Oops! Almost forgot

Hello everyone,

I would like to genuinely thank each of you who reads this, my very own newsletter. It’s a new type of writing for me still, and one that is not so natural, although I try to make it so with writing about what I want. I am in the process of deciding whether or not to start a university certificate in technical writing, hoping to push my lab bench-Pharma job into a more writing-based Pharma job.

After having a nightmare a few months ago, I had written a short story, science fiction-horror, and am still awaiting a Yes/No response from a magazine I submitted to. I hope to be able to send you the mag link in due time, but if not, I’ll share the story in my next newsletter. It involves space and the fallacy that space is a place for humans to dwell and spend time - in a non-research based setting.

Working in pharmaceuticals is a strange, wild world in Southern California - at least for me. I’m going to share some of the strange behaviors of my coworkers, just because it’s interesting and eye opening. Because, you see, as I was in graduate school for organic chemistry, I had this wide-eyed optimism that I’d be a small molecule chemist, creating chemotherapeutics with my hands and mind like a god. Due to some rather unbelievable events - my PI going to jail for a stint - I decided it was best for my professional life and sanity to remove myself from the program, I mastered out. If you do not know, the difference between a PhD and a Master’s is a hell of a lot larger than a Master’s to a Bachelor’s, and if you hear something different, they’re lying. Skip past my first job of a hard hat, leather gloves and steel toe boots (in chemistry) forward to me in biotech! I made it. Finally, I made it to the promise land. We were developing chemotherapeutics. Mind you, it was process development in purification - how to develop the process to purify the drugs (not developing them, as PhDs in research do that cool stuff), but it was a superb foot in the door. Company HR shuffle and I went from a hybrid position of process development and manufacturing to straight manufacturing. I hopped from manufacturing to sales and back, then to process development in my current job-many years later. Please note, it wasn’t all bad, and this is a rather short description of my tenure as a biotech employee, and my first boss is a good friend now and he’s actually on this newsletter - thank you, sir. We still need to set dinner plans! But I wanted to share this to help paint the portrait of who I am, and the dark humor of all this. What I thought of biotechnology, at the beginning, was a group of highly intelligent people with far reaching goals of helping humanity in dignified ways, rationality, and a general idea of being a good person. And then I met people at my places of employment. The grass is greener as they say, or just covered in cow pies.

A director of Cell Culture at one of the companies refused(s) to wash his hands after the bathroom. Another man set his coffee mug on a urinal. Bottles of water and Slip Knot in the stall. People who don’t tip servers (and tell people about it) but will buy an electric car by a billionaire shithead. I’ve seen a guy walk out of the bathroom eating a peach. People who don’t know what’s trash and what’s recyclable, what’s food waste, who work in science. A fellow motorcyclist parked an inch away from my own bike because it was ‘his’ spot (he was also a contractor - go fucking figure). Those who refuse to learn new ways of performing experiments. Best/worst yet, a guy who thinks beer will turn a man into a woman because hops contain estrogen compounds. Eyes wide? Are you confused? These are the humans helping created the drugs you consume in America.

These are just some examples of the strange reality in biotech I have encountered. So when I write books that are existential bummers and moral dilemmas, you should easily see why now. At least somewhat. And satire. This entire world is a cosmic joke. And I personally have no belief/trust in the scientific community as people to personally do-the-right thing, or even somewhat normal thing. They’re a bunch of weirdos with zero sense of rationality and logic. And then we’re all owned by corporate overlords to make money for shareholders. It’s a great system. I bet one of the next ads you see on Television (why do you still have cable?) is about some new drug to take.

So that’s a piece of me, a side of my work life anyway. Let’s get on the science news, and because I just cannot get enough about DARPA and their black box budget we pay for with American taxes.

Say WUDDUP to Northrop Grumman’s Manta Ray. I suppose at some point all great natural lives on Planet Earth will be branded, the world of flora and fauna will pass and all we’ll be left with is the reminder of that beautiful life as a corporate logo and an ever increasing dependency on underwater cables also known as the internet. Panda Express, AMAZON, the Coca Cola polar bear, you get the idea. And with the warming oceans, it’s not a hard leap to see DARPA’s Manta Ray becoming the icon of the sea you hope to never see-or not see. Covert underwater missions via autonomous weapons systems (they call it UUV - Unmanned Underwater Vehicle), the Japanese whalers must have an excruciating wait to get their hands on a few of these to kill our large brained ocean cousins for a glorified buffet-style extinction, this seems like one more thing to piss off every country trying to do the same thing as US.

While the front and sides of Manta Ray looks like a future NASA spacecraft, the back end/propulsion system is straight out of Florida’s manatees.

I would have figured as a high-budget, covert operations autonomous vehicle, it would have had more going for it than traditional propellers, but hey, I suppose NG was the lowest bidder.

Imagine Michael Crichton’s Prey self-replicating nanobots turning themselves into one of these bad boys. I really don’t want to. An ocean streaming with inorganic ‘life’, mining the ocean floor themselves to build more of themselves like some virus destroying the world. Shoot, I think we’re just trying to create humans again, perhaps with even less empathy. Okay, don’t imagine that.

If you liked this post and want to read more about how DARPA might just destroy the world (without any satire), check out my first novel, Brian, Created Intelligence.

One more thing. I’ve a bunch of talented author friends and Dawn Chapman has a cyberpunk LitRPG novel out - Tailspin: City of Artem (Pilots of Artem Book 1) that deserves some attention. If you do the KU thing, it’s a free read, or only $5.99 to keep it forever.

More next month!

Thank you for reading.

AJ