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To be clear: you like money, but you will not earn money.
Poor and middle-income people earn money. Rich people just take it from the people who earn it.
Passive Income has been outpacing earned income for decades. The best job to have is a giant pile of money in a stock account. You barely even have to trade it. Blue Chip stocks are generating double digit returns. All off other people’s labor.
30 years ago when I started heading down the computer science path, nothing about it seemed evil.
I’ve had this thought for a while and I definitely agree that a lot of software I’ve built is a net negative to society as a whole and the only reason why I get paid as well as I do is because I’m helping rich assholes suck value out of society more efficiently.
For instance, I’ve worked on CMSs that automated 90% of the processes for medium-large insurance companies. Sure, it may result in a marginal price reduction for insureds (lol), but it almost certainly has led to fewer staff being hired to the benefit of the overlords. If more and more middle-class white-collar jobs gets replaced by software, that helps put downward pressure on wages. At the end of it all, are the marginally lower prices worth it to society, when everyone has a lower wage or no well paying job forcing them to participate in the gig economy and such?
It’s a depressing thought, and I’ve been trying to break into research engineering roles or something of the sort to get away from my current role but it’s been an uphill task.
In a sane world, automating away tedious work would be an unqualified good. Too bad we live in a capitalist clown world where rich assholes are able to capture 120% of the benefits of automation, leaving regular people to make up the difference.
Computer science is no more evil than most of the industries on the chart; they all offer ethical jobs as well, they just tend not to pay as well as the evil ones
I feel like I mostly got away with it without being evil thus far. I ended up working for a foundation and the team I’m in builds internet access (and layer 2 transport) for institutions of higher education. But maybe network engineering isn’t really the typical outcome, most of my friends became developers.
“Frickin’ beautiful.”
accurate, and for the record, EPA, you can take my DCM wash bottle out of my DEAD DEGREASED HANDS
Like, so what if we store our tBuLi with other low-flash point flammables? And pyrophoric oxidizers? In the same bin? That’s stuck in a block of ice in the 30-year-old freezer because it hasn’t ever been de-iced?
What if the power goes out for a long period of time and the tBuLi goes for a swim? Or we say you have to de-ice the freezer?
Haha sounds crazy. And, I wouldn’t have to do the shitty quench before disposal. Or work on that project anymore.
Because you’re injured or because PI fires you?
Haha, yeah :)
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:)
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Oh, while you’re here, does this still smell like DCM? I can’t tell if I rotavapped it all off and the NMR tubes all need aqua regia (sorry my b).
Aqua regia isn’t even that scary. Try pipetting pure bromine while it shoots itself out from constantly evaporating
Aqua regia ain’t no piranha, and also ain’t the most concerning thing in my post lol.
Ah bromime. Super dense, low MW, and low bp, all making dosing accurate amounts a heroic feat. If you store your bromine cold, you can precool the pipette by sucking up and spitting out a few times before transfering, which helps cut down the vapor.
Like, so what if we store our tBuLi with other low-flash point flammables? And pyrophoric oxidizers? In the same bin? That’s stuck in a block of ice because in the 30-year-old freezer because it hasn’t ever been de-iced?
That’s just bad management and you shouldn’t store tBuLi that long anyway because it’ll decompose. You shouldn’t put it in freezer either
Oh, while you’re here, does this still smell like DCM? I can’t tell if I rotavapped it all off and the NMR tubes all need aqua regia (sorry my b).
just put it on high vacuum
What are you working with that requires aqua regia to clean NMR tubes? I’ve only had to use piranha once in a decade, while cleaning things that acetone, DCM, and basic ethanol won’t touch, and this was just after moving to another lab
That’s just bad management / just put it on high vacuum
Yes. The whole thing is satirizing the “Safety -> Against” bit. Each piece, though exaggerated for effect, has a basis in something I’ve seen over the years.
Regarding NMR tubes though, the answer in my old group was precious metal complexes, which have a tendency to mirror out once they’ve done their bit. Or just existed for too long; a lot of them were touchy. The mirror tends to resist solvents and scrubbing. Nitric acid alone sometimes was enough to remove it depending on the metal, but often not. At some point the cost, effort, and danger are all supposed to outweigh just binning the lot and buying new tubes, but my PI was allergic to buying new things.
Look, I’m all for green chemistry, and I’ll switch to using safer, more environmentally friendly reagents and solvents the second they are close to the efficacy of the real deal.
Until then, leave my acetone and heavy-metal catalysts alone!
Acetone is rather green (7 in GSK solvent guide), but I for one haven’t used heavy metal catalysts in a year, and more if you don’t count palladium
Depends what is meant by green. Acetone is decent for health and safety (flammability notwithstanding) but is produced from petrochemicals and tied to the production of phenol (petroleum -> benzene and propane (or natural gas -> propane), propane -> propylene, benzene + propylene -> cumene, cumene + O2 -> phenol + acetone). Not much chlorophyll involved. Also has somewhere between a moderate to obscene CO2 burden depending on how you draw that box in and around the oil industry, but so do most commodity chemicals.
I for one haven’t used heavy metal catalysts in a year
Maybe not directly, but a lot of commodity chemicals rely on some truly vile metal mixtures for catalysis :)
Almost all of solvents are made from petrochemicals, so it’s a distinction without difference. Few exceptions (bioethanol, MeTHF, DMSO maybe) also require obscene amounts of energy to prepare
What makes acetone tick as a solvent is the fact that most of phenol is used up immediately for bisphenol A, and this leaves 1eq of acetone from cumene process unused (or cyclohexanone, and this leaves all acetone unused). In some way, acetone is a waste product and that’s why PMMA or isophorone diamine is a thing
Just it’s low toxicity, the fact it’s non-chlorinated and sane boiling point makes acetone a pretty green solvent by comparison
After indirect
Do you want to feel like you are in a secret society? Yes -> actuarial sciences
There could be one more to differentiate engineers from architects. Do you like to solve problems (engineer) or create them (architect)? Fun flowchart!
That is literally the path I took to become an Env. Scientist
Same for computer science
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Geologists all end up pulling oil out of the ground.
Not this one. Environmental scientists end up cleaning up after them.
You know it’s a complete and proper list because it excludes that pseudo-science Geology.
Geology is just a specialized field of chemistry. Biology too for that matter.
Well and chemistry is just applied electron physics
Exactly!
