14 Comments

this was quite hilarious.... the wet footprints...nice!

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Thanks — I didn’t even think of the wet footprints as a joke. I just wanted an excuse why no-one was able to follow a sopping wet man running through a building.

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Thank you Mark - I appear to have pissed myself…..again

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Medical science may be able to help.

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I was just barely doing a million titrations in my chemistry lab today…that shower chain is really tempting.

Joking aside, I really appreciate this article. Learning is not for self-aggrandizement, nor to be done out of fear. It is for self-improvement and discovery. This reminded me of that. Thank you!

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I once used a aboratory emergency eyewash station. It worked just fine in terms of washing my eyes. But the drain wasn't hooked up to anything, so I had to wash my eyes, stop, wash the floor, and wash, rinse, repeat, until I just sort of felt done with all of it.

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Ow wow! So someone *does* use these in real life!

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I really enjoyed your story and the humor of its framing.

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Warm machine obviously radioactive and the poor dweeb is going to be dead in 48 hours. Subtly understated ironic ending but obvious enough to any alert reader. Incidentally a good maths person can do a 3hr exam in 30 mins so perfectly plausible. Great story!

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That’s an accusation of a severe health and safety violation!

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That post-doc sounds a lot like flat-earthers.

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Everyone has it in them!

(I started writing a comment on your notes on the ending of Ship of Fools. I'm afraid it's getting a bit long...)

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Liked! What was the warm machinery…..it was like introducing a gun in a crime story, eventually it’s important. I was a fool, easily led.

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It wasn’t meant to be a decoy, but I’m happy to say otherwise in retrospect. I’ve no idea what that machine was — I’m a theorist, I don’t waste my time learning the names of pieces of lab junk!

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