chem-n-chaos

Latest Posts by chem-n-chaos

garcia and gordon 1992 is really saving my ass here

sounds heard while reading hnmr spec charts:

“it’s so sad, it has no friends!”

“that’s not possible, you can’t have that many friends!”

“that hydrogen is getting peer pressured.”

"what skills do i have" is of course followed by "what job do you want me to do, exactly? oh, right. that, the one that matches my supposed skillset. right. that."

i love that when writing cover letters, i have to keep going back to my resume, going "wait, what skills do i have again? oh right, i can read that kind of graph. let's put that down."

i love that when writing cover letters, i have to keep going back to my resume, going "wait, what skills do i have again? oh right, i can read that kind of graph. let's put that down."

passive voice needs to stop. because sometime i forget how english works and i have like three different clauses in my sentence and i just- can't.

papers are hard.

seriously, it's not even a content issue anymore (i mean, we have those in spades, but that's not the point right now—)

how acknowlegements???? like??? titles??? full names??? what if they're a child, because you're also a child trying to publish something? what do you do then? if someone has a doctorate but did less do you put them first or last in that acknowledgement category??? what???

writing a resume be like "i promise i don't suck and i am capable of the stuff i will need to do for u. i'm not incompetent i swear" ｡◕‿‿◕｡

large empires in history be like "we tried to solve a problem by creating an even larger one."

reading thomas nagel be like

"sir WHAT are your verbs and why.

why are you like this?"

bernadette banner just referred to someone as her "resident chemist" and i am quite sure that this is the profession i aspire to.

i love describing acid base buffers as "they turn the extra pH-ey things into the less pH-ey things."

Caffeine does not dehydrate you quickly enough to cancel out the effects of the water content in coffee, soda, tea, etc. If you’re staring down deadly heat waves, please drink whatever you will drink the most of slowly–sipping often throughout the day is better than chugging a few glasses of water once you begin to feel thirst (a sign of dehydration). The only thing you should avoid is alcohol.

If you are going to give medical advice regarding high heat, please make sure that it is sound. It is dangerous to tell people to avoid certain liquids, especially liquids that are more likely to be sipped often throughout the day, especially because people in temperate climates who are getting tropical summer temperatures right now are not used to the fact that electrolyte loss from excessive sweating can be dangerous too. Water alone does not hydrate you. If you are drinking tons of plain water without eating anything with it, that is a recipe for electrolyte imbalances that can fuck you up big time. Guess what has water and sodium in it? Soda. Guess what has carbohydrates and proteins and calcium? Iced lattes. If you like water, that’s great! A lot of people do not like and will not drink water, or will chug water a few times a day while sodas and lattes and teas that could save their lives sit abandoned in the fridge because they’ve been convinced that it’s plain water or nothing. Don’t die for diet culture and debunked science. Drink your sodas, teas, coffees, milkshakes, slushies–whatever gets liquid into your body in sippable form, because your body can only process so much liquid at a time–chugging a bunch of water in the morning won’t help you by the afternoon, you’ve got to keep drinking. Also heat stroke can kill you. Heat stroke is a medical emergency. It’s not you being a baby or a wimp, it’s your internal body temperature getting high enough to cook enzymes in your body to the point that they melt out of shape and stop functioning. Heat stroke can kill you quickly, so don’t wait to call an ambulance if you think you or someone else have it. If you suspect heat stroke and you hesitate, you may watch someone die. I know people who have watched a young, healthy relative die of heatstroke while waiting for the ambulance to come, despite everyone involved being accustomed to the heat and having access to air conditioning. When you start to feel like the heat is getting to you, listen to your body and do not push yourself. Pushing yourself is how you die waiting for the ambulance to come.

Soda, tea, coffee, ice cream, and milk are all perfectly good at hydrating you. Please drink whatever you will put in a cup, carry around with you, and sip often throughout the day. Deadly heat waves are not the time to lie to yourself about what liquids you like to put in your body. Deadly heat waves are the time to put those liquids in your body frequently in small sips throughout the day.

i- it has come to my attention that some of the journal articles i am citing, for a school paper, sound like tabloids???

examples:

How Enigmatic is Hans Christian Andersen?

Seeing Andersen as He Isn’t

Like bro?

and this, kids, is why we don't write essays while consistently sleep deprived.

"Implicit in this argument about scientific truth is that scientific truth is predicated on conflict between multiple different theories, and approaches scientific truth as an absolute that can only be approached asymptotically through empiricism, a decidedly modern and western conception."

(my dear friend proof reading this) "bro u say 'scientific truth' three times in this sentence."

…and that’s ignoring the “multiple different theories” and all the other BS happening here….

google's auto responses are killing me..

my friend (the sweetest angel who looked over my paper for me) has highlighted the work "Lamarckian," asking "what does this mean?"

google's auto responses?

"i don't know" and "sorry."

"what is this?" "i don't know. i wrote this paper. but i just... don't know."

alternatively.

"what is this" "sorry." no context. just sorry.

to the chemistry demon: look. i already sold my soul to the algebra demon. and i know you guys are friends. you steal his torture tactics very often. so please. i can't sell you my soul for a 5 on your ap exam. i might be able to rent you a little bit, or convince algebra to lend it to you for a few minutes, but i won't be able to sell it to you.

...will you accept cookies in payment?

no? tears, blood, and souls only? *sighs.* fine.

the tear delivery should be around 2am, does that work for you?

you ever self-study for something, think you cover all the topics, and then take a practice test and realize that. damn. you know. absolutely. f-ing. nothing.

cuz like yeah same bro.

having attempted to categorize the various facets of poor response to oil spills as either market, civil society or government, i find myself at a loss trying to explain that... well... nature n the science we observed just... not working in favor of bioremediation isn't really a market failure?????

was anyone going to tell me that hans christian andersen is queer, or was i supposed to just figure that out myself???

ah, yes.

the sweet, sweet smell of procrastination.

lysenko is the mansplain manipulate manwhore of genetics and agrobiology.

no, my mind cannot be changed.

there are some days where i'm like "hell yeah! how many moles of photons do i need to raise a 400 grams of water 5 degrees using a CO2 laser at a specific wavelength? i don't know but i'll figure it out!!"

and then there are some days where I forget how to balance the reaction of sodium bicarb and vinegar...

...scientists really be like "put simply" and then follow it up with the most incomprehensible, jargon filled sentence you've ever read.

Dear scientists,

Please, for the love of God, please, make your papers more understandable.

Fuck you

Sincerely,

A college student on the verge of tears

me talking about my research project to non-science folks: yeah, so i'm using bacteria to get rid of oil.

me talking about my research project to science folks/writing about it: i'm investigating how the pH of the solution marine bacteria are cultured in affects their ability to degrade hydrocarbons.

me talking about research in my head: how make bacteria bois the best souuuuuuup? do they like sour soup or no sour soup?

delighted to be back in my happy place of bacteria, and not in the utterly horrifyingly confusing world of genomics.

...that said, i seem to have cornered myself into a deadline again, so here goes at least another three cups of tea.

*waters plants, chugs three cups of oversweetened black tea, pulls up six half-read, poorly annotated papers, knits three rows of a frog stuffie, re-reads prompt and guidelines, tries to command f keywords in the paper, finds nothing, re-reads the abstract, realizes all the papers are useless, goes onto googles scholar and searches for the same keyword, finds new papers, reads abstract and intro, finds something super interesting, reads discussion and realizes the methods for this study were slightly different than what you were expecting, has an existential crisis, wonders why tf they're doing genomics when they're interested in hydrocarbons, sheds one tear, shrugs, types furiously and writes it up anyway with a quick sentence explaining that it's slightly different but still relevant, cries, does citations and slams computer shut, stares at the clock which has somehow gone from 11AM to 6PM in the blink of an eye, and proceeds to not sleep for another ten hours*

"yEaH, i'M a ScIenTiSt."

the HOYO artificial upwelling project in japan...

such a rip to feed all the lil phytoplankton-ey bois all that phosphorous, nitrogen, calcium, and silicon to ultimately have growth limited by sunlight... like bruh...

geoengineering be like:

no one:

absolutely no one:

some random scientist named dr evil: y'know what sounds like a really good idea? froth the fucking ocean, make meringue earth using CO2.

part of the scientific community: huh... y'know, what if we just... tossed a bomb? but like, into the ocean. in the middle of a hurricane. cuz. that works. 100%

another equally ridiculous part of the scientific community that is like 100% white military men: ...okay, but what if we put frickin hydrofluorocarbons into the atmosphere. yes, it will cause warming. we know. we just wanna. play god.

so. geoengineering. seems pretty fricking cool, right?

and like, in concept, yeah. no, Fe fertilization ain't gonna solve global warming, and it will probably have some wonky ass impacts on nearby marine life, and i wouldn’t recommend doing it, but it’s theoretically very cool! and it's so much more elegant that other CO2 reduction schemes.

buuuuut.

then, you get to other types of geoengineering. and it's like—

toss a bomb into the ocean!!!

froth the ocean.

shoot aerosols into the atmosphere.

put hydrofluorocarbons into the atmosphere.

yeet dry ice into the atmosphere to precipitate snow

like. sir. no?????

have you ever done six hours of research, digging through at least twenty papers in order to get yourself to a surface-level amount of knowledge on a topic, write a two page summary that sounds like a five year old wrote it, and only cite five of those twenty papers?

cuz yeah. me too bro.