I had barely sat down when he began to tell me... that science writers were "ignoramuses" and a "terrible breed" who invariably got things wrong: onl… - John Horgan

Over the last few decades, physics in the grand mode practiced by Hawking and Rees has become increasingly disconnected from empirical evidence. Proponents of string and multiverse models tout their mathematical elegance, but strings are too small and multiverses too distant to be detected by any plausible experiment.

Einstein had drawn attention to nonlocality in 1935 in an effort to show that quantum mechanics must be flawed. ...Einstein proposed a thought experiment—now called the EPR experiment—involving two particles that spring from a common source and fly in opposite directions.
According to the standard model of quantum mechanics, neither particle has a definite position or momentum before it is measured; but by measuring the momentum of one particle, the physicist instantaneously forces the other particle to assume a fixed position... Deriding this effect as "spooky action at a distance," Einstein argued that it violated both common sense and his own theory of special relativity, which prohibits the propagation of effects faster than the speed of light; quantum mechanics must therefore be an incomplete theory. In 1980, however, a group of French physicists carried out a version of the EPR experiment and showed that it did indeed give rise to spooky action. (The reason that the experiment does not violate special relativity is that one cannot exploit nonlocality to transmit information.)

These are extraordinary events. Not measured before, not contemplated before. [the extreme weather events of 2021 will lead to a host of initiatives to help communities adapt in the future] but there was nothing, nothing that could have been done [to prepare for] a three-times-the-historic-high volume of water travelling through Merritt in one day.