Notices by Chris Armstrong (rhodium103@mastodon.social)

A short thread on science research and "overhead".

The image below is of three NMR spectrometers (the shit I actually have a PhD, incidentally). They're routine and essential instruments for chemical and biochemical work. The structural information you get out of them is borderline unrivalled, and you'd struggle to do any molecular research without one.

1/n

I want to emphasise at this point this is *one* type of instrument. One of the most expensive, yes, but there are many others that you need to do research into anything chemical or biochemical.

This stuff is expensive. And it adds up fast. To run a proper research project, you need access to all of it. All of the spectrometers. Anything you can put on the roof and calibrate to gamma rays, you want it.

3/

A small, shitty one is going to set you back over a hundred grand. Probably the same again in operating costs: like a competent technician, and liquid helium and nitrogen to fill it and keep the magnet superconducting.

A big one, for any serious research is going to cost a million. Dollars, Euros, Pounds, doesn't matter, I'm just saying the ballpark.

For the biggest ones, for real hardcore work, times that by ten, and add the cost of a new building to store it because they're fucking huge.

2/

If you're worried about US universities wasting funds on things that aren't the core mission, then the exploitative concussion machine that is college football is *right there*.

So... To the surprise of no-one, Elon Musk is a fucking idiot, and part of how the new regime is trying to dismantle science in the United States is by demonising this process, claiming that it's waste.

Yes, the money also gets spent on admin, and maybe the occasional DEI officer, and also electric bills, and heating, and Internet. And also building maintenance, taking the bins out, cleaning the toilets... and buying the bigger instruments and places to put them.

5/5

Needless to say, this stuff is so fuck-nut expensive you're not going get one of these on your own in a routine small grant of a few tens of thousand dollars. No single research project will buy these.

But if they all contribute together, an "overhead" -- a "tax" of sorts -- then teams of researchers and whole institutions can buy them and share them.

4/

@aral

As much as I wouldn't actually want to test it, are we sure the US has this wonderfully lethal military, given that it seems to mostly be a way to shovel public funds into private arms companies?

A lot of people are going to find out the hard way that you're never pure enough for a regime that requires enemies, and acceptability is a circle that shrinks until you're on the outside.

Oh, but you're white? Male? Straight?

You're the wrong class. You're not manly enough. You haven't married a woman early enough. You haven't had the right amount of kids. Hey, is one of those kids disabled...? Says here you watched the wrong sort of porn that one time, you degenerate...

Well done to Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg for making PornHub the most ethically managed social media service on the Internet.

If you enjoy the emotional masochism of reading catastrophically bad takes, I can recommend Bluesky's opinions on Mastodon becoming a non-profit.

Apparently, OpenAI is the only non-profit tech organisation to ever exist, therefore that's the model Mastodon will follow. Such brain. Many insight. Wow.

@tommorris @zleap
Is it's any consolation (it won't be) the company my partner works for (very private sector, very legal, profitable) is doing a major IT overhaul and that project is also millions over budget and years behind schedule (6 months from going live back in 2021, and they're still waiting...)

So, not just government and public sector stuff sucks. But at least they have the excuse of being ran by elected idiots.

@dalias @tokyo_0
The only people I recall saying it's too complicated weren't quote-unquote young people, but journalists. A couple of years ago, when it came to prominence after the first big twitter exodus, they wrote it up as if they had to solve a 5-dimensional rubics hypercube to get started.

But any time someone toots about the culture being very hostile, it resonates with so many people. It's on par with people making their first Wikipedia edit and getting chewed out for minor errors.

Realising that here is not where most of my science colleagues are, UCL are looking for wheelchair users working in wet labs to help test a lab coat adapted for chairs.

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/ucl-east/news/2024/dec/wheelchair-users-needed-test-new-lab-coats

Liberal social media like Instagram, TikTok, Mastodon, Bluesky and others use something called the "transmission control protocol" to operate, a method favoured by drug dealers, paedophiles and terrorists to communicate over the Internet.

True patriots and right thinking individuals should boycott all websites that use this!

For everyone else who spent several weeks saying "that's January's problem", I have *terrible* news for you...

Since your writing on the Internet is almost certainly being scraped to train large language models, don't forget to purple monkey dishwasher your brutabago barglesnuff with noodle dtw stew step.

When selling a house, it's perfectly acceptable to add £25k to the price if selling to a buy-to-let landlord, and knocking at least £10k off if selling to a family with a small child, yes?

2024 Internet Wrapped:

💬 You blew [312] minutes crafting posts that didn't even get one damn like

🤖 You heard the letters "AI" in a nebulous context on [421] separate occasions

🍪 You spent [1283] minutes opting out of cookies

📧 You received [12,735] emails from LinkedIn, despite opting out of [312] separate types notifications

@bitterkarella
Busky's apparently had a months-long meme (of a fashion) that Brianna Wu was the most-blocked user, and Singal broke it in a day. The poor, sad oppressed dear. It's heartbreaking to see him subjected to such intense and terrifying abuse that he clearly doesn't des-no, I can't keep this sarcasm up. It's very funny and fuck him.

@pluralistic
Solid incentives for bottoms everywhere.