That’s beautifully written. I like the idea that I receive cute lil interstellar photons. The stochastic nature of the universe means I am being irradiated by an interstellar object thousands of years away. They started a journey from a star thousands of years ago, crossed the vast expanse of space without hitting anything, pierced our planet’s atmosphere as our planet and system hurtle through space, and was then absorbed by a single cone cell in my eye. It almost feels unbelievable.

You activated ARCHIMEDES?! What the hell are you thinking?!

Great comment!

I’m optimistic in the space of biology and biotechnology though. People are doing actual SciFi shit right now. We’ve got CAR-T tech, CRISPR that’s trivial to deploy, monoclonal antibodies, mRNA tech, microbiome science, DNA sequencing that is mind-blowingly good, large scale computational analysis and machine learning that’s decoding the noise of our genomes, rapid detection of pathogens with a MALDI-TOF, to just name a few.

It’s an insane time in biology right now, and it’s the current frontier along with computer science/ML.

This was my favourite chapter of Orb: On the Movements of the Eartlh. 10% goes to Potocki

There’s only one country that uses nukes to destroy civilisation.

You can’t make a tomelette without breaking some gregs

Na this is actual intrusive thoughts from someone who has spent a considerable amount of time in a lab. It’s legit. I felt seen reading this comic. The plastic waste makes me shudder. Also experiments actually just fail sometimes, not even giving a positive or negative result. The method went wrong or a reagent was cooked.

You must enter Caesar’s tent alone. Anyone else must remain outside

You activated ARCHIMEDES?! What the hell are you thinking?!

💯 with you on this.

We also do preprints 100% of the time, but academic incentives are baked AF. Not ‘publishing’ means a large proportion of other academics simply won’t read or cite your work as they don’t believe in preprints. Additionally, funding bodies care about prestige publishing in top ranked journals, so if you don’t do this, the grant pool you have access to will be smaller.

The incentives need to change, where journal venue is irrelevant, or weighted far less than it is.

This comic is partially right. If you pay, you get open access, so no cost for readers. If you go old-school you don’t pay and the article is paywalled. Terrible system either way, but open access is necessary nowadays, as otherwise you will get cited less

Cool. Do more pls. Other bible story interpretations pls

Maybe the solution is a global space agency? Removing reliance on the USA is best for business.

Cringe take that is factually wrong and out of step with modern, evidence -based medicine and research. Educate yourself before talking, otherwise people will think you’re stupid.

I think about CP77 to this day. I sometimes even miss Johnny. He’s with you the entire time and it’s a really fascinating bond to experience as a player.

A zombie head on 3 stacked blocks of chicken makes a CHICKEN JOCKEY

I don’t really understand this sentiment. Cheap games are cheap games. Not even steam lets you ‘own’ your gaming library. More game market competition is good not bad.

Heroic AF

Maybe…but I doubt many of these phylogenies use DNA, and if so, likely only a single or few genes. Nowhere near enough resolution to accurately determine genetic relatedness. Woody plants may actually be more related than we think.

These sorts of phylogenies tend to use morphological characteristics which is an unreliable measure of genetic relatedness.

I will stand corrected if wrong though

Teams is the most reliably unreliable piece of software.