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slowly settling into a routine involving reading essays, random book chapters, writing, and loads of coffee

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Jan 21, 2025 - Tuesday

Trying a new setup! Actually I’ve been trying to build a setup that I liked for the past few months and I think I’m finally getting somewhere! I brought my hourglass from home and it’s already making it feel a bit more like ‘me’

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alright nerds, favorite biology (or biology-adjacent) field

had to make this new poll so there's more options

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cosas que me hacen feliz: mi diario. mi caja de lápices viejos

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Brain isn't braining very well these days

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it's funny that I've been remembering this post as two weeks/two months but actually it was half month/half year.....it was already that bad back in september huh

my next academic year starts in half a month but what i need is half a year of sleep

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“Don’t get me wrong: you can learn a lot on the internet. You can learn more than at any previous time in history. But ingesting information is only half of learning. The other half, the more important half, is responding to that information, thinking critically about it, about what it implies. Does it fit with your worldview? If not, why not? This is the part of learning that turns knowledge into wisdom, into action. This is the part of learning through which you create yourself, and it demands mental free time, time when you’re not consuming media of any kind, when you’re doing nothing at all. By greedily claiming every appointment on your mind’s timeline, the internet erases these vital hours from your life.”

– ‘I Think the Internet Wants to Be My Mind,’ Escape into Meaning: Essays on Superman, Public Benches, and Other Obsessions, Evan Puschak

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oops! it seems i tripped and dropped several million free books, papers, and other resources

https://annas-archive.org

https://sci-hub.se

https://z-lib.is

https://libgen.is

https://libgen.rs

https://www.pdfdrive.com

https://library.memoryoftheworld.org

https://monoskop.org/Monoskop

https://libcom.org

https://libretexts.org

http://classics.mit.edu

https://librivox.org

https://standardebooks.org

https://www.gutenberg.org

https://core.ac.uk

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march 2024

things to look forward to this month

- a spring break trip with a friend

- a research symposium I’m really excited for

- gradually warmer weather

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I am waiting for the return of my simulation results from a supercomputer. Having spent three months on this simulation already, I really hope it will work. I will try to attend all of my lectures next week as it’s the last week of teaching. I have been skipping so many classes just to focus on my project work. I really need to catch up now!

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why neuroscience is cool

space & the brain are like the two final frontiers

we know just enough to know we know nothing

there are radically new theories all. the. time. and even just in my research assistant work i've been able to meet with, talk to, and work with the people making them

it's such a philosophical science

potential to do a lot of good in fighting neurological diseases

things like BCI (brain computer interface) and OI (organoid intelligence) are soooooo new and anyone's game - motivation to study hard and be successful so i can take back my field from elon musk

machine learning is going to rapidly increase neuroscience progress i promise you. we get so caught up in AI stealing jobs but yes please steal my job of manually analyzing fMRI scans please i would much prefer to work on the science PLUS computational simulations will soon >>> animal testing to make all drug testing safer and more ethical !! we love ethical AI <3

collab with...everyone under the sun - psychologists, philosophers, ethicists, physicists, molecular biologists, chemists, drug development, machine learning, traditional computing, business, history, education, literally try to name a field we don't work with

it's the brain eeeeee

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Story time:

In middle school biology, we did an experiment. We were given yams, which we would sprout in cups of water. We then had to make hypotheses about how the yams would grow, based on descriptions of yam plants in our books, and make notes of our observations as they grew.

Here’s what was supposed to happen: we were supposed to see that the actual growth of the plant did not resemble our hypotheses. We were then supposed to figure out that these were, in fact, sweet potatoes.

What actually happened was that every single student in every single class lied in their notes so that their observations perfectly matched their hypotheses. See, everyone assumed the mismatch meant they had done something wrong in the process of growing the plant or that they had misunderstood the dichotomous key or the plant identification terminology. And, thanks to the wonders of a public school education, everyone assumed the wrong results would get us a failing grade. We were trying to pass. We didn’t want to get bitched out by the teacher. Curiosity, learning, science - that had nothing to do with why we were sitting in that classroom. So we all lied.

The teacher was furious. She tried to fail every student, but the administration stepped in and told her she wasn’t allowed to because a 100% fail rate is recognized as a failure of the teacher, not the class. It wasn’t even her fault, really, though her being a notorious hard-ass didn’t help. It was a failure of the entire educational system.

So whenever I see crap like Elizabeth Holmes’s blood test scam or pharmaceutical trials which are unable to be replicated or industry-funded research that reaches wildly unscientific conclusions, I just remember those fucking sweet potatoes. I remember that curiosity dies when people are just trying to give their superiors the “right” answers, so they can get the grade, get the job, get the paycheck. It’s not about truth when it’s about paying rent. There’s no scientific integrity if you can’t control for human desperation.

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having to take a cream break during exams then wait so it doesn't get on the exam sheet so now you're just thinking about the questions which turns into starting into the nothingness and oh when did i start skin-picking urgh can't get blood on the exam sheet now shaky leg of forced concentration oh no this chair is attached to a bench so i'm shaking everyone gotta put the extra energy elsewhere oh wait i know the answer to that

Nothing more miserable than having eczema on your hands and trying to study for exams. Everything it itchy, holding a pencil is pain, stupid hand cream gets all over my notes. What's worse? I can't even disassociate into my comfort media bc my exam is in 4 days!! >:C

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Hello all! I took a break from the Internet but I am back! Little update: I am now in year two of my degree, and I started organic chemistry! Very excited for this year's journey:) 🧪

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my next academic year starts in half a month but what i need is half a year of sleep

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Sick list of symptoms bro. Now try humanizing your behavior instead of pathologizing it.