Everything, underwater, all at once

Friends, as you know, I have a busy career. Actually, "chaotic" might be a better word than "busy" - there are always numerous projects, papers, proposals, and people to manage. I basically live in a hurricane. 

A while ago, I wanted to make a poster for my lab walls that described the situation. Inspired by the movie "Everything, everywhere, all at once," I tried using generative AI to create a poster titled "Everything, underwater, all at once" with myself as the main character. It didn't work. I'm not sure how many of you have played with gen AI recently, but it is not particularly good at taking instructions like "draw the person in this photo exactly." 

Enter my husband, Carl. He's the Vice President of Hardware for an AI company, and he knows his way around the state-of-the-art tools much better than I do. He didn't want to mimic a movie poster - he wanted to make me a brand-new logo for my lab. 

In order for you to appreciate the result, I have to tell you about tardigrades. They're commonly called "water bears," and they're the most resilient animals on this planet. You can heat them up, freeze them, dry them out, send them to outer space, and they just curl up into this little cyst. They can survive anything! As soon as they return to optimal conditions, they de-encyst and come back to life. Tardigrades are absolutely incredible organisms. I even suggested to Carl that we should name our dog Tardigrade, but that got immediately vetoed.

Ladies and gentlemen, brace yourselves for the most amazing lab logo ever. Carl gave the AI a link to this blog, told it I loved tardigrades, and asked for "whimsical." As I survive the chaos that is summer 2025, this logo is exactly the levity that I need this week. Behold: my new lab logo!

Created by Carl Kaiser with help from some AI


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