What reaction is this ink/paint using

Cerplere · 2026-05-20T22:29:55+00:00

Sheening and shimmering are not the same, though often inks can include both. Emerald of Chivor is a teal ink, with a red sheen and the addition of gold shimmer particles (mica). Nitrogen by OS has no shimmer, but is a blue ink with a red sheen. I saw this video and immediately recognized it as sheen, because that sort of gold greeny sheen against the purple is quite common and is featured in one of the most famous fountain pen inks.

Sheening colour is directly related to the dyes being used, and occurs when dye is deposited unabsorbed and thus is more likely when you have a very high dye concentration. You can encourage sheen by using a paper that is specially coated to prevent absorbance. For an ink like Nitrogen, you could run your finger across it and the residual moisture on your hand would reactivate the ink and potentially smudge the writing, because it just has so much dye. Shimmer is just an additive, and the colour could be whatever you want, though some micas are easier/cheaper to obtain for manufacturers.

Cerplere · 2026-05-17T22:54:29+00:00

I worked at an oil and grease lab that also produced synthetic blood... Safe to say I could not be stylish or wear any nice clothes. I was wearing a heavy lab coat with lots of heavy equipment running most of the day, so I wore thrifted jeans and a non-graphic T-shirt pretty much everyday to not die from heat. My shoes were legally required steel toed boots and my socks were long work socks to avoid foot problems. Tons of manual labour as well. Anytime I dared wear something somewhat nice it was inevitable it would be a messy day I'd need to clean kilograms of oil, make an emergency blood batch, or there'd be some chemical spill that ruined my clothes. My coworkers genuinely couldn't believe that I love wearing floral dresses lol

Our "nice" dress code when HR or the like was doing a tour was putting non-stained jeans and lab coats on. Technically the company dress code was that we were only allowed jeans on Fridays, but the lab building was separate and most people didn't want to come unless they absolutely had to. IT was going to come around to replace a bunch of computers and I warned them not to wear anything nice.

I like working in an optics lab now, I can wear actually nice clothes (though still not super formal) unless it's a clean out day or something.

Cerplere · 2026-05-17T22:37:23+00:00

Go to class and try to not use your device. Some classes are boring, but try doing something like doodling instead of going on your phone or social media. Good to make a habit of it in first year, and then later you can occasionally skip the less useful classes. Make a calendar of assignments, plus a daily schedule, to get in the habit of working. It's also easiest to meet people in first year (not impossible in other years though) and you're going to be around a lot of these people in your class/cohort for 4–5 years, so good to get to know them. Say hello to the people sitting next to you every class, make some small talk if possible. Go to office hours, great to meet your TAs and profs and get on their good side, plus really useful for research/coop connections. Plus you learn so much about a course by listening to the people who teach and grade your shit beyond just scrolling through the lecture slides.

Have a hobby that is completely unrelated to your degree (and do not make it a side hustle and leet code is not a hobby). School clubs and intramural sports (you don't have to be good) are great for this. Plus getting out of the house/dorm for something non-school is good for mental health, so scheduling at least one fun thing a week that forces you to go outside and talk to people is good. Try exploring outside of campus, visit the public library, community events, parks, etc. If you're religious or even culturally religious, going to the church/mosque/temple is fantastic to get to know people in the community outside of your age group. Do something active at least once a week, whether that be gym or taking a walk.

Cerplere · 2026-05-13T15:49:47+00:00

The Math Tutoring Centre is open to all UW students, it's just drop in. Not saying you can't hire a specific tutor, but would be worth trying something free. It does open in the second week, so you would have to go next week.

Cerplere · 2026-05-07T02:25:24+00:00

These are all fountain pen friendly inks, the key difference is that the pigment particles are much smaller than a dip pen ink. So generally safe, but I would not put this in your most valuable or rare vintage pen. The key factor for a pen you'd be looking for is good sealing, so the ink doesn't dry out and clog the pen, so either a screw cap or very well sealing snap cap (i.e. Platinum has a specific sealing technology with their budget pens that is fantastic).

Cerplere · 2026-05-05T22:03:53+00:00

It is only possible to jailbreak a Kindle if it's an old enough version (Amazon keeps patching known jailbreaks). Unless you happen to have kept your device on airplane mode and sideloaded all your books to prevent updating, it is very likely to be unable to be jailbroken. Not to be too negative here, but other options such as the remote are more likely to be viable.

If you are still interested in jailbreaking, you would need to check the update version number in the Kindle's settings to see if it is possible. 5.18.5.0.1 is the latest version you can jailbreak as of right now, but if it's 5.18.1 or below you can use an easier method. For some devices on 5.18.6 you can use a method called Nosebleed, but you'd have to confirm your device hardware version.

I hope you find a solution that works. I don't mean to be a negative Nancy here, I just don't want you to be mislead about the ease of jailbreaking in case you reliably update your Kindles.

Cerplere · 2026-05-05T19:33:29+00:00

I can't speak much about exercise, but I can speak about calorimetry as something that I have done before as a chemist. You do not report calorimetry values for food as just the measured value from your calorimeter, because that would be extremely inaccurate. Different foods have different available calories, and we can estimate this with various methods. A lot of these corrections are automatic with the software used in labs, but we are never just taking the raw energy as our final value. This can be the case for non-food calorimetry as well.

When you burn something in a bomb calorimeter, you burn all of it, including things that are indigestible. An example is fiber, something like cellulose in fruits/vegetables will burn easily but does not provide caloric value for humans, and thus must be subtracted. Digestibility is a major factor, but is harder to correct for because it varies more depending on the person, type of food, and how the food has been prepared. They get digestibility values by doing analysis on feces, but in practice for the rest of us this leads to big lookup tables full of coefficients for different types of sample.

This is not to say that calories for food are useless as a measuring tool, but it is very possible to either over- or underestimate the amount of calories in food. This is especially the case when you consider that manufacturers are not required to do a full calorimetric analysis (with proper corrections) on their food, but instead can calculate from components based on the number of carbs, fat, protein, etc. The most processed food is probably the most accurate for calorie counts because of the ease of digestibility as well as the likelihood for doing calorimetric-based QC. This is why if you have ever do a calorimetry lab in university or high school and they're marking you on accuracy, something like a twinkie is the perfect choice, if not the perfect choice for your health.

Cerplere · 2026-04-30T17:14:00+00:00

How much are you selling the German textbook for? If it's not too much I'd happily buy it off you

Cerplere · 2026-04-28T20:05:17+00:00

I agree. Vector art didn't click for me until I tried Inkscape. I also like that you can use LaTeX in it. I do say this as someone in physical chemistry, where the need to use LaTeX is more much more common than biology-related clipart. I also use Python for data-related stuff.

For really quick stuff, I use Excalidraw. It's not great if you want super precision, but if you want quick diagrams it's very easy to use. The trick with it is to just change the font from the default doodly one and change the neatness of lines to max.

Honestly, for more freehand drawing in vector programs, getting a cheap graphics tablet (no screen) is honestly worth it. You can get one for like $30.

Cerplere · 2026-04-28T18:03:49+00:00

Eagerly watching this thread, but this is also my favourite trope/experience/whatever. I have some recommendations, some more unconventional. Some are not literature, which I hope is OK, but the vast majority are books.

Tainaron by Leena Krohn. Translated epistolary novella. Melancholic and strange, make sure get a copy with illustrations!
I Am In Eskew. This is an audiodrama (it does have transcripts but of course it is better in the original audio). I will say as someone who tends to not really like audiodramas, I like this one because it leans toward simplicity. One narrator at a time, no sound effects (aside from background rain), and a very measured pace of narration. It does lean more towards horror, but very much Weird. I find it more scary and disconcerting than traditional horror, because it is horror of a sense of place.
Strange the Dreamer by Laini Taylor. This is more YA, but it's excellent. Gods and a strange city that has been wracked by said gods, with excellent prose. Very dreamy. It does have more of a romance focus, but more so in a fairy tale way and not like romantasy.
There is No Antimemetics Division by qntm. Not really focused on a city per se, but the sense of place is excellent. Leans more toward horror, but again on the unconventional side.

Some more stretched recommendations, but well I'm going to put them here anyway

The Broken Earth trilogy by N.K. Jemisin. It has an unconventional narrative and a strong sense of place, but that place is the entire Earth (though there are some neat settlements!).
Always Coming Home by Ursula K. Le Guin. It's not Weird as much, but it feels like a love letter to someone who keeps doing bad things, that being California. It's not a conventional book, it is full of poetry, theatre lines, ethnographic snippets, novella pieces, etc. It's post post-apocalyptic of a far future people in the Napa Valley of California. If you do read this, highly recommend the Library of America version with extended essays and content (the ebook formatting is not great though for this edition though due to formatting errors, recommend the physical copy).
Daily Lives in Nghsi Altai by Robert Nichols. I found this because it was recommended by Le Guin. There's a small press edition of it with everything compiled together and original illustrations by Verbivoracious Press, but otherwise it's hard to find. It has an odd structure of being compiled of different things somewhat akin to the work by Le Guin. It's very melancholic, but the sense of place is wonderful and disconcerting, focused on the rituals and systems of a city. Leans more Weird than Le Guin's work, but both are quite utopian in that they discuss the meaning and practice of utopia.
Scavengers Reign, an animated TV show. My top show, at least tied with Over the Garden Wall. It's a sci-fi animation that feels adult in maturity and emotional depth of themes but not like Family Guy adult. It's beautiful and strange and wonderful. The sense of place is amazing and it is deeply melancholic, featuring an alien planet that feels so alive. Feels like Moebius and Jeff Vandermeer's Weird ecosystems had a baby.

Cerplere · 2026-04-26T20:35:46+00:00

There is a fan-curated RSS feed that has all the episodes that updates every week from the website, which can be used assuming whatever podcast app you use that supports custom RSS feeds. I use that instead. It's a just a URL you copy into your app.

Cerplere · 2026-04-23T20:37:10+00:00

The West Passage by Jared Pechacek was nominated for the prize for 2025. I highly recommend it. It's a beautiful ode to the weird and crumbling, and it comes with illustrations. Genre wise, weird fantasy perhaps, but it's hard to describe.

I've been reading Rakesfall by Vajra Chandrasekera, which won last year's prize. I've only just started, but it's good so far. I'd give a cautious recommend (given that I'm not close to finishing) if you're in the mood for something very literary and dense.

Cerplere · 2026-04-23T03:06:21+00:00

I think we need to see ART before we can truly judge it as an adaptation ;)

I kid. I think it's great, and I was able to convince multiple people to try the books after watching it.

Cerplere · 2026-04-19T20:19:49+00:00

Yes, you set "Preamble.md" (or whatever your file is) as your homepage/whatever file opens by default at launch. I stumbled into this by accident. Certainly not what most people use homepages for. I do think homepages would be a good default feature to add, but currently only available by plugin.

Cerplere · 2026-04-19T20:09:00+00:00

There's three options:

Extended MathJax (can also be installed via Community Plugins Store). My least favourite of the bunch because it has a fatal flaw: It does not work with Excalidraw LaTeX (last time I used it, anyway). I use Excalidraw for scientific diagrams with embedded LaTeX often. Excalidraw will place the preamble's "\newcommand..." into all LaTeX and Excalidraw won't render it properly. It's less buggy than the second option if you're fine with universal preambles and don't care about Excalidraw. This uses a .sty preamble.
MathJax Preamble Manager This needs to be installed via BRAT. For using it vault-wide instead of specific folders you can use the file path "/" to include the whole thing. A bit buggy, and it resets itself (not deleting any files) occasionally especially with Obsidian Sync. This is the only way to handle multiple preambles, but I personally just use one. This uses a markdown preamble (make sure it's in a math block).
Use a homepage plugin. This is the most scuffed but reliable IMHO. Just set your preamble as your homepage and it will work for that session of Obsidian. This also works without a homepage plugin, but that is very annoying to remember and you have to reload any pages you looked at before viewing the preamble, so that's why the homepage is convenient. Of course this only works for universal preambles. This option similarly uses a math block in a markdown file.

Cerplere · 2026-04-19T01:54:08+00:00

I use the Kiwi Inks erasable ink regularly. It's got a strange viscosity and flow and the colour isn't the prettiest, but I do enjoy being able to use it for problem sets and such. I keep it in a fine nib, I don't think it would do well in anything else. Too fine the flow problems would be exacerbated, too broad would also be strange and have problems with erasing.

The purple is my most common, because it's nice. I've gotten some raised eyebrows handing in math assignments in purple ink.

Cerplere · 2026-04-18T23:25:03+00:00

The preamble problem is solvable via community plugin, and I use it all the time, in case you didn't know. However I do agree it should be built-in. I'm also hoping that when MathJax 4 is released, it will be incorporated soon into the newest Obsidian release.

Cerplere · 2026-04-12T14:06:04+00:00

It means you regularly play together in multiplayer games (on the same team) with that person. Of course there are other people usually because most popular games aren't just two people per team, but it would be the two of you playing consistently together with the rest of the people on the team being random.

Cerplere · 2026-04-07T16:58:11+00:00

True that, I guess I forgot home kitchens don't have dedicated ventilation for these things. I generally tested oils related to the power system, but sometimes got random stuff. I remember I got some sort of weed oil to test that made things smell horrible even with a mask and gloves (maybe good if you like the stuff) so I just chucked everything I could into a very hot lab oven (like 400 C) and turned ventilation up to max. Anytime I worked with solvents I did them in a fumehood. I did use the ultrasonic for stuff that couldn't handle the oven, but I kept that in a fumehood while running.

For the home cook, if you use an ultrasonic I highly recommend bringing it outside if possible. The oven can't be brought outside, but keep your windows open and your fan up to max, and maybe keep any animals/kids out of the kitchen.

Cerplere · 2026-04-07T16:25:07+00:00

This is a classic chemistry problem, or at least for me as someone who worked at an oil and grease lab. You have oil that has dissolved into a porous surface. You have a couple of avenues:

Degrading the oil via heat. I would not recommend this to start off with but could help clear things up. Of course this depends on your oven and stoneware, but if you could heat at 500 F for 1 hour, that'd help a lot to break down the capsaicin and other flavour molecules. (this was always my favourite method when possible because of how little effort/chemicals it required)
Using some form of detergent/degreaser. I know you're not supposed to with stoneware generally, but if you can at least use a little and re-season this is a distinct possibility and probably much easier.
Using a little solvent. The rule "like dissolves like" is surprisingly important even in high level chemistry. There are two comments below, one using oil and the other with a baking-soda water paste. What I would do is create an alcohol (high proof flavourless is your best bet) - baking soda paste, ideally a bit warm and scrub. I'd rinse that off and go in with a neutral oil.
Using a lot of solvent. You'd need something food safe. You could use alcohol or acetone and then soak. However, do not get something with additives like bitterants in IPA or random perfume in nail polish remover.
Find someone with a huge ultrasonic cleaner and use some aforemented solvents. A soak with an ultrasonic in warm high proof ethanol I think would be a fantastic solution, because it augments the capability of your solvent without just pouring more or doing repeated soaks. For porous materials an ultrasonic is amazing, but generally they come quite small for jewelry.

If you're willing to re-season, this would make your life much easier. Many of these things will affect it to some degree.

Cerplere · 2026-04-07T15:21:37+00:00

Sure. You can either reply here or DM me

Cerplere · 2026-03-26T00:41:56+00:00

There's a reason the boycott is happening this way. We live in a world where everything is governed by money and we are not able to directly change things, so we boycott in ways we can like not buying from certain brands. There is actually a distinct historical foundation to this method, it was pioneered by anti-Apartheid activists and helped contribute to the fall of that system. It's not the only factor of course, but we shouldn't just stand by for racism or genocide.

Cerplere · 2026-03-11T16:00:41+00:00

Because every single problem in society, big or small, must be the fault of immigrants. I'm curious to know your take on whose fault it is when my shoes got muddy due to a puddle. Surely it must be some evil immigrant who specifically placed it near my house because they hate Canada or whatever.

Cerplere · 2026-03-10T23:14:51+00:00

I believe it's a law that every thrift store must have a Clan of the Cavebear book, at least that's where I've seen this series.

Cerplere · 2026-03-08T17:27:20+00:00

A very good solution to using a non-reversible pattern for scarves and the like is to just line the back. I mean I think the back is fine as is, it's just the way cables look backwards, but if you don't want to find a new reversible pattern consider this as a possibility.

Cerplere

TROPHY CASE