A to B through Z

This is something I wrote in early 2017 and lightly edited this week. I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine. How are things? Good! Well, you know...not really. I mean pretty good, considering. Those conversations I can handle, but my least favorite bits are the silences after a few minutes. Maybe I explained how mom was doing or how he died for the morbidly curious. The platitudes and the chit chat is done and there's just silence. I didn't know it at first, but I've slowly learned that this is where people feel something profound is supposed to go. Something the movies taught us has to happen, it's right there in the script. You're supposed to provide the neat bow on the tire fire that is your emotional state to assure all present that "everything happens for a reason" or "every cloud has a silver lining". I hate that silence. I wish I could say that I hope you never have to experience grief, but obviously that's impossible.

There are three types of racists in the world right now: 1) Your tiki torch march for hate kinda racists 2) Your overturn constitutional law by executive fiat to keep out brown people kinda racists 3) Your shrug and accept that this is your team and you’ll stick by ‘em kinda racists I swear to god I think I respect the first group more for at least being honest about who they are and what they want. If you vote straight ticket republican in November, I know by your works exactly where you stand. I hope Jesus finds you lukewarm and spits you out when you get to heaven. ---------------- As an oddly timed side note I'd like to keep this blog going with a decidedly less heavy-handed self-editing mode. In thinking about why I even started this blog years ago and why I would want to keep this going I couldn't come up with a good answer. Blogs are such a weirdly anachronistic appendix of the digital world. They don't really have a place because it's a diary t

I've been thinking a lot about nuclear war lately, but that seems far too dark for the moment. In some ways I want this blog to reflect how I'm feeling at 28 as a time capsule for myself to look back on years later. The issue is that I'm only really drawn to scribble something down when I'm feeling particularly morose. When I'm out having fun and living life I'm just too busy to come tell the internet all about it. Then whenever the other shoe drops and I start think about how long we've had nuclear weapons and isn't it crazy that they've only been used twice? How much longer can we keep that streak going, huh? Nuclear arms are over 70 years old and our policy is to tell other people, "please don't build them. pls." Then all of a sudden I have to come and hammer out a depressing 1,000 words about nuclear winter. Well I ain't doing that today, chumps! Lately I'm just really content. Not happy daily or satisfied with where I am,

When we decided that a twitter personality was our best bet for president, I was pretty upset. I won’t tell you how upset or for how long, because certain corners of the internet sure would love to get their hands on my cuck tears. Outrage was the correct response at the time, but you can’t live in outrage long term. At a certain point, you have to be able to function day-to-day, work, and look your parents in the eyes again. It’s not giving up or giving in to a new reality, it’s just learning to cope in a way that doesn’t have you crying in bathrooms. My primary method for coping with a Trump presidency was to pick three issues that I care about the most and only try and comment on social media when these issues came up. That was working pretty well up to a point, but let's check in at the 100 day mark and see how things are going for me. 1) Science funding: F- 20% in proposed cuts to the NIH (my favorite and likely more in cuts for NSF (who actually fund me directly).

Getting a PhD sucks, no doubt about that. On the one hand, enjoying what you're doing requires you (or at least me) to get lost in the work. Thinking about problems, rotating issues in your head all day. On the other hand, you can totally lose yourself in a thought and effort for months this way. It takes a certain kind of person to stick it out in grad school, but even the best student isn't that person every day. Nor should they be, that's why PhD candidates are so much more likely to develop mental disorders (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048733317300422). The paradox is really that you have to be simultaneously completely devoted to your project, while at the same time retaining your sanity and awareness of the world around you. This is especially true for people looking to jump that fence from academic life to work in industry. A postdoc I used to work with told me not to get too invested in your work, because you would never be able to graduate

A good analogy only gets you so far. My first mentor in science taught me that. Basically, analogies in science are tremendous tools because you can translate the complexity of natural phenomenon into crystallized sound bytes for easier communication and snap comprehension. He also taught me that they can be dangerous, because they sand off the edges of complicated ideas for the sake of simplicity and comprehension. You've got to know where the analogy you're using breaks down. A good analogy will drive you 75% of the way, but all analogies make you walk around at dusk for a while. Truth ain't easy. As much as Americans "fucking love science," I don't think we like scientists very much. They're argumentative weirdos that hem and haw over complexity too much. True Americans™ like an overconfident cowboy to take the analogy, tip his hat, and run with it. Basically, we like a nice story with a scientific sheen to it. And yet, there's nothing more danger