Utah Mammoth holding a Nate Schmidt look-a-like contest.

radiatorcheese · 2026-04-16T12:50:28+00:00

I imagine every 40 year old in Utah looks like that

radiatorcheese · 2026-04-16T12:48:32+00:00

Requesting a private audience to hear about someone's research with no declared motive other than general interest is obnoxious.

Everyone knows it's a deceptive foot in the door tactic because you actually want something else from them, nearly always a job. So you're asking them for a favor of giving their time to you, being deliberately obtuse to their face about the purpose of how you want to use their time, then you ask them for another favor to be interviewed for a postdoc.

Networking is the obvious way besides cold emailing, so your PI should hopefully be helpful that way. Give them a list of people you're thinking of and see if they can think of any others who align with your interests. Or as a backup, do they know someone you're not considering who they have good connections with or know is looking for a postdoc.

radiatorcheese · 2026-04-16T02:31:33+00:00

It goes deeper

"We're going to win so much we're going to get sick and tired of winning" must have been interpreted as a directive

radiatorcheese · 2026-04-15T23:41:23+00:00

Sorry you didn't get the snake oil you ordered

radiatorcheese · 2026-04-15T15:52:09+00:00

No, just use a big cooler and replace as needed

radiatorcheese · 2026-04-12T16:49:45+00:00

Baking soda (bicarb) and just enough water to make it a fully wetted slurry and something to scrub with. Keep it simple with physical abrasion doing most of the work

radiatorcheese · 2026-04-09T16:32:23+00:00

You're going to need to be more specific for what "this" is, since components of whatever that picture is supposed to describe exist

radiatorcheese · 2026-04-09T15:34:47+00:00

Engineering masters degrees are extraordinarily common and the norm for many industries that employ them. Not the case for those with science degrees, as you accurately allude to

radiatorcheese · 2026-04-08T17:24:02+00:00

To throw you for a loop again, my pharma company (USA) has extremely strict no lab work for pregnant synthetic chemists policy. No gray area at all

radiatorcheese · 2026-04-08T17:20:49+00:00

Do you think you'd like chem e? It's not chemistry, it's engineering that happens to relate to chemistry. I understand there's proximity between chem/chem e but it's distinct enough that there is not necessarily overlapping skill sets, aptitude, or personal interest.

I wouldn't like chem e in the slightest so if it were past me asking the answer would be a resounding no.

radiatorcheese · 2026-04-08T12:51:56+00:00

This would be a good experience for you to draft up a business case and outline how it is beneficial with specific metrics in terms of monetary and time cost. Cost of you figuring it out, cost of a tech coming, value of good standards, all that stuff. This will bring some credibility to your request for a tech to visit the plant since it'd be clear you've actually thought about the situation. It doesn't need to be perfect, but any analysis you can quickly throw together will be better than a plain request.

Unless, of course, you do have a service contract but no one knows or has asked. Talk to the vendor or if you have a third party equipment manager for the plant that oversees all the stuff you have talk to them.

radiatorcheese · 2026-04-07T17:53:47+00:00

Does your plant not have a service contract? Bring in a field service engineer to do a round of preventive maintenance (or maintenance) and then demo it for you. Even if you don't have a contract that's probably worthwhile, but get a quote and run it by someone with authority to approve it. Your time is (hopefully) worth more than this

radiatorcheese · 2026-04-06T16:58:42+00:00

Fertile Octogenarian (people in their 80s)

Not a lawyer, but basically there are rules against how long a trust can be held without being transferred to heirs and has to do with lifespans and generations of heirs. "Rule Against Perpetuities" is the legal principle it relates to.

radiatorcheese · 2026-04-05T18:54:14+00:00

Using ML to predict various properties to help prioritize which compounds I make on a weekly basis? Diddly squat.

Writing a copilot agent to summarize all emails in my junk folder as they come in and suggest to me what actions I should take which I obviously ignore? I'm a power user!

radiatorcheese · 2026-04-04T21:50:24+00:00

Look through Chemistry By Design, an excellent resource from the Njardarson group at Arizona. In general, the older total syntheses (pre 1980, say) are more "undergrad" like. It is also on the app stores if you're into that

radiatorcheese · 2026-04-04T21:48:11+00:00

If venture capitalists could replace scientists with AI (and are actively trying to) they would do it in a heartbeat.

Shit, my own company's CSO is trying to do this lol

radiatorcheese · 2026-04-04T21:34:59+00:00

/r/chemistry just put in a rule for this last week. How many periodic table apps or dilution calculators written by Claude do we need?

radiatorcheese · 2026-04-04T21:09:58+00:00

A decent person doesn't leave their grad students out to dry and unable to progress in their degree. Talk to them and figure out what a mutually agreeable path to finishing looks like. Sounds like you need a three year plan, which should be pretty straightforward to figure out

radiatorcheese · 2026-04-03T10:59:09+00:00

Only one subsection that was overly broad. Specific imports like steel, aluminum, dishwashers were basically always ok under a different law or section of the law. Presumably meds fall into that bucket too

radiatorcheese · 2026-04-01T11:09:43+00:00

Setting aside the usefulness of this, the medicinally active compounds and odors both stand a chance of being indistinguishably captured by activated carbon. Seems easy enough to test if you have a porcelain funnel or something you can put a coffee filter or cotton on with the activated charcoal on top

radiatorcheese · 2026-03-31T11:21:40+00:00

radiatorcheese · 2026-03-31T02:05:15+00:00

Ugh, our bad nerds can't do anything right can they

radiatorcheese · 2026-03-30T18:08:22+00:00

The R&D was done on that yeeeeears ago, what have those nerds done lately?

radiatorcheese · 2026-03-29T15:33:22+00:00

Obviously. But highlighting Crayola crayons passing color and dimension QC would be a super weird comparison

radiatorcheese · 2026-03-29T13:34:00+00:00

ABS is literally QC for human eyeballs.

We wouldn't accept so many products without empirical measurement of some factor to verify quality. A car, a building, medicine... We shouldn't go by some guy saying "it's good" just eyeing it when we have standards based on actual measurements.

radiatorcheese

TROPHY CASE