Max Todd
SciAll’s Cabinet of Curiosities Episode 2 is Out Now!
And just when I was thinking that Science Communicator header was looking suspicious, too…
It’s true—while I’ve brazenly word-vomited enough to justify the title of Author and become a Creature of the Night in order to get that stuff out (Remember, Kids: Suffering Makes Better Art, And That Is True), my portfolio has been lacking in science communication this past year. I’d love to remedy that, though, and perhaps the best place to start would be my semester-long internship with SciAll last fall. SciAll is a nonprofit science communication platform founded by marine biologist Dr. Mike Gil with the aim of making science more accessible to anyone intimidated by STEM fields. Since SciAll is made entirely up of overbooked researchers volunteering their time, I was able to speak with so many intelligent, eccentric, and passionate people from (literally) across the country, and consider myself super lucky to be a part of their work.
In this episode of Cabinet of Curiosities, I collaborated with the University of Michigan’s own Dr. Jenan Kharbush, chemical oceanographer and microbial biogeochemist to tell the story of her STEM career through the lens of her styrofoam cups. We also talked about doodling, whale training, and seasickness. Check it out!
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SciAll’s Cabinet of Curiosities tells the stories of real scientists through the oddities in their labs. Every scientist has their shrine, and every trinket or talisman has a story to tell. What wisdom lies in the drawers of a wunderkammer? Subscribe to find out!”
Songs of the Week 03/24/2023
Yea, so, screw conciseness, right? I thought last week’s one-sentence style would be a fun little break from the absolute cinderblocks of song reviews that I usually collapse everyone’s roofs with, but apparently, I must have just bottled up all of my words, because I’m serving up the cinderblock of cinderblocks this week. Get comfy.
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Selling Songs in One Sentence! | Songs of the Week 03/17/2023
Since I’m fourteen pages deep into midterm essays with a flash fiction unit on the horizon, I figured it might be fun to try to distill my love for this week’s songs into one sentence each, which is something that should be easy-breezy, especially considering how deliberate, curt, economical, un-repetitive, and un-repetitive my writing tends to be—the “B” in Max B. Todd stands for Brevity, after all, and as a believer in nominative determinism, which I don’t actually think I’ve mentioned before on this blog, I strive to try and embody this in my every sentence, and that’s the Max Todd Dot Com (Max! Todd! Dot! Com!) guarantee, free of extraneous “bombastic”s and “driven”s and “punchy”s and “swelling”s and “earworm”s and any words I’d never, ever use more than once, because… sorry, hold on, I think I was going somewhere with this.
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Songs of the Week 03/10/2023
Howdy doody, dark and broody. Check out Fire of Love if you please, leaving Hulu today! It’s a race against time! Go, go, go!
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Songs of the Week 03/03/2023
in my lowercase indie girl era, bopping to Fiona Apple Feist boygenius at the King Soopers self checkout
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Songs of the Week 02/17/2023 (coming to you from 02/24/2023)
sick and snotty yuck yukc yuck make your own song pionions everythinbg sounds loud
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Songs of the Week 02/10/2023
This one’s a good one. It’s real fun, this one, it’s roulette-inspired. If you put it on shuffle, odds are you won’t have your heart ripped out…
but the chances are never zero…
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Songs of the Week 02/03/2023
Okay, aaaaaaah!!! We’re a little late this week!! Sorry about that, folks. As I mentioned in 2022’s Songs of the Year, I try to prioritize quality over quantity with these, and lately, I’ve been tired enough that writing has felt more like smashing words together expecting that they’ll fit. It doesn’t always flow, that’s for sure, but I hope by just getting letters on a document, I’ll make something worthwhile happen, even without the combined forces of nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine other aspirational monkeys typing at my side.
While we’re on the subject, I felt it was worth following up on Movies of the Month, seeing as a whole entire month has indeed already scuttled past like the mouse rummaging through your pantry (I made you check). Much as I’ve wanted to talk Pinocchio (the good one), Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, and The Menu, I’ve been pretty strapped for time this semester, and when I have free writing time available, I’d ideally like to spend it chipping away at my bigger projects rather than setting more secondary obligations for myself. That’s not to say movie reviews or videos aren’t coming—trust me, I would love nothing (well, a few things) more than to put both out—but until things calm down a bit, I unfortunately can’t make any promises. Ugh, sorry, okay, I need a distraction! Um… okay, uh… songs!! Five of them!
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No Prose (Hope This Was Helpful!)
imagine: pale blue air balloon,
greying wave of corpse decay
organs swelling, cities sinking.
Earth, she weeps, sweeps mankind wombwards,
past etiquette to creature code—
just crust, chest-thumps, and angry boils
bursting hellfire-high, warming
hovering hands, soft and scarless,
hanging from the blue balloon,
raking through the greying wave.
they say mercy, they’re drowning!
mercy from the mountaintop,
they say I should strip and jump down,
say “I’ll drown with you,” probably.
that’s you at the end of times,
that’s you.
hope this was helpful!
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Max Todd. 