🎵 Tim Blais 👨🏻‍🔬

KPOP MUSHROOM HUNTERS

i spent two weeks on this so that y'all can learn about AURORA BOREALIS in 49 seconds

Oh Holy Night is my favourite christmas song. Someone accused me of flouting the holiness of the holiday with this one, but i think of it as telegraphing reverence for the unearthly powers of the universe

on the fifth day of Newtonmas.. oh never mind. i reused some old animations in this one see if you can spot em :)

on the first day of Newtonmas my TA sang to me..

@Angry_Amphibian did you tweet-search "newtonmas" just to get mad about it?

@acapellascience Newton was devout. He'd have nothing but contempt for those who tried to replace Christmas with his birthday.

the total streamed hours here is a bit over three years which means that at any given moment there are on average 3 people listening to an a capella science track on spotify

@irl_danB @thephysicsgirl @missmalindakat that's the a capella science guarantee xD thanks!

@acapellascience @thephysicsgirl @missmalindakat spent the first 20 seconds expecting to hate this and then watched the whole rest filled with pure joy masterful, bravo, this is a top 10 internet work

throwback thursday in honour of the impending Wicked release

it's there to point the way to planet 9

@juliet_turner6 @OxfordBiology @NewCollegeOx congrats dr turner, sorry bout the hateful weirdos

🎊 I passed my viva exam! After ~4 years of research, I successfully defended my thesis. You can call me Doctor 😎

no one *else* does but shhh here's a secret it's because i told it to

@skdh i once serenaded her theatrical deathbed

@acapellascience the woman's got courage and goes her own ways, I appreciate that

academic funding explained

"House elves are WHAT?!?!!" said Harry. "Crystalized cosmic power," said Draco a second time. "This is basic, Harry." "But modern wizards don't understand cosmic power, the most powerful form of magic, something that incinerates everything it touches if you conjure even a cubic millimetre of it???!!" "That's only if it's not in crystal form," said Draco. "Crystals are safe. My family has had a house elf for years, it's totally fine." "And house elves don't look like crystals," said Harry. "They just use illusion magic to look like elves. Friendlier-looking." "So the cosmic power, in crystal form, just really wants to serve humans? That's how they work?" asked Harry. "Of course not," said Draco. "The first cosmic power crystals we tried growing just did random stuff. But we figured out that if you grow them in certain environments, they have different effects. Eventually Pinfield the Wise crafted the Elf Room -- it's basically a greenhouse with 786 different items arranged in exactly the right way, and that gets the crystals to grow into a house elf." "Seven hundred ... and ... eight-six?" said Harry weakly. "Yeah, it took a lot of experimenting," said Draco. "You should like that. Experimenting. It's your thing, right?" Harry was having trouble speaking. "We just experimented with the items until they started following instructions," explained Draco. "At first they just kind of did whatever they wanted. But then we changed the items in the room and they got more helpful so we kept tweaking until they always follow instructions. We couldn't get rid of that weird clothes loophole -- not sure why that happens -- but it's fine, doesn't really come up in practice. Anyway they like the whole setup." "They ... *like* this whole setup???" Harry repeated slowly. "Of course," said Draco. "Ask any house elf. Well besides Dobby. But he was a mistake. The next batch they fixed it and no other house elf claims to want freedom anymore." Harry made a strangled gasping noise. "In theory we should be able to make house elves that do pretty much anything," continued Draco. "Cosmic power is really powerful. At first we were super disappointed that the original house elves could barely use magic at all. Those elves were grown in a room with only 164 items. Primitive!" "And the current method has 786 items? That's the maximum?" asked Harry with growing dread. "The elf scaling curve is doubling roughly once every three years," said Draco proudly. "We expect to break 1000 items by Christmas. And the capabilities are looking really promising. Imagine a house elf that can do your Charms homework for you!" "Look," said Harry seriously. "I'm all for harnessing cosmic power. I have been ever since I heard of it. It's the strongest force in the universe. We could use it for so many things. We could end death." "You get it," beamed Draco. "So do you want to join my father's elf lab right away, or--" "But shouldn't we *understand* the spells we're using to summon unlimited cosmic power first?" said Harry quickly. "Not just grow crystals of it haphazardly??" "Be serious, Harry. The crystals work. There are house elves all over Hogwarts. They follow instructions. They're happy to follow instructions. They do all kinds of tasks for us. House elves are the future." "But--" Hermione burst into the room, wearing a t-shirt with the slogan: SERIOUSLY PAUSE ELVES WTF. "Come on, Harry, hurry!" she says. "What is it?" asks Harry. "Ron found out about house elf risk and --" "Oh no, what's he going to do. Please tell me you explained to him that we shouldn't firebomb any crystal fields because --" "No, but almost worse," said Hermione. "He's starting a competing crystal field, to 'do it the right way himself.' He's already raised 17 billion sickles--"

happy aurora day to all who celebrate!

@TierZoo i mean language is messy so this is always going to be a vibe thing. for me there's consistently a moment of whiplash like "oh they have their own streaming service?oh nebula" simon clark's latest video did a fantastic job of avoiding this particular clunk btw

@acapellascience eh idk bro I don't think it's true that the default understanding of that phrase is that nebula is a sole proprietorship. An ad sounding scripted and unnatural is a separate issue.

look i'm gonna say it, the "MY streaming service Nebula" line is weird and always stands out like a sore thumb. "My" is singular. if i own 1% of a company that's not "my" company

@TierZoo lol no worries and yeah i get the idea but i think the way you guys chose to say it impedes understanding. like the truth is a plausible reading of the phrase but not the default reading, you know? so it getting repeated verbatim ends up clocking super hard as a scripted line

@acapellascience oops accidentally ratiod a friend sorry tim