#fancy journaling

[ginpotts]

all of my doctor who gifs so far are like: 90% my favorite quotes from the show and the rest are pretty people lmao XDD

[roseserpentpress]

With both TBOB and Journal 3 finished, here's photos of them assembled them as earrings! (See more detailed photos of each of the books in their respective posts). I ended up wearing them out to a con (in a Ford cosplay) over the last weekend which was very fun. They also currently chill above my desk, nearby some Bill and Ford figures I made. Some WIP progress photos below.

[mariahthealchemist]

WHAT was the dresscode LOL

[causeimanartist]

Behold, the last lunch break drawing in my sketchbook

[alpaca-clouds]

Doing Science in a Solarpunk Future

Yesterday I talked a bit about the ethics of animal testing (just to reiterate: Yes, if it is for medical use, I think it just cannot be circumvented, unless you want people to die of all sorts of preventable and treatable issues). But today I want to talk about science in broader way - and what is going wrong in it right now.

Everyone who follows me who themseves is working in academia knows this, but a lot of other people don't: science is having quite a lot of issues right now. Has been having them for years and years for that matter.

Depending on the country you live in, there are a couple of different approaches to doing science. The most traditional one is obviously doing it at an university or a similar institute for science and learning. However, you can also do science for companies, and you obviously can do science under government contracts (which usually is a nice way of saying: You are doing science for military use). Mind you, university science in some countries get treated as government work - at least if it is a public university. Germany, where I live, thankfully has a provision in our laws about this (basically, the military cannot use any scientific things unless the scientist explicitly allows for it), but other countries don't.

Which brings me to the general problem. You might have heard of it: Science is kinda underfunded. Because for years and years the governments generally have reduced the budgets of universities. This hits the humanities even harder, but the MINT faculties also tend to be hit with budget cuts every so often - while the same time more and more stuff needs to be done by more bureaucratic means. As David Graeber writes in his book Bullshit Jobs: Scientists and teachers are forced to become more and more "box tickers" (so people who do government assigned documentation work, not because it is acutlaly needed, but because it is ordered).

And while we are on it: If you have not tenure (meaning: if you are not a professor), you will be paid shit either way. Which kinda sucks, because it makes fucking as hell sure that only people from rich families - or who have a rich spouse - can afford to do this.

Just as an example: I will start working for my university in a couple months. How ever, the university uses the same contracts for everyone. And those have not changed in a couple of years. Inflation happened. Right now doing the job parttime will not allow me to make enough money to pay for my bare necessities. It will not be enough to pay rent, insurance, and food. Because it is just so low. (About 950€ a month.) This works for folks who have other means of money or family who pays for stuff - but not for an orphan like me.

And while I obviously will start as "student assistent", even other folks - like PhD candidates and stuff - will get paid fairly poorly for the work they do and how important that work is to keep the university running.

Even once you have your masters or even your PhD. If you do not have tenure, universities will pay you worth - especially in MINT - than any other job you could take with that degree. Basically, they are building on the entire idea that the honor of doing science is enough payment. Just that honor does not pay bills.

But lets talk about science itself. Though the problem kinda is still the same: money and bureacracy.

I am not going to argue, that there should be some hurdles for science to make sure that the sciene done ideally is ethical and such. Absolutely. No argument from me. However, right now there is a ton of unnecessary hurdles to try and do a project. And often enough, even if you are at a university, the budget the university has for a single project, will not be enough to pay the scientists and their assistants and whatever material might be needed for it. So a lot of scientists will have to ask at other places for funding. At times you can get funds from groups that just help science for science's sake - but often this means either companies (who will then make money with anything you come up with) or government (who, if your country allows for it, might use anything in the military).

Which also brings us to the problems between MINT and humanities. While this is from Utah, there was this wonderful poster, that I feel sums it up really well:

Mind you, from my experience so far, there are quite a lot of scientists, who would like to have someone from humanities on certain projects. But those are usually not within the budget. And while all in all a lot of folks in science are screaming for more interdisciplinary research... Getting the university to finance that is often a fucking nightmare. Partly, because the different faculties basically get budgeted differently. So if you work together with 5 faculties, how might they ever budget that?

Of course, if you get to do research these days also will largely depend on three things:

Are you already a very well known scientist in your field, who might even have won some accolades? Great, you might go ahead with your project.

Otherwise: Will there be a way to monetize this science later on? If so, well, we will certainly find some way to do this.

Finally: Will it be something super prestigeous which will enhance the name of the university and get you published in one of those very fancy science journals? If so: Amazing, this will work too. But don't you dare to find out that the thing you theorized does not work. Journals do not like "we tried this, and it did not work, because..." papers.

I think you can see the issues coming up, here, right?

In recent years there are again and again scandals of "scientist X faked their results" or "actually everyone at university Y faked their results". And this tends to be bound to the last point.

See, right now, if you get to keep your academic job is largely dependend on whether you publish a lot of papers - ideally in some well known magazine. If you are in natural science, you totally want to get something published in NATURE or SCIENCE. And if you do medicine, you should at some point publish something in the New England Journal of Medicine. You know, to enhance the reputation of the university, who kindly is paying you a bad salary (as long as you do not have tenure).

To make simple: this does not work, and it creates the wrong incentives.

Mind you, most people who are in science right now do indeed do what they do, because they want to do something for science and humanity. They love what they do.

But of course it does not need to be that way.

Which is where we get to the Solarpunk aspect of this all. Because yeah, it is easy to imagine how it could work a whole lot better.

Technically this would already start if we just had a system that took care of everyone's basic needs and a bit extra. Be it because we had communism, or because we had something like UBI. (Reminder: Yes, I am a communist, but I will take UBI over nothing, thank you very much.) In this case, at least the problem of scientists not making enough money to take care of their family would just go away. Because the families would be taken care of.

We also need just more options with folks from different disciplines to work together. We know for a fact, that the best results will happen, if diverse disciplines cooperate, because it creates a mix of ideas that will work a whole lot better for everyone, than just the same nerds with the same focus sitting together.

But of course: While man-hours are the biggest money-sink in a lot of research, we also need a better way to finance equipment. Both those kinda of equipment we already technically have as a society - and those that people want to get to work (I don't know, stuff like CERN, which was obviously a massively expensive project to be built). Because those projects might be needed to push science ahead.

Most people who work at universities indeed do it right now, beause they care about whatever they do. (Let's face it, a lot of folks are undiagnosed in terms of one flavor of one neurodivergency or another.) But this should not mean that they have to do the work in a way that endangers them in terms of allowing their families to thrive or basically forbid them of taking care of their pensions.

And of course... the bureaucracy. It needs to go. Do not make researchers fill out weekly forms for some bullshit that nobody will look at at any point.

I think we could be a lot further in certain areas of research. This goes for humanities either way (the stuff we could have found and researched in history - if you guys only knew how MANY UNTRANSLATED MANUSCRIPTS THERE ARE), but it goes for science, too. Chances are, we could have come with certain solutions to serve environmentalism and such, if folks could just do the research they actually wanted.

[applefoam]

you ever get so overwhelmed with grief that you call out to your deities for help and get the feeling that they're there with you? yeah

[lyrebirb]

sometimes the world is just you and your room

[dogstomp]

Dogstomp #3032 - April 20th

Patreon / Discord Server / Itaku / Bluesky

[whentherewerebicycles]

a lowkey but joyful day with the baby. he woke up complaining around 5:30am but then I persuaded him to go back to sleep by changing him, giving him his pacifier, and telling him firmly “we are going back to sleep now” and then he slept until 7:30 huzzah. then we crawled all around upstairs hunting for small pieces of fuzz on the carpet (he is collecting specimens as part of his fieldwork, although unfortunately in THIS HOUSE some people do not believe in SCIENCE and are always confiscating his samples before he can eat them). then he took a nice long nap and hung out with his sitter while I tutored and worked on these job materials for a bit. then my sister came over and hung out for the rest of the day. we ran errands while the baby hollered joyfully at us from the back seat (GAH GAH GAH YAYAYAYA AAAAA BAH! BAH! BAH! PBBTTT! YA YA YAAAA!). he got to ride sitting up in the front of the cart at costco because he’s such a big boy now 😭😭 then we came home and hung out on his play mat while he hollered and played his little baby piano and smacked his xylophone and practiced trying to crawl over my sister’s knees and chomped our calves. my happy little kiddo. such a nice chill day and I DON’T HAVE TO WORK TOMORROW YIPPEEEEE I can’t believe I was going to put on tights and go to work in my freezing cold office on my birthday. what was I thinking.

[daddyduncan69]

gonna be off tumblr for the next week or so as i slowly read the golden raven so posting all my drafts before i go

[karda]

wat journal do u use for yr spreads ! ive been wanting to start doing like multimedia / scrapbooky spreads like that but the last time i tried i basically broke the spine of my journal </3

thats the only wayyy dude💔💔 i have like 6 journals i jump around to and theyre all either $15 ones from target (meant for basic writing) or old ones i find around the house. the target ones hold up ok, the covers are solid, but they arent meant for anything i put in them so they fall apart eventually ┐(´ー｀)┌ thats kind of the beauty of it

[rainintheevening]

Every time I go to Staples to print something I walk past the display of fancy journals on my way to the back where the copiers are, and I stop to peruse the selection almost every single time, and sigh over some of the gorgeous covers, and today there was a really nice little one I had never seen before, and it was so HARD to leave without buying it. But what am I gonna do with ANOTHER journal???

[cosmignon]

ive been journaling since the start of jan and it really is a nice little grounding activity to do when ive got a minute. putting little stickers in it to sort out my feelings and my days. actually keeping track of important scheduled stuff. i just think its neat

[b-plot-butch]

gonna try to start my first scrapbook tomorrow :DDD

[aquariumfaguncle]

I wanted to show off my shrimp!

[magsillustrations]

Working slow as usual, has been a lot of stuff in the past two weeks and its gonna be busy in the next two+ Weeks as well, however really happy for this spread not sure what more to do with it x'D atm