we used to be a country! we landed on the moon! invented chemotherapy! and the x ray! and the polio vaccine! - ThreadSky

swordsjew.bsky.social • 6 hours ago

we used to be a country! we landed on the moon! invented chemotherapy! and the x ray! and the polio vaccine!

Reposted from KLAB at Harvard Medical School

UMASS IS RESCINDING ALL GRAD POSITIONS FOR THIS YEAR

Comments

swordsjew.bsky.social•5 hours ago

sorry we didn't invent the x ray

djackmanson.bsky.social•5 hours ago

It's the Twitter Ray, surely?

bmkpdx.bsky.social•4 hours ago

We invented the Foot-O-Scope. For sure the best use of radiation.

shoulderdevil.bsky.social•4 hours ago

I think the (popular) confusion on that is because a *very* primitive version of an X-ray machine was being debuted at the Pan-American Exposition when President McKinley was shot, but it wasn't used to look for the bullet.

Interesting bit of trivia, but easily misremembered as us inventing it.

joedobner.bsky.social•4 hours ago

We *did* invent these.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-ray_specs

Which kinda explains our current predicament.

dconrad.bsky.social•5 hours ago

a really big star in the early universe invented the x ray

samay-gheewala.bsky.social•5 hours ago

We invented the TV and the light bulb so that balances out, right?

fourinchcats.bsky.social•5 hours ago

Wasn’t the TV John Logie Baird from Scotland? But yes definitely the light bulb, and teflon, and lots of other cool stuff.

chemb.bsky.social•2 hours ago

The light bulb is shared… https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Swan

schroedinger.bsky.social•2 hours ago

Looking at Baird's Wikipedia page, whether he invented the television depends on where you draw the line on what constitutes a television, his early stuff is more like proto-television. It says he did later invent COLOR television though.

fourinchcats.bsky.social•2 hours ago

He is recognised in Australia as the inventor, having an award named after him. Let’s agree to disagree 😊

n1ckfg.bsky.social•1 hour ago

Technically still true--iirc they used to say Baird invented television and Farnsworth invented "electronic television" (directing the beam with electromagnets instead of mechanically)...but only the second kind was practical for mass production so in time that distinction got lost

robsample.bsky.social•3 hours ago

I think the early TVs could be used as an x-ray machine, if I'm not mistaken.

twitskeptic.sirvin.com•3 hours ago

No, but the H-bomb, which we did invent, does generate quite a few of them.

theshawnmorris.bsky.social•5 hours ago

But we could have!

visitkarte.bsky.social•3 hours ago

🤣 nope.

nathanmwilliams.bsky.social•4 hours ago

X Box

kurthy.bsky.social•5 hours ago

But we did do the first digital computer.

jwmangrum.bsky.social•4 hours ago

We did invent the X-Men, though

eddiegalvani.bsky.social•5 hours ago

we invented overcharging for it

lynnnothegger.bsky.social•5 hours ago

I live in a town with a Röntgen Ring, Röntgen Gymnasium (High school) and a Röntgen Museum, so I knew that. He lived here at the time.

Fun fact - Dirk Nowitzki went to the Röntgen Gymnasium. I think he’s more famous now that Röntgen tbh.

pymundgenealogy.com•5 hours ago

To your misfortune most countries still call it with the name of the discoverer

alilnightmusing.bsky.social•5 hours ago

Roentgen?

pymundgenealogy.com•5 hours ago

Of course

rewhan.bsky.social•5 hours ago

"We used to fight with Canada over who invented the telephone!"

nopipbutcpip.bsky.social•5 hours ago

We did invent the MRI, though.

temporaryhermit.bsky.social•3 hours ago

Have you all considered Sweden and learning Swedish yet? They invented a lot of things, too, and some Swedes just gave stuff to the world for free, like the handicapped lady who invented the walker.
It's awfully close to Russia, though, like all of Europe.

monkey666.bsky.social•2 hours ago

Strictly speaking the first x-ray was taken by Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen, and chemotherapy by Paul Ehrlich, both Germans, but I get your point. This is why France is actively formulating plans to poach your scientists.

goldring.bsky.social•2 hours ago

Fwiw you have my sincere sympathy

richardthunderbay.bsky.social•4 hours ago

This defunding of universities is totally insane. There should be a massive outcry from every level, but I'm not hearing it. The Trump administration apparently wants to turn the US into a scientific and technological backwater, which will have devastating economic impacts in the future.

donotcomply123.bsky.social•3 hours ago

I'm assuming they want to replace university research with private research to get the results they desire.
Or they think AI will solve everything so we don't need research anymore. 🙄

greg60.bsky.social•3 hours ago

This… this right here 🫢😔😠🤬

psychicfax.bsky.social•5 hours ago

And the internet / Arpanet / TCP/IP !

wuhanclams.bsky.social•5 hours ago

The internet was a huge mistake.

psychicfax.bsky.social•5 hours ago

I understand that sentiment and I could not disagree more.

iratelump.bsky.social•2 hours ago

I think the mistake was letting it get sold off the way it was. The internet had problems from the start, but it only became destructive when social media started cooking people's brains.

kaijusensei.bsky.social•42 minutes ago

But how does any of those help billionaires with their taxes?

THINK ABOUT THE BILLIONAIRES!!! 🤔

sunsout.bsky.social•4 hours ago

The US is going to experience a massive brain drain. The brightest scientific minds of a generation will have to leave the US to study or work in their chosen field because Donald Trump and Elon Musk are taking away the funding on a whim.

ian.mckellar.org•6 hours ago

I'm glad China's surviving their property bubble or the world would be in trouble.

rowyourbot.bsky.social•4 hours ago

I’m also glad but the world is still in trouble, unfortunately.

patnkev.bsky.social•5 hours ago

OMG! This is terrifying.

olafrotkohl.bsky.social•just now

Send them to Europe. America can continue its downward slide as it likes and chooses.

drchrisdeutsch.bsky.social•5 hours ago

Fuck. UMass is a jump from elite to state university. For what it is worth, universities and colleges are also canceling faculty job searches mid-search.

gillian07.bsky.social•5 hours ago

I don't even have words for what they're doing to this country. Beyond evil. Beyond idiotic. Beyond self-defeating.

surfnorway.bsky.social•2 hours ago

When is someone going to point out that a democratic election has resulted in the winning candidate vowing to dismantle the very democracy that put him there? So far doing a pretty good job of it, too.
Do treason, insurrection, other similar guardrails not apply when they were legitimately chosen?

katz.theracket.news•6 hours ago

Wasn’t the X Ray invented in Germany though?

william3000.bsky.social•5 hours ago

Yes, they were. In many European countries, including my native Denmark, X-Rays are called "Röntgen Rays" in honor of the inventor Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen

swordsjew.bsky.social•5 hours ago

sorry. in my defense im an idiot

ropenfold.bsky.social•3 hours ago

This is what breaks my heart, As a non American, you had so many things I admired. You weren't perfect but when I visited the US, there used to be something in the American spirit, that made you push things forward sometimes with great struggle. And now I feel like that's gone.

metalslorg.bsky.social•5 hours ago

The painful truth is that we were an empire which committed 63 years of hegemonic crime against two-thirds of the planet, followed by 17 years of post-hegemonic crime against a third of the planet. Now US elites are reduced to committing crimes against 346 million Americans.

abecedarian.bsky.social•5 hours ago

Yeah nice education system you have there. Shame if anything would happen to it.

karhey.bsky.social•2 hours ago

This is incredibly sad.

ok-sure.bsky.social•5 hours ago

Modern day Lament for Ur, this is

riz4robot.bsky.social•2 hours ago

MAGA and the christian nationalists are trying to save their, er, our christian founded country

this is for your own good that they are fucking up this democracy

orange jesus is going to save everyone even if his own family hates him

he alone can save amerkkaa

zombiepete.bsky.social•4 hours ago

Slaves built our presidential palace!
Adolf Hitler took notes from the Jim Crow South on how to be extra racist!
We installed dictators all over the fucking planet!

(But yeah, we did some science, too.)

der-meister.bsky.social•4 hours ago

Don’t forget nazis did a lot of our science lol

realbenisons.bsky.social•5 hours ago

still haven’t taken social security benefits but I’ve been alive for all of those except the X ray and had measles before the vaccine was available, and my childhood pediatrician was the researcher who first identified the measles virus, and before we moved to Mass. I was represented by Sen RFK Sr