Things I think are funny

Well I’m here to tell you that’s wrong. I’m a quantum computation physicist. I study the creation and transmission of discrete variable quantum entanglement. And getting here was a straightforward process of “practice till you can do it” as surely as any other skill is.

STEM skills, I think, can often seem divorced from any slow process of practice because the end results are literally beyond most people’s ability to understand or interpret. You can see people paint and see the connection between a child scribbling and a master working. It’s intuitive. But basic algebra and quantum mechanics look so different, they can feel like a difference in kind rather than degree. The jumps in understanding and leaps of intuition made by people further along than you can seem conjured only from their own brains, rather than a thousand hours of practice seeing the same patterns over and over. So it’s easy to make the assumption that people who can do math stuff you can’t are just inherently smarter than you. That there’s some gap to can’t be bridged.

That’s just not true though. All intellectual pursuits are reached one step at a time, slowly building a base of knowledge until you’re ready for the next step. Just like everything else. There’s nothing mystical or special there. Just work.

The reason most people end up feeling like math and science are ‘not for them’ is, I think, because you can’t miss something and keep going anyways. In art if you struggle to draw hands you practice something else for a while. In math that’s not an option. Everything must be learned in order, and everything must be learned. And that’s not how our education system works, so if you miss something early on everything afterward will feel like a struggle, like you’re constantly catching up. But that’s a problem with our education system, not something which actually puts STEM beyond the realm of mere practice.

pandaren - strictly eurodance/europop, everything on the dancemania albums, a tiny cloister of hands up trance (think cascada)

The EU hasn’t died unless you and everyone else let it die.

Lucasfilm made the decision to create new stories.

‘osteoporosis’ is a disease in which bone mass decreases

so they mean fucking