instead of brain there is song lyric

Just finished Alien Clay, the new standalone novel by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Reads a bit like Annihilation meets Baru Cormorant. I've been on a real Tchaikovsky kick this year, and I think this one might be my favorite.

Far-future science fiction where political dissidents are put on one-way sleeper ships to lethally dangerous exoplanets as prison labor. The protagonist, Professor Arton Daghdev, has been shipped off to Imno 27g, colloquially known as "Kiln," as part of the Mandate's crackdown on "seditious" academia.

As one would expect from Tchaikovsky, the book is equal parts political screed and speculative biology worldbuilding exercise, both of which he knocks out of the park. Alien Clay is one of the more overtly radical Tchaikovsky books I've read so far – the story is divided into three parts, "Liberté," "Égalité," and "Fraternité," it's not exactly subtle.

I think this book rises above the rest because of the protagonist. Daghdev's first-person narration is playful, wry, and bitter all at once, and the core of his revolutionary ideas center around state control of the philosophy of science, more so than literal academic censorship. That's a subject I don't see tackled often in fiction.

"What if a small group of religious extremists, persecuted in their own country, moved to an inhospitable uninhabited island and had to rebuild society there?" - But the Americas and Australia weren't inhospitable and were full of Native nations, why are you perpetuating the idea of Terra Nullius and manifest destiny? - Yes, that's because this isn't a metaphor for the British invading other countries, it's a metaphor for finding out how much of a person's religious practise is rooted in worldly concerns, vs how much they will really stymie themselves for the sake of God.

"What if 1/100 children born was a werewolf?" - But queer people are no danger to straight people, and disabled people don't have predictable patterns to their illnesses, and most people who have uncontrollable rages really CAN control them and are just lying, and no minority group has superpowers... - Yes, but that's all immaterial, because I wanted to talk about a load of other metaphors about the passage of time and responsibility and the relationship between humans and wildlife.

Hi there fellow chemistry student! :D

To be honest, I made my decision rather early (sometime between my first and second years of uni), when I didn't know that much about chemistry yet. I had a favorite professor and thought his research seemed interesting, but I chose *him* rather than the lab/ research area, so to say. Sure, I did some reading and a lot of thinking first, but there was also some luck involved, in the sense that in the end, I really did fall in love with these areas of chemistry.

Still, even in hindsight, I agree with what many other people used to tell me when I was a baby chemistry student: that the supervisor is more important than the thesis topic. A good professor can make tedious work easier and more enjoyable. A bad professor can make you detest the most interesting topic. A TL;DR of how I chose my supervisor: I took his class in my first semester, and he was kind, encouraging, very, very demanding but also very, VERY good at teaching, and I continuously had the impression that I could learn so much more from him beyond that class.

If I could do it all over again, I think I'd do it exactly the same way I did back then: think about who I'd like to work with first, what I want to work on second.

But it's not like I just decided I wanted THIS person to be my thesis supervisor, no more thinking involved. Other things I considered very deeply were:

do I want to do experimental work or theoretical? For me personally this one was easy, because I love being in the lab and am not very good with computers 😅

do I want to do something synthesis-heavy like orgo? I enjoyed doing "simpler" syntheses, one-pot stuff, none of that complex apparatus that organic chemists love, so again, I could reject all the orgo research teams;

what classes do I enjoy the most? Especially the labs - because I wanted to do experimental work - where do I feel really in my element? Which classes do I miss/ could see myself missing in the future? For me that was inorgo and pchem, so an intersection of these two sounded perfect for me;

and similarly, what do I enjoy studying the most? What chemistry-related topics do I seek out in my free time? What gives me that feeling of curiosity and fascination whenever I come across it? Is there any team at my faculty whose research seems to encompass most of those? At the time, I had a newly found interest in coordination chemistry, I was having fun in pchem lectures (don't judge me), and I had always found spectroscopy very intriguing. And coincidentally, there was a research team that merged all three, and my favorite professor happened to be in it.

So, we now own a $7,500 kitty. Bertram should be coming home this weekend after Friday surgery for an intestinal blockage. Thankfully, no resection was needed - the offending hairballs were able to be squeezed back into the stomach and removed via an incision.

Luckily, we caught his behavior change very quickly and hopefully minimized damage. Crow noticed he didn't want his 3pm feeding on Thursday, and we saw he was getting progressively more withdrawn to where he was wanting to hide by 7pm. He had also puked up bile 4x. That's when I made the call to take him in. He got surgery less than 24hrs after that first symptom we saw.

Cats are pretty horribly engineered on the inside. Urinary and intestinal blockages can kill within 24-48 hrs. Missing just 3 days of meals can destroy the liver with a 90% mortality rate. The FIP genetic mutation can take months to trigger after an uneventful bout of kitty coronovirus and kill within days.

Cats are so good at hiding pain, so you must take other behavioral changes seriously - lethargy, vomiting, not eating, and anything else that feels "off". Lots of people think animals can just sleep off and tough out health issues; a cat will not recover on its own from any of the aforementioned issues, all (except FIP) which are common.

This little man is not good at regurgitating hairballs, so with his long fur, we're going to give him supplements + a teddy bear haircut. But first thing is his road to recovery.

For other cat owners, just always be aware if anything has changed your cat's routine. Regular feedings/treat times are a great way to monitor eating. When you clean the box, take note if it is suspiciously absent of pee or poop. And of course, if kitty is being weird, that can be a sign of a health emergency. Familiarize yourself at least with the signs of urinary and intestinal blockages, as these are the common problems that are ER emergencies.

These treatments are pricey, too. It is also worth researching pet insurance and Care Credit options now, before any crisis.