Narrator: it was not the last time.
Science Memes
Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!
A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.
Rules
- Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
- Keep it rooted (on topic).
- No spam.
- Infographics welcome, get schooled.
This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.
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Memes
Miscellaneous
Also scientists today: Vaccines do not cause autism and actually work.
Sorry but due to new government policy it is illegal to study or even acknowledge weather
weather leads to climate, climate leads to fear...
Fear... leads to sOcIaLiSm!
You mentioned diverse weather conditions in your grant application, and we can't have that.
THIS ISNT EVEN AN EXAGGERATION.
We are so fucking cooked.
It took republicans a while to full dismantle everything. Their almost done now so, yay?
I want to help them build that wall, so we can keep them inside, and watch what happens when a government does everything opposite of good.
Yes, the vaccines are... Are you feeding that baby unpasteurized milk?!? What the fuck, guys?
Well, while I agree that things are pretty shit and regressive, let's not downplay the achievements we've had in the past 10 years:
- Completion of The Standard Model of Physics with the detection of the Higgs Boson.
- mRNA technology, which is now a serious candidate for curing HIV, and is potentially capable of being used against most viral diseases.
- Imaging a black hole. Doing it again. Providing more proof of general relativity.
- Measuring gravity waves. Doing it as a normal measurement now.
- Salt batteries are finally reaching the market, which will eventually end the destructive mining and refinement of lithium.
- The James Webb Space Telescope, which was already making breakthroughs and creating new questions within the first 3 months of activation.
- Solar power becoming incredibly cost effective.
- Cybernetic limbs for the physically disabled. Yes, cybernetic limbs.
- Though overused; medication that effectively combats eating disorders.
These are just the ones I know from the top of my head.
Don't forget CRISPR-Cas9 allowing reliable and precise gene editing in living organisms.
Thank you. With all the awfull stuff going on the atm I tend to forget all the amazing things we humans still achieve.
One of the most important ones that a lot of people use every day are the huge advancements that have been made in creating modern chips. It might not be something new and exciting, but it actually involves very groundbreaking work and huge breakthroughs. Not just the crazy machines that ASML makes, thought to be breaking the laws of physics just years ago. But also advancements in manufacturing, being able to create super advanced 3D structures and large scale manufacturing at a very high level, yet with a surprising consistency in quality and low cost. Not just for ever bigger, more efficient and faster chips, but also things like MEMS at tiny sizes and low cost.
Often it's taken for granted what we have. People saying stuff to the sentiment that this isn't the future, everything is boring, we haven't got flying cars or people living on Mars. But the fact we all got this ultra powerful computer, with a high resolution high framerate self emitting screen, no active cooling, a bunch of sensors, lots of memory and storage and hyper connected to all sorts of networks, all powered by a high capacity high power low wear battery should be mind blowing. And not just that, but it fits in our pockets and they are so cheap everyone has at least one. Just because we've chosen to spec our tech tree into the small stuff instead of the large stuff, doesn't mean we haven't come a long way.
I think people look at the past at new "inventions" and think that's the way progress is. New revolutionary stuff. It's why people often invest in crowd funding of obvious scam products. They want something that changes the game. In reality it's a lot of little steps that create a big change over time. And imho this has always been the case. We always hear about the Wright brothers "inventing" the airplane. Like they had some magic sauce and thought of something nobody else thought of before. Then made it and bam the world was changed. In reality they didn't invent anything, they developed it. They made prototypes and iterative refinements. And they were far from the only ones working on the exact same concept. If they didn't finish first, someone else would have within the same time frame. But the romantic story of two American blokes with the right stuff changing the world all on their own just sounds good.
So let's also celebrate the thousands of smaller breakthroughs that got us where we are today.
You're right, I try to remind myself to marvel at the incredibly cool science we wield every single day.
But I'm also pained because I understand where the "boring future" folks come from too:
Where would we be if all this incredible technology was actually designed for humanity and not simply for profits at all cost? If optimizing for humanity was the target instead of exploiting it?
Smartphones, for instance. Small, networked computers! In your pocket! Wow! I've always wanted a pocket laptop! But they sure don't feel like it. They're designed to be content (mainly ad) delivery devices and data miners first, and useful machines second.
(There are some tiny niche actual-computer palmtops now which are pretty cool.)
I think that's the part that gets people kinda depressive about modern science breakthroughs. The coolest stuff, the working folk don't even get to tangibly feel much benefit from.
Discovery is locked behind paywall research journals and implementation is marketed in the interests of capital and used against us to make us work harder for longer hours for less pay.
What's happening to space is a VERY stark illustration of all this. NASA unifying humanity and working globally on projects like the ISS was INSPIRING.
Now it's all about privatized interests and their stupid desires, like space hotels for the elite.
I bet we'd marvel at technology designed for human beings, and not sheer exploitation.
I don’t want to downplay some of the amazing things in this list but i dint think the standard model of physics as made by humans can ever be completed.
What did happen is that something like HB must exists in order to make most of other things work. Now that we know HB is verifiably real we tied up a major loose end.
But there is still many stuff unanswered and a “complete model” would require constant revision.
Internet was a mistake. It gave all the anti science people and crackpots a platform for their ideas.
Making it easy was the mistake, the internet was great when knowing what tcp/ip actually is was a barrier to entry.
Gatekeeping isn't a dirty word.
This also exposed just how many stupid people are out there. We all assumed that making infinite knowledge available would be the rising tide which lifts all boats; instead, the rising tide is a tsunami of idiocy and willful ignorance.
I know that I was completely wrong in this regard. You know, like how Mark Twain said something like travel was anathema to bigotry.
So, I thought that the reason bigotry existed was that people are afraid of the unknown, so if you forced people together, they'd have to realize that we're all the same.
But now I realize that the main reason bigotry exists is that people are staying in contact with other bigots. The part about meeting diverse people is important, but far less important than pulling people out of their comfort zone to combat bigotry. So, the internet amplifies bigotry, because they'll never be out-of-contact with their local bigots, even if they travel away from them.
am I old or does nobody remember the name Dolly?
I seem to recall something about her working 9 to 5 and having an arch-nemesis called Jolene.
EDIT: Wait! Wait! I remembered! There was a sheep called Dolly who was a workaholic who had herself cloned to spend more time with her partner!
EDIT 2: Ok, I just did a web search. I was way off.
Of course we remember Dolly! She was stuffed and is on display in the National Museum of Scotland.
I feel bad for field researchers that have to do studies on critically endangered species
Imagine trying for days to find a specimen and then end up having to reclassify it as extinct
Wrong. Flat Earthers do think the Earth is round.
The rest of us think it's spherical.
Nice Try NASA, we all know the truth that Earth is a Donut. This is why cops think they own the planet.
Checkmate, FBI!
Some of the most high profile science news of this past decade have been in cloning and martian robotics