Tarannus

Tarannus

Some of the time takes pictures From Black Mesa
Messages
442
Nebulae
5,565
Points
538

Profile posts Latest activity Postings About

  • Tarannus
    The Lab keeps stating there will be no reductions in force, but rumors are surfacing that retiring technical and operations staff will not be replaced.

    Overhead funding for procurement and travel is on the chopping block.

    And per an Executive Order last week, all environmental regulations - where most of my team gets their regulatory backing - will be sunsetted by 2026.
    Oswald
    I've read everything you posted and my jaw is securely on the floor, dude I have zero words. I couldn't imagine being you, I don't think I've ever been that stressed and I've skirted past homelessness a few times. I wish you the absolute best of luck and I pray the situation improves as much as it can given the situation in America.
    Love from Britain.
    Reactions: List
    Tarannus
    Tarannus
    Thank you @Oswald - things bounce between emotional extremes daily. It feels like the anonymity, sociopathy, and jingoism of the internet have finally spilled out into the real world for good. It's exhausting and akin to a crisis of faith, watching good, honest, academic institutions, being destroyed for the kinds of utterly destructive paroxysmisal endorphin rushes that teenagers have.
    Tarannus
    The British have unbelievably neat and tidy plutonium handling facilities for their weapons. And they'd like to move their weapons museum into Reading so school groups can tour it.

    Time to see if my job category applies for a 5 month secondment.
    General Mario
    From one researcher to another, I am truly sorry that you have to deal with all this and I want you to know that I completely support you :)
    Reactions: List
    Tarannus
    Tarannus
    Thank you, I needed to hear that in a way I didn't realize until now. Much love from the Atomic City, and keep being a bastion of sanity for the lunacy that's happening down here.
    Tarannus
    The Lab is suspending non mission-critical travel (e.g. visits to universities, academic conferences) effective immediately. I don't know if this impacts the engagement that I've committed to attend next month.

    Postdocs are being informed that staff conversions are not going to happen.

    And just received a list of words that I must expunge from our reports, and remove any public documents that contain them.
    Tarannus
    Regarding today's news between the U.S. and Ukraine, I'm haunted by this quote:

    "It takes the Navy three years to build a ship. It will take three hundred years to build a new tradition."

    -FADM Andrew Cunningham, 1941
    Tarannus
    I know five people that were fired since last Thursday. My counterpart in the NNSA was fired and then immediately given his job back in 12 hours.

    Now I hear this is the first of possibly 3 waves of firings.

    All I ever wanted to do was be a researcher and uncover interesting history. I never wanted to be a part of seeing everything I ever believed in get destroyed by a bunch of coddled toddlers.
    Dallas
    Reading your updates now. Only logged because I heard the news about the Nuclear / Energy department cuts. The Rightist Cultural Revolution is scything through the American state like there's no tomorrow. "Woke science" denounced. It's become like this scene:

    Hope you can survive and rebuild. Ignorance never triumphs forever. It is always defeated.
    Reactions: List
    hewrrra
    hewrrra
    americans when "woke" walks into the room 🤬😡
    Tarannus
    Tarannus
    What politicos don't understand is that scientists really don't want to give a shit about politics. They want to do their work with a some appreciation or, at the very least, unmolested.

    If this keeps up, this could be a serious proliferation hazard. There are hundreds of people in the country with design knowledge. If someone is willing to offer guarantees of safe employment to them, that would be attractive.
    Tarannus
    Haven't gone to bed before midnight in 5 weeks.

    All probationary period federal staff are being fired.

    The lab just removed all of its public-facing publications to be scrubbed of "offending language".

    Climate science and carbon neutral research groups at the lab are being canned.

    Employee resource groups representing marginalized populations are either being deprecated or deleted outright at the lab.
    Reactions: List
    Postal
    Postal
    next thing you'll be telling me is that they will call science woke!
    Tarannus
    Tarannus
    I've received word that at least 4 of my colleagues were fired yesterday. Good, decent, researchers who took major cuts in pay to work for the National Park Service.

    I'm embarrassed to be an American.
    Postal
    Postal
    can't the american ppl just do what they always do regarding this?

    shoot their problems away?
    Tarannus
    So an email was sent out to all 2+ million federal employees this afternoon. Current administration wants to cut/fire a minimum of 10% of the workforce. Those who remain don't have job security past September.
    Tarannus
    A lot of friends in the federal government are fearing for their livelihoods. My work got a cease and desist memo from DC.

    How's everyone else doing?
    Reactions: List
    Earthnov
    Earthnov
    Shit man i'm sorry to hear that. Why did they want you to stop your work?
    Tarannus
    Tarannus
    Long story short, the powers that be have suspended virtually all science publications and public outreach. Grant funding and authorization has been cut off. We can't talk with other labs even within our own agency.
    Tarannus
    Tarannus
    Even things as innocuous as putting stuff on the Federal Register and routine environmental reporting is prohibited. And all contracts over $100,000 within the National Laboratory System have to go directly through the acting Secretary of Energy.
    Tarannus
    The state of online news media in the United States is so poor that I did something I haven't done since the late 1990s: bought a subscription to a local newspaper. And not one that simply republishes AP or AFP stories.
    Reactions: List
    Postal
    Postal
    you must be old then
    Tarannus
    Tarannus
    Our family didn't have a computer until 1991. And although our family business had internet access back in 1994, we didn't have internet at home - powered by a 14.4k modem - until July 1996.
    Postal
    Postal
    not bad as a 31 y/o only recently getting non-dialed up internet due to broadband in 2020
    Tarannus
    Well, before tariffs completely wreck shit with the economy, should I go and get a Nikon Z9?
    Reactions: List
    Señor Jaggles
    Señor Jaggles
    You should invest in a buttload of Xiaomi products for whenever they get expensive you can re-sell them as brand new for a shitload of money
    Tarannus
    Tarannus
    The cell phone market in the US is very locked down. Even though Chinese products aren't technically banned, there's good reason they aren't sold by most major retailers.
    Tarannus
    My sister moving 1,400 miles away while I'm trying to help my Mom live on her own for the first time in 50 years is stressful enough.

    But doing that while having an existential crisis over my own job, and worrying about my coworkers who're very legitimately fearing for their safety in this upcoming election, is something else.
    Merlinsclaw
    pit one complete!
    Reactions: List
    View previous comments…
    Tarannus
    Tarannus
    The more I learn about plutonium, the more it's an element that defies millenia of metallurgical knowledge.
    Tarannus
    Tarannus
    It actively hates everything and everyone it comes into contact with.

    It will form compounds that melt some 130°C lower than if it was a pure metal.

    It changes volume and density by as much as 25% depending on how hot it is, and how fast you heat it.
    Tarannus
    Tarannus
    It can be as soft as lead, or as hard and brittle as tungsten if you so much as look at it wrong.

    And it spits out so much alpha radiation that you could get a liter of helium per 250 kilograms every year from decay alone.
    Dallas
    Reactions: List
    View previous comments…
    Dallas
    Dallas
    It's crazy but looking back on it we were just trying to tell stories that meant something to the people playing them. I hear this from quite a few people, that they take away meanings and ideas that we couldn't have possibly planned when setting up each story beat. Stories are a pale mirror and you see what you want to see, and you take away what you're already carrying inside.
    Dallas
    Dallas
    But it's really moving to me that we had this moment, everyone who played on that day and made those individual sequences all said how cool it was, and how special the sections were.The fact I still think about that scene, the music, the lines, shows it was probably my favourite event I ran in terms of its story.
    Dallas
    Dallas
    I think the El Dorado lore was so interesting because, like Deliverance before it, the world was painted together and everyone filled in something. And I had to be open, first to get such an ambitious and strange character brief, and then run with it completely. Thank you, man. We had some good times.
    Tarannus
    abDKiww.jpeg


    Work is fun!​
  • Loading…
  • Loading…
  • Loading…