I Have Attempted Science

The modern researcher's digital habitat in its natural state. What parents say about their "fine" children is exactly what scientists say about their "organized" research process. Those 53 open browser tabs aren't a problem—they're a carefully curated collection of scholarly desperation. PubMed tabs for papers you'll "definitely read later," SciHub for when your institution doesn't have access (purely hypothetical, of course), and Wikipedia because sometimes you need to remember what a mitochondrion actually does at 3 AM. The browser isn't crashing—it's just experiencing thermal equilibrium with your research career.

Physics YouTubers are the new rockstars for nerds who'd rather calculate the trajectory of groupies than actually talk to them. This grad student is out here solving nuclear physics while the rest of us can't even solve our relationship problems. Notice how his videos include "Finally Writing The Paper" and "I've Been Stuck On This Problem For..." – the universal academic cry for help disguised as content. Theoretical physics: where you spend years deriving equations just to get 25K views and your mom asking when you'll get a real job.

The rarest mental illness in modern society: believing that evidence actually matters in an argument. Ever tried showing a flat-earther a photo from space? Or explaining climate change to your uncle at Thanksgiving? Facts bounce off some people's brains like quantum particles hitting an impenetrable field of confirmation bias. The true scientific method involves collecting data, analyzing results, and then watching helplessly as someone dismisses your peer-reviewed research because "they did their own research" (i.e., watched a YouTube video at 2 AM). The real experiment is seeing how many times you can bang your head against this particular wall before you develop an actual mental condition.

The brutal reality of lab work, folks! Textbooks make it sound so easy with their "theoretical yield 74%" nonsense. Meanwhile, you're on your fourth attempt at the same experiment, staring at your pathetic 0.3% yield like Patrick Star himself—exhausted, defeated, and ready to accept whatever microscopic product you can scrape together. The chemistry gods have spoken, and they've decided you're getting just enough product to confirm it actually happened, but not enough to do anything useful with it. Congratulations on your "technically successful" experiment!

The quantum physics struggle is real! Working with photonic qubits is like trying to carefully pour an exact number of photons while the vacuum fluctuations keep yanking at your arm. In quantum optics, the vacuum isn't empty—it's a chaotic sea of virtual particles popping in and out of existence, messing with your perfectly prepared quantum states. Those squeezed coherent states require such precise control that even the zero-point energy of empty space says "nope, I choose violence today." Every quantum optics researcher knows that feeling when your carefully engineered photon source gets trolled by the fundamental uncertainty principle itself.

Behold, the "breakthrough" drug that looks like someone let a toddler loose with the periodic table. This monstrosity contains everything from gold to xenon because apparently cancer cells will be too confused to replicate when hit with this chemical chaos. Side effects include: your pharmacist having an existential crisis, your insurance company laughing hysterically at your claim, and the possibility that it might actually turn you into a superhero. Pharma companies be like: "This will cost $50,000 per dose and we named it Complexiva™."