Eighth Post!

[hoisinsauce]

It's one thing if mankind is hunted to extinction by ChatGPT, but I really do object to being executed by Bing.

(https://secretfanspace.dreamwidth.org/2511.html?thread=3169743#cmt3169743 )

Welcome back! Fandom chat, misc creativity, internet weirdness, books, films, anything! Tell meme about it so we can get to the next post title!

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Comments

Re: Books - A Most Remarkable Creature by Jonathan Meiburg

[(Anonymous)]

One thing I forgot to mention - there's a whole chapter dedicated to Sean McCann's adventures in academia and Meiburg just sounds so done the entire time. You can really see why he fucked off to make music instead.

Sean originally wanted to be a herpetologist, but he switched to entomology for better job prospects. Unfortunately, those job prospects were mostly finding new ways to kill mosquitoes efficiently, and while he did like insects, he wasn't going to survive doing a PhD on something that mind-numbing. He wanted to study social wasps, maybe, or army ants.

Finally, he manages he get himself a position in a research group that specializes in household pests. He figures he's going to have to write boring grant proposals about how wasps are a threat to human life, but he accidentally admits to his advisor he'd rather be studying reptiles and birds - and surprisingly, his advisor offers him a project to research a rumor that the red-throated caracara, a voracious wasp-eater, might secrete some kind of natural wasp repellent.

So Sean decides to do a little advance research.

> After a search of scientific literature going back to the eighteenth century, Sean felt pretty sure he'd found every word ever written about red-throated caracaras, by scientists and amateurs alike. It added up to a single afternoon's reading.

What he did find, though, strongly suggested that the caracara wasn't producing any sort of wasp repellent - they were just smart enough to realize that if they did enough damage to the nest, the wasps would simply abandon their babies and start over somewhere else. Having summarily disproved the initial hypothesis, Sean took the job anyways. After all, what else was he going to do? Kill more mosquitoes?

Then there's like another four points throughout the roadtrip where Sean brings up something interesting (like black caracaras!) and then goes 'meh, no one'd ever give me funding for that.'

Re: Books - A Most Remarkable Creature by Jonathan Meiburg

[(Anonymous)]

Too true tbh. Academia be soul-crushing that way.