New year, new year’s post! Per usual: the year end rap up, what I’ve been up to, and my birthday post. Plus celebrating my 4 year blog-iversery!

Hiphop

2022 was a dope year for hiphop. I hate putting albums in a particular order so I’ll get right to it. King’s Disease 3 by Nas was insane, before you consider the fact that he put out Magic on Christmas eve back in 2021. He’s been on a run since the start of the KD series really. Too many quotables on the album (I’ll mention a few in the next post) but I have to give Nas props for being candid about texting Hov on Thun. The Blueprint is my favorite Jay-Z album and Takeover is a top 5 track in no small part to the wisdom he drops with such caustic irreverence.

Kendrick’s highly anticipated Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers came out. I’ll admit that it took me a minute to digest, but it goes hard start to finish (count me out and silent hill are my favorite tracks for sure.) Also, I gotta talk about The Heart part 5! The Heart series by Kendrick is amazing, and I think the song was dope, but there is a camp that thinks it’s not canon in the series. It didn’t dethrone Part 3 as my favorite, but I think it was still amazing and came with the same energy. The visuals added another layer to unpack, plus I think it gave you an idea of what to expect on the album without any spoilers.

As a Slaughterhouse fan, I’m bummed about the situation that unfolded earlier in the year (I guess the J.U.S.T.I.C.E. League manager was right smh). Still, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t hyped when Backstage dropped alongside the R&FoS announcement. The rollout and the album weren’t for me and painted things a certain type of way IMO. Hearing Royce and Joe chop it up on the pod gave me a little more insight, but to quote Joe from the On the House mixtape on Gone, the writing was in the wall. Joe mostly addressed his perspective on Slaughtermouse, which should make it clear I’m on their side. I’m not all the way biased, since I still play the Hiphop weekly series from 2008, but I’m far from objective. Joe’s sleeper on the response pod was super dope, fitting, and adds to the collection of leaked Glasshouse tracks (we need more CDQ!!) so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

Pusha T had an amazing album with It’s Almost Dry and I still find myself playing the whole album start to finish. I’m definitely hyped for the Pusha T Gangsta Grillz mixtape, especially since Tyler and Drama won a Grammy for theirs. Vince Staples was another artist I was checking for at the beginning of the year when he dropped the teaser for Magic (the single for Ramona Park Broke My Heart). Vince doesn’t miss with his albums, but with the way that Magic hit, I’m excited to see what he does next. As an aside, Mustard and Vince are a tight west coast combo, and I hope to keep seeing rappers team up with producers for entire projects. Drake and 21 Savage dropped Her Loss, which left the game in disarray; tracks 10 and 12 stay on repeat for me. Griselda went hard as usual: WSG dropping Peace “Fly” God and 10, Benny The Butcher dropping Tana Talk 4, and Conway the Machine dropping God Don’t Make Mistakes. Of course, I have to mention God Did, where Hov had an insane 80 bar verse. The Game put out Drillmatic, a very dope and very long project. No man falls and start from scratch 2 are still my favorite tracks, but there’s something on there for everyone. Em rollout aside, it’s good to know that Game still has the ability to put out another 300 500 bars and running when he feels like it. Nobody was really doubting him, but props nonetheless! Ab-soul dropped Herbert, which I played on a roadtrip to Kansas, with Hollandaise, Church on the Move, and Gotta Rap being standouts for me.

Blog-iversery

This year I’m celebrating 4 years of blogging! I changed the style of the site back in 2021, then I made what I thought were small changes in 2022, and then those changes eventually broke the site so I did a major revamp. Seriously, pages were taking 10+ seconds to load and I stopped getting mobile visitors (my bad!) I spent a few days panic-learning CSS, web development, and google insights, but think things are a little better now. Some super tiny details that make this site extra personal: the oocyte color scheme, the oocyte logo that appears on the top left of the browser tab, and the blog post album covers. As an aside, this site is all me: I pay all expenses out of pocket and don’t run ads because I think it’s worth it to stay “independent”. If I wanted to be a hardcore blogger, suppose I could turn on cookies/tracking to the max, but I respect people’s privacy, and even though this site is a lot of work, I’m not trying make blogging my full-time job.

It’s good to know that people are finding the site useful. The most popular post is still How to run DNA and RNA gels faster, followed by Should you do a postdoc, and grad school economics. It’s also interesting to see how posts have evolved with time. I started the blog with micro-posts dedicated to SLIC and cloning, then wanted to share hard-earned knowledge to make electrophysiology easier, then I wanted to share advice and my experience for undergraduate and graduate students working in research, then I wanted to share the trials and tribulations of being a postdoc, and now I’m almost ready to start sharing advice for making the transition from academia to industry. This site serves as a public journal/time capsule of my career development in science, which reminds me of the mixtape era in hiphop. Kinda dope.

Post post-doc

I left my postdoc position and sunny San Diego back in September, and since then, I’ve been leaning on my hard-earned financial independence! If you’re on reddit, think r/FIRE but without the early retirement or existential crises. Of course I’ve been interviewing for jobs and talking to companies I find interesting, but the fit really does have to be mutual, and I have the money to back that up (how real is that??) Again, I saved and invested an absurd amount for a grad student/postdoc, which means that unlike before, I’m not being pushed to make things happen due to a time or money crunch, which gives me much more control over the next phase of my career. I can’t make a position appear but as an electrophysiologist, my patience, preparation, and resilience are real.

So what I’m looking for, a hiring manager may ask? An environment where I can thrive technically, culturally, and intellectually. They say that your first industry job is the hardest to get, but still: I am not interested in a bridge job. I’m super passionate about drug discovery, and while my background is in electrophysiology, molecular biology, and pharmacology, I’m not trying to limit myself to these techniques/fields. I’m a Latino first generation college grad who went from being an insect biochemist to to an in vitro pharmacologist to a neurophysiologist, which means if I don’t know something, I can quickly learn. Remember though, I was in the lab as an undergrad, so I also know how to teach and I’m confident saying I can teach anyone anything. I’m also an investor, and if I don’t see long-term growth potential in a position, that’s bad money, and bad money is worse than no money. I like to think I’ve gotten pretty good at decoding the vibes from job descriptions, and my intuition has been pretty spot on so far.

One of the best things about moving to the Bay was being able to have a frog fam meetup with two of my former research assistants, Sharyse and Catherine! It was great catching up with them and seeing them working towards their dreams. It was great reminiscing with them about the research struggle and if you know me, you know I had to bring Wilson, the stuffed oocyte. What’s crazy is that my girlfriend joined us for frog fam brunch, and she randomly ran into a former student at the restaurant. The student asked about my USC shirt and she recognized them from her days as TA for a class called Water Planet. Small world!

Like most people, I’ve also been playing with ChatGPT (didn’t mess with DALL-E tho). Tl;dr all [large language] models are wrong, but some are useful, and as a great drug discoverer once quipped: you get what you screen for. Honestly, what can I say that other people haven’t already? Like all ML/AI research, it’s a neat concept but the end was nigh (not really) with GPT-3. You gotta do your own provenance on what it gives you (big ask in 2023), and as neat as it is, it won’t (or at least it shouldn’t) replace writers, editors, and scientists anytime soon. I will say that it’s fun to train/bounce ideas off of. For example, I fed it minimal company info on a few job ads I had seen and asked it to write an ad for a bench scientist position in industry, and it was exceptionally accurate. I then played out some scenarios with it (tough/technical interviewer, candidate strengths/weaknesses, etc) and while it was useful but generic advice 90% of the time, it had some interesting results often enough. It won’t save you a trip to your career services advisor if you want to prepare for an industry position, but if you have to make an appointment or are in a time-crunch, or you’re super shy and hate asking “stupid” questions, it can be useful sounding board in a very dire pinch. A reasonable use case IMO: drafting emails if you struggle with that. I’m cool responding myself so I’ll still be writing all my emails, but I recognize the utility. That said, I personally (ha!) wouldn’t use to blog either. Too many vibes get lost with AI, plus you can tell its a computer writing stuff. Still, ghost blogging exists, particularly in the tech space but also in science, so I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s an AI blog push soon. Think DSye platitudes but more boilerplate. Anyway, the bugs with AI/ML when not catastrophic, are kinda funny. I remember laughing uncontrollably as an undergrad during a biophysics class when a professor said that a crystal structure program resorts to alanine stuffing when it gets confused. I know, I know, AlphaFold2! I’m on Derek Lowe’s side when it comes to technology.

Other stuff: I finally beat Bioshock 1 (hard mode) Bioshock 2 + Minerva’s Den (regular mode), and Bioshock Infinite (regular mode). Of course I’ve been exploring the Bay Area with my girlfriend, but I’ve also been attending events like the QBI Bay Area Chemical Biology Symposium and a #AltAcChats meetup in Berkeley. I’m also finally getting through books that I wanted to read but couldn’t make time for during grad school, and of course, I’ve still been reading plenty of papers. After an uptick in coaching requests, I got a little more serious about my scientific writing and consulting side-gig (see the new page). Plus I’m still finding ways to mentor and give back.

I bought some Z31 model car kits (Zenki and Kuoki) to hold me over until I can start restoring my 1986 Nissan 300zx IRL. In the meantime, the new wheels on my Honda Fit finally inspired me doing other small things to it. I was going to put some Enkei92s to celebrate my 1st industry job, but whatever; they’re more meaningful this way, kind of like my gold Aztec calendar chain. Also, when I went to Kansas I picked up the old alpine amplifier and subwoofer I was running in my Z31. I’m still waiting on a new headunit, but I ordered/installed a new speaker system in it and added sound deadening material to the doors while I was at it. I ordered a rearview camera, which I plan on mounting on the outer hatch trim (mock install suggests it should work). I also added curb feelers; partly to protect the wheels and partly cuz it looks super dope. The vibe I’m going for is lowrider-tuner from the 80s (e.g. Eazy-E’s red Suzuki Samurai on the NWA EP and Ice Cube’s Suzuki Sidekick). I’m considering bringing my moped (La Poderosa) up to the Bay, but I’m not sure. In grad school I modified it so much that it became too fast to use safely (60 mph on premix, can’t remember the ratio tho) but there are some suspension and brake upgrades now that would make it more manageable. The main issue now is that I would need an M1 license to ride it, even if I register it as a moped, due to the speed. We’ll see though!

31 Savage

I celebrated my 31st birthday with an extended visit (by choice this time!!) to my hometown of Dodge City, Kansas. Technically I could have taken a flight, but I decided a drive would be less stressful and would make it easier to deliver gifts to my family. Plus, I was terrified of another 29th birthday fiasco (feel kinda vindicated by southwest). I broke the trip up into 12-hour drives and stayed in Flagstaff, AZ which brought back childhood memories of family vacations to LA (we always drove everywhere).

Anyway, I did a lot of chilling. Of course my family went to Casa Alvarez on Sunday, and I tried my best to keep my mom out of the kitchen, but she still made some of her signature dishes. I got Pizza Hut buffet with my little brother (his favorite), I had King’s buffet and hit up the local flea market with George my childhood friend, we watched the world cup, and my dad and I put new wheels on my car (my Christmas/birthday present!!) Mounting stretched tires, even modestly like mine, is a pain in the ass figuratively, but it’s literally painful on your ears because you have to use a tire bead blaster for each freaking wheel.

For the holidays, we got together with my mom’s side of the family and played Christmas games, we built a gingerbread house (oreo cookie train thing, but close enough). I had a LAN party with my little brother (GTA online lol) and with the help of my family, I made my traditional birthday dinner: brussel sprouts, honey glazed ham, and the Kitchenista’s baked mac and cheese. I also helped my mom a lot around the house and learned to cook chilaquiles, posole, and tamales.

Making tamales and patch clamp electrophysiology are a lot alike in that the learning curve is steep, technique matters, and that it’s best done in groups. Like electrophysiology, you should learn how to make tamales from the best.