I’ve only really run in to him when he caused grief with the knitting community with a video that had a bunch of misinformation and talking down to knitters („women have been doing this highly technical thing without maths education for hundreds if not thousands of years, here’s a bunch of male scientists to explain what they already know in more formalised and unnecessary language to them“). His reaction to the community‘s criticism soured me on him.
Even just the video (before the reaction to criticism) left a super bad taste in my mouth. I remember an aggrieved knitted described their own feelings around it as being that it was easy to enjoy the edutainment material he produces when it was in a topic they were confident he knew more than them on. However, when they saw how shoddy the knitting video was, that made them feel uneasy about even the non-knitting related content, because what if that was as plagued with errors and bias as the knitting video, except they didn’t notice it.
What I was especially salty about with the video is that there was a non-problematic way to say “look at the cool research that involves throwing modern science at ancient textiles crafts” — highlighting research by people like Elisabetta Matsumoto, a physicist and a knitter. I was so hyped when someone reviewing the video mentioned Matsumoto’s research, as I was aware of her research already from being a ridiculous nerd.
I’ve only really run in to him when he caused grief with the knitting community with a video that had a bunch of misinformation and talking down to knitters („women have been doing this highly technical thing without maths education for hundreds if not thousands of years, here’s a bunch of male scientists to explain what they already know in more formalised and unnecessary language to them“). His reaction to the community‘s criticism soured me on him.
Even just the video (before the reaction to criticism) left a super bad taste in my mouth. I remember an aggrieved knitted described their own feelings around it as being that it was easy to enjoy the edutainment material he produces when it was in a topic they were confident he knew more than them on. However, when they saw how shoddy the knitting video was, that made them feel uneasy about even the non-knitting related content, because what if that was as plagued with errors and bias as the knitting video, except they didn’t notice it.
What I was especially salty about with the video is that there was a non-problematic way to say “look at the cool research that involves throwing modern science at ancient textiles crafts” — highlighting research by people like Elisabetta Matsumoto, a physicist and a knitter. I was so hyped when someone reviewing the video mentioned Matsumoto’s research, as I was aware of her research already from being a ridiculous nerd.