Catechism

Review from April 2026
I think about this story when I walk past the optics labs at work. I think about the ways in which scientific progress is an idea which can be used to exploit people just as much as religion can. I think about how the majority of people doing scientific research at universities are paid less than minimum wage and are discarded by their institutions as soon as the money runs out. I think about the ways that scientific research makes people disposable. I think of how people are willing to put up with that to be part of something bigger, how they are willing to sacrifice their minds and bodies at the altar of science. I think about all the ways I have been exploited, about the free labour that I have done in the name of scientific progress. I think about how that left me burned out and about how it has affected my immigration status and how, now that I have been disposed of, I feel even less human.

That's all just me though. Let's talk about this story!

It's about nuns that work as lab technicians and like I feel that's all I need to say. If you like the idea of nuns that work as lab technicians then you're going to love this. If you, like me, have thoughts about the way universities exploit these kinds of workers then you're going to like it even more. If you just want to see powerful lasers doing powerful things then go and read it right now.

As with The Blissful Dead I'm going to resist my impulse to make this entire thing an analysis of liturgical music in mechsplo but given the centrality of the piece of music I feel like I have to talk about it. Aesthetically I think of Be Thou My Vision as a very protestant song. I feel like I have encountered it in the contexts of the Calvinist Church of Scotland or maybe Methodism. Which, to me, initially made it feel very at odds with the more catholic imagery of holy orders. The more I dwelled on it though the more I did come to find something interesting in that idea. It made me think about the way that disconnect is manifesting in USian Christianity today: the adopting of Roman Catholic imagery and aesthetics by right wing nationalism, in what remains a very protestant structure. I don't know, just some thoughts. The choice is great in the sense that the initial line is be thou my vision and someone's about to have their vision taken away by a laser.