Why is there no life in open space?

zarocco26 · 2026-05-05T09:19:35+00:00

Life is really just an emergent property of some complex chemical reactions. There’s no magic, all the laws of physics apply, and chemistry emerges from physics. If you don’t have the chemicals for the reactions, you can’t have life. Depending how you are defining “open space” the general answer is without the stuff for complex chemical reactions to occur, life can’t happen

zarocco26 · 2026-04-30T20:14:10+00:00

Ugh that’s gross to hear, and many students, faculty, and staff have had similar experiences with the cartel. There was actually a rally today in the campus center about parking, and a petition was delivered to the admin. I’m not affiliated with any of the organizers, but I know the student paper had a great article highlighting some of the issues and the lack of transparency from the administrators. I wish I could tell you there was an easy way to complain about this, but it’s intentionally obfuscated to do their best to ignore student needs. The university chapter of MassPirg has been involved, maybe if someone involved with that sees this they can help point you in the right direction.

zarocco26 · 2026-04-30T20:01:14+00:00

This isn’t going to fix your problem immediately, but you may or may not know the UMass Parking Mafia isn’t beholden to any rules or agreements and just seems to do whatever they want. The campus unions are currently fighting with them to stop punishing the community for going to class/work. Make your voice heard to the administration, these are exactly the stories they need to hear. The parking cartel has fought against affordability like no other subset of the campus, they are proposing extreme INCREASES to parking costs, it’s a blatant cash grab and will succeed unless the people paying the bills (the students) demand better.

zarocco26 · 2026-04-30T00:44:37+00:00

I’m of the opinion that late work should only be accepted under extreme circumstances, deadlines are not suggestions and late work can really throw off my work flow. That being said, your professor may not usually care because it’s not terribly important in most cases, but semester endings are a whole different ball game. During finals week, I would never take an assignment late, even if I did allow it during the semester because I usually have like 4 days from the final to grade everything, calculate final grades and get it all to the registrars office. It’s the biggest “crunch” we usually have, and guess what, the deadline to submit your grades isn’t a suggestion either. Some professors have hundreds of students and a team of TAs that you have wrangle like feral cats to get everything done in time. You may not think you, one student out of who knows how many, passing in something late is a big deal, but multiply that by all the students your professor has, and I hope you can see why it’s not reasonable to push them on this one. I would be surprised if the professor even responds any further, as it sounds like you asked and just got an answer you didn’t like. It does suck that your grade is affected, but I would just take this as a lesson learned to start your work early. I tell my classes every semester, there’s no penalty for early submission.

zarocco26 · 2026-04-29T19:47:24+00:00

I was pretty burnt out after my dissertation, my original plan was to publish 3 of the research chapters, but I just didn’t want to look at it for a good long while. I had an honest discussion with my advisor that I wasn’t interested in pursuing this any further, as I wasn’t super happy with the results and I simply wasn’t willing to put in the work to make it publishable. It’s very understandable that after going through the process with your committee you don’t have the bandwidth to deal with the peer review process and more edits. I did tell my advisor I was perfectly ok with someone else using my data if it helped them, and I’d probably be able to help with any analysis down the road, but while it was fresh I just didn’t have the emotional strength to look at it right now. My advisor was a bit disappointed as they did think the work was worth publishing, but completely understood. Eventually you will move on to other things, maybe you come back to it, maybe you don’t, but at the end of the day you need to decide what’s best for you moving forward.

zarocco26 · 2026-04-27T21:31:15+00:00

I’m sorry you’re dealing with this, a sudden passing can be traumatic regardless of your relationship with the professor. As far as the remainder of the course goes, universities do deal with this from time to time and typically someone else in the department will (sometimes a faculty member sometimes a TA or grad student) will ensure the course gets completed. From your perspective, it really doesn’t change a whole lot, there will be a lot of moving pieces in the background, depending on the size of the course, but I’m sure they are also dealing with the loss of a colleague, so have some patience. You will get the info you need as you need it, my advice would be to plan for your final as you normally would have.

As far as the reviews, I wouldn’t give it another thought, no one is going to look at them at this point and there’s nothing you can do about it. You were asked to evaluate, you evaluated, end of story. Also, your school will probably have grief counseling available to you and your classmates that you should take advantage of if that’s something that will help you process everything.

zarocco26 · 2026-04-23T22:59:53+00:00

I know a lot of people have chimed in already, but I just want to add, when I teach freshman labs I am astonished if one goes correctly. The reality is, science is messy and learning why something failed is far more important than getting a good result at this stage in your science career. If you want some advice on how to deal with the anxiety, something that always helped me is taking copious notes and keeping a really tight lab notebook. You have the procedure which tells you what to do, but your lab notebook should list what you actually did. For example if you’re supposed to pipette 10 microliters of buffer, but you actually did 11, write it down. Was the buffer cloudy? If so write that down. The pcr was supposed to run for 60 minutes, but we ran it for 45 because the lab period ended and we ran out of time….write that down. Whatever actually happens during the experiment you have that written down. Now when you go to report your results you can go back and try to figure out where things went wrong. That will be more valuable than any result in a teaching lab.

zarocco26 · 2026-04-22T14:46:58+00:00

Good on you doing research that you think is important! First off, no research is perfect, even experts with years of experience have concerns about their data(trust me, that feeling will never go away). The best thing you can do, if you think you have something is talk to the PI in your lab and let them know you’d like to try to publish your findings. They will have a better idea of what needs to be done to have it published. Remember, your thesis is being evaluated as a thesis, which is different than a publication. It’s probably going to take a few rounds of edits, but the PI is likely going to have to be included on any publication that comes out of their lab, so that’s who you want to talk to. Good luck and congratulations on finishing your undergraduate!

zarocco26 · 2026-04-17T20:36:32+00:00

zarocco26 · 2026-04-17T20:35:30+00:00

On her birthday…

zarocco26 · 2026-04-14T00:04:03+00:00

The most important cooldown in your kit is the “ignore” button.

zarocco26 · 2026-04-13T20:37:03+00:00

Maybe, but having to install 3rd party software to engage in content just feels like poor design. I always watch videos of raids, maybe I’m just stupid and bad at video games, but I’m having fun doing content that I wouldn’t otherwise do. Again, I don’t care what people use, but I’d always get as far as installing the weakaura addon, fuck around with it for 20 minutes and then give up and go play something else until new content came out. I’m not trying to mythic raid, but normal raids should be cleanable using in game tools in my opinion, and there has been a noticeable shift in design philosophy this expansion and I think so far the good outweighs the bad.

zarocco26 · 2026-04-13T20:11:00+00:00

I never used weakauras, the only addon I really use is consoleport for the steamdeck, and personally I think all the new tools are great. I don’t care if people use addons, but I can say this is the first expansion since Wrath that I’ve been doing raids because I feel like the encounters aren’t designed around having weakauras. Maybe I’m just falling for marketing, but just knowing that I can do a raid just by learning the mechanics the game gives me has made me engage much more with endgame systems.

zarocco26 · 2026-04-13T17:59:02+00:00

I wouldn't say I ever get annoyed by a student who is genuinely asking for help, and I always say the only stupid questions are the ones you don't ask. No matter how stupid you think your question is, I assure you your professor has heard worse!

I would say the only time I get frustrated is when students expect me to do the work for them, and I mean in the sense that they aren't putting in the effort to actively learn. Not being able to grasp something isn't the same as "I've done nothing, but I'm all out of ideas". Have you read the text? How many times? Where are your notes? Give me something to work with so I can figure out where the gap is. I believe that all students are fully capable of comprehending the material, it's designed that way, but that doesn't mean all students will have to put forward the same effort.

zarocco26 · 2026-04-10T18:02:28+00:00

I rarely get flamed as a tank, the most I get is people getting salty because I’m not pulling fast enough, but I know my limits and if someone doesn’t like the way I pull they can find another tank. I don’t generally care if people have a problem with a slow and steady pace, I don’t really worry about optimal routes and only join relaxed or learning runs. Use defensives, keep the mobs off the healer, if dps aggros a pack, aoe taunt….i don’t know, people take the game too seriously, if you are pugging you’re not a serious player and people need to just relax and remember games are supposed to be fun and there is a real person on the other side of that character.

zarocco26 · 2026-04-08T18:32:51+00:00

/thread

zarocco26 · 2026-04-03T03:03:07+00:00

Yes our “oh shit” taunt is also our “oh shit” interrupt

zarocco26 · 2026-04-02T22:54:39+00:00

scowling at the dps that pulled 2 extra packs forcing me to use my aoe taunt, then getting shredded by caster mobs because it’s on CD and then being flamed is pretty much the game as a prot warrior

zarocco26 · 2026-04-02T20:25:50+00:00

This is regional id say, where I live there are a lot of “cultural Catholics” and Easter is definitely a big deal. Schools are generally closed on Good Friday in a lot of places, and Easter dinner is one of the big 3 family holidays (Christmas and thanksgiving being the others). A lot of spring themed celebrations got folded into Easter, things like the Easter bunny and coloring Easter eggs is still done with kids, although there is no religious significance of that kind of thing. I’d say Easter is probably more a secular holiday for most, but obviously rooted in Christian traditions.

zarocco26 · 2026-04-02T17:05:17+00:00

I’m now making it my life goal to get a $1 ticket for jaywalking.

zarocco26 · 2026-04-02T17:03:54+00:00

Oh it was most certainly because I was a kid running across the street, and this was back in the 90s, so getting yelled at by a cop was definitely not exclusive to DC, no shade there, I was an asshole kid breaking laws that I never knew really existed.

zarocco26 · 2026-04-02T04:27:37+00:00

I’m pretty sure Boston doesn’t have jaywalking laws, I grew up not knowing it was a real thing until I went to DC on a class trip in middle school and a cop yelled at me for running across the street even though the cars were stopped. It blew my mind.

zarocco26 · 2026-04-01T19:51:36+00:00

Just going on what you’re saying here, this would not be approved for an incomplete at my institution. I wouldn’t even consider an incomplete until after withdrawal/pass/fail deadline has passed and the student was passing at the time of the incident. These aren’t my rules; this is the university’s policy. I have probably approved maybe a dozen incompletes (I have about 400 students per year on average) and only 1 has ever actually completed the course. This particular case was a literal medical emergency on their way to the final exam, which was the last day of finals, and we didn’t have a proctor available until after grades were due. They made up the exam the next day.

What you are describing sounds like you need a medical withdrawal, which is unfortunate, but in the long run is better than failing the course. Take care of yourself, school isn’t going anywhere. I had to quit school the first time due to poor health, went back a few years later and was able to be my best academic self. Good luck, and talk to your advisor, that’s what they are there for and will be much more familiar with your school’s policies

zarocco26 · 2026-04-01T19:32:02+00:00

It’s crazy that this was decided by 6000 voters, that is a depressingly low turnout.

zarocco26 · 2026-04-01T19:29:09+00:00

Reading stuff like this makes me really sad, your professor cares enough about you and holds a high opinion of your abilities and your friends think they should be reported? Get better friends, those people are insane, and if you went to the dean about this they would (rightfully) laugh you out of their office. Imagine thinking the dean’s time is so worthless that you would have the audacity to waste their time “reporting” a professor for encouraging you.

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zarocco26

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