An unpleasant memory

I just had a flashback to my worst academic experience ever. I think it was a combination of my recent posts about all those scientists losing their jobs and that cool video of Pakistani mechanics cutting and shaping steel.

In the 1990s, I was an assistant professor at Temple University, and I had a magnificent custom microscopy rig. A top of the line Leica was at the heart of it, but I had modified the heck out of it. I’d built an air table — a massive 2cm thick sheet of steel resting on a cushion of tennis balls — that had been a huge effort to get cut and hauled up to my lab. I had hydraulic actuators for single cell injections. The microscope itself was modified with a motorized stage and a UV filter wheel (thanks to my friends at Applied Scientific Instrumentation, who are still in business, I’m pleased to see) all programmable and controlled by custom software I’d written. It was beautiful, and unique.

Unfortunately, I did not get tenure at Temple. You may not be aware of this, but if you’re hired by a university for a tenure track faculty position, and you do not get tenure, you’re done. You have one year to clear out your stuff, and then the axe falls, and there ain’t nothin’ you can do about it. You’re a dead man walking, still ambling zombie-like about the university, still obligated to do your teaching and committee duties, but there’s a deadline ahead of you, at which time you have to vacate your office, your lab, everything, it all comes to an abrupt close.

Yeesh, but that was a miserable year, with all my former colleagues cutting ties. Fortunately, I landed another job in Minnesota, but that gorgeous microscope was not mine, it belonged to the university. I had to abandon it.

But that wasn’t the worst of it. At that time, there was a political crisis: HMOs were consolidating and going bankrupt, and many of them had associations with research universities that they were abruptly shutting down. Temple saw that they could buy up entire research groups for a song! It was time to shuffle out the peons working at their university already, and instead bring in all these big biomedical people who already had research grants. And so they did.

One day, in the waning days of my employment, a pair of these new hires walked into my lab, zeroed in on my microscope (that I was using at the time!), and started taking photos, writing down part numbers, and measuring stuff with a tape measure, while talking to each other about where they could put it in their lab space. They looked a bit puzzled by the filter wheel and the weird piezoelectric stage and the strange camera I was using, but they didn’t ask about any of it. They didn’t talk to me at all. They didn’t even acknowledge my existence. It was a strange experience that left me feeling like a ghost, and also sad, because these clueless twits were no doubt going to carve up my microscope for parts.

It was a dehumanizing experience that poisoned all my good memories of working at Temple. It did make me feel better about saying goodbye to that place.

Academia is a cruel and heartless beast, and overpaid biomedical researchers who lack the basics of human interaction are the worst.

Impressive mechanical work

The Algorithm threw this video at me and I had to watch it. Now you shall watch it too.

It’s not clear where the video was made…Pakistan? I liked the look of the truck to start, but then they haul the tire to a shop where they completely rebuild the wheel. I don’t think we could do any of that where I live. There’s a whole massive body of infrastructure in those communities to keep machinery running.

I don’t think “tariffs” will bring that back to the US.

Another reason to ignore social media

As a man who was born a Chad (I keep telling myself), I am immune to the “looksmaxxing” trend, but apparently a lot of men have fallen prey to it, and it’s hurting them.

But for some young men who participate in an online community called “looksmaxxing,” those self-critiques can become excessive. And the criticism they receive from other members — and their suggested remedies, which can include self-injury and surgery — are even more extreme.

Looksmaxxing is, on the surface, about trying to look your best in order to attract a partner. But a new study from Dalhousie University says while the community is framed as self-help, it can be harmful to participants.

This shouldn’t be a surprise. If you tell people that their only value is their appearance, they’ll obsess over their looks. We’ve known this for years from the way our society treats women, and now young men are being hit by the phenomenon.

Green says the hypersexualization that women have felt for decades has been hitting guys acutely in recent years, with social media messages that push the physical ideals of being tall and muscular.

“I happened to be at a hotel gym just last week and the manager of the gym said this place is packed with teenage guys from like 4 until 6 in the afternoon, but no one’s doing any cardio,” says Green. “They’re all doing weight training.”

They’re not doing this for their health, but to impress other even more obsessed people online. The source of the problem isn’t individuals — they’re getting screwed up and are victims — but a whole shallow, superficial culture that skews people’s perspectives, and it’s actually killing people.

Halpin says the looksmaxxing community can cause harm in several ways, firstly by creating body image issues in men and boys.

“They’re finding flaws that I think people outside of that community wouldn’t really find,” he says. “So, they’re teaching people how to look at their bodies in a really critical, negative way.”

The solutions members suggest to remedy perceived physical shortcomings can also be risky and cause harm, Halpin says.

But most disturbing, Halpin says, is the regular encouragement participants give each other to die by suicide.

“We saw numerous men being told that they’re beyond help, beyond saving,” Halpin says. “It’s like, your appearance is set, nothing you can do will help you and you should complete suicide because looks are all that matter and you’re going to have a terrible life because you’re an ugly man.”

We should take this problem seriously, but then I learned about the fad of “mewing,” the practice of pushing the tongue against the roof of the mouth to achieve a more masculine jaw. Fine. That sounds harmless, and mostly pointless. But then I learned about the origins of the practice. It’s promoted by this squirrely looking guy:

The term ‘mewing’ originated with Mike Mew (pictured above) and John Mew, British orthodontists who promoted a technique that purports to change the structure of the jaw.

There’s nothing wrong with his appearance, but he doesn’t represent some kind of classical ideal of masculinity — he’s just a guy. Maybe we can cure people of “looksmaxxing” by sharing that photo around.

Sure. And then people will start floating photos of George Clooney around. We all want to look like handsome George.

Did you know that early in his career George Clooney starred in a movie called Return of the Killer Tomatoes?

We’re all a little bit squirrely. It’s part of our charm.

Adventures in enterocolitis

That wasn’t fun at all. I went to bed last night, and then at 11, like a magical evil switch being flipped, I was suddenly vomiting. I was puking all night long. Even worse was the diarrhea. I was so incapacitated that I was just lying in my slimy filthy effluvia all night as my gastrointestinal tract tried to turn itself inside out with peristalsis.

The heaving subsided by morning, but I was exhausted, barely able to think or move, and my wife told me I needed to go into urgent care right away. I said no, I’m too tired. She said yes and chivvied me out to the car and got me checked in. Good thing she did, too: my blood pressure was 60/40. That was an odd experience, to be so low on energy that I could barely move and not even interested in moving.

The doctors pumped me full of IV fluids and finally let me go home when my bp was 106/70.

I missed today’s class, I’m hoping to make it to lab tomorrow.

The lesson learned: have a partner who can kick you into gear when your engine isn’t ticking over, and who is willing to do the most disgusting load of laundry I’ve ever seen.

Death to Star Trek!

I’ve got a busy, messy morning of bottle washing ahead of me — the first fly lab of the semester is on Thursday, so I’ve got to get that teaching lab in shape. The flies are ready to go, but the glassware? Nope.

So I’m going to leave you with something important to wrangle over: Stephen Miller thinks Star Trek is too woke and wants to put 94 year old William Shatner in charge of the new show. Way to go, presidential advisor: you are stupid and wrong, and you propose a stupid solution to your imaginary problem. That is so perfectly Trumpian.

I’m going to mostly agree with this video — Star Trek has always been idealistic, to a sometimes corny degree. That’s why people watched it.

But I also kind of hope it happens. I was a huge fan of the original Star Trek, and I used to beg my parents to let me stay up late to watch it. I was 12 years old. As I got older, my taste changed, and I wanted something better — The Expanse was probably my ideal for a while (in spite of the magic engines that propelled the whole show), but I don’t even want that to continue on. New ideas are good! Star Trek has been in a rut of familiarity for 60 years. I didn’t even care much for Star Trek the Next Generation, not because it was different, but because it wasn’t different enough.

It’s been running on dual fumes from two sources: people like comfortable familiarity and will complain about any change, and in case you haven’t noticed, capitalism loves a profit-making franchise, and will keep shoveling cash at a reliable series, even if it is getting creaky and as crotchety as William Shatner. I watched about 20 minutes of the latest iteration, Star Fleet Academy before giving up. It has the good idea of galaxy-wide collapse of the old Federation, making it a total reboot…but then I could tell they were using it to reconstruct the same old framework, as if total societal collapse wouldn’t be interesting unless it was about restoring the old story.

Miller is a fool who is wrong about everything, but I think demolishing Star Trek, as his ideas would accomplish, has some virtues. Move on, please.

Related: I see HBO has created a new spin-off of Game of Thrones, a prequel set 100 years before the events in that catastrophically ended original series. Once again, capitalism wants its cash cow back. I’m not tempted to watch even a minute of that.

Also, at the end of the above video, they give a Hero of the Week award to the citizens of Minnesota. I’m one of those citizens! Thanks, I’ll wear the badge with pride and use the cash award to heat my house. There is a cash award, I assume?

Use it or lose it

I’ve been away from the habit of delivering long orations, so today in my first class returning from a long break, I suffered from wobbly knees, and worst of all, I only made it halfway through lecture before my voice started to rasp and fade. Uh-oh. I have many more hours of talking ahead of me.

After class, I ran out and bought some chamomile tea, and also some honey lemon ginseng tea. I think I’ll bring a cup to my classes so I can lube up partway through. Does anyone have recommendations for habits/chemical reagents that I should use to strengthen my voice and to help me get through hour long lectures on very dry topics?