra charitable to this author others online speculated that maybe he was referring to not necessarily pride chants but other jokes that queer people have made about corrupting the youth for example in 2021 the san francisco gay men's choir went viral because they played on this very trope with a song where they sing about we're coming for your children you think that we'll corrupt your kids if our agenda goes unchecked funny just this once you're correct we'll convert your children happens bit by bit quietly and subtly and you will barely notice it you can keep them from disco warn about san francisco making wear pleated pants we don't care we'll convert your children we'll make them tolerant and fair at first i didn't get why you'd be so scared of us turning your children into accepting caring people but i see now why you'd have a problem we'll convert your children someone's gotta teach them not to hate so that line within the proper context changes the entire meaning of it right they're saying we're coming for your kids and we're going to teach them to be accepting and loving and tolerant whereas when you just see queer people who are being accused of being groomers and pedophiles without the context saying we're coming for your children you can see how that is going to be used more nefariously by these right wing actors but i mean even within the proper context even though that song is very obviously about queer people trying to teach children to be accepting and tolerant conservatives were still outraged about that so even within the proper context that doesn't necessarily stop these bad actors from trying to lie and demonize the entire community the difference however was that the proper context existed and that does matter for example the top comment from a year ago reads i'm sorry folks i'm a straight 70 year old man that heard the uproar about the song and decided to listen for myself pretty damned obvious this is a statement that they will seek the better angels of human nature and find understanding it seems all the uproar is coming from the narrow minded in their dark caves looking to lash out it's just sad yeah so my overall point is that even when something is obviously satirical and you have the full context for it conservatives are still going to weaponize it for propagandistic purposes but when we don't have the proper context for suspicious comments or edgy jokes that's when the propaganda is the most powerful because conservatives will capitalize on people's ignorance or concern which is why so many people asked for more clarity from that nbc writer because simply saying that queer people have been chanting that they're coming for your children for years creates this context void that can be filled by bad faith actors who want to demonize the community so if matt walsh for example tweets that that chant is confirmation that gays want to molest children or that the lgbtq plus community is expanding to include pedophiles as they've argued before normal people will likely take that at face value if they don't have the additional context i mean look at the way that we all just thought that that video was them chanting we're coming for your children we all took what the uploader said at face value when he told us that the crowd was chanting they're coming for your kids so if even we people who are a little bit more savvy when it comes to the media that we consume can be duped by right wing propaganda it's not unreasonable to think that regular people could get tricked into believing the worst lies about this community using singular anecdotes to extrapolate and make broader inferences about the entire lgbtq plus community is by far the most powerful tool for anti lgbtq plus propagandists because they work they're effective right but right wing propagandists can only weaponize ignorance so long as people are still ignorant i adore the lgbtq plus community and feel genuinely privileged to be a part of it but like all people there are bad queer people the goal isn't to sanitize the actions of every single queer person ever because bad queer people exist and they will always exist the goal ultimately is to get people to see our humanity at an individual level yes we're part of a group but if you zoom in a little bit you'll see that we're all unique individuals with different personalities different set of moral standards and ideological views and we're not monolithic so people if they see us as individuals part of a broader community and they're less likely to believe generalizations then they're less likely to believe terrible things about the entire community based on the actions of like one or a few of us but until we reach that level of societal understanding which we're not yet at all of us especially journalists should be a lot more vigilant so that way we don't inadvertently get duped by right wing provocateurs or play into their hands as they work overtime to demonize all of us


I decided at the spur of the moment to see this new Cloverfield thing. It looks unusual. It doesn't look like there's Wi-Fi inside this cinema though, so I won't be able to snapchat it live, which I'd like to do, but I'll review it when I get home. Okay. Ten Cloverfield Lane is a good movie. In fact it's very good. I'm glad I saw it. I'm actually glad that I saw it. Although it's produced by JJ Abrams and Bad Robot. It's not directed or written by JJ Abrams, which is a good thing. It was very well directed. It has excellent story elements. It has surprises that are actually surprises, and it has a payoff. None of which Abrams knows how to do himself. There's a cast of only three people. All of them give excellent performances all the way through, and John Goodman is surprisingly good. Very good. It's an excellent example of actual film making. Real making of film. It's not just illustrated radio. The first few minutes of the movie tell this young woman's story in a few minutes of silent film. Actual silent storytelling. It starts off as one kind of film, and it becomes another, and there are actual surprises, like I said, that really surprised me, and that's a good thing. If you can't tell already, I recommend 10 Cloverfield Lane. I recommend that you go right now while it's still in theaters.


Hi everybody, my name is Konstantin Davy and I'm a field application engineer at USound. In this presentation we will cover a new application of MEMS microspeakers that allows for maximum freedom for the industrial design of free field loudspeakers. By using flexible parts one can design loudspeaker shapes previously thought impossible. First a few words about the company USound. We at USound develop acoustic solutions based on MEMS technology. We have developed Ganymed, which is the first commercially available MEMS loudspeaker. It comes in two versions, Akhilos and ADAP, which are optimized for India and free field applications respectively. USound was founded in 2014 and received private and public funding. Right from the beginning USound has had a strong IP portfolio with 29 patent families filed. Since we are a fabulous company we have partnerships with manufacturing and R&D partners like STM and Flex. In 2018 we also signed a deal with 3node acoustic link, where we are doing our mass production. By that time we have had over 150 patent applications pending. This year a subsidiary company called Fauna launched the first B2C product, which is an audio Iver product. Now how does a MEMS loudspeaker work and how is it different from a traditional electro-dynamic loudspeaker? Unlike conventional loudspeakers, which rely on the electro-dynamic principle, MEMS loudspeakers rely on piezoelectricity, although they have very little in common with the piezo quartz buzzers that you might be familiar with. Piezoelectric crystals move when an electric voltage is applied. This allows us to make a cantilever that translates voltage into movement. By taking multiple cantilevers we can use them to move a piston up and down. This assembly is very thin, essentially as thin as a silicon layer and directly replaces the traditional big and heavy voice coil and magnet of a conventional loudspeaker. Adding a diaphragm on top of the assembly closes the acoustic short circuit and radiates the sound. There are numerous advantages to using MEMS loudspeakers, as their performance and small form factor makes them one of the most versatile transducers on the market. MEMS loudspeakers allow industrial designers more freedom to come up with unique devices. When used in an array, they allow for the creation of precise directivity patterns. Due to batch processing and fully automated manufacturing processes, part-to-part variation is the lowest in the audio industry. MEMS loudspeakers comply with international reliability standards to ensure robustness and stable performance over the whole product lifetime. MEMS loudspeakers can be used in multiple applications. Their small size obviously makes them predestined for India headphones, such as one of our reference designs seen on the left, which is a USB-C earphone, and of course also for true wireless earbuds. The small footprint is also an advantage for audio glasses, be it VR glasses, AR glasses or Bluetooth-enabled audio Ivor, like the founder glasses seen here. We also designed a concept for 3D headphones with multiple loudspeakers on different locations within the earcup to get actual, real surround sound. This again becomes possible due to the small size of our speakers. But what I'm here to talk about today is another application using MEMS loudspeakers on loudspeaker products in unique shapes. One approach that is more conventional is to use a fixed array of MEMS loudspeakers. In our Proteus One reference design, we used 40 of our ADEP MEMS loudspeakers. ADEP is the version that is optimized for free-field as opposed to in-ear applications, and we have added a horn to it and paired it with an 8-inch woofer to create a typical two-way hi-fi loudspeaker, and it benefits from the extremely precise high-frequency reproduction of our MEMS loudspeakers. After Proteus One, we were a little more daring. The Proteus Two reference design really showcases the benefits of using small MEMS loudspeakers. It is still a two-way system with a 3-inch woofer inside the grey box on the bottom, and MEMS loudspeakers used as tweeters. But due to the small size of the tweeters, there is no actual need to conform to conventional form factors, which is why our industrial designer was able to come up with this abstract design. Inside the three main tubes, there are 20 MEMS loudspeakers each. All in all, there are 60 MEMS loudspeakers, and the sound is radiated in 360 degrees in all directions. The assembly of the tubes is very simple due to our flexible array, which we will see on the next slide. Diona is the heart of our Proteus Two loudspeaker. It is our reference design for a mechanically flexible array of MEMS loudspeakers. Each loudspeaker has its own small box for the acoustic back volume, and is directly mounted onto a flexible PCB that can be bent and twisted. This allows for unparalleled design freedom, and truly makes MEMS loudspeakers the LED of acoustics. Here you can see just how flexible the array really is. As you can imagine, this allows for numerous applications where function follows form and gives the industrial designers much more freedom. As just one example, the Diona MEMS speaker array can be mounted on a lamp or other household devices without compromising the aesthetics or creating acoustic blind spots. The Diona soundstripe comes in two versions. The first one we call Diona Maxi. It is a single array of 20 loudspeakers driven by an external amplifier. We are also working on a second version, which we will call Diona Mini. This will be an array with five loudspeakers and an integrated amplifier built into one segment. And multiple segments can be connected together to create arrays of different lengths to suit every application. This is our Diona Maxi array. It consists of 20 ADAP MEMS loudspeakers on one flexible PCB stripe. It has a wide bandwidth from 2 kHz up to 20 kHz, and its lightweight construction is inherently protected from mechanical damage. Due to the working principle of the loudspeakers, there is no magnetic field emission and also no noteworthy heat generation either. This array is powered by an external amplifier, as seen in the middle of the picture here. As I mentioned before, we are also working on a version with an integrated amplifier. This will be out around January. On our website you can find more information about Diona and our other products. You will find all datasheets, step files, lumped parameter models, handling and unboxing guides of the MEMS loudspeakers themselves, and user guides for our development kits. If you have any more questions about this specific application or other ways to use our loudspeakers, or if you want to know more about our MEMS loudspeakers themselves, please write us an email or give me a call. You can also find us on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube. Thank you and goodbye.


I think people of African descent have done a lot to bring their concerns to the United Nations and to states. It is for those poor perpetrators to listen and implement the suggestions. We have contributed to the Internet, the program of activities for the international decade. We have contributed to the DDPA. We have attended various fora. We have written, made our suggestions. I think that people of African descent have already done all these things and those state parties who know themselves should really just implement. The first thing they should do is apologize for the historical crime against humanity.