Daily OpusEverything I write is freely rebloggable. Just keep the source and tell people about my books :D [Until I decide otherwise, my pronouns are Ze/Hir/Hirself. As in "Ze went to the shops to get hir medication hirself". Thank you for the respect.]
I had some other work to do this morning (Figuring out some algae stuff involving 1000 L mesocosm up a mountain) so mystery species has been sitting alone in the lab all morning…..
Made it up to the lab today to find this. It’s probably from the fridge defrosting and not the creepy “algae”.
June 13th Update.
According to a few colleagues it’s either a plant, an algae, or a fungi. So that’s been helpful.
After a day with some sunlight I think I might be seeing some chloroplasts.
It seems to like the nutrient solution I added yesterday though!
I for one welcome our new plant, algae, or fungi overlords.
I was about to say “in a sensible lab people wouldn’t waste time with this, they’d autoclave the bottles and move on” but on reflection I can’t think of a single bio lab I’ve been in that wouldn’t immediately go “ooh, mystery algae, that sounds like a fun challenge; let’s devote multiple hours to identifying it for no reason”.
I need updates tell me about the algae
The mystery algae/plant/fungi/alien is stuck in the university growth chamber. With everything going on I probably won’t get to check in on it until September, possibly not until 2021.
So by that time it will have developed what, writing?
God I hope so, then I can train it to write my thesis!
This entire post is the most on-brand biologist thing I have seen in my entire godforsaken life. The moment this pandemic is over these guys have another crisis ready for us.
Can we get an update cause this is crazy
Update: Due to the global pandemic, the algae has been left alone in a weird hidden growth chamber for a year and will likely stay there for another year. Enjoy that information!
Oh god oh fuck oh Jesus fuck
This is unreasonably funny to me. Like if you wrote it as an apocalypse drama, nobody would believe it… But this is real stuff.
The World ends not with a bang. Not with a whimper. But with a curious voice cooing, “Oooh, what’s that?” and a poke.
There’s a post that I love that I can’t find right now about how we took robots and sent them to other worlds and gave them names like Opportunity, Curiosity and Perseverance. We taught them to sing Happy Birthday.
my favorite college experience is when i had a 7am class and the kid next to me literally poured a monster energy drink into his coffee said “i’m going to die” and drank the whole thing
i knew a guy who brewed his instant coffee with monster instead of water. three cups in two hours. i think he ascended to the astral realm
the survivability of the human race never ceases to amaze me
TABI ANECDOTE
My final year I lived with engineering masters students. One night, I’m finishing up my final paper, I’m juuuust backing up my final copy, and my housemate’s cat knocks a vase over onto my laptop.
Which wouldn’t be a problem except my cable had been chewed on (thanks Kobe), so the wiring was exposed. Circuits short out, I fling myself back to avoid electrocution and by the time we get the situation handled, my laptop AND my external hard drive have been fried by the surge.
I mean, fried. Like, they-are-vaguely-smoking fried.
I start to cry, because there goes fifty percent of my final grade.
Ahmad just goes “it’s okay, we will fix”. I’m like “how the fuck do you propose that?” And he’s like “I have spare laptop.” “THIS IS DUE IN THE AM!”
And he looks me dead in the eye and goes, “I said I will help. Go get the laptop.”
So off I go. By the time I make it downstairs, there’s this chemical /reek/ in the kitchen. I go in and there he is, methodically crushing caffeine pills with the bottom of a glass on a ceramic plate, periodically dusting the powder into a cooking pot. Meanwhile, his coffee pot is chugging away on the counter.
As I watch, he takes the coffee pot, empties it into the cooking pot, lets THAT come to a boil and dumps in some of his Turkish coffee, AND the remaining caffeine pill powder, which by now is starting to look uncomfortably like coke.
He lets that steep, and by now the coffee/burning smell is so strong it’s woken up all six of the other housemates, who have all come downstairs and are vacillating between staring at my laptop and at this concoction with undisguised horror.
He pours this sludge into a mug, stirs in about four /tablespoons/ of sugar and slides it my way.
I figure that I’m probably dead either way regardless, so I suck it back, filtering the grounds through my teeth as I go.
I’ve had three sips when it hits, and I feel my heart trip on a beat. I must have gone white cause he nods, all pleased, and points me at his laptop.
Long story short, I got an week’s extension, didn’t sleep for five days, had a conversation with my BLINDS in SPANISH, and got a B+, with a note that it was an “engaging read and well-written, when intelligible”.
To this day, coffee any stronger than a pale off-beige makes my chest hurt.
I honestly thought he was going to drink the coffee and perform was magic on the laptop but.. nope. even better. Honest to god, I really want to know how that conversation with the blinds went.
Bruh. BRUH.
This is so real. LMFAOOO
I’m concerned for all of you. You at least shortened your life by ten years.
I hate to use a Mad Max reference but WITNESS ME. -chugs monster and takes midterms-
My minor is in Chemistry.
I collect chemistry glassware.
I figured out how to triple-distill and vacuum-extract coffee to raise the caffeine concentration 20-30x.
The first time I sampled a mug of the end product, I didn’t sleep for 2 days and was convinced that I could feel air molecules.
Now I drink it in shot glasses.
THE GATES OF VALHALLA ARE OPEN. WITNESS ME.
I AM SCREAMING YOU ARE AWAITED
I CANNOT STOP LAUGHING.
How can anyone hate our generation? The ingenuity is incredible.
