Where thoughts get blurry: the people, moments, and timelines that stick to me — the things I love, hate, miss, fear, or can’t stop replaying at 2 AM 🌙🖤⏳
Below: the full collection of thoughts I didn’t delete (yet) 👇
“How Are You?” Is the Most Successful Lie Humanity Ever Invented
“How are you?” “Good! You?” “Good.” A masterpiece. Two people have successfully exchanged absolutely no information.👀 We say “How are you?” with the same emotional investment that a microwave has while beeping. It isn’t a question anymore. It’s a verbal CAPTCHA proving you’re socially functional. If you actually answered honestly,…
Keep readingWhy the Next Pandemic Is Probably a Disease You’ve Never Heard Of
During my PhD, I spent years studying Ehrlichia japonica, a tick-borne bacterial pathogen that most people—including many physicians—have never heard of.😝 Whenever I explained my research to friends and family, the conversation sometimes followed this same script: 👀“How many people get infected?” “Not many.” 👀“Is it a major public health…
Keep readingUnfortunately, the Chatbot Has Better Communication Skills Than Most Men
Originally, I was just using ChatGPT the way people use Google at 1 AM when they suddenly need answers that absolutely cannot wait until morning. Things like:“Why does my orchid look like it has given up?”or“What restaurant in Cambridge has food that won’t destroy my calorie deficit?”or“Can you make this…
Keep readingBreaking the Curse We Were Taught to Call Love
I didn’t expect this book to matter to me. When I first heard about “It Ends with Us” by Colleen Hoover, I filed it away in my mind as just another romance novel. The kind that lives on bookstore tables with pastel covers and promises of love that somehow conquers…
Keep readingAcademia Loves Mothers. Just Not Enough to Keep Them
Okay, so, I recently read Parenthood and the Career Ladder: Evidence from Academia, a “fun” discussion paper, and I did not finish it feeling inspired, or impressed, or academically energized. I finished it feeling tired. 😮💨 Just tired in that quiet way you get when something confirms a truth you were…
Keep readingA Wedding, a Curse, and the Problem With Soul Mates
I finally finished ‘Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen’ after watching it one episode a day at breakfast, which turned out to be exactly the right pace for a show like this. Not because it is slow, but because it lingers. Each episode ends, but it does not really…
Keep readingHow Bureaucracy Kills Discovery Without Leaving Bloodstains
People love to talk about “supporting science.” Institutions say it with glowing pride, governments print it into mission statements, universities put it on banners, and administrators repeat it as if the phrase itself can cure disease. But after enough years around research, I have come to suspect that a lot…
Keep readingLiving in Fragments: My Review of ‘The Time Traveler’s Wife’
Some books are easy to finish and put down. You close them, think that was good, and move on. ‘The Time Traveler’s Wife’ was not like that for me. I finished it and just felt heavy. It did not feel like I had simply read a story. It felt like…
Keep readingThe Science, Hope, and Heartbreak of Cloning Dogs and Cats
For a long time, I have been fascinated by the idea of cloning dogs and cats. Not in a casual, “oh that’s interesting” kind of way, but in the very specific way people become fascinated with things that touch both science and grief. It has always felt like one of…
Keep readingNIH Funding for the Academically Traumatized
There are moments in life (like right now 😂) when I stop, look around, and think: wait. I’m not even in academia anymore. Why am I voluntarily sitting here writing about NIH funding mechanisms, grant codes, fellowship categories, and the bureaucratic alphabet soup that once haunted my dreams? 😵💫 And…
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