SCIENCE AND MATERIALS

Ice-9 and the Nonsensical X Post

How worlds of knowledge open from a little blurb

Dall-e image with from prompt “create an image representing ice-9, a fictional material mentioned in Vonnegut’s novel Cat’s cradle”

It started with my normal doomscrolling. Trump this, Biden that, Ukraine the other, Gaza also. And this is after I tried to curate my X feed with STEM and triathlon subjects, but alas, my connection to crypto brings in a lot of doom.

But something slid in.

Tweet from X.com

I’m pretty versed in science and technology but as I read the comments, I realized that for the first time in a while, I had no idea what anyone was talking about. Polymorphs? Sophons? Ice-9? How does Damascus steel fit in? The entire post and comments read like a completely different language to me, utter nonsense.

Obviously my brain turned on the “Only focus on this!” switch, which makes it so that I am unable to do anything else until this was understood.

Science and Fiction

The real issue here is that I am a programmer and mechanical engineer with experience with electrochemistry, EUV lithography, and biology, but I am not a chemist.