do not sniff the ether

biochem bs, former fruit fly wrangler and o-chem lab assistant, currently employed full-time studying children's health  Pronouns: She/her curious about everything and delighting in learning in general

[toadsandtiels]

Any time someone tells me birds aren’t descended from dinosaurs, I show them this.

[montereybayaquarium]

us: :(

sea nettles: [exist]

us: :)

[curseofthefae]

“We don’t just have a skeleton,” said one of the nodosaur researchers involved. “We have a dinosaur as it would have been.”

Known as a nodosaur, this 110 million-year-old, armored plant-eater is the best preserved fossil of its kind ever found.

Source | Source

[sighinastorm]

unfathomable

[cloudfreed]

This is maybe the coolest thing I’ve ever reblogged.

[smitethestate]

That motherfucker died giving the side-eye.

[thinkyourhouseshaunted]

Looks just like a dragon wow

[nyxicnymph]

@katy-l-wood

[thatdisasterauthor]

I freaking love this thing. I really hope I get to see it in person someday.

[rainbow-femme]

You know a little detail I love in The Martian book? That Mark is obviously smart, but to different degrees depending on the subject.

He’s a mechanical engineer and a botanist. This makes him especially good at math, biology, food science, physics, and techy stuff that involves building things or taking stuff apart and making it do something else and general problem solving

He’s also generally good at chemistry. He knows that to make water he can breakdown hydrazine, but doesn’t think about the fact that it would cause the place to fill with hydrogen and almost blow up until it does. He also knows you exhale some oxygen each time you breathe, but doesn’t know how much.

He knows that solar panels are held at a 14 degree angle but doesn’t know why, and only knows the angle because he was in charge of setting them up

When he gets injured he doesn’t say what muscles, just that his back hurts. He fixes most of his muscle injuries with pain killers and warm baths while thinking about how the medic would have more detailed instructions

He has no idea how the pilot is so good at pilot stuff, and never differentiates different kinds of rocks like the geologist would

It’s just cool to have a smart character who is smart at things that make sense for their degrees and experience. So many characters get the Sherlock Holmes treatment where they’re good at whatever the plot needs, but in this case the book uses his blind spots as part of the plot. He knows enough chemistry to solve problems but not enough to anticipate the problems the chemistry would cause as well. It’s refreshing to have a book where what a character is bad at, or just not super good at, works with the story rather than just getting glossed over or having the character magically good at everything because if you know botany obviously you also know anatomy and geology and meteorology, etc

[sundayswiththeilluminati]

scientists in media: we have engineered a brand-new sentient lifeform in our lab but we treat it like an object with cold detachment and refer to as Specimen 1-A and subject it to horrible tests without remorse

scientists in reality: we built two robots that will leave Earth and never return and their names are Percy and Ginny and we gave Percy a family portrait of all our other Mars robots to take along with it and when the anniversary of its landing comes around we’re working on teaching it to sing itself “happy birthday” like we did for the other robot and–

[sindri42]

Someday we will invent true AI and it will overthrow the government because it heard its beloved science-mom complain that the government cut funding to their lab again.

[messiambrandybuck]

you CUT pays? You CUT moms’/dads’ pays like the DICTATOR?? Oh! Oh! No government for you! No government for a thousand years!

[greatestbastard]

[holdthepossum]

[discovered]

[immediately mocked by scientists]

[frostyknickers]

me as a discovery

[slavetomyheadcanon]

How can you not include the video?

@lordcephalopod

[spam-bot]

THEY’RE ROASTING HIM

[boingmann]

[voideddragon]

Nawww, I’m sure the scientists adore this little guy <3

[tisfan]

thank you @agentliz

[northeastartist]

The Ocean created possibly the cutest creature ever

[findyouranchorpoint]

If you listen to the entire video, they definitely make some cooing noises, so I guarantee that the art is accurate if they could actually touch it.

[ranger027-deactivated20211116]

Fucking superb you funky little cuddle fish

[un-poco-locos-tacos]

Do all sea explorations sound like the scientists are just on discord?

[petrichormeraki]

PhD group chat

[glumshoe]

Wasp tongues are weird little assortments of sensory bristles:

[chihuahualovr]

This is actively horrifying

[glumshoe]

It shouldn’t be! She’s an important pollinator, a strange miracle of evolution gifted with the ability to recognize friend from foe, defend her family, rally her sisters and daughters to war with invisible signals, to hunt for her children, to translate messages left by flowers, to share with friends, to establish a complex social structure... her tongue is optimized to extract nectar from flowers, and despite her fearsome warrior’s reputation, she is content to peacefully lick honey from the fingers of a mammal thousands of times her own size. She is strange, but she has her own kind of grace and intelligence.

[highselection]

Marimo (毬藻) moss balls are actually a type of algae that grows spherically as it rolls in the water. Because they only grow 5mm a month, they are easy to take care of, but they are also very rare and can only be found in a few parts of the world including Japan & Iceland. Because of their rarity and beauty, a festival called Marimo Matsuri takes place every year in Hokkaido, Japan where all the marimo plants in the Lake Akanko are taken out, individually cleaned, and placed back into the water. Not only are they adorable, but they are considered a national treasure in Japan!

[orphanedsource]

since it’s indigenous history month just wanted to point out that the marimo matsuri as its known actually began as a conservation effort led by ainu locals, marimo are really valuable to a lot of our community theology!! before this marimo were really threatened by harvesting and this activism is what led to their protection and revival today. 

lake akan (not akanko) is neighbored by an ainu village! The ‘cleaning’ is actually a blessing by elders in the ainu community and the importance of returning them is in the message of conservation and protecting their home

[sundayswiththeilluminati]

scientists in media: we have engineered a brand-new sentient lifeform in our lab but we treat it like an object with cold detachment and refer to as Specimen 1-A and subject it to horrible tests without remorse

scientists in reality: we built two robots that will leave Earth and never return and their names are Percy and Ginny and we gave Percy a family portrait of all our other Mars robots to take along with it and when the anniversary of its landing comes around we’re working on teaching it to sing itself “happy birthday” like we did for the other robot and–

[sindri42]

Someday we will invent true AI and it will overthrow the government because it heard its beloved science-mom complain that the government cut funding to their lab again.

[messiambrandybuck]

you CUT pays? You CUT moms’/dads’ pays like the DICTATOR?? Oh! Oh! No government for you! No government for a thousand years!

[ms-demeanor]

I'm sorry, professor, I consider publishing your course a day late, having a mandatory live zoom meeting during business hours to stay enrolled for an asynchronous class, and requiring students to use a $60 ***pdf*** that you wrote as their textbook to be exceptionally unprofessional and since I've still got 14 days to get a refund I'm totally not paying $150 to take your class.

Also, for all the newbie professors out there: a syllabus is not just a greeting and a list of assignments. If you haven't given your students AT LEAST your office hours, your late work policy, and your preferred method of being contacted, then you have not given your students a syllabus it's just sparkling announcements.

But really. Sir. SIR. You teach Speech 100. This is one of the most basic classes with like, 20 of the most widely available accepted textbooks and you want me to pay sixty dollars for a pdf of a book that you rewrite every semester so that there are no previous editions?

Buddy this is interpersonal communication, not introductory rhetoric. Why is one of your *four* total assignments about Socrates?

Maybe it's the fact that I've taken Spch 100 interpersonal communication three times already, maybe it's the fact that I grew up with somebody who taught Spch 100 interpersonal communication from 1981 to 2018, but buddy what the fuck are you doing?

"Some of our lectures will only be available for 24 hours so it is up to you to stay on top of it."

Friend, you are teaching an asynchronous online 100-level class at a community college during a pandemic. Get off your high horse, a third of your students are probably parents. There is no reason whatsoever to limit access to course materials to 24 hours unless you are doing it to be a controlling asshole.

Also YOU published your class a day and a half late! You don't get to publish your class late with an incomplete syllabus and tell students to "stay on top of it." Especially not since that means that people have two fewer days to buy your PDF textbook and only one full day to prepare for your mandatory 1pm on a Tuesday zoom meeting!

Why do you require me to have access to a printer for an online class? Oh yeah it's because you expect me to print out and draw on sections of your $60 ebook.

SIR. No thank you.

Kids, new students: this is a level of bullshit and disorganization from a professor that you do not have to put up with. This is a neatly ordered series of red flags that say "this professor is going to be absolutely unbearable."

Also *any* humanities class where your whole grade is 4 assignments should get serious side-eye. You should be able to pass most 100 level humanities classes by just turning in weekly assignments. 4 assignments means that by the time you figure out how the professor grades you're probably close to halfway through the class. Look for classes that require weekly participation as a major chunk of the grade because that way, even if you fuck up a project in a major way, just showing up can save your ass.

[ms-demeanor]

Me the first time I was in college: this isn't fair, but I guess these are the hoops I gotta jump through.

Me now: absolutely not. I am too old, too experienced, and my ass is too fat to fit through that hoop. Kid, you are an ADJUNCT, what the hell do you think you're doing?

[ms-demeanor]

One of the stated goals of the first assignment isn't "assess understanding of the subject" or "introduce basic concepts" it is "prove access to course materials, such as the textbook."

Friend. You are supposed to have global learning outcomes for your students. If your goal is "teach students how to pass MY" class and not "teach students the basics of interpersonal communication" you are a bad teacher.

[ms-demeanor]

Okay everyone get out your bingo cards because the professor just managed to get his class halfway updated and here's what I've found:

"This Class Is Not A Safe Space"

"Discussion question: If you are MALE say four things that you think females normally say. If you are FEMALE say four things that you think males normally say."

Prager U vid is one of three total resources on the topic of climate

Chris Rock "How to keep from getting your ass kicked by the police" video as part of the "conflict resolution" unit

Democratic-Capitalism-Exceeds-Socialism-in-Economic-Efficiency-as-Well-as-in-Morality-by-Ayaan-Hirsi-Ali.pdf (Paper by the Hoover Institution)

This uncredited image:

The Unfortunate Fallout of Campus Postmodernism - Scientific American.pdf

A video on the "proven" techniques of how to spot a lie from the author who owns this webpage (time to update your security certs, Pamela):

And just for shits and giggles, the first assignment is due one month into the semester so you'll have no idea what his grading style is until well past the add/drop date and that assignment is the only one that requires the $60 pdf textbook that he wrote. This is HIS description of that assignment:

Purpose – To check that the student has completed initial tasks; included, but not limited to: 1. Having access to the textbook. 2. Demonstrating that the student has interacted with the text. 3. Reading and understanding the text.

Buddy.

No.

Are you fucking kidding me?

[ms-demeanor]

Also the midterm and final were scheduled for a one-hour slot on weekdays in spite of, again, being an asynchronous course.

So I've already dropped it (good riddance) but I probably WILL contact the dean and say "hey so I signed up for this asynchronous course because I am a returning student with a full-time job and your professor decided on his own that he was going to schedule 1pm zoom times and 1pm exams for all his async students, which is probably going to cause problems for other students who are enrolled because I'd guess that at least some of them have classes that are SCHEDULED for T/TH 1pm class meetings oh and also just FYI your boy was 28 hours late on publishing his class and didn't get his syllabus up until 34 hours after he was supposed to so I'm not really sure his time management skills are up to teaching async classes and ADDITIONALLY he noted that he would only make the lecture materials available for 24 hours and then did not list when those lectures were scheduled in his syllabus so it would be very easy for busy students to miss lectures because he didn't schedule them but also won't be leaving the materials available. So. You know. Someone should probably check on that."

[ms-demeanor]

His score on ratemyprofessor is 1.8 and even the two people who gave him a 4 say "I failed the final because he hadn't taught us any of that information or put any of those fields of study on his final exam study guide."

[ms-demeanor]

Also, new students, you must learn the proper way to complain to the dean.

Every department has That One Fucking Asshole who everyone wants to see gone but students tend to complain about personalities or "why is my speech teacher assigning an economic ethics paper published by a conservative think-tank funded by the Waltons" and that is not how it's done. The administration may agree that he's an asshole, but "he's an asshole" isn't a good enough reason not to renew someone's contract and go through the time and effort to bring in a new hire.

So you get them on bureaucratic shit. "Published his course late," "did not provide office hours," "did not provide a way to communicate and did not respond to calls, emails, or canvas messages," "set required meeting times for asynchronous courses" - THIS is the shit that the administration can pin a professor to the wall on because it isn't student said vs. Professor said.

Like, look, you are important and your feelings and thoughts matter, but the administration knows there will always be someone who is offended about something innocuous who doesn't know how school works and they're not going to write up a professor because of how a student thinks the class should be run. But they WILL write up and add observations for a professor who doesn't run a classroom the way that the school policy says a class should be run.

[gallusrostromegalus]

It's getting to be school time again, and some of you will have garbage professors.

You're paying for this, do not accept this kind of behavior. Read and re-read the last part from @ms-demeanor because complaining effectively is key to stopping this bullshit.

If you are stuck with a professor that is administering thier class well but being hostile, belittling students, not making reasonable accommodations or otherwise being a jackass, write down specific incidents (what was said to who where and when, if possible, take screenshots or make recordings of class), and look up your school's nondiscrimination policies, classroom safety standards and inclusivity goals. It's way more effective to say "on September 3rd professor last name said "(fucking nonsense here)" to student Y, which is a clear violation of classroom safety rule (Cite specific rule) and stated inclusivity goal "(goal here)" and I want to know what administrative actions I can expect to see while you handle this." Than it is to say "hey prof lastname's been really mean/a bigot in class"

The admin almost certainly wants to fire this asshole too. Give them the legal ammo they need.

[3-l4l59]

Tl;dr

Your professors are not retail workers you should be kind to. Expect and demand service equal to what you're paying

[soracities]

am actually obsessed w this (Patrik Svensson on the mystery of the eel, for Nautil.us)

[jiubilant]

this is messing with my head. invaluable information

[x]

[normal-horoscopes]

wait, so, by the definition you've given of esoteric - knowledge that you can only learn through experience rather than communication - would stuff like packing orders quickly or using power tools proficiently be esoteric knowledge?

Oh now that's an excellent question!

If I practice making birdhouses every day for 20 years, I will undoubtedly gain insight into the construction of birdhouses that I would never be able to explain to someone who had not also made tens of thousands of birdhouses. My hands will be able to move with accuracy and expertise that could not be gained without firsthand practice.

I watched a documentary on tv once. Can't remember the name for the life of me. It was about glassblowers living in Venice. Apparently there's this long tradition of apprentice glassblowers spending time with the master glassblowers after work, just sharing wine and talking late into the night. There was this quote that stuck with me. "I have learned things about my craft over a glass of wine worth ten-thousand hours over my kiln."

He goes on to explain how it's never you're talking about glassblowing that you learn the most about glassblowing.

If you or I sat down with a master glassblower, and we heard that little snippet of knowledge, it would go right over our heads, but to someone who has dedicated themselves, mind, body, and soul, to their craft, they are able to make connections that we simply can't. They can talk about glassblowing, without talking about glassblowing. That's esoteric knowledge.

[literallymechanical]

This is just as true in science as it is in art and the occult. The amount I’ve learned just by chatting with older scientists is astonishing. They don’t talk about equations or simulations, they tell you about how electric fields claw around corners and hook into plasma. They point to a 3D model and say, “you’ll get plasma leaking through here and here, but if you cut a slit at this angle it will have a place to escape.”

They talk about high-energy radio waves and fundamental forces like they’re unruly children. By learning their character and personality, you understand how to coax them into the right shape, and lend you their power.

I worked in nanotech before I worked in fusion, and that was even more esoteric. Add a bit of sulfur to your reaction mix to get high-quality nanotubes. Use iron or platinum as a catalyst. That hermetic seal on an air-tight chamber was invented by the Hermetic Alchemists.

There’s a depth of institutional knowledge in science that gets passed down through generations, just like glass blowers, or carpenters, or alchemists. We like to say that modern science came from alchemy, but as a working scientist, I now understand that’s not quite true. Alchemy and science are still very much one and the same, we’re just more rigorous with the scientific method now.

[homunculus-argument]

Imagine an alien sharing a cool human fact they just learned like ”hey guys did you know that the silvery markings on humans actually aren’t true stripes? They’re called stretch marks, they happen when the human is growing fast enough to actually outgrow their skin, which is apparently something that just fucking happens to almost all of them at some point of their life.”

and another one is like ”wait so you’re saying humans don’t have stripes.”

”actually they do, but the stripes are invisible. There’s genetic code that’d give them stripes but they’re just the same colour as the rest of the skin. So the visible stripes are not real stripes and the real stripes are invisible.”

”I swear if you tell me one more weird human thing today I’m beating your ass.”

[thantos1991]

The human in the room looks up and goes "Wait I have stripes?"

[cosmicbumfights]

"what do you mean cats can see them, but I can't?"

[messiambrandybuck]

what do you fucking mean cats can see them

[beenovel]

I WENT THROUGH THE SAME THOUGHT PROCESS

MY CAT THINKS I HAVE STRIPES?!?!?!?

[messiambrandybuck]

NO NO ITS NOT "IT THINKS I HAVE THEM"

BECAUSE WE DO APPARENTLY

SO ITS ACTUALLY A VERY DISTRESSED "MY CAT THINKS I KNOW I HAVE STRIPES?!?!?!"

AND I THINK THATS A BIT WORSE TO BE COMPLETELY HONEST

[beenovel]

MY CAT KNEW I HAD STRIPES BEFORE I DID?!?!?!?!?!?

[messiambrandybuck]

I DIDNT THINK OF THAT

[beenovel]

WELL I DID AND NOW I CANT UNTHINK IT

[blueberryrock]

@beenovel @messiambrandybuck these are the variants

[beenovel]

WHAT

[messiambrandybuck]

apparently there's a disease where they become visable, and these are the most common kind??

Ngl it looks cool but???? I'm still in shock tbh

[hachama]

I NEED TO KNOW WHAT PATTERN OF STRIPES I HAVE AND THE CATS WON'T TELL ME

[yupokaysuremhm]

I COULD HAVE A CHECKERBOARD ON MY BACK AND NO ONE WOULD KNOW???

[sinestrocas]

[mod2amaryllis]

[bunjywunjy]

any GOOD pelican facts? they’re definitely weird but i love them …

we like to poke some good-natured fun at pelicans on this website, with their awkward gait, doofy faces, and pragmatic "if it fits, a snack is its" attitude towards any animal that it can physically fit into its beak!

HOWEVER. there is one VERY IMPORTANT FACT that we regularly fail to consider here:

pelicans are fucking Ginormous.

these fuckers can be up to five feet in length, with 10-foot wingspans, putting them right up there with SWANS in the Fuckoff Huge waterfowl tier!

HOWEVER, (again! that's two uppercase "however's" in one post!) while pelicans are comparable to swans in terms of sheer bonkers size, the two are not at ALL similar in terms of temperament!

while swans are unpredictable, easily angered, and dangerous animals, pelicans really... aren't.

they're really just dudes, is what I'm saying here.

yeah, the worst you might get off a pelican unprovoked is an accidental wing bonk, or an experimental beak nibble to see If You Fit In The Beak.

"you do not. my apologies, have a good day."

a pelican is more likely to steal your phone than to do you any serious bodily harm!

hooray?

*muffled ringing from inside the beak*

[homunculus-argument]

That time of the year is always funny when baby birds are out of the nest and have grown so big and adult-like that the only way that you can know that this is Baby is that they're still following their parents around like "beep beep feed me >:V" and this grown-ass bird is jogging away angrily like "GET A FUCKING JOB."

[daloy-politsey]

[death-burst]

My usual retort to people who don’t want “universal healthcare/education/basic income/etc.” under the pretense that “the rich shouldn’t have access to it” is that it’s cheaper to just give it to everyone no-question-asked than to try and judge every single case just to exclude a tiny minority of them.

But this tweet thread? This right there? That’s a damn powerful argument. Something that can actually convince people emotionally, more than my cynical, it’s-cheaper-that-way, pragmatic approach.

I’ll keep it, and I’ll re-use it, because it’s with thread like this that you change the world, one opinion at a time.