Marinus Okoronkwo

Aeroacoustics | Teaching and research | Learning | Finding myself | Growing |

[Daniel of NGN STX @obiokeke_]

To anyone arguing politics or trying to understand tribalistic rage bait in Nigeria, here's your relief.

[SARS‑CoV‑2 (COVID-19) @COVID19_disease]

🚨 BREAKTHROUGH: Scientists from McMaster University have developed AeroVax a breathable vaccine mist that delivers immunity directly to the lungs in just 2 minutes.🧵

[Conor Moore @ConorSketches]

More than you believe #pep

[Marinus Okoronkwo @Riqblaze]

@jesuis_ST I’m very glad to have helped you with navigating that phase. Till today, that’s my gold standard for any cold email.

[Renegade @_wapnen]

I went to secondary school in Barkin Ladi 20 years ago. This is what SS1 - 3 boys were doing, night shifts in the blistering cold. I did it too. My mates in Oyo were sleeping or studying. I’ve watched this shit deteriorate in real time.

Barkin Ladi now looks nothing like it did when I graduated 14 years ago. I went to the same junction we used to buy stuff during outings last year & I was shaking. They don’t speak the same language. Crisis after crisis. Slowly, the people who used to till those lands are now doing menial jobs in the south. The names of the villages have changed. The senator representing that region was killed few days after I graduated when he attended a mass funeral of people who were massacred by the Fulanis who now occupy their homes. 14 years ago guys.

Trying to raise awareness about this state-backed conquest feels like screaming under water.

Few months ago, my aunt in mangu came to ask for money to trade cause she can’t farm anymore. Their farms were attacked 3 years ago. They wouldn’t dare go back.

For more than 10 years, we’ve had internally displaced persons from Borno living in our house, after my mother took them in. They only go back to their so-called homes for funerals. 3 brilliant kids; Elizabeth, Margaret and Grace (named after my now late mother for her benevolence). The dad does security work, the mom cleans. Who knows what they could’ve made of themselves back home? I do, they’d have been compost for aliens.

It always starts small then it spirals out of control. We’ve seen all kinds of terror. I wish they just came and shot people but that’s not fun enough. Bullets are for runners. They’ll slice pregnant women open to kill their fetuses. They’ll feed women their kid’s fingers. They burn people alive, hack them with machetes. When people try to defend themselves, that’s when soldiers come in. They call it farmer-herder clashes. They say cattle was rustled. Cattle was rustled? That’s why you renamed my village and put 200 people in a mass grave ?

I remember @YarKafanchan saying that she wept after the 2015 elections cause she knew her people would die like flies & then what happened in southern kaduna? When people talk, they say where’s the evidence? But what about the bodies? Dying is a morbid thing to be skilled at but boy, we have experience.

We’ve seen “strategists” platform them and defend all manner of wrongdoing on the alter of political correctness.

Omoh, let me just stop here.

[University Health Network @UHN]

NEWS RELEASE: In a Canadian first, University Health Network (UHN), @UnityHealthTO, and the @UofT report a case of sustained HIV remission – and possible cure – following a bone marrow transplant for cancer, in a man dubbed the Toronto patient.

https://t.co/RdLGioNh15

[Bo Wang @BoWang87]

Another huge medical achievement from our very own @UHN 🇨🇦🔥

A Toronto man lived with HIV for 27 years. Then he got leukemia and that diagnosis may have just cured him of both.

His doctors found a bone marrow donor carrying CCR5-Δ32, a rare mutation in ~1% of people of European descent. HIV hijacks immune cells through the CCR5 receptor. If you don't have it, the virus has no door.

The transplant replaced his entire immune system with one HIV can't infect.

He stopped antiretroviral therapy in July 2025. As of today, HIV is undetectable by the most sensitive assays available. No viral reservoir. No immune response to HIV. Nine months clean.

He would be the 11th person in history to possibly be cured of HIV.

HIV cure is possible. We just proved it again at @UHN

Proud of the team at @UHN and @UofT !

Source: https://t.co/zH1fIfVubV

[Nick Freiling @NickFreiling]

A cutting reflection from Cardinal Ratzinger, Good Friday 2005:

"Pilate is not utterly evil. He knows that the condemned man is innocent, and he looks for a way to free him. But his heart is divided. And in the end he lets his own position, his own self-interest, prevail over what is right.

Nor are the men who are shouting and demanding the death of Jesus utterly evil. Many of them, on the day of Pentecost, will feel "cut to the heart," when Peter will say to them: "Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God... you crucified and killed by the hands of those outside the law."

But at that moment they are caught up in the crowd. They are shouting because everyone else is shouting, and they are shouting the same thing that everyone else is shouting. And in this way, justice is trampled underfoot by weakness, cowardice and fear of the diktat of the ruling mindset. The quiet voice of conscience is drowned out by the cries of the crowd.

Evil draws its power from indecision and concern for what other people think."

[🦋- SHE WHO CANNOT BE CAGED @OniOluwafunmi]

I wrote something on Girlbosses and you may want to read it here

@OjoObaRihanot @OjoObaRihanot

https://t.co/akdVle4xzY

[McKay Coppins @mckaycoppins]

Last year, I met a Mexican athlete who told me an incredible story—that he’d been kidnapped in 2023 and forced to compete for his life in a secret tournament of cartels. Once I started reporting, the story only got more surreal.

For the May issue:
https://t.co/O7YQwJRpu5

[Oluwaseun Alaka @oluwaseun_alaka]

No negotiation can stop someone who makes N200m annually from kidnapping from repenting.

Repent to N2-3m a year?

You must send him to heaven

[Massimo @Rainmaker1973]

Jon Batiste transforms Beethoven and stuns Chris Wallace
https://t.co/vLJ6aCbiDX

[Clement Uwajeneza @cuwajeneza]

In 2017, I stepped onto the Facebook campus in Menlo Park. They took us to the Oculus VR lab first. A geeky engineer gave us a demo of the VR features and ended on the haptic gloves that let you "feel" virtual objects without touching anything real. Then he paused, voice almost reverent: “Imagine connecting anyone in the world… real social interaction… without ever leaving home.” The demo was amazing but I walked out with a strange feeling. This guy is "solving for humanity" and is excited about a world no longer needs physical human connection

We passed a long hall of developers. One guy—Black, friendly—leaned over his monitors and asked where the group of us (mostly Africans) was from. We chatted. His desk had big screens, half-eaten snacks, the faint smell of takeout lingering. His neighbor, paler watched curiously but, too timid to join. The desks were comfortable, the food smell everywhere, as it was available in every corner. It all felt… contained. Like this campus was its own sealed ecosystem, where the world outside was just data to optimize.

Fast-forward to 2020. I work at Andela, where we placed remote engineers with Silicon Valley teams. Some companies flew their leads over to meet the "remote" teammates in person. When they visited the Kigali campus I went to dinner with them. They were 5. Of this dinner I vividly remember 2 conversations. One guy launched into how "all humans are actually lactose intolerant after infancy… we're the only species that keeps drinking milk." They all nodded, confessed their own intolerances like it was a quirky universal truth. Then came the photos: a dog's birthday party. Balloons, cake, friends invited. The owner beamed like it was his kid's party. I love dogs. But something twisted in my chest. These are the people shaping the tools billions use every day—yet their version of care, connection, family… felt redirected, abstracted.

Now it's 2026, and Sam Altman says training an AI costs less than "raising a human"—because it takes "20 years of life and all the food you eat during that time before you get smart." He compared childhood—first steps, heartbreaks, scraped knees, bedtime stories, learning trust—to server racks and electricity bills. I think back to that VR promise of connection without leaving home… to offices smelling of food and isolation… to dogs celebrated like children while real human messiness gets optimized away

[Marinus Okoronkwo @Riqblaze]

@jesuis_ST You’re welcome. Cheers to more wins.

[John Simpson @JohnSimpsonNews]

I think this is absolutely wonderful — Shakespeare and Sir Ian McKellen putting the case for decency and kindness and civilised standards in a world full of anger and brutality.

[Adam Butler @GestaltU]

Fun fact: The 1998 paper that introduced Google and PageRank to the world ends with this acknowledgment:

"Supported by the National Science Foundation under Cooperative Agreement IRI-9411306. Funding also provided by DARPA and NASA."

Sergey Brin was on an NSF Graduate Fellowship. Larry Page was a PhD student on the grant.

Google—now worth $2 trillion—exists because American taxpayers funded "the Stanford Integrated Digital Library Project."

Not a startup garage myth. A government grant.

Every time someone says public research funding "picks winners and losers" or "crowds out private innovation," remember: the most dominant technology company of the 21st century was incubated entirely with public money, inside a public university, by researchers on federal fellowships and grants.

The private sector didn't see it coming. VCs passed. The government funded it anyway—not because it would become Google, but because fundamental research into information retrieval seemed worth understanding.

That's the point. You can't predict which grants will change the world. You fund the science and let researchers explore.

The internet (DARPA). GPS (DoD). Touchscreens (CIA/NSF). mRNA vaccines (NIH). Google (NSF/DARPA/NASA).

Public investment in basic research isn't wasteful spending. It's the seed corn of the entire modern economy.

[HipHop Nigeria @Nigerian_Hiphop]

Ice Prince Ft. Sunny Nneji - Whiskey (2013)

[Marinus Okoronkwo @Riqblaze]

“Dein na mu” his dirge in honour of Major Adaka Boro is one of the most soul touching pieces of music to ever come out of Nigeria

[Flavour of Africa @2niteFlavour]

We lost a legend on this day 55 years ago. Keep resting Cardinal Rex Lawson. A true inspiration

[Flavour of Africa @2niteFlavour]

We lost a legend on this day 55 years ago. Keep resting Cardinal Rex Lawson. A true inspiration