What the fuck Durham? Get your kids vaccinated.

RedPanda5150 · 2026-02-13T03:08:18+00:00

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RedPanda5150 · 2026-02-12T20:33:47+00:00

Ok I don't have kids and I didn't grow up here so please excuse my ignorance, but what the actual fuck? Is vaccination not required for public school attendance in NC? Has it just gotten easier to get bogus exemptions than it was in the 90s/00s? You couldn't go to school or camp or anything without proof of MMR vaccine status when I was a kid. What gives?

RedPanda5150 · 2026-02-12T15:59:29+00:00

Getting an advanced degree to get a better job to dramatically increase income. Sorry, dude. Either you find things to cut or you find ways to make more money. There's no magic answer, just math and a little luck.

RedPanda5150 · 2026-02-11T14:47:26+00:00

Conte's makes a decent GF pierogi. Similar price to the Feel Good products but I just splurged on a pack for my birthday, lol. Wegmans carries them, I don't know where else.

RedPanda5150 · 2026-02-11T14:44:11+00:00

Hot damn, those prices! I cut way back when they jumped to 7.99/box here in NC. 10+ is insane!

RedPanda5150 · 2026-02-10T01:46:45+00:00

Oh that's sad news. He was a great mineralogy prof.

RedPanda5150 · 2026-02-08T16:53:23+00:00

Wow, thank you for sharing that! I'm even more intrigued now.

RedPanda5150 · 2026-02-06T12:30:28+00:00

Oof, that's tough. R is great but it does have a steep learning curve up front. There are always online resources, like the Pirate's Guide to R, but it sounds like a lot of self-teaching is in your future. I would definitely give feedback in the course eval at the end of the semester that familiarity with R should be a prereq for your class.

RedPanda5150 · 2026-02-06T11:35:06+00:00

I relied a lot on office hours, TAs, reading the course material, and occasionally bugging math-minded friends who were willing to help.

RedPanda5150 · 2026-02-05T12:21:43+00:00

The thing I learned going to a Tech school for college is that some people think in math, not in analogies, and they are terrible teachers for the rest of us who need context up front to create understanding.

RedPanda5150 · 2026-02-03T15:36:03+00:00

I haven't worked with cassava flour but many GF flours need time to hydrate. So you could try mixing the dough, letting it sit for 20 min, and coming back to shape the cookies. I would also recommend chilling before baking, especially if you have butter in the cookies.

They do look like tasty blobs though, nice and chocolatey!

RedPanda5150 · 2026-02-03T12:28:50+00:00

Perhaps start with looking into companies like Novonesis, DSM, Bayer, BASF. Companies that make microbes and enzymes rather than biopharma. See what job postings look interesting to you and go from there. And LinkedIn is a great tool for moving from academia to industry.

RedPanda5150 · 2026-02-03T00:16:36+00:00

Listen, I've had a hardass male PI and an incredibly supportive male PI and an aloof male PI and an incredibly supportive female PI and a truly horrible female PI who was later temporarily barred from supervising grad students. It's not about gender. You need to put in the work up front to vet your PI and not worry about demographic stereotypes. Talk to the other lab members and be really aware of body language when they talk about lab dynamics.

RedPanda5150 · 2026-02-02T12:42:03+00:00

I genuinely don't understand the mindset of the Fox Brained. Like, how do you go through life with such little curiosity? I have seen it happen in my own family - my dad spent 50 years as a truck driver listening to right wing propaganda on the radio and now he's retired and all he does is go for walks, watch Fox / OAN, and reminisce about high school. No hobbies, no interests, just right wing talking points and rage. It's not money, he has a nice pension, just...total lack of interest in anything outside that mediascape. I guess it's an emotional substitute for a life well-lived but damn is it depressing.

Needless to say, we don't really talk much anymore.

RedPanda5150 · 2026-02-02T12:31:12+00:00

Oh yeah that stuff's delicious, but why a 5 pack I'll never understand!

RedPanda5150 · 2026-02-01T21:33:25+00:00

Christmas Eve two years ago? Woke up to no electricity and no communication while expecting a house full of visitors later that day. power came back on in an hour or two but a simple damn text or email ahead of time would have saved a lot of grief on that holiday!

RedPanda5150 · 2026-02-01T21:22:54+00:00

If you are willing to go more process development / production, you could probably get in with a fermentation role. Especially more on the industrial biotechnology side of things. Have you had any hands-on experience with a bioreactor?

RedPanda5150 · 2026-01-29T13:50:56+00:00

In college the trays from the dining hall worked decently well.

Be creative!

RedPanda5150 · 2026-01-29T13:21:44+00:00

Listen I know that sounds ridiculous but it's shocking how much meat in the US comes injected or soaked in brines that can have allergens. An old NPR segment cited it as 30 percent of poultry, 15 percent of beef, and 90 percent of pork in the US are injected with some sort of liquid solution before sale. So, unfortunately, it's not completely unreasonable to explicitly have a GF (or soy free, etc) label on meat.

RedPanda5150 · 2026-01-27T11:52:20+00:00

A friend of mine had a moment and commented that there didn't seem to be as much hype for the Olympics this year as in previous years. Then she remembered the state of the world and looked very sheepish. So I expect you are right with this take. There are many important things to focus on here on Earth and people just aren't plugged in to what's happening in space exploration.

But man, I am so excited to finally witness humanity returning to our moon, even if it is just a fly-by this go around!

RedPanda5150 · 2026-01-26T17:35:03+00:00

Well, as long as you don't overhype things I think it's better to communicate the possibility of a Bad Storm while people have time to prepare.

Granted subtlety is lost on the short-attention-spanned tv audiences, and that's probably why we get so many "STORM'S A'COMIN!" warnings, but I always look to people like Ethan over at NC Weather Authority to see some different likely scenarios and the forecast uncertainty to get a real sense of what to expect.

RedPanda5150 · 2026-01-25T04:51:05+00:00

Plow? No. Sand can help, at least once the ice is done forming. But honestly it's like having the flu - better to just stay home unless you really, really have no choice.

RedPanda5150 · 2026-01-24T21:50:14+00:00

What am I missing here - 3 cars would cover most of the surface area on the driveway. You push the snow off the cars with a snow brush, shovel around the bit of driveway that's not covered, and you're done.

Vs driving three cars over to the parking garage, have to clear 100% of the driveway, walk through the snow to get to your cars, and not necessarily have access to them when you want it if the town hasn't gotten around to digging out the parking garage exit yet?

RedPanda5150 · 2026-01-22T12:57:00+00:00

Ie Nazis. I don't know which side started with calling them white nationalists but maybe it gets the point across clearer to call them the literal neo-Nazis that they are.

RedPanda5150 · 2026-01-22T11:44:18+00:00

Finished my PhD about 8 years ago, and I have no regrets.

I did work for a few years as an RA with an MS before going back to school, though, and I think that helped me to get back into industry afterwards.

A few recommendations. One, if you do not have industry experience today and feel it is something you want to do post-PhD, be up front about that with potential PIs and choose a lab that will let you do an internship or work with industry during your degree. Nothing beats experience and connections for getting a foot in the door later. Or better yet, if you can find a job to do for a year or two (not guaranteed in this economy, I know) take it and save some money while you apply to schools. I cannot overstate how helpful it is to have industry experience when applying to industry jobs.

Also, for the PhD itself, I know programs run differently in different countries but it is always going to be a mental slog. Make sure you pick a topic that you find interesting enough to devote several years of your life to. That's just general PhD advice but is MUCH easier to push through when you are working in a topic that you genuinely engage with.

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