im having a good run since I havent died early, but I’m like 1 billionth on the ladder so doing relatively poorly.

when I was young (but still way past the prime time of IRC, 2000’s), I was invited to a few IRC servers for raids and etc. I didnt realize other kids werent doing the same…

The truth of academia is that it is extremely slow. there are less than 20 minds total on all of earth working on this idea, separately, in different countries. And these 20 people are in their 20’s, severely underpaid, don’t necessarily have all the resources they want, and science may not be their #1 life priority.

anyways:

reading and writing DNA is the main driver of evolution, and it does so because it is error prone (causing mutations). You can imagine this is bad if you want to preserve the integrity of the data.

DNA storage would be okay if you were to… say archive the entire internet for future generations, or geneology records, etc. things that do not need to be written and accessed quickly or often.

most scientists are great at speaking. Your research is only as good as how effectively you communicate it. You don’t have to be a TED talk speaker, but generally most scientists can put together a logical story on what they’re doing, why they’re doing it, and why you should care. (That’s how we get funding, but convincing people that it’s important).

i disaseemble all my laptops so they are just a motherboard, screw them into sheets of MDF, place vertically, and use them as servers.

NAS, pihole, plex, etc