Brandon Hacha

@brandonhacha.bsky.social

429

Posts

(HACK-uh)

Ph.D. Candidate at UW-Madison

I’m essentially a physicist with the fun and charisma of a chemist. And an ego obviously of a physicist.

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There’s some competition, but I think dubstep is the worst thing England has unleashed on the world

… nothing about this strikes me as particularly awful There’s not much of a good reason to answer a call from the president about your s.o.’s very recent death that he had nothing to do with And, Trump was the target and survived. It feels a bit early to call the widow of the man who didn’t

This whole excerpt tells you multitudes about our current political moment.

Imagine Lot stopping at the gift shop on his way out of Sodom to get a Salt Wife sticker

One of the first emails I got after the debate was from the Sanders campaign saying “don’t forget, here’s all the bad things Trump did. And here’s all the good things Biden did, and he’ll do even better things if we pass good legislation for him”

What a twist of fortunes that Bernie gives one of the strongest affirmative defenses of Biden while the centrists try to shiv him

Good lord. What kind of evidence?? Historical evidence like winning in 2020 or futuristic evidence like winning in 2024 (his plan)

If you’re sharing a news story from a year ago without explicitly mentioning it, I’m going to assume you didn’t notice and that’s kinda embarrassing

My research is going very poorly, but I got a LinkedIn request from a grad student somewhere for some help with simulations and it helps make me feel much more competent

Just today I said daydline 3x in succession while trying to say either “date” or “deadline”

what are we doing here? he accidentally said million instead of billion and then immediately knew it and corrected himself. he didn’t “flub a line” and then “make an effort to correct himself,” he did the speaking equivalent of a typo that you know you’ve made and instantly correct

Bernie Sanders’s campaign messaging has been unabashedly pro-Biden lately and it’s kinda nice to see that now they’ll toe the line when it matters.

Sometimes when I refresh my Apple Mail app it will bring me back to a random day from months ago and I have to refresh again to get to the present. I’m not sure if this is a global thing or something specific to people with 30,000 unread emails

It’s probably not a great system where the Wisconsin Supreme Court can completely do a 180-degree change from a decision 2 years ago, but a win’s a win

The Hunt for Red October is genuinely such a fantastic movie. One of the few I can happily rewatch

I just bought 36 cans of beer on the 4th of July without being carded. I’m officially old.

Once you have basically any formal knowledge of a field at the college level or beyond, you can probably accurately say you know more than 99% of people in the world about said field. That’s kinda wild.

In spite of my posting, I consider myself an abnormally anger-proof dude. But listening to corporate people describe their fake jobs nearly makes me explode. Promoting synergy and maximizing return on investments??? Get a real job!

I’m 100% serious that they could do a Weekend at Bernie’s thing with Joe Biden and I wouldn’t give a shit. I’d be a little annoyed about the lying, but I’d vote for a steaming bag of dog shit if it had this administration’s domestic policy track record.

Someone stop me from buying cheap (crappy) optics for home use from AliExpress

Ok maybe I’m overthinking it, but is there a name for the configuration you get if you take the emission pinhole out of a confocal fluorescence microscope? I call it something like “focused excitation” but I feel like there should be a technical word for it

Cathedral by CS&N slaps so hard

It’s extremely frustrating that I have to pay $300 to my employer for the courtesy of working this summer, but it’s downright enraging that I have to pay an extra $100 late fee for not doing so on Monday. Maybe I’ll just try to feel better about this with a slew of public records requests

It increasingly feels like we’re only 5-10 years away from the US Preventive Services Task Force requiring insurers to cover semaglutide for a large portion of people

Anecdotes from patients & small studies from academic researchers suggest obesity drugs like Wegovy & Zepbound could treat addiction. But it'll take ages to prove if pharma doesn't step up. My latest (gift link!):

Ozempic’s Addiction-Fighting Potential Is Being Ignoredwww.bloomberg.com Several small studies suggest semaglutide can curb cravings for drugs and alcohol. But pharma can make more money elsewhere.

When I don’t know how to pronounce a term named after someone, I just alternate pronunciations each time I say it. Kerr lensing -> kur lensing + care lensing

The Carolina Hurricanes hired a new GM, so it’s time to update your “what can you do with a chemistry degree” slide for first-years: - chancellor of Germany - Pope - NHL General Manager (NEW!) h/t @chemjobber.bsky.social on twitter

one early episode of House of The Dragon features a pug (dog) and it raises important questions about the history of dog breeding and domestication in Westeros.

Today has had 2 weirdly unrelated manhole cover incidents (not a double entendre). First my bus took an unscheduled detour because a construction explosion blew manhole covers up downtown, and just now I rolled a flash-flood-displaced cover back into place.

My advisor is having our physics postdoc audit an intro organic chemistry class and I love it. Something something central science

Sometimes I feel like the bus drivers are nicer to me than to some of the other passengers. It means either a.) I’m a narcissist and imagining things or b.) they recognize and respect my efficiency-focused attitude towards using public transit

The university is hiring students to work the A/V for the D1 sporting events and it sounds like such a neat job if I wasn’t so far into my Ph.D.

Gonna buy a vape so I can trace out the optimal fan placement in my apartment for maximum air exchange

My AC is broken and it’s 90 degrees outside, so my solution is to sit at my computer in the office instead of sitting at my computer at home. It’s only “working late” if I’m actually working.