Feralscienceguy - The Alchemist

As a former nerdy child (and current nerdy uni student) I love how you don't grow out of it, I love that ✨real scientists✨ remain genuine nerds: there's a sheet of paper stuck to the wall above the coffee machine in my internship mentor's office that shows an increasing linear function where x = amount of consumed coffee and f(x) = number of published papers. The researchers here regularly joke about electrons and syntheses and whatnot. Internship mentor told us all today about a science meme he'd seen the other day. It's amazing :')

Sometimes you need to read something twice to get it. You might need to watch a movie three times to understand it. You might have to have that album on repeat for a week until the lyrics make any sense. You're allowed to engage with it and can keep engaging with it until it means something to you. People will see a painting at a museum and laugh about not getting what the big deal is but like you can come back, you can see it at another time, and maybe that next time it'll be different for you. I'm of the belief the "media literacy crisis" would solve itself if more people just sat down and did it again. Watched, read, played, listened, etc like I don't think people are getting more ignorant necessarily I just think we're not glorifying personally replaying things nearly as much as we should be.

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.

just learned about the granulated sea star . . .

dont talk to me

This Zenith Movie was taken on Sol 4001 (2023-11-07) at approximately 8:04 LTST and a solar longitude of 145.03°. (What is this?)

I might be a little biased but I’m honestly starting to believe that there’s no purer form of love than the defensive spite you see from biologists that have devoted their life to the study of a maligned or misunderstood species. For example:

The hyena biologist that arranged for Disney animators to come sketch captive  hyenas for The Lion King film (Laurence Frank) was so incensed when the animals were depicted as villains in the movie that he later included boycotting the film on a list of ways the average person could help hyena conservation.

Though it’s commonly known that Charles Darwin’s distaste for parasitic wasps played a role in his development of evolution theory (since he felt no loving God would create animals with such a disturbing life cycle), the biologists who study these wasps find it an unfair characterization. When they were tasked with coming up with a common name for the family of parasitic wasps (Ichneumonidae) that old Charles so disliked, they proposed the name “Darwin Wasps” to spite the famous naturalist who had insulted their beloved family of insects.

Parasitologist Tommy Leung was so frustrated with the way people write about parasites to evoke horror and gore that he started writing a Parasite of the Day blog, that specifically avoids inflammatory or unsettling language to describe them. He also illustrates different species in colorful anime art on Twitter in a series called Parasite Monster Girls—which he calls his “love letter to parasites.”

I guess I’m just saying that if you’re a biologist studying an unpopular species and you have a little bit of a chip on your shoulder about it you can always count on me to be in your corner if you want to get a little petty with the public!

Cesium-133, let it be. Cesium-134, let it be even more.

Periodic Table Regions [Explained]

Transcript

[A periodic table with regions labeled.]

[Hydrogen:] Slightly fancy protons [Lithium and Beryllium:] Weird dirt [Group 1 & 2 metals, Periods 3-4:] Regular dirt [Group 1 & 2 metals, Periods 5-7:] Ends in a number, let it slumber ends in a letter, not much better [Left side of the transition metals group:] Boring alloy metals Probably critical to the spark plug industry or something (but one of them is radioactive so stay on your toes) [Most of the top row of the transition metals + aluminum:] Regular metals [Below the rightmost "regular metals" - the "ordinary metals" and some transition metals:] Weird metals [The platinum group:] $$$$ [Boron:] Boron (fool's carbon) [Carbon, Nitrogen, Oxygen, and Phosphorus:] You are here [The Halogens:] Safety goggles required [Noble Gases:] Lawful neutral [Iodine and Radon:] Very specific health problems [Ordinary metals and metalloids - Arsenic, Antimony, Tellurium, Thallium, Lead, Bismuth, Polonium] Murder weapons [Astatine and Period 7 from Rutherfordium onwards:] Don't bother learning their names - they're not staying long [Lanthanides and Actinides:] Whoever figures out a better way to fit these up there gets the next Nobel Prize

NATIVE CARBON DIOXIDE FOUND ON JUPITER’S MOON EUROPA