Not every scientist is above average

My invitation to FTB caught me at a busy time. Last week, I was at the APS March Meeting, which is the largest physics conference in the world of the year. There were about 10,000 attendees, and about 50 simultaneous sessions throughout the week, with no lunch breaks.

Of course, I manage to find break time anyway. Quite frequently, it seems that there is not one single session going on that would be of interest to me. I just wouldn’t understand them.

In previous years, I used to find this very depressing. On my conference app, I’d bookmark all the sessions on superconductivity, which is my area of study. Then I’d sit in on a session, and find that I understood not a single talk, not even a little. And every 12 minutes there would be another talk, and another, and another, for hours. Then I’d try going to a different room focused on superconductivity, and the same thing would happen again.

It’s no wonder that impostor syndrome is so common among physicists.
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I was not joking about the copy/paste

Now that I have a bit more spare time, I added a few things to the sidebar. My comment policy is basically ad hoc until I get used to FTB commenters. And my asexuality 101 page is copied over from my previous blog. It’s short.

I used to give workshops on asexuality about five years ago, and back then the audience knew basically zero. If you have basic questions about asexuality, I can answer them no problem. But in general, I expect more from my readers here. Occasionally I’ll crosspost articles to The Asexual Agenda, and those are explicitly written at a higher level for ace readers, so get used to it. That is all.

Explaining atheism for aces

Since I’m best known for being an ace blogger, perhaps a few of you expect me to explain asexuality, preferably in an easily digestible blog post, preferably in listicle format. Pffff, wait your turn. Have you considered that I have ace readers, and the ace readers want to hear me vulgarize atheism instead?

What is atheism?

Atheism is defined as the lack of belief in gods. This definition, of course, is a political fiction.
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Welcome from a soup can

It’s said that labels are for soup cans. Never having known an aphorism to be false, I have concluded that I am a soup can.

Physicist – I am a grad student. I do experiments on superconductors. They pay me money. I can answer physics questions for free though.

Blogger – I started blogging in 2007 at Skeptic’s Play. In 2015, I moved to wordpress, changing the title to A Trivial Knot. And now I’ve moved to FTB. Independently from this, I run the group blog The Asexual Agenda, launched in 2012.

Ace – Here’s a brief primer! An asexual is someone who experiences little or no sexual attraction. A gray-A (aka grey-A, gray-ace, grey-sexual, graysexual, grey-asexual, grace) is somewhere between asexual and not. A demisexual might only experience sexual attraction to someone if they have a close emotional bond. “Ace” is often used as an umbrella, including asexuals, gray-aces and demisexuals. I’m gray-A.

Oddly, of the three labels I’ve presented so far, “ace” is the one that is derided as a phase and a lifestyle choice.

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