My department had its retreat this week and it really cemented in my views about its biases. We had a rather forced event where we interacted with other researchers and tried to come up with impromptu collaborations. I wasn't exactly enthused with the idea to begin with, but I felt it devolved into churching out more and more non-sensical combinations of hype-y technologies without any attempt to carefully think about a biological question. I've spent the few days since trying to reflect and think about what other biases or viewpoints I might encounter at other universities and how they contrast with my own tech-obsessed environment. That said, here's this week's set of instrument pictures: First time I've seen a TEM before, it looked like it was built in the 80s