A community which focusses on improving yourself. This can be in many different ways - from improving physical health or appearance, to improving mental health, creating better habits, overcoming addictions, etc.
While material circumstances beyond our control do govern much of our daily lives, people do have agency and choices to make, whether that is as "simple" as disciplining yourself to not doomscroll, to as complex as recreating yourself to have many different hobbies and habits.
This is not a place where all we do is talk about improving "productivity" (in a workplace context) and similar terms and harmful lifestyles like "grindset". Self-improvement here is intended to make you a generally better and happier person, as well as a better communist, and any other roles you may have in your life.
Rules and guidelines:
I've quit smoking, drinking is a WIP but the occasional relapse is a marked improvement from daily day drinking. Exercise is now a regular part of my life
You must think you’re pretty slick sneaking these other major accomplishments into your post like they’re no big deal. Well it’s not gonna work on me. I’m gonna congratulate you for all of it!
Assembling a person out of the ruin that fell upon me through the pursuit of greed has been a work of some years. I owe a lot to the endless patience and love of my wife and the wise council of friends.
Hell yeah! Your wife and friends sound amazing, but congratulating YOU. I’m proud of YOU! YOU are gonna rock grad school! Keep it up!
Oh shit you're doing the exact thing I started 3 years ago.
Good luck, I'll be rooting for you.
If you need any help with your work feel free to ask and I'll do my best to help even though I'm a dumbass. We're studying similar fields after all so I might be some use.
You'll do great!
What switching from physics to ecology? or going back to grad school?
The project is pfas remediation so that's neat and highly topical in my area. You're a fellow inmate in aus right?
Going back to grad school and doing ecology. I am waaaay too dumb for physics lol
And yeah I'm stuck in Aus lol
I also did a short assignment on pfas last year, this paper might be of some use. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-08698-5
I always maintained physics is for stupid people. All you need to know is that:
Thanks, will read. I've gotta start chewing through the lit. Realistically nothing in undergrad is too hard, the breadth is what makes it take so long, but getting up to speed on the basics will still be a couple of months of crying at the keyboard :p
Sounds like you're pretty on top of things, you'll be fine!
Ahhhh. The artesian well my family would regularly get water from as long as I could remember, was shut down recently for contamination with PFAs lol.
Shoutout to you for fighting the good fight. I’m excited for you to keep us posted on the latest developments :)
Do they do phytoremediation by you? I lucked into working in a research lab in my formative years- so that’s my niche remediation interest
It's using plants ya. Bioaccumulation don't want to dox myself but it's like seeing if native plant species incorporated into artifical habitats can bioaccumulate pfas and other harmful shit, then be harvested to concentrate the waste for handling.
Fuck yeah- I love that. Np - that gives me enough background to find a niche-ass web of journals to recommend :)
Well recommend away!
Sent a couple colleagues research groups publication pages via dm
Okie dokie :) will follow up to this
I'm doing honours by research and my project is related to ecology. Nothing to do with water remediation (although that's super cool!) instead I'm doing a study into the diets of a couple of migratory shorebirds. It's fun! Hard, but fun. Getting to actually do science rather than just use the knowledge gained by science is great. Good on you! And well done on the other stuff, too - no small thing!
Hell yeah - as a migratory shorebird watching enthusiast :
So far it's involved a LOT of painstakingly sorting through droppings with a microscope, a needle, and tweezers
Tyfys - shorebirds are my fave (my jobs building coastal restorations)
Congratulations!
I am so proud of you.
Congratulations! I want to try that one day.
Wishing you the best of luck!
YOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!! WE LOVE TO SEE IT 
comrade i also studied physics, then went into banking for 2 years because everything else was even more morally disgusting, and now i'm starting my phd in green energy! i guess communists really are a hivemind lmao. i'm happy for you, and i hope we'll both get to use what we do over the next few years to help the world <3
Haha god it's tragic. You know how feynman joked about one electron moving forward and backwards in time? What about one braincell? Glad you're able to find a field where you don't go to sleep musing about having made the world worse that day.
I am doing a lowly masters, as I dropped out of honours because I needed money for housing and fintech promised it. If it goes well maybe I'll switch to a PhD but I'm mostly hoping to go work for the gov doing like vegetated swails, water quality testing you know, practical useful stuff that's outdoors and isn't just moving fake money around in ways that give horrible people more power.
You might enjoy this study - I’ve seen it presented a few times and it really helped me conceptualize trial set up at a field site like this!
Cheers, I have a lot of catching up to do. It's been... 11 years? since uni so even in the fields I was good at there has been decay. Any and all relevant resources need to be devoured. If I have one thing going for me it's enjoying learning from papers.
That said, murder is a likely outcome should the originator of the passive voice be colocated with the present typist.
Lmfao. Holy shit. I never realized that until you pointed it out. Or should I say until you formerly pointed at that
Yayayayay!!! HMU if you’d like support on any of those things! I switched from chemistry for similar reasons, and do all sorts of water things now (mostly the ecosystem restoration sorts of stuff, but have dabbled with remediation). Not sure of your general familiarity with the state of the practice, but happy to help if I can :)
Impressed by your efforts - Quitting smoking is a crafty enemy!
congratulations!!!