It dawns on me that I have not posted the medium post thingy I wrote about mastodon and pineapples yet
it is tradition, so here goes
On the plus side, it's proven that I don't ever have to worry about the cat running off outdoors, because it is clear that the outdoors is a Scary Horrifying Place, which needs to be escaped from at maximum speed / by piteously throwing oneself at the door and yowling.
the cat was already flipping out *before* the fire truck pulled up, and the big noise made everything 50x worse. So while it turns out that everything is fine with regards to the gas leak, I now have a large slice taken out of my palm by my extremely upset cat, who immediately hid under the bed once the smell cleared out and we came back inside. Sigh.
so apparently there's a gas leak right outside my apartment. There were two folks from the energy company working on something outside, and they hit a line somehow. The whole apartment smelled nasty, but we were told to just close the windows and not have any open flames.
I guess one of my neighbors was freaked out, because somebody called the fire dept and they came by. Meanwhile I went outside and took my cat (on a leash) to escape the fumes [cont.]
star trek discovery spoil
real actual plot summary
The USS Discovery is developing an experimental "Spore Drive" for near-instant travel based on tapping into an omnipresent galactic fungus. It turns out the secret to Spore Drive navigation is strapping a giant tardigrade that eats galactic fungus spores to the navigation system via painful nipple piercings.
I shit you not, that is the actual plot and I feel like maybe it was generated via Mad Libs?
academiaaaa (negative, vent)
scene from today: physics department attempts to have 1 (one) actual discussion about racism; ends up with white male department chair basically yelling over a female grad student of color to show her "what it's like"; professor demanding a Black student explain structural racism to him while insisting that he personally has no implicit biases at all
just
all kinds of fuck, wow
academiaaaa
amazing
a group of grad students sent out an email to our department (grads and faculty) expressing our concerns over the fact that Charles Murray is speaking on our campus, and encouraging fellow scientists to speak out against "scientific" racism on campus
one professor blasted back immediately accusing us all of repeating "scurrilous charges" against Murray, whom he "knows very well"
p.s. this prof teaches the required first-year ethics course
ST DSC, spoilers through ep 4, prediction
miscellaneous guess about future events: Voq's big "sacrifice" is that he will have to go undercover as a human for plot reasons (Γ la Arne Darvin), betraying his commitment to "remain Klingon"
this will, of course, eventually lead him to interact with Michael and the crew of the Discovery.
butch cyborg with a glittery soul | they/them
I'm a physics grad student and I vent a lot about academia crap. But I also talk about fun stuff, like tabletop rpgs and sci fi, and the cool parts of my job!
My cat is way more popular than I am, online and off, but I don't begrudge that. :)