I don’t know whats worse: Scientists naming everything unpronounceable unspellable Latin, naming things after people, or naming things jokes. Just name it what it fucking does in a language someone actually uses jerks.
I joked to a coworker yesterday that they should name new materials they make after stupid pop culture references because the regulations for naming new things in our field are obtuse.
I may have implied that if it worked for biochemists, Sonic the Hedgehog would work for us too. Next time, I’ll suggest we name it something even dumber in Vietnamese or Arabic.
To be honest, love the “Ferrous Wheel” pun. It’s too good.
Can you explain it? I don’t get it.
Ferrous means iron. When they say Ferrous wheel, it means how the iron is stored and used in the biosphere and lithosphere. It is a pun on Ferris Wheel, which is an amusement park ride.
Google Ferris wheel. The London Eye is an example of a Ferris wheel.
There’s a type of bacteria that infects caterpillars and produces a toxin that makes them lose all rigidity. The toxin is called MCF.
MCF stand for Makes Caterpillars Floppy
That’s the best thing I’ve heard all week.
oh man you really don’t want a flaccid caterpillar, total mood killer
Yeah, if the mood called for that wavy, reach-for-the-sky dance that caterpillars do. On the other hand, if the mood called for a thick, rigid caterpillar, throbbing with pent-up intention, you might want to reconsider the parties you attend.
These are hilarious. I NEED MORE!
Same lol
there’s also a protein involved in visual signals in the brain named Pikachurin,
there’s a wasp in austrialia named Aha ha,
(again, chatgpt sourcing… but I did check to make sure they’re real… lols)
there is a species of mushrooms named Spongiforma Squarepantsii.
there is a beetle named Agra vation
a spider named Apopyllus now
apparently, a sea slug Yoda purpurata. (but I don’t see the resemblance.)
and a waterbug named Ytu Brutus,
(compliments to ChatGPT…lol)
Meanwhile psychologists just name things as exactly blandly as they can. There’s a neat phenomenon where a relationship can immediately be viewed as deeper and more connected, merely by one of the individuals sharing deeply personal information. It even works at the very first interaction. In other words, if someone tends to overshare, or blurt out info about themselves, we measure their blirtasiousness and its effect on relationships. Not even kidding. I think the folks who came up with it were Scottish, which is why the blirt rather than blurt.
scientists work their asses off, its nice to have a little fun and make the endless hours all worth it.
C++ is just the next iteration of C. C# is just another layer of iteration on top of C++. Flags are simple indicators for programs, usually set by a controlling human/system, semaphores are flags that communicate between processes.
C++ is just the next iteration of C.
This is somewhat clever when you know that the ‘++’ operator is the post-increment operator in C.
C# is just another layer of iteration on top of C++.
…except there is no ‘#’ operator in C or C++, so any interesting self-referential pattern breaks down here. The ‘#’ comes from musical notation, where a ‘#’ (sharp) note is played a semitone higher — and was chosen more for marketing purposes rather than scientists having an inside joke.
You could have also mentioned ‘D’, which is another “next iteration of C” independent of C++.
The C programming language also descends from the B programming language (though B’s lineage unfortunately goes to BCPL, not A)
pretty sure there’s a D language, and i know there’s R but that’s not super related, obviously.
i’m just waiting for the ø programming language
R is a wonderful programming language in the eyes of people who are bad at programming. And that’s not disparaging it, it’s just used by scientists and engineers more than programmers because nothing makes an anova take less work
R is partly based on S.
The # looks like two “++” stacked on top of one another
Exactly
except there is no ‘#’ operator in C or C++, so any interesting self-referential pattern breaks down here
# is two layers of ++, so the pattern is there. Whether that was originally intended or coincidence is another matter, but it works well enough that I suspect it was considered when picking names.
That feels like a significant reach — and every online reference I was able to find only talks about using ‘#’ in the musical notation sense, hence why the name of the language is pronounced “C-sharp”.
In quantum mechanics, there are types of vectors that are written like |a>, which is called a “ket”, and their dual vectors as <a|, which are called “bra”. You write the scalar product as <a|b>. This is called the Bra-Ket-Notation.
1/4 of a byte, or half of a nibble, is a crumb.
Thanks for giving us your two bits
Ha! 🤓
I’ll just leave this here
TIL that “cocksucker” has a wiktionary entry.
Fun fact (not really) about Nim: he and the other ASL chimps were HORRIBLY abused. Basically every single one of them.
And it was all for nothing, not a single bit of evidence shows that teaching chimps ASL worked and allowed any form of actual communication.
Yes, even Koko.
There is also a good You’re Wrong About podcast episode on this.
Well, communication is definitely shown.
But… “speech”, “language”, “sentient thought”? That’s the subjective bit, imo. Communication is easy.
There’s always NMR scientists. Proton-Enhanced Nuclear Induction Spectroscopy.
Also one paper that was talking about copper nanotubes (NT). So it was shortened to CuNT. I think that paper may have been oblivious to it though?
Maybe they were Australian.
One does not simply walk into Mordor. One has to build a spacecraft because even the eagles can’t fly there.
Meanwhile, in immunology:
“Can we have fun names?”
“NO! Now shut up and keep isolating proteins and cell markers!”
The stupid terminology in immunology made me hate it so much, even though the actual mechanics are fascinating. At some point my brain just reached saturation with all the CD proteins. Enough is enough!!!
Nah, it’s good and helps people remember things. Easier than the arbitrary name of the discoverer
i was going to say that english was a mistake, but you convinced me
english IS a mistake, but not for the puns
