1 files changed, 89 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/docs/shitpost/if_academia_worked_like_music.md b/docs/shitpost/if_academia_worked_like_music.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..506903f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/docs/shitpost/if_academia_worked_like_music.md
@@ -0,0 +1,89 @@
+# If Academia Worked Like Music
+
+2024-07-06
+
+You are an associate professor at the Fakeland University of Common
+Knowledge (FUCK). After years of hard work with your best friends Ethan
+and Albert (they go by Et and Al), you have 12 manuscripts you call
+"demos".
+
+You rent a lab space, larger and more professional than the one in your
+basement. The staff help you with cameras and stuff.
+
+After a two-week-long lab session, you take everything to your producer
+Oliver Leaf, who has every tool imaginable for LaTeX typesetting. He has
+the ability to get Nature to accept a CVS receipt.
+
+Over the duration of three months you sit together with Et, Al and Oliver
+to discuss what looks best in print. Sometimes it feels like torture. You
+commission artist Tik Zeichner to create a striking book cover.
+
+At the printing press, the .tex files are compiled to .pdf, printed out,
+and bound into a hardcover. You and your friends each take a copy and
+shoot some promotional photos.
+
+For the paper videos, you and Et Al do experiments in the most random
+places: on a frozen lake, in bed, on top of a skyscraper, etc. Contrary to
+what the video shows, the blowtorch doesn't actually melt quartz glass. At
+the end you smash a few Erlenmeyer flasks in slomo just cause you can.
+
+The opening paper is released along with its paper video. It's a smash hit
+(pun intended), although you had to cut the discussion entirely for the
+radio mix. One month later, you drop a more opinionated paper. It sparks
+controversy among your fanbase, which is needed for hype.
+
+The marketing team is working hard to plaster every billboard in every
+city with your abstract. Soon it becomes impossible to end a conversation
+without mentioning your name.
+
+On the day the book drops, you announce a world tour, which would be quite
+accurate if North America and Europe were the only two continents. But
+hey, Mexico technically counts as "Latin America" right?
+
+You show up at a surprise book signing party at a parking lot, before the
+police show up and cancel it. Your 20,000 fans are disappointed and soon
+riot. You narrowly escape.
+
+After a dozen interviews and promotional photoshoots, you read on the news
+that your book is "generally favorable". It's only been ten days but
+there's at least a hundred videos reproducing your reactions (called
+"reaction videos"), or cover a part thereof ("covers"). Most are cringe.
+
+Like everything else, ticket prices skyrocketed over the pandemic.
+A general admission ticket that used to cost 50 now costs 187. Your fans
+are complaining how TicketPastor® monopolizes live research.
+
+Opening for you on the tour are undergrads who work in the lab next door.
+But they specialize in wireless communication, a topic you doubt your
+audience is interested in. Their antenna had grounding issues and there
+was a constant hum.
+
+The crew help the undergrads clean up their workbench and leave. Then you
+enter the stage. Thunderous cheering. Et and Al walk on stage. More
+cheering. Neon signs that read "Your Research Saved My Life". You know
+that isn't true; they saved themselves.
+
+Your setlist opens with the opening chapter in the book, which segues into
+chapter 2. You then perform experiments from your previous books. The
+sixth paper requires a pot of beewax, so you move through the crowd to the
+Bee stage. The crowd cheers as you pass, trying to touch you without
+consent.
+
+The crew shove a portable table into the mosh pit for them to hold up. Al
+leaps off and surfs to the table, where he dilutes stock solutions into
+0.001M phosphate buffered saline. At the end, he throws one empty test
+tube into the pit. That's gotta sell for a hundred bucks on ebay.
+
+The show is over and you are exhausted. Some diehard fans, who you recall
+seeing just the night before, have waited two hours at the crew exit.
+Sure, instagram, tiktok, whatever. You crawl back into your touring van
+and basically just sleep there.
+
+Eleven months later, just as the tour is over, the RIAA (Research Industry
+Association of Anywhere) informs you that your book has been certified
+gold, which means it has sold 500k copies, where 150 library checkouts
+counts as one copy. It would have been way sooner if there wasn't so many
+Sci-Hubbers out there, but then you remember Sci-Hub saving your ass as an
+undergrad, so you can't really blame them.
+
+Time for more manuscripts.