adventuresinchemistry

[adventuresinchemistry]

Okay someone asked me earlier "Hey CT, you study the occult for a living, off the top of your head, what's the most popular form of the occult in today's world?"

Pseudo-nutrition. Bar none. A massive amount of the fad dieting world goes beyond simple misinformation and ignorance and full on into a systemized non-scientific theory of anatomy and nutrition that 100% qualifies as magic. If you replace the term "toxins" with "evil ghosts" half of these blogs would sound like sumerian curse tablets.

[adventuresinchemistry]

That’s what happens when you lick a turtle

Wild caught Salmonella. Hehe

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NEW FISH JUST DROPPED

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MY SCIENCE TEACHER CAUGHT THE TABLE ON FIRE AND HES JUST STARING AT IT

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look, I know I've talked about this essay (?) before but like,

If you ever needed a good demonstration of the quote "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", have I got an exercise for you.

Somebody made a small article explaining the basics of atomic theory but it's written in Anglish. Anglish is basically a made-up version of English where they remove any elements (words, prefixes, etc) that were originally borrowed from romance languages like french and latin, as well as greek and other foreign loanwords, keeping only those of germanic origin.

What happens is an english which is for the most part intelligible, but since a lot everyday english, and especially the scientific vocabulary, has has heavy latin and greek influence, they have to make up new words from the existing germanic-english vocabulary. For me it kind of reads super viking-ey.

Anyway when you read this article on atomic theory, in Anglish called Uncleftish Beholding, you get this text which kind of reads like a fantasy novel. Like in my mind it feels like it recontextualizes advanced scientific concepts to explain it to a viking audience from ancient times.

Even though you're familiar with the scientific ideas, because it bypasses the normal language we use for these concepts, you get a chance to examine these ideas as if you were a visitor from another civilization - and guess what, it does feel like it's about magic. It has a mythical quality to it, like it feels like a book about magic written during viking times. For me this has the same vibe as reading deep magic lore from a Robert Jordan book.

[adventuresinchemistry]

I see you've noticed my overhead mural of mushrooms. That's myceiling.

[adventuresinchemistry]

"there are only two sexes, it's literally third grade biology!" and pronouns are taught in kindergarten and you dont seem to understand those either

#this is why I like to point out that I have a PhD in bio and never took intro bio lol

[adventuresinchemistry]

[adventuresinchemistry]

if they'd shown me this in science maybe i would've learnt more

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oh man, they made you defend your thesis? that's fucked up, they told me mine was perfect the way it is and just gave me the phd

[adventuresinchemistry]

The weird thing about leaving academia for a completely different field is that you end up with so much random knowledge that is of no use to anyone, including yourself

#I know the molecular weight of IPTG off the top of my head #and so so much about the bacterial cytoskeleton and NMR #but I will probably never need that info every again

[adventuresinchemistry]

Btw if I say things like “by god” or “good lord” in posts please be aware I don’t mean it in a catholic way I mean it in a 1950s scientist reacting in horror after they create an evil creature in the lab set in the distant future year of 2005

[adventuresinchemistry]

I Love Prehistoric Ecosystems So Much

yeah individual taxa are cool and everything but no species is an island. What did it live with? What did it eat, what ate it? Did it have "friends" (term used loosely)? What was the environment like, where did they get water, what was the climate?

Tell me the whole story

Tell me how they lived

[adventuresinchemistry]

scientists have discovered an organism which they believe to have the lowest brain power of anything else previously discovered, and they're calling it the customer

[adventuresinchemistry]

Everyone should learn to code? More like everyone should learn markdown so we can stop fighting with word formatting

#the only thing markdown/TeX can’t do that word can is track changes and collaboration

[adventuresinchemistry]

I forgot the part where there’s so many blood types. It’s not just ABO (Lewis) and Rh (+/-). It’s ABO, Rh (D, C, c, E, e), Kidd (Jka, Jkb, JK3), Duffy (Fya, Fyb), Kell (K, k), MNSs, U, Lutheran, and a bunch of others I can’t think of off the top of my head. Plus, any of the ones I listed can cause complications if they’re mismatched.

A fun fact though is that most blood groups are named after the patient they were first identified in.

Fun things I’ve learned so far working for a company that makes blood transfusion diagnostic tests:

The official journal of the International Society of Blood Transfusion is called Vox Sanguinis (literally Voice of Blood)

Drawing blood is known as bleeding, which means that in all of our internal studies “bleed date” is a data point

Customers can and do call to complain when they make mistakes (for example, not reading the label correctly or ordering the wrong product or not reading the instructions)

The EU continues to have the best regulatory framework for medical devices (looking at you FDA for not requiring regular updates or ongoing clinical data)

Lexi cat can and will sit directly on top of my keyboard at every given opportunity

[adventuresinchemistry]

Gonna start referring to myself as a professional writer (technically true) just to confuse people when they find out I work for a medical device company

#technical writing hive rise #also technically doing sci comm #I’m just only communicating science to regulatory bodies in the EU