Atlanta, GA
“I’ve always been fascinated with quantum mechanics and space. When I was 11, my parents got me Stephen Hawkins’s “Universe in a Nutshell”. It’s kind of like a, um, more relaxed, friendly, brief history of time. It had lots of diagrams and pictures. There was a really good one with a cross section of a camel and it was like, “This is how time works!” and I was like I do not understand, (laughing) Okay, Professor Hawkins! I am really interested in learning how to tackle issues surrounding global warming. I studied astrophysics at Ivy Scott, I didn’t finish, but I don’t think you can study astrophysics and comparable planetology and think about Venus and not be concerned about global warming. Venus being a possible eventuality is pretty scary. I mean, people would be gone way before it goes that far, (laughing) but that’s not exactly a comfort. I’m pretty interested in many social issues. I run a Tumblr that surrounds mental health, disability, and trans advocacy. I was surprised, too, by gaining a lot of followers through Twitter. I’ve done threads that were over a hundred tweets long. I started getting a little bit of a following last year when Samaritans Radar, which is a very good charity, and they created this twitter app that had an algorithm that recognized certain phrases and tweets. If someone you were following that this algorithm, which is a strong word, that mean you were suicidal or in crisis it would send an email to the person following you. Now, that is a good idea in theory but the problem is there is no consent from the people being surveyed and it didn’t work very well. I did pretty rigorous testing through test accounts. I used a lot of different phrases that would come up for a suicidal person. I’d say things like, “I am going to insert suicide method” and that wouldn’t come up. I pursued this and confronted the group with the issues and it was the first time I had heard someone on Twitter say, “Thank you for your work.” After that I started a block list called Nazi Blocker and has currently blocked 500 people. It can be draining work so in my spare time I am a big fan of bath bombs, rescuing cats, and Pokémon Go.”