Trust the Process

i used to blog my adventures in academics | now this is just where random thoughts go

[loveipromiseimnotinsane]

I am a really really big fan of this whole filming and putting pro-shots of musicals in theater

[devotedlystrangewizard]

i think everyone should program at least once just so you realise just how fucking stupid computers are. because theyre so fucking stupid. a computer wants to be told what to do and exactly that and if you make one typo or forget one detail it starts crying uncontrollably

[beemovieerotica]

ok this is sick as fuck

[qqchurch]

[poetrylesbian]

[poetrylesbian]

[thesweetnessofspring]

"The next Hunger Games book should be about-"

WRONG. The series should be done. Fanfiction forever.

[louezem]

[thememedaddy]

[mamoru]

🇺🇸december 26, 2025🇺🇸: oreos distributed by gold star distribution inc. recalled in 3 states for insanitary storage and contamination with general filth including rodent piss and shit, bird shit, insects, and possibly salmonella and leptospira

[bigboysdrinkmilk]

Two years ago, you could eat bagged lettuce without worrying about diarrhea. Two years ago, ICE wasn’t regularly shooting people on the street. Two years ago, the Strait of Hormuz was open and America’s economy was the strongest in the world.

What changed from two years ago to today?

[r2x2]

The Amnesty International report that JK Rowling is trying to censor through legal threats.

It can also be found on Google Drive here and on Bluesky here.

[cbarc]

Please save and share this info where possible. This report has since been removed by Amnesty International due to legal threats of libel from JK Rowling. This information is no longer easily accessible.

[specialagentartemis]

Character has a PhD: they’re really smart and knowledgable about their field!

Character has 2 PhDs: either they did a dual degree program and are braggy about it, had a life-changing experience after their first degree and pivoted their whole career, or they find the structure of being a PhD student, despite all its stress, more comfortable and familiar than the stress of finding a Real Job and have a very indulgent advisor.

Character has 3 PhDs: who keeps accepting them to PhD programs. Either this person needs psychological help or their department needs to be investigated for its academic standards. Probably both

Character has 4+ PhDs: if they aren’t an undercover vampire or something then no they don’t lol

[specialagentartemis]

#this is why martin dubois weirds me out #who let him get phds in physics chemistry AND biology #does he have any industry experience at all

Funny enough this post was prompted by learning this fact about book!DuBois. Looking at Andy Weir saying “Dr. DuBois has three PhDs” straight in the face and going. Dude. No He Doesn’t.

The favorites people are tagging here include Bruce Banner (7 PhDs), Engineer Team Fortress 2 (11 PhDs), and Stanford Pines (12 PhDs), and like, of course that is not how it works, that is not how anything works, but they come from cartoony universes that operate on cartoon logic. Looking at TF2 and going “that’s not how that works” is not the point of it.

Andy Weir is supposedly trying really hard to make everything in his books realistic, or at least plausible. That’s his whole schtick! This is a world meant to be taken seriously! But his aversion to learning/acknowledging how human social institutions work in the name of Not Being Political™ produces some real howlers that are impossible to take seriously. Eva Stratt’s “I can do what I want” permit is the famous one, and the idea that Grace got a personal attack paper petty enough to end his career through peer review really strains credulity to me, but DuBois’s three PhDs in very closely related fields is another. That’s just not how PhD programs work. This is not about any given character’s capability, this is about how PhD programs are not things you just keep adding to like that—once you have one, you go on to do research, write research papers and monographs, not more PhDs. Your PhD already proves you know how to do research! That’s the point of it, you don’t go prove it again, and any subsequent PhD program you apply to will seriously question why exactly you want to! Weir presumably wants to convey that DuBois is both very smart and very accomplished, that Project Hail Mary recruited the best of the best. Instead I look at this and go “this is a fake character and Andy Weir does not know what he’s talking about” and it breaks my suspension of disbelief.

If I was inventing this character and wanted to immediately convey that he was incredibly smart, accomplished, and the best of the best, I’d say DuBois has a dual PhD in biology and chemistry, and Grace recognizes him as the guy who got a MacArthur fellowship after winning the Nobel Prize for Chemistry two years ago. A dual degree, a MacArthur Fellowship, a Nobel Prize, several dozen published papers (or even better, a paper that Grace has cited at some point!), these are the kinds of markers anyone serious would give DuBois that actually convey what I assume Weir was going for, that “three PhDs” does not.

[enki2]

[transcyberism]

ok but this unironically works. talk about how the working class is exploited and you can basically sell full-on marxism to your average republican if you do it right. all you have to do is avoid the words "Marx," "capitalism," "socialism," "communism," "means of production," etc - just use synonyms. say "big business" or "corporate shareholder interests" instead of "capitalists." say "a government that prioritizes the needs of the working people" instead of "socialism." it WORKS. I've DONE it. the hardest sell are usually things like social and racial equity, welfare, things like that, because people have been primed with the racist/classist idea that those things are somehow unfair - but you can get your foot in the door to getting them to buy into those too if you start with class issues. read up on your theory, make sure you REALLY understand your own ideology, because that will enable you to reword it and successfully sell it.

[a-ginger-in-black]

In my experience, you can often help sell 'welfare' stuff by appealing to self-interest with a touch of Aren't We Great.

Disability benefits: "I mean, sure, there are probably some sad sacks who are gaming the system, there always are, but hell, with the amount of taxes we pay, the government can afford a few freeloaders, right? I'd rather pay for a couple people who don't really need it than not have the system at all for if I need it, or my kids do, or whatever. I mean shit happens. What if some asshole drunk driver puts me in the hospital and it takes me a year to get back on my feet? Or Heaven forbid something permanent happens. I'll sure be glad that I can get disability then, won't I?"

UBI: "I dunno, the kind of guy who'll just sit on the couch playing Call of Duty all day if he doesn't have to work, I kinda don't want him on my job site anyway. That type is just taking up a place that you could fill with someone who'll actually get the job done, you know? You end up short-handed even though you technically have enough people because everyone else has to pick up his slack. And it'd mean that if your boss is a dick you can tell him to shove it and not worry your kids are gonna go hungry while you find a better place. We can sure as hell afford it."

Racial equity: "I've got a lot more in common with a Black guy who's just trying to get the job done than I do with some rich white asshole who thinks the sun shines out of his ass because of how much money mommy and daddy have."

[ansitru]

I'm just saying, we could settle this with swords, instead of 30+ emails. 🤺

[lovrboyx]

The Last Unicorn really said “There will be times when you can’t find other people like you and there will be times where you'll wonder if you're really the only person experiencing the world as you are and others will even try to take advantage of you through commodification and exploitation to the point where it starts to dilute your own sense of self and will make you question if you were ever you to begin with but it’s important for to resist the urge to assimilate and find community because there will always be people like you who will understand and have experienced these same things and the only way to combat a dark world who wants to smother your light is to FIGHT FIGHT RAGE AGAINST THE RED BULL DO NOT GO GENTLY INTO THAT OCEAN.”

And I just think there’s something beautifully and inextricably queer about that

[queerquests]

Framing illness as even involving morality seems to me a mistake, because of course cancer does not give a shit whether you are a good person. Biology has no moral compass.

—John Green, Everything Is Tuberculosis

[grandestrology-deactivated20150]

I don’t wanna get involved in the drama I just wanna know 103% of the information on what happened

[paverics]

“my father is a boy and my mother is a girl so i’m mixed” is the funniest possible response to someone asking your gender and it came from 6’5 Viking footballer and notable weird little guy Erling Haaland on a Snapchat

[paverics]

comedians can only dream of writing something this funny

[stjohnstarling]

Inside the Booming Business of Monster Porn

Teratophiliacs were once a niche group that bonded over their sexual attraction to monsters in obscure forums. Now—as online communities pro

Okay guys, we’ve got to wrap it up now with the monsterfucking and find something new to do. It’s getting write-ups in GQ, it’s so over.

[stjohnstarling]

Sometimes, in their obsession with monsters, humans end up finding other humans. In 2019, Cachét developed a crush on Salad Fingers, the main character in a British cult web cartoon. She drew porn of Salad Fingers and sent it to David Firth, the show’s creator. Firth loved it and followed her back. “He thought I was a guy because no girl would draw porn of Salad Fingers,” Cachét says.

They started messaging. Cachét complimented his drawing of a human-bug threesome and asked for a print. Three years later, Cachét and David got married. The human-bug threesome drawing hangs on the wall of their home.

Okay this does kind of rule though.

[prokopetz]

I don't think I've ever seen an artist misunderstand their own work's target audience quite so starkly as David Firth finding it implausible that a woman would want to fuck Salad Fingers.