Mikell Taylor

@mikell

Boston-based robotics nerd whose opinions do not reflect those of her employer. Come for the robots, stay for the cringe. It’s pronounced “Michael”.

879 Following2,742 Followers12,099 Posts

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Mikell Taylor@mikell· 17d

Mika my dog nibling is ready to move in a party-hat direction tho

Mikell Taylor@mikell· 29d

Apparently Ohio is a mystery

Screenshot of the Pantone birth chart generator trying to figure out what I mean by “Ohio” for my birthplace and suggesting Ohio, Illinois; Ohio, the Philippines; Ohio, Australia, and Ohio, Nigeria.

Mikell Taylor@mikell· Jul 11

I appreciated this Wired review of this chair that I will almost certainly be buying and also I love that whoever created this graphic knows exactly who this chair is for www.wired.com/review/amsea...

Screenshot of the article header showing the subheading “this extra-wide chair gives you room to sit cross-legged, sideways, or however your body actually wants to sit” with a photo of the chair on a pink, purple, and blue color blocked background that evokes the bisexual pride flag

Mikell Taylor@mikell· Jul 9

Best STAR TREK captain. Wrong answers only.

Screencap of Stede bonnet from our flag means death season 2, in the cursed red coat, holding a small goblet of champagne

Mikell Taylor@mikell· Jul 4

AS THE PROPHECY FORETOLD

Photo of a kookaburra sitting in an old gum tree

Mikell Taylor@mikell· Jul 3

Toured the Sydney Observatory yesterday and if you can’t tell I’m a big fan of total solar eclipses (and of century-old photos of them)

Selfie of me showing off a stylized solar eclipse tattoo on my upper arm in front of a wall mounted photo of a total solar eclipse taken with Sydney observatory equipment in 1922

Mikell Taylor@mikell· Jul 3

my beloved

Photo of the Sydney opera house, taken from the side, with a lovely blue sky dotted with clouds and taken from the Manly ferry so it’s showing the blue water of Sydney harbor as well

Mikell Taylor@mikell· Jun 26

I am not making this up. There is literally cultural “wisdom” in some countries that AC on hot days is bad for you. THIS is the problem.

Screenshot of a Reddit post on r/IWantToAskAnAmerican:

Do Americans experience "thermal shock" from going between heat and AC?

Hey everyone,
I'm curious about something that comes up a lot in France and wanted to see if people in the U.S. have experienced anything similar.

Many French people believe in something called "choc thermique" (thermal shock). The idea is that sudden changes in temperature-like going from really hot weather outside into a strongly air-conditioned room, or vice versa
—can make you feel sick. People often blame it for things like catching a cold, getting nauseous, headaches, or even feeling faint.
Here, it's pretty common to hear warnings like:
• Don't blast the AC when it's super hot outside
• Avoid sitting directly in cold airflow
• Be careful moving quickly between extreme temperatures
I'm wondering how common this belief is in the US, especially since air conditioning is widely used there.

Mikell Taylor@mikell· Jun 20

This was interesting. Claude and Deepseek: okay, yep, not wrong. Grok: the fuck? intheweights.com if you’re curious

Screenshot of “are you in the weights” results showing that Claude accurately references me as a robotics engineer

Screenshot of “are you in the weights” results showing Deepseek accurately referencing me as a robotics engineer who does a lot of public speaking

Screenshot of “are you in the weights” results for Grok showing that it turned the 10 week summer internship I had at nasa into a belief that I’m a nasa engineer and space robotics specialist who worked on various nasa missions

Mikell Taylor@mikell· Jun 19

Moon joy in permanent ink

Selfie showing my upper right arm with a healed solar eclipse tattoo under which is a fresh tattoo showing the Artemis II mission orbital path

Mikell Taylor@mikell· Jun 15

This Business Insider summary is bad and should feel bad

Screenshot of a business insider headline with summary that says:

We were promised sex robots

VC investment in robots has swelled as Al companions have boomed. Yet the market has remained curiously soft on sex robots, which essentially combine the two.

Bl's Henry Chandonnet spoke to robot purveyors, researchers, and fans to understand why sex robot demand has remained flaccid.

Mikell Taylor@mikell· Jun 2

I randomly came across this that I forgot I’d written in 2022 but it’s always nice to remember how consistent I am in my informed opinions. I really am not just making shit up. spectrum.ieee.org/robotics-exp...

Screenshot of written content in an IEEE spectrum article that starts with my info:

Mikell Taylor
Principal Technical
Program Manager, Amazon Robotics

Then my writing:

There is no "doing it first" with an all-purpose humanoid robot that can 1:1 replace people. That's simply not where the tech is now and it's not where it's going to be in the next 10 years, I will say with complete confidence.

Those of us in the industry were watching to see if Tesla somehow knew something we didn't know. And...nope. They did not. The tech isn't there for anyone. And that's why the more generous takes some of us try to make for the sake of the engineering team are "you did as well as you could and you're figuring out the state of the art quickly." It's not that team's fault. There was no way to
achieve an impossible goal.

This screenshot continues the take in the previous one, reading:

Here's the thing. What humanoid robotics needs is a realistic vision. A "here is exactly where this, a humanoid form factor, is needed instead of literally anything else" vision that acknowledges the realities of the technology. But that's not what it was. It was
"today we have this, in a year we'll have sci-fi." And that's just not going to happen.
Frankly, it's disappointingly un-visionary.
"Everyone else just hasn't engineered hard enough" is not a vision. It's ignorance.

Mikell Taylor@mikell· May 31

Yeah okay that’s a good reason for us to be landing late

Screenshot of a flight aware website flight map showing my flight leaving Denver and then making a wide curve south to avoid a massive line of thunderstorms running northwest to southeast that is blocking direct eastbound flight paths out of Denver

Mikell Taylor@mikell· May 30

The 501st has an incredible exhibit at this con raising money for Make a Wish, and I love that the posting with Artoo and Threepio is in front of this “No AI” sign

Photo of me standing next to an impeccable C-3P0 cosplayer and a life size remote controlled R2-D2. On the wall behind us is a sign with the letters AI crossed out.

Mikell Taylor@mikell· May 29

I am deceased

Photo of me, David Duchovny, and Gillian Anderson during a comicon photo op. I am grinning like a banshee and looking very excited. They look far more chill.

Mikell Taylor@mikell· May 29

The Scully Effect is actually when a friend you made 30 years ago because you were both X-Files nerds agrees to fly across the country with you for a comicon and you get your selfie with Gillian Anderson

Selfie of me and another woman with Gillian Anderson between us

Mikell Taylor@mikell· May 18

Please enjoy some pretty things in my garden.

Close up photo of white and pink rhododendron blossoms

Close up photo of white petaled blossoms on some bushy thing in my garden I don’t know the name of

Mikell Taylor@mikell· May 16

Assuming that this ride share notif is part of the Jesus plotline that the Good Omens finale didn’t have time to let breathe

Screenshot of a text notification that says “Jesus is here - look for the black Ram”

Mikell Taylor@mikell· May 15

Went to my alma mater’s commencement today and got to wear funny hats with a couple of my favorite professors 💙

Selfie - or ussie I guess - of me in academic regalia with two men next to me, also in regalia. One is Gill Pratt, if you know your robotics people.

Mikell Taylor@mikell· May 5

Every once in a while I get a reminder that I am extremely not the target demographic for airline status.

Photo of an ad on my computer screen when trying to join Delta lounge WiFi inviting me to shop the Delta Golf Collection, for all my branded golfing needs. The ad shows a silver haired white dude in a visor, showing exactly what their target demographic is.

Mikell Taylor@mikell· May 4

showing up very profesh in my teams calls today

Screenshot of me in a Teams call wearing a Jedi robe and holding an illuminated blue lightsaber. In the back are shelves holding an R2 unit droid, a drawing of Luke skywalker and Yoda from the empire strikes back, and other nerdy paraphernalia.

Mikell Taylor@mikell· May 2

I picked up an order from a native plant nursery today and among my loot is asparagus crowns and I… am not sure what I expected asparagus to look like when it’s not yet asparagus but this wasn’t it

Photo of an open plastic bag full of light brown roots that kind of look like woody octopi

Mikell Taylor@mikell· Apr 28

I’ve been training my whole life for this

Screenshot of a NYT crossword clue that reads “Han solo’s response to Leia’s ‘I love you’”

Mikell Taylor@mikell· Apr 15

Watching Waymos from a Waymo. I think it’s super interesting that no one wanted to let this one in after it sat through two light cycles trying to change lanes. There’s no social value to human drivers - or even a “good deed” dopamine hit - to let in a driverless car, so they don’t.

Mikell Taylor@mikell· Apr 9

Photo of admiral Adama from battlestar galactica with a speech bubble shape under his mouth implying he is speaking the below reskeet

Mikell Taylor@mikell· Apr 7

My IG at this point is nothing but resharing Artemis II content and now the algorithm is feeding me the good stuff. Crying on an airplane right now.

Screenshot of an instagram post by user “spokensincerely”. It’s a poem that reads:

The kids are looking up
at their televisions, clad in crinkly polyester pacesults, their faces obscured by the visors on their too-big helmets, to watch four humans fly, impossibly, to space.
for the first time, they hear the word Godspeed. they learn that awe is a feeling that lives at the base of your throat, as if your heart swelled in tandem with the hearts around you and now is taking up your whole chest.
their parents, dinner forgotten, are thinking about the glow-in-the-dark stars stuck to the ceilings of their own childhoods, understanding suddenly why all those ancient astronomers were poets, too.
it takes eight minutes to leave Earth's atmosphere. it takes far less than that to be changed by the sound of a breath collectively held, then released as cheers so loud, they drown out the roar of a rocket engine.

Mikell Taylor@mikell· Apr 2

omg you guys it’s the validation I’ve always craved!

Screenshot of a DM from a fake account pretending to be Elon musk. The message reads “hello. This is Elon. I want to personally thank you for your support and love. I saw a few of your likes and comments on my fan pages. You’re not just a fan, you’re family. The future can be yours if you believe in it. You are loved. 🚀🚀🚀”

Mikell Taylor@mikell· Mar 26

Cursive isn’t enough. Teach flourishes or gtfo.

Image of John hancock’s extremely over the top signature including an overdone flourish underlining his name

Mikell Taylor@mikell· Mar 25

Added alt text.

Screenshot of resignation letter reading: The decision to leave was not an easy one. I thought I'd spend my entire career working at this wonderful place. Like many young people, I daydreamed about working at NASA. Those four magic letters conjured up a sense of awe and a promise that America could be a better place, one that provides its people with not only a good life but also wonder and discovery as a birthright.
I still believe in that promise. Space should be for everyone who lives on this singular planet, not a playground for the wealthy or a frontier to dominate. I think we should explore new worlds, but with humility and with our minds open together to the mysteries of the cosmos. We should remember what we've been shown: the beautiful marble, the Earth half in shadow from space, a pale blue dot seen by a little machine sent far from home. The more we learn about the Universe, the more we should cherish our perfect and irreplaceable home.
I was wrong to believe it was enough to simply do good things, to think that the benefits of knowing about our home world would be self-evident. I anticipated that our work would be questioned, but only because its implications were politically inconvenient. I never expected that science itself would come under attack, simply because it - like journalism, history, and even the best kind of art- is a way of seeking the truth.
I'm leaving because I want to tell the truth. The upheavals of the past year have made this difficult, and I feel that I can contribute more to the world in a position that allows me to choose my own research directions and speak publicly about everything I learn.
These are things I know and will continue to know until the weight of the evidence convinces me otherwise: the Earth is warming due to human activities, this warming is already responsible for human suffering, and it can be stopped through human action. None of this is, or should be, the least bit controversial. You know these things too, as …

Mikell Taylor@mikell· Mar 25

- proper currywurst from a food truck in Hamburg at 1 AM, usually whenever I’m drunk - laksa