#stupid synthesis | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

bee-calm · 4 months ago

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tbhk but they're lab-based phd students- because sometimes you just need to make the most self-indulgent au you can think of

nene

marine microbiology

talks to her culture plates, swears it makes them grow faster

tries to put cute labels on her samples then can’t remember what ANY of her shorthand means the next day

forgets her pass and gets locked out at least once a day

algae clip-art in all of her presentations

sings in the microscope room, thinks nobody can hear her singing in the microscope room

once thought she’d re-written scientific dogma then realised she’d put a decimal point in the wrong place

thinks transcriptomics is witchcraft. is currently doing transcriptomics.

brings chocolates for the rest of the lab, is everyone’s favourite because of it

became best friends with aoi when they somehow managed to double-book the flow cytometer

could read those papers she’s been saving for weeks, OR she could spend two hours changing the colour scheme on her figures

amane

materials chemistry, probably something space-exploration-aligned

pure synthesis, if it’s bigger than a kilodalton then he doesn’t want it anywhere near him

if there is an unlabelled round-bottom flask in the lab freezer then there’s a 90% chance it belongs to him. claims he can tell the chemicals apart by Vibes alone (amane voice: nmr is for Weaklings)

worlds messiest fume hood, yet somehow the worlds most immaculate desk-space. (currently the biggest scientific mystery the rest of the lab is working towards)

will tell people (read: kou) that biochem isn’t real chemistry just to cause problems

really good at teaching project students

also really good at scaring the project students by pretending to drink the toxic chemicals

extensive lanyard pin collection

nobody has ever actually seen him go home

has a set of glassware-themed coffee mugs. much debate as to whether or not he just stole them from the lab.

kou

structural biology

just a guy and his 10 litre E.coli grow-up

once spilled an vat of LB all over the bacteria room. legend has it the stains are still there to this day

banned teru from the cryoEM room after he walked in and the entire setup almost crashed

likes modelling structures, wonders why his computer is always running so slowly, fails to consider that the 5 pymol projects he has open at all times may have something to do with it

serial offender for walking home still wearing his goggles

thinks mammalian cell work is witchcraft

incredibly chaotic labwork processes, still somehow gets the results anyway. most common saying: ‘this is not going in the methods section’

once dropped his earring into the liquid nitrogen tank, has still not lived it down

has a framed photo of his first crystal on his desk

ongoing war with mitsuba over whether electron microscopy is real microscopy or not

keeps taking on side projects for other people, has yet to realise that this may be the reason he never gets to go home on time

teru

molecular biology

theory x1000, ask him a question after his presentation and there’s a 90% chance he’s got a bonus slide already prepared to answer it

benchwork also x1000, that person who asks ‘oh can i try?’ and gets amazing results first time on the experiment you’ve been trying to get right for weeks.

cell culture x0, banned from the tissue culture room, WILL contaminate any flask put within 5 feet of him

the machines hate him. the centrifuge keeps trying to eat his samples. the plate reader breaks on him at least once a week.

serial weekender

stickler for lab safety, can and will send out threatening emails reminding people to wear their gloves and lab coats

once drew the entire signalling cascade for his target molecule from memory on the whiteboard in a lab meeting and it was impressive enough that nobody has wiped it off yet

keeps doing horrendous timecourses, can be found taking plate readings at stupid o clock in the morning

aoi

immunology

the flow panels she manages to pull off are a constant subject of awe and horror

likes working weekends because it means nobody can hear her verbally threatening her cell cultures when they’re not behaving

can fit a scary amount of information onto the lid of an eppendorf tube

when stressed can be found hiding out in the plant biology greenhouses. has made friends with some genetically modified tomatoes

rocks up to the lab meeting with publication-ready figures for an experiment she did yesterday

the source of 90% of the passive aggressive post-it notes around the lab

everyone dreads her post-presentation questions. will dissect your experiments and do it with a smile.

started off working normal hours but has gradually become borderline nocturnal over time

teru contaminated her cells once, has been using it as leverage to make him collect things from stores for her ever since

keeps giving akane’s email to sales reps instead of her own so she can get free stuff without ever being contacted by them again

akane

biophysics

scary single molecule data, deliberately puts huge equations on his presentations so nobody will ask him questions

might as well get paid lab tech wages too, chronically stuck on stock solution duty

crashed the lab computer trying to run one of his datasets on it

the only reason the lab has a booking system for the equipment. anarchy would prevail if he wasn’t around.

will go off to do photobleaching experiments and emerge hours later looking like a cave creature

keeps having to fix the equipment that teru breaks

perpetually receiving emails meant for aoi by people who got their names mixed up

also perpetually receiving emails from the company sales reps who aoi told his email to so she wouldn’t have to deal with them

says he needs to stop working weekends, then suddenly it’s saturday and he’s stuck in the microscope room with teru again

has somehow acquired a small army of project students (none of them are studying the same thing as him)

incubation time= coffee time

mitsuba

cell biology

made a cell line, treats it like it’s his baby

trust issues, won’t let ANYONE share his reagents. serial pipette hoarder.

neat lab book, can still somehow never find where he put his protocols or what concentrations he used his antibodies at

could probably win an award for his immunofluorescence images, someone automatically turns the lights off when it’s his turn to present in lab meetings bc he’s guaranteed to have cool microscopy to show

thinks bacteria work is disgusting. ensures kou knows this.

[emerging from a 5-hour session in the microscope room] what day is it?????

loves his work, doesn’t act like it (the reagents smell bad. the lab benches are dirty. people keep using the milk he brought to put in the fridge. nobody cleans the water bath. if there’s nothing to complain about, he’ll make something.)

threatens to move to industry at least once a day

outright refuses to do weekends

found the perfect colour scheme for his graphs, considers this the highlight of his entire degree

any minor inconvenience is an excuse to go to the cafe on campus

natsuhiko

innate immunity, infection

zebrafish models

nobody is sure if he bought a tie-dye lab coat or if it’s just that badly stained

has absolutely named his fish (doesn’t actually remember which is which, but the sentiment is there)

forever followed by a gaggle of project students. is constantly reminding them to do as he says, not as he does

incubation times are a suggestion, not a rule (read: keeps getting distracted and leaving his experiments way longer than necessary)

convinced he’s going to be patient zero of the zombie apocalypse when he accidentally creates super-salmonella and infects himself

serial distractor, WILL chat to people while they’re in the middle of a 96-well plate

isn’t going to eat the LB agar, but the temptation is always there

someone bought him the ‘women want me, fish fear me’ hat for his birthday, keeps it on his desk

the confocal microscope hates to see him coming (5 hours is a short session when you’re trying to take z-stacks of an entire fish)

sakura

drug discovery

probably dabbles in synthesis, plays orchestral music while running columns bc apparently it gives them better separation

tea drawer in the office, WILL pull out an entire teapot during their incubation times

best dressed person in the lab, at all times

eternal struggle of dangly earrings versus the samples they’re leaning over

neat handwriting, still terrible at labelling eppendorfs (what are the lids so small for)

incubation times to the second

runs BIG experiments, has mastered the art of the plate plan. made a template which has somehow ended up distributed around the entire department

ceo of not replying to sales rep emails

mildly allergic to the nitrile gloves, the drawer below the tea drawer is the hand cream drawer

earphones + cell culture is the ideal de-stress activity

over-prepares for presentations, will spend 2 weeks rehearsing an informal flash talk

probably the only person who actually sends their lab coat to get washed

mei

tissue engineering

has designed all of her labmates a mug with terrible research-relevant science puns on them

invented side-projects, has probably got a collaboration ongoing with every other lab in the department

bought a label printer for her reagents, has way too much fun with it

thought a week-long experiment was bad? try two months

life goal is to get to try making DNA origami just to say she did it

keeps starting doodle chains on the lab whiteboard

experiment worked= sweet treat to celebrate

experiment failed= sweet treat to commiserate

probably did a masters in the microbiology department, they keep trying to convince her to switch projects back to them bc her streak plating was gallery-worthy

picks up her lab coat and 10 pens fall out of the pockets

sold her soul to parafilm

tsukasa

RNA therapeutics

goes in cell culture with no gloves, still somehow doesn’t get contamination

that one insane person who actually enjoys the stress of working with RNA

doesn’t even do SDS-PAGE but still has coomassie stain all over his lab coat

keeps launching dry ice rockets

homebrewed a microfluidics system in the lab, it makes weird noises at night and everyone is slightly terrified of it

keeps materialising in the corner of the microscope room when mitsuba is in the middle of taking images. the cause of many a dropped slide.

plots his data in excel

worlds worst file names. no system, no dates, just a keyboard smash and a prayer

who needs desk space when you can just move your laptop into the lab

gave into temptation and tasted the cell culture media once. it was disappointing

either the most incoherent presentation you’ve ever seen, or a major scientific breakthrough, no inbetween

#tbhk #jshk #toilet bound hanako kun #jibaku shounen hanako kun #i work in a lab so therefore i have to make the fictional characters who live in my brain also work in a lab #already inflicted this as a thread on twitter #so now you have to deal with it too #jshk lab au

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girls--complex · 6 months ago

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My project of painting over this very ugly and stupid tarot deck that I don't agree with that I won in a white elefant party. I'm calling it the messy process tarot, in part because making it is a messy process, and in part because the cards themselves are content wize reflective of Process, and technical wize, a Mess (or gritty/textural to be nice). I'm applying paint thinly letting elements of the original design form a tonal backdrop, smearing, smudging, then sealing it up. Crunchy is good.

Suit cards are on a vibe level based on the numerology of the Enneagram as a process model, related to but not the same as the Enneagram as a typology model. I'm shocked more contemporary tarot decks don't do the same, but I guess I have to do everything around here. 4 and 8 include explicit references to acupuncture channels and points, the stomach meridian marked in 4 as an axis of scarcity/abundance, and CV 1 becoming a pentacle in 8 when the energy shifts to purposed and primordial work on the basic and the bodily. That sed much of it is a straightforward synthesis of the OG medieval weirdness of tarot with the mid-century's intentional divinatory spookiness. All good decks SHOULD, in my onions, have a foot in both, as well as a few fingers in some unrelated pies.

I am forced to pace myself because I'm getting owned by chthonic pains, but this is good because otherwise I would be done with the whole thing in like a week. The tactile piece is important for my learning and chimpanzee enrichment N though embodiment is a big pentacles theme I think betwixt the punishing process, the themes of integration and dynamic growth, the touchy and tacky and crispy cards, and my own cosmic destiny as such, we will continue to visit and revisit the body-soul-spirit as a field of complex conjunctions as we ascend through the prima materia. I will continue to shitpost as the situation develops ...

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ciaran · 1 month ago

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there are a few trends in this discourse - i want to say it's twitter-brained but it's kind of not, we do it on tumblr too - which broadly goes around the topic of "is it okay for people to get excited about and eagerly discuss books that are Not Good? is it elitist to say that some books are Obviously Better than others? is the real anti-intellectualism in telling people that they should read something other than tiktok romance/fan fiction/whatever" and i just want to say that, like. you can sit around endlessly pontificating about how literary culture is falling apart because people read too much romance or like how it's terrible to condemn things as "slop" just because you don't like them but at the end of the day it simply. does NOT matter what you read, if your approach to it is banal and incurious and fundamentally one of what i could maybe call "reading for the sake of saying that you read it" like you can read moby dick and anna karenina and every classic ever but if reading those classics does not lead you to think, in any engaged or sincere way, about their topics, their themes, why they are written the way they are, who wrote them and for whom, etc. then what was the point of you having read those things? just to say that you read them?

on the other hand, even if you read nothing but "slop" all day, you can still be a critical and engaged reader! you can ask tough questions of your books and subject them to rigorous analysis. you can excavate themes and subtext. you can think about why they are the way they are and who they aim to please and who this imagined audience is and whether you are a part of that and who is left out of this audience.

it is literally all in the approach. and it might be harder to do rigorous literary analysis when you don't have the intellectual tools to do so, which is why someone might encourage you to pick up on some of these tools and think carefully about where they are deployed. but even without the tools, it is possible to analyse. it is harder, and more of a struggle for some. reading other people's thoughts jumpstarts your own.

but i've kind of had enough of this discourse that keeps going around on what is okay or not okay for people to read and whether they should be allowed to enjoy things. the corollary of "just because this person reads booktok romance/fanfiction 24/7 doesn't mean they're incapable of Actual Thought" is to say that "your having read the 5 big literary fiction texts of the past decade does not necessarily imply that you have a superior understanding of literature" - you might feel as though you are owed treatment according to your supposed superior understanding but your demonstration of that understanding should also involve the realization that anything can be read critically and intelligently. being a critical and intelligent and engaged reader is your practice, about you, your approach, honed by thought and widespread reading and synthesis and asking tough questions to yourself and to the authors that you gravitate to reading. which means that anyone can read critically and intelligently.

maybe you are frustrated because you feel as though this does not apply to the median reader of the thing you hate, which, lbr, is probably true - most people are not reading very intelligently. but that cannot necessarily be fixed by forcing them to just "read better things" which is a very strangely parochial and eat your vegetables way of approaching the problem. we have already lost the battle of whether most people are intelligent readers - but why does the intelligence or lack thereof of the booktok romance reader bother you so much? literally how does it involve you if a somewhat stupid average woman wants to read a vaguely spicy kinda cringe novel? who cares! really i am far more concerned by the grandstanding of people who claim to read better novels but have not, in any way, deepened or broadened their approach such that all this "better reading" does very little for them.

at the end of the day reading, like any activity, can be transformational for some and completely banal for others. and even for mountain climbers, not all mountains are memorable. that doesn't mean that mountain is like, slop? it's just you know, not that good. what is good is remembering that you can read any book in a variety of ways. you can read it purely for enjoyment, without thought; you can read it in order to remake and transform it; you can read it and be transformed yourself; you can be bored, you can hate it, or love it, or pick it apart. you can do this with an ad on tumblr just as much as you can do it with booktok romance #85 or litfic du jour #90. the way you read something is about you, and your willingness to think deeply about what you've read, and not on the book's innate qualities - and even the best book in the world won't leave a mark on you if you aren't willing to let it.

#notes

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macabro · 1 year ago

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is there room in ur heart for a bayverse starscream

Anon... I am whiny little hater when it comes to the bayverse. BUT I'll make an exception. If ONLY because I try to be impartial to all screamers.

I thought this would be a 'fun' exercise in synthesis. I tried so hard, I promise! But you can tell this is not my thing.

Also I have wanted to make this stupid joke ever since joining the fandom,,, don't take this from me.

#this took so long #the back and forth was unreal #transformers #maccadam #starscream #transformers bayverse #ask

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mylordshesacactus · 2 years ago

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I'm sorry but I have made this post multiple times before and I cannot put it in any smaller words:

If you expected the ARMY OF GENOCIDE MACHINES FROM DARK SPACE to have a rational and coherent motivation, you may just be bad at narrative comprehension.

The answer to their question was “cyclical genocide”. There is no logic that can make that make sense. It is, genuinely, perfect that at the end of the day the Reapers’ motivations are stupid and deranged.

They are a broken AI modelled off the broken logic of a megalomaniacal group of eldritch abominations who are, to this day, even after seeing the horror they wrought, incapable of even comprehending the idea that they might have made a mistake--incapable of comprehending the idea that the “lesser races” might have any value, anything to contribute, any worth, any right to not be subjected to this. The Reapers say they’re “beyond our mere mortal comprehension” because they think they’re gods, because their creators thought they were gods.

The logic shouldn’t track. It shouldn’t make sense. And that is not only sensible and narratively coherent, it’s extremely realistic. Surely, surely especially now, seeing what actual AIs do, the things they think are logical, surely you can see this.

The Reapers are the galactic-scale equivalent of an AI art generator that’s told to make a pastoral scene with sheep, and instead doubles down on making increasingly photorealistic oranges because it thinks those are the same thing, except in this metaphor ChatGPT has guns. That’s good writing. That’s the horror of it. They cannot be reasoned with because they are, genuinely, beyond anyone’s comprehension--because their reasoning is utterly divorced from reality.

(The breakdown from a writing standpoint comes with the way the narrative fails to point this out--the way the final choice, even with the extended cut, presents Synthesis as somehow both morally pure (instead of a horrifying violation of literally everyone’s agency) and existentially necessary--not just a way of saving everyone by exploiting the Reapers’ algorithm (which I would accept 100% if it was a purely strategic, this-is-guaranteed-to-work-with-no-casualties option) but as somehow ‘the way to end the cycle’, when you’ve already shown through gameplay that the cycle can be broken through compassion alone.)

But the issue there is in the narrative framing at zero-hour, not--jesus fucking christ, people-- not the fact that the Reapers’ logic is bad. Do you hear yourselves?! Do you understand what you’re implying--that there is in ANY way, ever, a motivation that would make this “make sense”?

The Reapers’ logic was always going to be bad, was meant to be bad, NEEDED to be bad, because no good logic, no sensible motivation, will lead you to fucking genocide.

#mass effect

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