Hey all! I'm an Australian PhD student working in supramolecular chemistry (mainly photoswitch related, with lots of supporting NMR studies). Alongside the chemistry I play music, dance, and have interests in politics/international relations/global security (any open-source analysts hanging around here?).

I've tried mastodon on and off a few times before this account, but never really managed to find a critical mass of enough others with shared interests to keep me here. With all the interest M's been picking up recently, it seemed like it might be worth trying again!

@spinflip A warm welcome! I did quite some chemistry exams in my career, and I'm very happy to have more scientists aboard from different fields to learn from.

Seems like qoto is going in the right direction.

@arteteco Thank you! I'm not 100% sold on subject-focused instances making sense in the long term (am I more a researcher, or a film fan? or should I self-sort based on my politics?), but maybe it'll help get M off the ground

@spinflip @arteteco We aren't exactly subject focused. We want a certain caliber of people that are rational people looking to learn and teach about the world. Critical thinkers. But we dont enforce any one subject in people's posts. You can post about whatever. But when you have high caliber people then the quality of the posts naturally reflect that.

@freemo @arteteco well, the website is pretty clear about the STEM focus (which honestly isn't always the most promising sign for critical thinking). Still, we'll see how it goes. Hopefully we'll be able to find things to talk about other than Mastodon itself

@spinflip @arteteco Yea we want STEM focused members but we dont limit the topic of discussion to STEM. Talk about whatever you'd like.

@freemo
I would like personally if the instance were sciences focused in general, not just STEM (which as I understand is just some branches, we don't have such term in my country). But is just a personal feeling.

@spinflip