Me: I'm going to Barcelona.

People: OMG you gotta go see the Sagrada Família now that they finished it.

Me: I do not.

Pick yourself up by your tootstraps

PBR:

When packing for an international conference be sure to bring your finest stationary

If I accept the invitation, it extends my time in Washington DC by like 5 fucking days. Nobody wants that (edit: to be that close to Shitler). Also it's on the last day, in the afternoon. After everyone has left. GTF outta here.

Invitation to be part of an expert panel at a conference, early in my career: :60fpsparrot:

Invitation to be part of an expert panel at a conference in 2026: :holdthepain:

Hot take: you shouldn't need a PhD-level understanding of statistics and an encyclopedic knowledge of PubMed in order to make informed decisions about medical care that protects you from over-treatment and unintended consequences I'll see myself out

That’s just basic science. Also, you know damn well they’re gonna claim the idea as their own when running analyses to the group and I’ll just sit in the back with the knowing smirk of a woman with 20 years in academia.

I was asked to generate a subset of data from a large global epidemiological study that will be used at a statistical workshop in the near future. They asked that I not indicate which countries were included for data protection. So I changed the county names to regions of Middle Earth and I was quite proud of myself but not one of the 3 old men on the email thread said a word to my prediction that people in the Shire would have fewer digestive problems than people in Mordor.

I know that’s supposed to be an ASCII snake with the gavel but all I see is a snail happily eating the little present next to Gift Article

Rivian really outdid themselves this year with their Halloween update.

Just outright saying to physicians “you should know I’ve reviewed the literature on this” before any appointment starts, as a general policy

In order to test for my black belt in Shotokan in December I had to add a 3rd class and I chose Friday 7:45-9:15 and I’m here to say that this was a poor decision.

Working with a person in the EU who is a royal PITA in that she's trying to micromanage me even though she is in no way my supervisor. For anything. She sends an email stating I never sent 2 documents, which I did in fact send back in August while she was on an extended vacation. So of course I had to bust out midwest passive-aggressive with "I'm reattaching them here in case they got lost while you were in holiday."

Como se dice "Fuck off into the sun" en espanol?

Ope.

Tis the season!

#aurora

This is a screen grab from the Lake Superior Live webcam, I can claim zero credit for this.

Is anyone like @ProPublica or @eff
paying attention to what shady shit EPIC (one of the most widely used electronic health records in the U.S.) is up to?

I was pissed the whole time and wasn't receptive to their assurances during the procedure. Because I wasn't anxious about the machine or looking at the biopsy needle, or the blood that ran down my belly, or that they couldn't stop the bleeding so I'm now wrapped in compression shit for a day. I eventually said I'm not anxious about this, I have Crohn's disease for the last 24 years, medical procedures don't bother me. When they were injecting the numbing solution, they were like "are you okay? do you want to squeeze my hand?" and I said "it doesn't even hurt." I may have told the nurse while I appreciated her reflective statements, it wasn't what I was looking for.

Making friends.

After pushing back on the interventional radiologist's take on the importance of biopsies, I got her to acknowledge that "it's not just come in for a biopsy" and that there definitely can be "fatigue" from the process. To which I shot back "Fatigue? Is that what we're calling it?"

In her defense she was somewhat open to what I was saying about my particular shituation and acknowledged mistakes were made and stated she would incorporate my entire clinical history into her report after it was ignored by multiple people at 2 separate medical centers.

Fuck this whole process.

Whenever I get all the responses back I want to email the group like are y'all just fucking with me rn?

WE MUST HAVE A MEETING!

I'm only available between 2:00 and 2:07 next Wednesday