ornery_chemist
@ornery_chemist@mander.xyz
- Comment on Precision takes time 1 day ago:
one gets silicosis and the other gets siliconetits
- Comment on Problem? 2 weeks ago:
Goos rule of thumb: if someone else hasn’t solved the problem yet, it’s more complicated than you’re assuming. If the problem is worth solving, other people smarter than you have almost certainly attempted the easy “solutions” already, and they were inadequate to solve the problem. Heck, even if it’s not worth solving, there’s a non-zero chance that some pre-Reagan weirdos took a crack at it with bonus mercury and thallium compounds for the lulz and published it all in a vague 200-word comm in a now-defunct journal.
- Comment on This feels wrong. I love it. 3 weeks ago:
Isn’t the squaring actually multiplication by the complex conjugate when working in the complex plane? i.e., √((1 - 0 i) (1 + 0 i) + (0 - i) (0 + i)) = √(1 + - i^2^) = √(1 + 1) = √2. I could be totally off base here and could be confusing with something else…
- Comment on Yep, it's me 3 weeks ago:
I so badly want to be as smart and articulate as Feynman when ever I grow up.
- Comment on I hate that that happens 3 weeks ago:
dass das das das dass da ersetzen kann ist falsch
translation: that “das” can replace “dass” there is wrong.
same shit different barbarians
- Comment on Ah yes, regression 3 weeks ago:
This relation between temperature and resistivity can be shown to be exponential in certain temperature regimes by waving your hands and chanting “to first order.”
for some reason this is the line that got me
- Comment on Half as Hot 3 weeks ago:
New strategy to prevent global warming: just freeze all of the CO2 out of the air!
- Comment on Drink it, I dare ya 4 weeks ago:
Alternatively for a full octet on every atom, oxiryne, which does not exist and does not have a wiki page. It’s basically acetylene with its arms chopped off and the stumps dislocated, bent back, and stapled together with an oxygen atom.
- Comment on Publishers Always Innovating 4 weeks ago:
Fair, but certain corporate-mandated client-side PDF viewers are… bloatier. Though, I do like not having another window to manage when I open in browser, particularly when doing web searches. It pairs well with tab grouping extensions, and I generally don’t use markup, so no loss for me there.
- Comment on Publishers Always Innovating 4 weeks ago:
https://…/epdf/… -> https://…/pdf/…
- Comment on Synthesize deez nutz 4 weeks ago:
Synthesis: everything happens except what you want. And then the 26h/day tryhard at <random other institution> in <random other country> publishes the molecule with the exact same route. The problem? Your hands suck. Git gud scrub.
- Comment on Academic writing 1 month ago:
inhales
Complex 1a was prepared according to well-known synthetic procedures. The reduction potential of the complex was increased due to the nephelauxetic expansion of the occupied FMOs induced by photolytic epimerization of the auxiliary tetrahydrophosphazolidine sulfide ligand to enable a strongly σ-donating dihaptic coordination mode.
translation: we made molecule 1a, we shouldn’t need to tell you how, it’s obvious, lmao, git gud. the molecule became less likely to gain extra electrons because shining light on it made one of its weird-ass totally-not-bullshit parts wiggle around a bit so that it could bind more strongly to the metal atom through two of its own adjacent atoms, making the metal atom’s relevant electrons floofier.
- Comment on Bread 2 months ago:
In grocery stores in many parts of the US at least, it is extremely hard not to find bread in plastic bags. Even the one of 3 near me that has its own bakery puts the bread in a plastic bag, and then in another bag that is paper with a plastic “window”, and the paper part has a PE wax lining for god knows what reason.
- Comment on "Now everyone will have an easy reference table at hand!" 2 months ago:
But… but… muh thulium…
jk all lanthanides are the same don’t @ me physicists
also Ce(IV) catalyst stans also also total synthesis tryhards who think SmI2 is ever the right call
- Comment on Palantir partners with Microsoft to sell AI to the government 3 months ago:
Oh, I’m sure this’ll end well.
/s
- Comment on To distinguish between the word woman and women, we change the A to an E, but only change the pronunciation on the O. 3 months ago:
Corpse, Corps, Horse, and Worse
I will keep you, Susy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy;
Tear in eye, your dress you’ll tear;
Queer, fair seer, hear my prayer.
- Comment on To distinguish between the word woman and women, we change the A to an E, but only change the pronunciation on the O. 3 months ago:
Best I can tell from quick internet searches: Old English: wīfmann/menn (“female person/s”). The w rounded the following vowel giving a wo- pronunciation, which for some reason (umlaut?) stuck for the singular but not the plural. The spelling of the plural changed to match that of the singular in spite of the pronunciation.
* Everything here carries the caveat “in some dialects, …” because English
- Comment on Do you agree with my unpopular opinion about height in fencing? 3 months ago:
Nah, reach is a huge advantage. I’m not sure how rapier fencing differs from regulation sabre/epée/foil, but here’s my 2 cents from that perspective:
Smaller people are not, as a rule, substantially quicker than larger. If you see any difference in your experience, it’s likely a selection bias (shorter people have to be quicker to compete at the same level). The shorter person must enter the strike range of the taller person before the taller person comes within theirs and must be significantly quicker or more skilled to overcome that dead space. If the taller person can maintain a proper distance, gg. Taller people can also lunge farther, giving a wider active range.
Targeting is a smaller issue than you make it out to be; footwork and maintaining balance, which reposition the core, are at least as important as leaning to dodge, and advantage the taller person (longer legs = more movement range). If the taller person is coming from above as you say, they can just continue their slash (sabre) downward toward that less mobile core, or squat a bit deeper if the arc won’t reach. If instead you were referring to a poke, they’re either already targeting the torso anyway (foil) or whatever body part is most easily reachable (epée; still often torso, but cheeky wrist/arm strikes can be something of an equalizer here), and anyway they are already striking at a range that the shorter person cannot, making a successful counterattack more difficult.
Besides reach, a height difference is brutal when it comes to sabre fencing; the shorter person is restricted to targeting arms and torso (can’t reach the head easily), so the taller person can anticipate strikes from fewer angles. The taller person can come from any direction and has gravity on their side for own overhead strikes. Those suck to defend against.
- Comment on Part of this complete breakfast! 4 months ago:
That’s some expensive cereal…
- Comment on smh 6 months ago:
*swish-swish-swish pfshhht, swish-swish-swish pft, swish-swish-swish pt*
- Comment on I mean have they seen our stipends 6 months ago:
My take-home was $1700-2100/mo after taxes and fees depending on whether I was teaching that semester (teaching paid less). We were paid minimum wage (at the time $15/h in CA) on the basis of 8 h/day, 5 days/wk 52 wks/y lmao. Rent split 4 ways was ~$1500 per person, and that was the lowest of anyone I knew. UC Berkeley.
- Comment on it works! only 99.99$! 7 months ago:
Fact: 90% of science is made with quartz
… accurate
- Comment on xkcd #2917: Types of Eclipse Photo 7 months ago:
I went up to the Champlain Lake area where there was some high altitude cloud cover. Fortunately, it didn’t affect the viewing basically at all. A cool side effect of the clouds/related atmospheric conditions though was that the sun had a 22° halo. I wish that 1) I’d had a camera that could capture it and that 2) I’d had the presence of mind to pay attention to what happened to it in the moments before and after totality.
- Comment on How to open a textbook 7 months ago:
…and then we take the partial derivative of the log of this infinite series wrt molar volume to find that–
- Why?
Why what?
- helplessly gestures at the whiteboard
Oh, yeah, it’s so the math works out later! Anyway-
- Comment on xkcd #2907: Schwa 8 months ago:
The point about stress is interesting. I’ve been playing with pronouncing the phrase, and almost everything tends toward [ɐ] when I speak the syllables one at a time, even the ones I marked with and pronounce as a schwa in normal speech. The notable exceptions are the final schwas in “obstruction” and “onions”, which tend toward [ɪ], and the -nel of “tunnel”, which is something like [nɫ] (vocalic ɫ) ~ [nəɫ].
- Comment on xkcd #2907: Schwa 8 months ago:
It helps when most of the vowels are the same and most other letters match their English counterparts lol.
In case you get the urge to learn sooner:
Here are some quick refs for consonants and vowels in English (RP = received pronunciation (a standardized form of English from the UK), GA = General American). Wikipedia pages for specific English dialects (e.g., Australian English) also contain a bunch of word/IPA pairs. Here are audio charts for vowels and consonants.
- Comment on xkcd #2907: Schwa 8 months ago:
yup
- Comment on xkcd #2907: Schwa 8 months ago:
Thank you for reminding me of this channel, I’d forgotten about it.
- Comment on xkcd #2907: Schwa 8 months ago:
Don’t a lot of these use the “strut” vowel (/ʌ/) and not schwa (/ə/) per se?
My transcription would be
/wʌts ʌp? wʌz dʌg gənə kʌm? dʌg lʌvz bɹʌntʃ. nʌʔʌ dʌgz stʌk kəz əv ə tʌnəl əbstɹʌkʃən. ə tɹʌk dʌmpt ə tʌn əv ʌnjənz. ʊχ./
- Comment on ꙮ BE NOT AFRAID ꙮ 8 months ago:
Praise be to 1155.6