#sobbing mathematically

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Sometimes working in science is like. I know the person I share an office with is a famous guy with many important papers to his name but it would be lovely if he could move these large pieces of machined aluminium he hasn't done anything with for a year out of MY desk drawers so I can actually store things in there

(This is to say nothing of the Giant Plastic Bag Of Assorted Cables, or the Mystery Box that no one has opened yet because it's been getting buried under a pile of stuff for longer than I've been employed)

[guinevereslancelot]

[codecarpenterbee]

This is my favorite picture on the internet.

[headfulloffantasies]

Sobbing Mathematically

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Also, it occurs to me that maybe the reason people were Like That about Pluto no longer being a planet is that this was their first exposure to a scientific Redefinition Discourse. Most of these debates are too niche to gain much media traction but they are happening literally all the time forever and everyone involved has very strong opinions. If the general public knew the kinds of things scientists want to redefine they'd hurl, etc.

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My take on Project Hail Mary is I don't think Grace would have realistically been fired (explicitly, officially) from his academic job for calling a professor a waste of carbon. Academia has worse/stupider drama than that all the time and probably some of his colleagues would have been like, heh, yeah correct <3 I DO however think he would have been kicked out of academia because his postdoc contract ran out (and he couldn't find another one, and no one would hire him because the professor he insulted was everyone's former PhD supervisor). Grace is canonically in his early thirties (I think?) at the time he would NOT be on a permanent contract

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Having just got back from a conference which contained a lot of lab physicists showing their experimental setups, I have observed two main genres of physics lab photography, which are:

Picture meant for their own records that's breached containment, taken under harsh fluorescent lab lights on a phone. Very often poorly centred/cropped, sometimes with half a blurry graduate student in shot. Backrooms lighting and general liminal vibes. These pictures have the power to make a rack-mounted oscilloscope seem ontologically evil

The bisexual lighting dutch angle professional shot. These usually happen with experiments that the company/university deem Big and Important, so they get a professional photographer in as part of a press release about the project. They darken the lab and set up lights worthy of a high school drama production and sometimes a smoke machine. If lasers are involved in the experiment they love to turn on the visible light alignment laser on the optical table, with the smoke machine smoke to make it look Cool. The PI of the experiment will be sitting there staring glamorously and wonderingly up at the equipment and pretending to work on Science™, while they look like they're at the club. This will be published on the website forever and ever

My theory is that all lab photography exists on a spectrum between these, possibly with another as yet undetermined axis. Also, very important: both of these will be pasted, blurry and pixelated at the wrong aspect ratio, on everyone's powerpoint presentations at conferences. This, perhaps, is the great equaliser

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Mentally rehearsing my work exit interview monologue all the time (even though i haven't quit yet) makes me normal, right