trench tales from slop world

[dawn finch]

Deep verschlimbesserung

[dawn finch]

Monotron delay

[dawn finch]

what solvent you ask... oh yeah... the usual slurry of broken glass and ether

[dawn finch]

There's no end to it

[dawn finch]

Replacing the solenoid didn't help

[dawn finch]

They forgot to package the power switch so I jumped it

[deep helm]

I feel like the complexity is exponentially increasing with each successive picture ⊙⁠.⁠☉

[dawn finch]

I have an addiction

[deep helm]

that's great, it's a cool addiction to have! enjoy what you enjoy~

[dawn finch]

Evil

[pale turtle]

What's subliminating in there? Or, well, just dissolving.

[dawn finch]

Sodium potassium alloy

An explosive liquid

[dawn finch]

A dim light is still visible in the slops

[dawn finch]

Destroyed all the frontline material trying to harvest crystals for diffraction. Saw them turning orange before my eyes

[dawn finch]

The rack rompler...

[pale turtle]

WHAT KIND OF WITCHCRAFT IS THIS!? 😮

Also... what's cooking in your cauldron?

Or liquifying... or whatever you are doing

[dawn finch]

Cyclopentane ice, frozen with liquid nitrogen 🙂

Most liquids expel gas when they freeze so we do this to deoxygenate solvents

Before bringing them into the controlled N2 atmosphere of the glovebox

[pale turtle]

May I ask what the goal of your synthesis is? [Not that I will be able to follow. Many many years ago I took physical chemistry 101, but that's about it.]

[dawn finch]

In this case I'm just using the cyclopentane as an antisolvent to crystallize some other compounds I made. Because it is a ring and not a chain, it should be less floppy/randomly oriented, leading to higher propensity to pack with and form pure crystals with my target compound, instead of oils

[dawn finch]

Oddly meditative

[dawn finch]

[dusk sundial]

What if we co-grinded intimately

on the NaH hybride transfer agent

[dawn finch]

No forgiveness

[dawn finch]

I have brought the device through the airlock. Pray I do not bring in another

[dawn finch]

ominous.

https://hoch.cup.uni-muenchen.de/dr-constantin-hoch/ this guy is rippin darts on main

[dawn finch]

An unprompted thought: I must hold true to the notion that the world of grid is not a dystopia

[elfin compass]

Disco elysium skills be like

[dawn finch]

New room has the ingrained dirt of 10 years of tenants

[dawn finch]

I'm 5 tanks in it never ends

[dawn finch]

Old room empty for the first time in 4 years

So long forever

I came here years ago excited and nervous with the hope of doing good science. I leave like a sleepwalker, not knowing what will happen next week, not knowing if I'm going to make it to 30. And years still remain to finish the PhD

[broken sapphire]

beginning of a new era

[dawn finch]

Some kind of era boundary for sure

[broken sapphire]

excited for you, and hopeful for you 😊

[stiff stratus]

Oooo, so crunchy me like

[dawn finch]

The inert atmosphere box "suicide valve"

[pale turtle]

I like how the photo features that black line on top, just like all the "in memory of" - photos

[dawn finch]

Free stir bar. Never stop hitting licks

[dawn finch]

Made this weird ourple stuff

[pale turtle]

What is the composition of this?

[dawn finch]

I wish I knew. Got an NMR spectrum - some kind of palladium phosphine complex but no structure yet

It was a <1% impurity I isolated by accident

[pale turtle]

Gotta love those <1% isolated impurities. Well done! May I asked by which method you separated it from the desired sample?

[dawn finch]

Chromatography over silica gel

Red was desired product

[tepid marlin]

beautiful and haunting 🖤

[dawn finch]

Tyvm 🙂 it is a random chord output of an Ellitone Multi-synth

[dawn finch]

Wah pedal on acid synth

Goofy ass

Desperately needs regreasing

[dawn finch]

I hope my mental world becomes as recondite as that of Fomenko

I want to live in the world of people less and less

[dawn finch]

Arpeggiator output into arpeggiator

[dawn finch]

soon to hit 10k papers saved

[pale turtle]

What is your read/unread ratio?

or rather... read/total ratio.

[dawn finch]

1:25?

[pale turtle]

Impressive!

[dawn finch]

Trust the process

[dawn finch]

Current read

Finally a book that is about how big slops have a quality entirely different from small slops

Holy shit this is grid coded

[dawn finch]

https://youtu.be/CYKjZtw068g?si=zSWIF_QAVTuDBxpN

[dawn finch]

Cryo ops

[pale turtle]

Video of tinnitus machine when?

[dawn finch]

Soon coming

[dawn finch]

I've seen things tonight

[pale turtle]

Urbexing? Labexing?

[dawn finch]

Both

[dawn finch]

Horizontal sweep amp on my oscilloscope failed suddenly after about a week of no use. Good night sweet prince...

You're just a glowing dot now

[dawn finch]

Taking matters into my own hands

[fair aurora]

i have no idea what you're doing most of the times

so it looks like a modern mad witch doctor performing "stuff"

very entertaining, good job

[dawn finch]

I live to amuse

[deep helm]

Thanks for the reminder!!

[dawn finch]

Any time cherished friend

[dawn finch]

Cryssle

[pale turtle]

Took me a while to realise that its a number and not tapeworms

[deep helm]

The scarlet formation is really pretty! What do you do with all this stuff usually?

[dawn finch]

These metallocenes are intended as electrocatalysts for a reaction, so they ought to be extremely pure - we don't want to poison the surface of the electrode with a decomposition film or get confused about the origin of catalytic activity down the line

Unfortunately in this sample you can see orange crumbs mixed in with the scarlet blocks. So I must crystallize again

[dawn finch]

I guess there has to be some trust here

If you would like to know more I am always happy to share what I have collected

[wind obsidian]

do this!

[dawn finch]

It helps to be more specific although I could just dump parts of my pdf library

Although idk how that would play with discord policies

[pale turtle]

If I were to stick my finger into that, would it be goo'ey in a good or a bad way?

[dawn finch]

Definitely bad... it would stink also

[pale turtle]

Now, what is it?

[dawn finch]

A sodium phosphaethynolate salt

The growth of recrystallized material on top of precipitated powder was unexpected

[dawn finch]

This is the linear anion OCP-, with a carbon-phosphorus triple bond

[dawn finch]

I dropped the vial sunday nite and it exploded into gloop everywhere fml

Bringing the slop and kimwipes I used to mop the glovebox floor with out of the antechamber, they had a disgusting metallic stench

[dawn finch]

https://xray.chem.tamu.edu/documents/tools/tool.php

[dawn finch]

I replaced 2 transistors on the board. No dice. They were probably fine

Probably roasted something else with the wayward tip of the iron while I was at it

[dawn finch]

Following a crystallization "procedure" ("product was crystallized from alcohol") from 1938. Decided to add water to our nice anhydrous ethanol to more accurately simulate the solvents of the period... worked nicely

[dawn finch]

Just found out this shit is up to 0.15% sodium

[deep helm]

So cool!! Someone formulated that procedure in some lab in 1938, in what seems like a completely different world..and 85+ years later, someone reads about it, tries it out, and hark! it still works..🥲

[dawn finch]

The world before bottled anhydrous ethanol was casually used for recrystallization:)

[fair aurora]

oh...you invented the cum jar....

[dawn finch]

Not my finest hour

[dawn finch]

Finally a paragraph in this book I kind of understood

[dawn finch]

Lost in a fucked up crystal thought loop

WHAT IS SADABS DOING??

[dawn finch]

It's still not pure

[pale turtle]

The forbidden burger patty

[dawn finch]

It might be pure

[dawn finch]

The crystals in question

[pale turtle]

Will we get to see its xray crystallographic visualisation, too?

[dawn finch]

It's an unpublished compound so no, but I can show an interesting impurity pulled from this batch in an earlier crystallization

[dawn finch]

Reflowed the solder on all pins of the cathode ray tube after fruitlessly replacing all components of the horizontal sweep circuit 1 by 1

We are so fucking back

Ngl thought I was going to fry working on the tube with a flashlight in my teeth

[dawn finch]

Drum machine outputs

[pale turtle]

I guess https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CPK_coloring does apply to this... yet, I am still not quite sure what the purple/blueish centre is meant to be

[dawn finch]

It's cobalt

[pale turtle]

N, most likely

Cobalt!

[dawn finch]

Usually darker than N would be

[pale turtle]

Could N even form bonds like that?!

[dawn finch]

No, although there are some really strange polynitrogen species 🙂

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentazenium

[pale turtle]

Thanks!

When it comes to N, I should pester my explosives chem mate. They are all about the N it seems.

[dawn finch]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_O._Christe you know it's serious when the wikipedia introduction includes an epithet

[dawn finch]

Operating at such a high N/C ratio should put instant alarm bells into the mind of any nonspecialist chemist

These compounds are on the brink of metastability

[dawn finch]

Mouthwashing on the shore

[broken sapphire]

the sound of walking into a new cruelty squad level

[dawn finch]

ominous

[dawn finch]

Training extremely hard for a return to grid by watching every Brick Immortar video

I pour one out for every dead sailor of the ocean and the vacuum

[dawn finch]

Every day waiting for the Orb update

Good thing the Orb update is fast

[dawn finch]

it is well out of hand by now...

[dawn finch]

The fx pedal is of course the real game changer for turning this thing from charming noise maker into semirandomized wall of sound

Drums into guitar overdrives become roars and blasts

[dawn finch]

Kept getting distracted in the office by crystallography stuff so I forgot how many caffeine pills I took... ended up at 3 ish. Be responsible kids!

[dawn finch]

The fume hood ventilation broke so I went home but still gacked on the pills!

[pale turtle]

PetardHoister, how often does your inner life in the slop trenches look akin to your favourite cat:

I hope this question isn't too 'direct'

[dawn finch]

The answer is always

Superposition of that cat and this

[dusk sundial]

Average academic experience

[pale turtle]

You two surely must be made of diamond or one of these exotic materials that form under 500 GPa and upwards

Despairium

[dawn finch]

I dissociated so hard in my 2nd year I haven't come back

I think I probably experience an intense emotion about once a year. Everything else is observed as if behind glass being rotated with robotic arms

[pale turtle]

I dearly hope this is hyperbole...

[dawn finch]

It's not that far off. I started taking my life "seriously, but not personally" around then

Connections with other people became different

[pale turtle]

It sounds like Jeff Goldblum in The Fly. But instead of half-human, half-fly, you became half-Marcus Aurelius, half- bipedal Erlenmeyer flask?

[dawn finch]

By intense, I mean to the point where the feeling is in charge rather than being observed

Like crying uncontrollably

[pale turtle]

Well, I haven't had that in a long time either. But I am mainly dead inside.

[dawn finch]

Then we're in a similar boat

[pale turtle]

Not quite. You still do things, I've mostly given up or do things at snail speed at most.

[dawn finch]

Burnout nation...

Rise up...

[dawn finch]

Deployed the big funnels today

[proven cosmos]

https://tenor.com/view/blendtec-blender-will-it-blend-dont-breathe-this-smoke-gif-23488626

[dawn finch]

Put a quarter sized burn on my wrist today with a glass flask heated to 250C

Tattooed by the job...

[dawn finch]

Lost my favorite magnet for 30 minutes and nearly crashed out

It's safe now

[dawn finch]

The burn on my arm is not healing well. We are in the stages where less is replaced and fixed per day than is broken. I watched a misaligned robot nearly kill an NMR yesterday by dropping a sample sideways into the magnet bore and the probe below. Couldn't make it to the halt button from the other side of the room

https://youtu.be/4CLblRKVwow?si=Os-HM6acFa1fSftP

I see myself not dissimilar to the skinless freak on the cover of this album. "Endorphin" is a contraction of "endogenous morphine". The reserve is dry

[dawn finch]

Purity

[dawn finch]

It's not pure

I will sublime it tomorrow

High vacuum leave this base matter behind forever

[dawn finch]

Death or glory

[pale turtle]

y is there a blue ms paint cloud in that... "bottle/cap" (insert proper term below)

[dawn finch]

Obscures a mark

[pale turtle]

The mark of the Beast.

[dawn finch]

It is a cold finger packed with powder dry ice

[dawn finch]

Crawling the zones again

[pale turtle]

Do you use a camera (as in a 'proper one') or your mobile phone to take these pictures?

[dawn finch]

All phone

[pale turtle]

Oh dear, maybe I need to upgrade from my S4 mini. May I ask which model you use? I'm out of touch but given the ambient lighting the quality is impressive. (I'm stuck in the year 2013)

[dawn finch]

Currently an S21 ultra

[pale turtle]

I dearly hope some day you will start an UrbEx photoblog on here.

[dawn finch]

We will see if long term I end up anywhere with interesting tunnels

[dawn finch]

Worked another 12 to 12 day. I am not purifying these compounds

Need a new strategy

Tried every solvent in the box...

At least I could distill this aniline

[dawn finch]

Ain't nobody ready for this piece

[pale turtle]

Is this the burn scar that is visible on your hand in the video?

What are you rotating there, it surely isn't a cow

[dawn finch]

Other arm

[dawn finch]

A swagelok contraption

[dawn finch]

world of scrappers. it's scrap or be scrapped

[dawn finch]

Trickery

[pale turtle]

Care to elaborate? Does the circled "MR solution" imply that the protein NMR lied?

I could just do my homework and read the paper and its erratum!

[dawn finch]

It's a reasonable guess

However I think MR here means a homologous replacement type strategy

https://www.ccp4.ac.uk/schools/DLS-2019/course_material/day5/mr_introduction_isupov.pdf

[dawn finch]

Micro-electron diffraction day

I watched a specialist operate the scope. I could see the beam track across the sample and burn up crystals no more than hundreds of nm across, crusting the grids. And eventually the lattice of points in reciprocal space like stars in the sky

What is disordered to us, who live in macroscopic space, becomes perfection when looked at closely

[dawn finch]

Yall already know what's going down

[dawn finch]

I basically live inside the game Crazy Bus now

https://youtu.be/sC0cvwnG0Ik?si=_028qRhMuss4bV63

[proven cosmos]

i hate that i hear this at least once or twice a year without fail

[dawn finch]

https://youtu.be/V1byf7aHtjg?si=aoNCi1nI3UoO-IaV

[dawn finch]

Pic of me

[dawn finch]

"GOIN TO HELL ANOTHER DAY IN THE DARK"

[dawn finch]

forced to learn a new program

[dawn finch]

Enucleating my eyes tonight to understand the spin boson model

[dawn finch]

waiter why is there an ominous robotic voice in my percs n plucks

[dawn finch]

Serial killer coded drop in today's issue of Organometallics

[dawn finch]

Warning very loud

[broken sapphire]

fuck i plaued it at work just now and it scared the hoes

[dawn finch]

The hoes were scared as soon as this channel was opened

I'm sorry

[dawn finch]

https://www.diamond.ac.uk/dam/jcr:530f52c2-fc5f-41d5-8a3f-8734cadc3eec/s4sas_tutorial_fibre_diffraction_FINAL.pdf

[pale turtle]

Gives off mild Daphne Oram vibes. (or was it a remix? a mashup of Oram's work?)

Merry Christmas, GamerHoister89!

[dawn finch]

I actually wasn't familiar with her work but will look into it. I love musique concrete

[dawn finch]

Merry christmas Claustro! Stay warm on your sojourn (if you're still out and about)

[pale turtle]

Thank you very much. I returned back home [well, it stopped feeling homely here many years ago] three weeks ago. But I need to get going again within the next few weeks, for the sake of my own sanity and health.
With some luck I can dig up a 'remix' of her work. I think most of her opus is hard to listen to, but it's interesting nevertheless.

[dawn finch]

LOUD! Turn ya volume down

[pale turtle]

Petard! Soon, it will be over. Spring will mark the End of Slop World and its trench tales.

[dawn finch]

luckily for slop enjoyers my defense will be in september

[runic orbit]

ooo thats a nice one

[dawn finch]

A shimmer reverb on a dark sound can make any situation eerie

[pale turtle]

Analogous L-systems.

[patent sonnet]

It's more of a W-system in my book

[runic orbit]

finally, pure lean

[pale turtle]

What happened to the trash bin? What horrible fate made it disintegrate like this?

[dawn finch]

Use of position 50 perhaps

Basically everything made of plastic rots out here

[pale turtle]

And when the hourglass has run out, the hourglass of temporality, when the noise of secular life has grown silent and its restless or ineffectual activism has come to an end, when everything around you is still, as it is in eternity, then eternity asks you and every individual in these millions and millions about only one thing: whether you have made it to position 50 or not.

[dawn finch]

My nitrile gloves go crispy on the bench on the timescale of days

[pale turtle]

Isn't this very bad news when it comes to their permeability?

[dawn finch]

Yes, i dont reuse past that pt

[pale turtle]

A naive question, but I shall ask you nevertheless. How do you assess the diffusion safety of your gloves and their materials? That's after all a bit of a science in itself, as I once learned about all the ugly incidents involving mercury compounds

[dawn finch]

I take no special precautions unless working with something extremely hazardous. Nitrile is quite good across the board. I dont work with too many acute toxic agents - mostly pyrophorics

Karen Wetterhahn was using latex gloves which IMO are below the standard for most things

Double glove, silvershield glove in absolute worst case scenario

Thick butyl rubber for GB work

[pale turtle]

Which reminds me of a friend of mine who once jokingly ( ?) remarked, he'd insure my hands for millions of euros and then I could be his assistant, handling his chemicals. He worked in an energetic materials group.

Since workplace accidents are a hobby of yours. During his undergraduate studies he mishandled the disposal of a compound. It was explicitly stated to not mix two compounds when disposing of them. He did mix them. He and his labmate breathed in hydrogen chloride and went into an ICU. But lucky them, it was nothing.

[dawn finch]

sounds like a near miss...

[elfin compass]

Material safety data sheets are your friend

[pale turtle]

I was just thinking about possible shortcomings of references, as chemists tend to synthesise novel agents. I guess their behaviour in polymers used for gloves can be predicted from first principles though. Or maybe not. I just got reminded of a research group that studied catalysts and two PhD (postdocs?) students developped stomach cancer around the same time. Unbeknownst to them they might have ingested something hyper carcinogenic at the time.

[dawn finch]

Novelty is one thing but it is very rare to inadvertently produce a basically new type of hazard with new permeability properties

Basically, everything lies on a continuum between "rock salt" and "grease". Polar bioactive molecules in the middle. Moreover, the larger the molecule the slower it diffuses through polymer

One uses best available protecting gear and practices - if you die with those, I guess you die

[runic orbit]

@dawn finch how goes the adventures in slop world?

[dawn finch]

for your consideration:

[proven cosmos]

yummy

[runic orbit]

what's the purple stuff

[dawn finch]

Tetrahedral Co(II) pyridine complex

[runic orbit]

that was my guess

[dawn finch]

Spoken like one who knows ball

[dawn finch]

no new slops, ancient slop to tide over the time.