Ask me about:

  • Science (biology, computation, statistics)
  • Gaming (rhythm, rogue-like/lite, other generic 1-player games)
  • Autism & related (I have diagnosis)
  • Bad takes on philosophy
  • Bad takes on US political systems & more US stuff

I’m not knowledgeable about most other things

  • 0 Posts
  • 4 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
Cake day: September 15th, 2024
  • zlatiah@lemmy.worldtoAsk Lemmy@lemmy.world•What's your favourite technical/scientific joke?
    7·
    2 days ago

    The “mouse scanner”

    This is way too meta, and somewhat of an inside joke to my previous lab… explanation below

    Explanation

    In cancer biology, many labs work with mice as a model organism. Back in the days before single-cell sequencing and organoids became popular, almost every good lab would routinely graft tumors onto model mice, then inject drugs and other stuff… and after a few weeks harvest the organs. Lots of ppl still do this. Very demanding research but it was state-of-the-art so

    Anyways… my lab, similar to many, used to have scanners for scanning Western Blots (another super common and notorious lab workflow). We’d scan images, histology slides cut from mice organs, etc… We also had a dedicated X-ray or CT machine (probably, memory hazy) specifically for scanning mice organs, but those two are separate

    And one day we were doing journal club and reviewing a cancer biology paper from another lab. They had full-body scans of lots of different mice, nothing too crazy… but in their methods section I think they straight up said they scanned the mice on a scanner 💀

    So yeah, we had this joke of someone putting a still alive mouse on the standard printer-scanner, and then S Q U I S H the mouse to make an image

  • zlatiah@lemmy.worldtoAsk Lemmy@lemmy.world•Anyone actually gone through the O-1 visa process? What did the evidence really look like?
    2·
    4 days ago

    Not the O1… I’ve tried the EB-2-NIW though, and seriously considered EB-1 before

    My understanding is that you need a lawyer for this, as the law firms have effective templates that can help to “fluff” up a profile. Many law firms do initial consultations too to see whether one person can be considered. Self-writing a competitive O-1 application (sans being a Nobel Prize laureate or along those lines) is almost impossible

    Edit: if this is relevant. For EB-1, the numbers I got from the law firm were 200+ citations (or 150+ with very good other records) and select other accomplishments as scientist. Non-scientists are a lot trickier, but not impossible

  • zlatiah@lemmy.worldtoAsk Lemmy@lemmy.world•How’s the economy where you are?
    3·
    4 days ago

    Belgium. Personally, I have a job now so I feel fine, has a good bit of leftover money despite being on single salary. Salaries here are indexed against cost of living (not too many countries do this anymore), so anyone who is not living in the capitol can survive even on minimum salary; and in the capitol, yes with cohousing. People without a job are somewhat fucked though… yes the unemployment benefits are quite generous, but there simply aren’t many jobs out there. Belgium has a competitive strength in pharmaceuticals but then last year there was a pretty notable company shutting down, and recently GSK let go of a large chunk of their R&D team. Things are not looking very bright

    I guess this isn’t what the topic is about but… macro-economics numbers seem functional? The fiscally conservative leading party implemented some budget cuts that were supposed to help, I’m not an economist so I can’t say whether they helped but there certainly were lots of protests. GDP is slowly growing, not as fast as NL but the numbers are going up

    Edit: Just saw the news that the PM (Bart De Wever) submitted an official request to the king to resign. I take it back, we ball I guess 😂