Zeynep Tufekci

“Large corporations exist to sell us things, and to impose their interests, and I don't understand why we as the research/academic community should just think that's totally fine, or resign to it as 'the world we live in.'”

“For many people, tear gas is their first interaction with state violence. It's the first time they've been treated like an insect, usually by police geared up like robocops. That warlike stance is a strong escalatory agent in a protest.”

“We have large-scale nuclear power but are avoiding steps to evaluate it, update it or make it safer.”

“Our social networks, our news, our mundane existence and our important moments are all mediated by algorithms, whose proprietary, profit-driven, ad-financed nature seeps into every small micro-interaction.”

“Biking is a great way to get around.”

“There is no doubt that social-media fury can go wrong.”

“What is the point of talking about health care access and outlining how it manifests itself in failure after failure, given that the Republican Party seems determined to block progress and even roll back what little improvement we have had with the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare?”

“Working with children with autism is difficult, tiring work, especially since the social rewards - the smile, the eye-contact, the hug, the thank you - that make most of us tick are few and far between. I've never tried such an endeavor; I'm in no position to judge anyone.”

“Even common colds can cause fatal outbreaks in nursing homes.”

“The first time I was teargassed, in Istanbul, Turkey, I thought I was going to die. Overwhelming pain flooded my eyes, nose, throat, and lungs. I couldn't breathe.”

“We have an energy crisis but we continue to consume as if there will be a magical solution.”

“If some people fly, any virus can get to any country.”

“Sometimes the social-media mob isn't just justified or understandable, but necessary because little else is available to protect the real victims.”

“After decades of research, I've personally concluded that perhaps the single most effective police action for crowd control would be for the police to show up dressed like humans, not terminators. But crowd control is often not the point of state violence.”

“In 2020, Wuhan may seem remote to Western audiences, but it's a bustling, giant city with more than 500 direct international flights a day, situated in a country that has made great strides in domestic transportation since 2003, with more flights and high-speed train lines.”

“Thanks partly to their long history of fighting epidemics, Hong Kong also has some of the world's most prominent experts in infectious diseases.”

“Unsurprisingly, Hong Kong has had a long history of epidemics. The 1968 flu pandemic that killed 1 million people around the world started in Hong Kong, and killed at least many thousands of the city's residents, and became known as the Hong Kong flu. Hong Kong also lost the most people outside of mainland China to the 2003 SARS epidemic.”

“A model's robustness depends on how often it gets tried out and tweaked based on data and its performance.”

“Pandemics have long been among my favorite topics to teach sociology with, not because the subject is cheery, but because they contain so many of the lessons about our modern world.”

“If you have a tool like Twitter that gives everybody the ability to speak, but in 140 characters at a time, it's almost inevitable that it's going to encourage some forms of bickering. One-hundred-and-forty characters is prone to misunderstanding. There are real limits to how this thing functions.”