Log #9 inş

Selam Selam

It has now been over a month since Deniz Göktaş was detained. I seem to have adopted the phrase “They can’t steal our joy, can they?” as a kind of motto. Even though Deniz used it ironically, even though he was actually making fun of the phrase, it has come to mean quite a lot to me. In Ölü Deniz—Dead Deniz, a pun on “the Dead Sea”—he mocked the way his girlfriend repeated these words like a prayer after every election, and honestly, I am entirely on Deniz’s side. What the fuck is “They can’t steal our joy” even supposed to mean? What else is there left for them to steal, for fuck’s sake? And yet, despite everything, I too have started repeating it like some kind of prayer. They can’t steal our joy, can they? They can’t steal our joy... I can use it for almost anything now. Whenever someone pisses me off, I immediately go, “They can’t steal our joy!” Whenever I see some depressing piece of political news, again: “They can’t steal it. They won’t!” I have even started muttering this “prayer” in response to simple responsibilities I do not feel like dealing with, such as washing the dishes or working on an assignment. We love you so much, Deniz. I hope we see you among us again as soon as possible. I hope they cannot steal your joy in that so-called well-type prison.

Can They Steal Our Joy?...

Recently, my working hours at the laboratory where I work as a student assistant were increased. It was basically as though I had found a second position. Naturally, I did not do anything as idiotic as putting the extra money into my savings account, so I bought myself a Nintendo Switch Lite. I had wanted a Switch for a very long time, honestly, but for a while I had somehow forgotten that the console even existed. Recently, though, I realized something: I have started travelling a lot. Especially since moving to Germany, I have been constantly going back and forth to Turkey. Normally, I crochet on trains and planes to pass the time, or read a book or something. But the idea of playing games on a handheld console had started to seem much more appealing. There were also a few specific games exclusive to Nintendo platforms that I had wanted to play for a very long time. Apparently, the time had finally come. After getting the console, I have started feeling like a child again. Even more interestingly, I could say that the Switch has, in a way, reduced my dependence on my phone and social media. Sure, another addiction has taken its place. But honestly, I would much rather devote an entire hour to one game—to one single thing—than spend that hour doomscrolling through five hundred different pieces of content and wrecking my attention span. The reason it makes me feel like a child again has quite a lot to do with the PSP. Unless I remember incorrectly, I was either ten or eleven when I was given a PSP, and I spent the next few years practically glued to that console. I played it especially whenever I was outside, even when I was at school. I may have spent hundreds, perhaps thousands, of hours playing NBA 2K11. I had done absolutely everything there was to do in that game. The funny thing is that the game was genuinely terrible. Neither the visuals nor the mechanics offered anything resembling an enjoyable gaming experience. But none of that matters to a child’s mind. I miss being a child so, so much. I miss being able to enjoy the moment without worrying about anything and to take pleasure in even the tiniest, simplest things. I wish my brain could somehow reset and return to that period. Especially over the past six or seven years, I have experienced a gradual decline in both my enjoyment of life and my sense of satisfaction. Activities that I normally enjoyed stopped having any effect on me, and the new things I tried did not exactly do a very good job of replacing them. This general state of dissatisfaction cannot be reduced to something as simple as not enjoying a game I am playing or a film I am watching. Compared with the past, I have also become much less productive. I read fewer books. I study less. I have become worse at dealing with uncertainty and unpredictable situations. I was never particularly good at it, but I was still “better” than I am now. I do not have many games on the Switch yet. For now, I am only playing Kingdom Come: Deliverance, Hollow Knight, and Hades. I had previously played Hades on PC as well, and the moment I discovered that I could synchronize my Steam save files with the Switch, I became unbelievably happy. Apparently, the last time I played Hades was in 2022. Had you asked me, I would have said 2024 or 2025, so I could hardly believe it myself. Still, having all of my previous progress transferred exactly as it was was, of course, extremely pleasing :).

I know my desk is messy so stfu

In a month and a half, I will be going on a field trip. It has been quite a while since I last did that, and honestly, ever since I became so firmly anchored to the laboratory, I had started to think that this day would never come again. By “this day,” I mean fieldwork, of course. Well, what can you do? It is a compulsory course, after all. Speaking of the laboratory, I came across something interesting last week. So I have these alunite samples to be measured for oxygen isotopes, and for some reason we cannot measure them directly because we are not getting a sufficient oxygen yield. In other words, we are having trouble analysing them as bulk samples. In our laboratory, there is a method that is used constantly, particularly for phosphates, in which a phosphate sample is precipitated as BaSO₄ and then analysed. While wondering whether an analogous method existed for sulfates, I came across a USGS report from 1992. It is an unbelievably detailed report. A rare treasure in which every single step is described in excessive detail, almost like a recipe. I was so happy when I found it that I decided to try the method myself. The procedure involves dissolving the alunite in NaOH and then adding BaCl₂ to precipitate the SO₄²⁻ ions released into the solution. The pH also has to be lowered carefully using HCl so that the aluminium from the alunite does not end up precipitating alongside the sulfate in an unwanted ionic form. So, yes, there is quite a bit of wet chemistry involved. For that reason, while looking around the laboratory for a glass pipette of the right volume, I found the pipette shown below.

A glass pipette dating from 1939. The fact that it has survived intact for this long is incredible. But what makes it interesting is not its age. It is the imprint on it apparently, the propaganda of the era made its way all the way onto the pipettes used in laboratories. Interesting, interesting...

don't worry I did NOT use it :)