Oh I love that half the shit I use at work is broken now. It’s amazing. (Said no one, ever)

The science feeds, and a few friends, are the only reason I’m here. (ChemSky is amazing regardless of platform.) The content I see on Mastodon is generally nicer.

Propaganda is a tool, depends on who wields it. I always work a propaganda question into my trivia sets. Typically something to do with coal miners dying for the right to unionize, civil rights, or something horrific the US government has done in history (see also: why the Bath Riots happened).

There’s a lot more to your potential than what you get paid to do. Personal growth takes a lot of dimensions our academic background encourages us to neglect.

FWIW, the year after I defended I couldn’t get hired in academia for anything beyond an adjunct role, couldn’t get a job in my field, took a lowball offer doing something else because I needed the health insurance. Hardest year or two of my life. Probably took a decade off of it if I’m being honest.

wow way to go polar cop on us

You JUST GRADUATED into a collapsed labor market, give yourself some grace. Takes some of us a few years to find our footing.

Ah, sorry to hear that. That’s really disheartening.

I think it really depends on where you end up. There are good and bad work environments everywhere, and even the good ones are not perfect. Choose your people wisely, I guess.

PhD student, right?

You’ll get there - even if you just end up an industry rando like me and you mostly just publish conference papers. I know it seems near-impossible now, but hang in there.

I got bumped to acknowledgments a couple of times and was not happy. Now I take care to aggressively credit everyone on my programs and I don’t give a fuck how long the author list is.

Nah, it just means [prominent scientist] isn’t a physicist, because that would be irresistible

I think the proportion of NTs in physics and engineering is significantly lower than in the general population.

Yes, just snacks. They know their customer base.

omg I would LOVE garage project supplies as gifts…I think I’m slowly turning into my father and I’m ok with that

They’re a pretty quiet couple in their late 20s/30s. Fluent in English (as they’re leaving the US), proficient in French, fascinating conversationalists, really some of the coolest folks you’ll ever meet.

This is an argument, but I can also understand an eyeroll akin to “GMO is bad!” - too broad a statement to be useful. Replacing all the art/animation with AI would be egregious, but using it to generate a snippet of code or NPC dialogue or something is less so

Or pharmacist suicides

That was 10 years ago. Lasers are cool but I still miss chemistry.