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we love those power laws
(mander.xyz)
A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.
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This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.
This is the real reason I follow the Primitive Technology channel. One of these days he's going to make an arc welder out of mud and bugs.
I follow him too. People joke about him being a short way away from computers, but I think it's a testament to just how far we've come as a species. Because even with the benefit of modern knowledge on the chemistry of the process, he's kinda still stuck on figuring out how to scale out his iron production.
It also shows just how labor-intensive everything is without modern machinery, when it takes him several days of effort, from gathering and processing the raw materials, to making charcoal, building the kiln, and finally smelting the ore just to get a handful of pellets of pig iron.
Jokes aside, you're right. Progress is never easy, fast, or guaranteed and we truly are standing on the shoulders of many, many non-giants and there is still so much work to do. It's humbling and awesome to contemplate.