El :)

El :)

@blimby.bsky.social

lesbian husband to @katieaki.bsky.social | they/them | 29 | rva -> roc | what hurts you hurts me! 🏳️‍⚧️❤️‍🔥

513 followers247 following1K posts

something that has been genuinely hard and not just annoying about my new work being ai-happy is that I can’t discuss what I’m working on with the assumption that it will be considered a legitimate use of time. 50% of the time I get hit with “why don’t you just make claude do that?”

writing alt text for figures in my paper (as required by journal)? “claude can do that”. formatting my paper for journal? also claude. cover letter? fucking claude. formatting files for analysis, claude. doing math? claude once more. lit review? you are never gonna believe this…. claude

I think the only things left that folks in the lab perceive as a legitimate use of the ol brain is like… an imaginary sort of raw brainstorming they’re theoretically doing and first draft writing.

I’m having dreams of buying a decent keyboard (something with weighted keys etc) so I can play piano again, but these fb marketplace sellers are NOT helping

like…. your $400 keyboard that was $400 when you bought it a few years back is not still worth $400 in 2026

uh oh…. I am learning right now that toilet paper can go multiple ways…….

Katie Aki ✶@katieaki.bsky.social

my beloved butch husband doesn’t even know that we’re fighting a silent war over which way the toilet paper goes & that I’m RIGHT & winning

I think I am the only person in my new lab who does not use an LLM as part of their daily workflow, which is uh, just great. upshot is that I feel like the ubiquity of using ai to reduce friction and effort in my field has me feeling unusually motivated to do hard things (math, writing) by hand

new landlord is letting us put our UBoxes in the driveway for a few days, saving us $50/day (!!!!) in permit fees from the city of Rochester to have them on the street

wish I would have tweeted abt it at the time, but while I was at my conference over the summer (in cleveland) I was “”Cleveland Sober”” which is when things are so dire you have not only no booze but also no ice, no diet coke, and no brita filter, so you just drink lukewarm tap water

we’ve been getting playfully close to Cleveland Sober ever since moving bc we’re living out of this Airbnb. just enjoying Rochester’s finest tap water and the amount of ice that two ice cube trays can make

they should do a behind the bastards on James Fitzjames. or any polar explorer who is a bastard. which I gotta assume is most of em

my life made so much more sense when I realized my mom had me in the role of "husband-eldest daughter" long before I was trans.

Katie Aki ✶@katieaki.bsky.social

lol today El said goodbye to their old-ass beloved grandpa & when I went to rub their back consolingly, their mom pushed my hand away to put her arm around them instead

our ubox facility keeps bringing our boxes out naked, without their little orange cover they are supposed to have which makes them waterproof. and it keeps raining super big!! I am stressin

boohoo cried because I had to rehome the worms with my mom 😭 she was laughing at me but IM NOT!!!

Katie Aki ✶@katieaki.bsky.social

El is out there in the Real Feel 7 degree weather, digging through the compost for worms to rescue, beaming because they found some…. they literally have the kindest heart of any person on earth…….

El :) reposted

Replying to @katieaki.bsky.social

“kind of chic to–“ I do not aspire to be Parisian or to fuck a Kennedy. I want to be a recurring side character in Pee-wee’s Playhouse

finally some actionable mental health advice that might actually help

The Onion@theonion.com

Mental Health Experts Advise Struggling Americans To Try Crying About It Like Little Baby https://theonion.com/mental-health-experts-advise-struggling-americans-to-try-crying-about-it-like-little-baby/

made this plot from my job spreadsheet (as a treat). I put in 46 total job applications to yield one job offer, which I signed today!

I think this might seem like a fairly low number to folks outside science, but many of these required some or all from the mix of: cv, cover letter, research statement, teaching statement, personal statement, short proposal about how my work matches the prospective mentor, diversity statement, etc.

entering a beautiful and blessed phase of my life where I have signed the job offer and but not yet started the job…. cheers!

this is me and Katie (I’m obviously the husband)

Butt Praxis@buttpraxis.bsky.social

Still reeling from going to the zoo this weekend and seeing an orangutan, which is basically a person, just sitting there in a hammock. I was tearing up imagining being a sentient creature in a captivity, then looked at my husband, who sighed a troubled sigh and murmured, “I wish I were in a zoo”

El :) reposted

this year & all future years should be the time where we start putting in the effort to reading the works of small creators and talk about them to all our friends and also strangers. most of the recs for work i love ive gotten from people who know me and my tastes really well, not a trending ig reel

Roo 🔞 at NEKOCON@frictionpress.bsky.social

hate to be a realist on main but jesus christ, scoob i can't stress enough, the best way to help an indie artist is to REC THE WORK. i have literally never in my life gotten a new subscriber by saying "i'm too poor to live" but i DO get new readers when someone excitedly reviews my books

I’ve been doing some reading in the scientific literature about the parasite and from 1995-2019 95% of outbreaks were from: basil, raspberries, cilantro, lettuce, salad mix, and sugar snap peas. 🫛 🚫

Katie Aki ✶@katieaki.bsky.social

bro we CANT get the diarrhea parasite, we live in a one bathroom studio!!!!!!!