once i was presenting research at a conference where everyone who received money from a specific grant had to go to basically be like “and here’s what we’re doing with your money.”
and there was a team there presenting on astrophysics and I truly barely understood a thing they said. my team was there to talk about salamander eDNA, and the juxtaposition between Space Math and swabbing salamanders with cotton-tips just struck me as deeply funny.
Later some of the Space people came by and asked us all about the salamanders and one of them said, “I can’t imagine working with animals and water. It’s all so messy. I don’t know how you stay sane with those variables?”
And I was like, “dude I didn’t even know the math you talked about today even existed.”
And we were both just like 🤝 “love your work. huge fan. I’d rather die than do it though.”