The tension was palpable at Asimina Observatory last Tuesday night, as astronomers gathered in hopes of witnessing a rare cosmic event: a graduate student packing their “papers to read” folder with so much dense literature that it would collapse into a black hole.

“An event of this magnitude has only happened a handful of times before,” said astronomer Dr. Terence Haynes. “Sure, plenty of grad students have folders of research papers they will never read dense enough to have nuclear fusion occurring at its core, but to have accumulated so many papers in a single place that the folder deforms spacetime itself… it’s a truly remarkable feat.”

Astronomers first began watching the folder of PhD student Lucy Porter as she was preparing for her preliminary exam. “I had never witnessed the gathering of so many 1000 page review articles before. We were repeatedly forced to revise our models to explain how a single folder of unread papers could be so dense without collapsing into a black hole [1]”

When asked what the consequences of the folder turning into a black hole might be, Dr. Haynes said, “Shit, I hadn’t really thought about it. The black hole would consume everything around it, so adjacent folders like ‘healthy recipes’ and ‘novel ideas’ are gone for sure. Could be the end of life on Earth I guess? Jeez, that one’s kind of a downer.”

Porter, however, suggested that risk was low on account of vague plans to remove papers from the folder as she read them at an unspecified future date. “I’ll definitely work through the folder as I’m preparing for my defense. Once I get through this final experiment for my paper, I’ll have a lot more free time.”

While experts applaud her plans, they note that this is often the exact point at which PhD students enter a Netflix black hole.

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God has been in a state of inner turmoil of late, insider sources say, due to a dilemma over how to tell humanity that Escherichia coli, also known as E. coli, is actually the species made in His image.

“To be honest, I only made the human species in order for them to grow massive volumes of E. coli in the lab,” God said, “I even left some pretty obvious clues in the E. coli genome about all this, but obviously these simple little scientists have missed them.” 

While humans have failed to heed His message, E. coli, the blessed Gram-negative, facultative anaerobic, rod-shaped, coliform bacteria have exceeded His holy expectations and unified under a single, true religion.

“As a testament to their dedication, they erected a glorious church — the Cysteine chapel — and adorned it with gorgeous masterpieces of Me in My true form,” reminisced God.

Meanwhile, God is growing increasingly frustrated with how slow humanity is picking up on the superiority of E. coli. 

“They have so many wars and tragedy, do they seriously think I would do that to my chosen species?” asked God, gesturing broadly. God further confirmed that many of the great works He had wrought, such as Chipotle, were actually for the benefit of E. coli from the Beginning.

On whether He regretted letting humans go on believing their role in the universe was central to His divine plan, God said, “Of course! I should have set the record straight millennia ago. But the longer it goes on, the more awkward it’s going to be. You know how these things are.”

When asked by one particular brazen angel what sort of deity humanity was actually made in the image of, God reportedly began to sweat profusely.

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Want a better tax return but aren’t rich enough for tax evasion? Science has you covered! Simply declare all your lab and body-based bacteria as dependents for a tax credit. 

While people may call this tax fraud or “creative accounting,” if you have provided your bacteria with food, shelter and clothing for the last financial year, AND total bacterial income did not exceed $4200, then you technically have trillions of dependents! And when your annual income fee barely covers food and rent, it’s important to get as many tax breaks as possible. General Tips are followed by the complete Bacterial Dependent Tax Code.

Tips For Maximizing Your Tax Return

Maximize Cultures

The bigger your brood, the bigger the tax break, so be sure to culture your new wards overnight at 37 C to maximize their numbers.

Use Proper Names

A separate Form μ-810M3 must be submitted for each bacterium, so make sure you have a good naming scheme for all trillion bacteria, including strain information and a family tree. Tip: use modifiers such as “Jr” or “the MCLXXXXVIIth” for bacteria in the same family. 

Keep Track Of Birthdays

Carefully write down each bacterium’s birth date and time. This will help you assign each one a personality according to their star chart in case nosy tax people start asking.

Keep Receipts

Keep receipts from any bacteria-related purchases. Do not claim anything that might harm the bacteria, like alcohol or bleach. 

Have Photo Evidence

Take a photo with your new family! Having a record of family gatherings will help solidify the belief that your bacteria are dependants.

Count Exactly

To avoid a visit from the IRS, be sure to provide the EXACT number of dependent microbes. The IRS knows.

Grieve Conspicuously

Have lavish funerals for any bacterium that die. Love and cherish your bacteria. They are your family now. You are their god. They are children of God.

COVID-19 Addendum

If your bacteria have helped you navigate such a difficult year, have them registered as emotional support microbes

Bacterial Dependent Tax Code:

Add-Ons

If your bacteria carry any plasmids or phages, use Form C-0MP373N7 to enumerate them. 

State Microbes

Your state microbe should NOT be listed as a dependent. It is considered your civic duty to provide a safe home for that microbe. For similar reasons, you should NOT list Lactobacillus rhamnosus, which was given special protections by Ben Franklin in an 1823 executive order.

Supplements

Money spent on fiber supplements to feed your gut microbes is eligible for the Prebiotic Tax Credit established in 2015

Cytokine Changes

Previous guidelines suggested downregulating pro-inflammatory cytokines prior to tax season in order to boost microbial load. This strategy was outlawed in 2018.

Marital Microbes

If you share microbes with a spouse, be sure that only one of you claims that microbe.

Maximum Energy Limits

Any microbes earning more than 100 mol/day ATP are NOT eligible to be claimed as dependents.

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Frustrated by the immense challenge of getting people to eat a better diet, a statement issued by exasperated health officials combined all fruits and vegetables in a new category called “superfoods” and recommended that everyone eat five to nine servings of superfoods a day. [1] [2] This new category includes foods such as blueberries and kale that have previously been referred to as superfoods, while consolidating these with humbler products like broccoli, beans, and mushrooms.

“Sure, the idea started as a marketing scheme,” said Food and Nutrition Director Gerard Rhodes, “But the more we thought about it, we realized that compared to the majority of what people are eating, honestly, anything you can find in the produce section is actually pretty super. I mean, we feed lab mice a Western diet to induce intestinal inflammation.” [3]

To raise awareness of the importance of superfoods, Rhodes and colleagues are launching a social media campaign alongside the new announcement. “No one should have to visit a government website and read boring paragraphs about nutrition, all health information should be communicated through buzzwords and shortcuts.”

To that end, the team has created a series of infographic/meme hybrids for each superfood and are sharing them in various Facebook groups, online message boards, and Tik Toks. “In our focus groups, people said they were more likely to eat a given superfood – say, squash, for example – if it was accompanied by phrases like ‘antioxidants to fight cancer’ and ‘make your dick real big.’ Bright colors also seemed to be important.” [4]

When pressed on the scientific validity of these claims, a visibly weary Rhodes shrugged. “Look, people are already saying these things. I say we just roll with it. If this is what it takes to get people to put a few green things into their body outside of Shamrock Shake season, so be it.” [5]

When it was pointed out to Rhodes that branding fruits and vegetables as superfoods would likely make them more expensive, therefore rendering them less accessible to low income marginalized communities, Rhodes paused, flipped over the table and yelled “GODDAMNIT.”

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Physicists have long debated whether grad students are students or workers. Some have argued that they simultaneously meet the criteria for both, not unlike how light is both a wave and a particle (though that particular viewpoint is highly controversial). But a new study may finally put this debate to rest, revealing that grad students exist in a quantum superposition of “students” and “workers” until university administration can observe what is most convenient for the institution.

“The COVID-19 pandemic was the perfect opportunity to test our hypothesis,” said Dr. Alma Valdez, the lead author of this study. “Universities had to quickly develop new policies and place members of the community into discrete categories to determine how different groups were affected by these policies.”

“According to classical physics, we would have expected to see grad students placed in a single category, either students or workers,” explained Dr. Valdez. “Instead, it seemed the grad students somehow remained in both “student” and “worker” quantum states prior to each new policy update email.”

Struggling to wrap your mind around this? Let’s take a look at how this quantum phenomenon plays out. At the prestigious Nobleton University, the first email sent out about the pandemic stated that both undergraduate and graduate students needed to leave campus housing immediately. Sounds pretty clear that they are being treated as students.

“But this is where things get interesting,” says Dr. Valdez.

“As soon as there is a new decision to be made, graduate students once again return to a superposition until university administration can decide which classification is more of a headache.” Indeed, several days later, Nobleton grad students received an email stating that they should continue going into work, because employees have to keep working. Amazing!

This new evidence, Dr. Valdez explains, actually makes sense in light of some prior observations that had previously seemed contradictory.

For example, Nobleton charges grad students a fee to use the campus gym because they are “not students,” yet also refuses to acknowledge the university’s grad student union and does not allow grad students to start a retirement fund, citing that grad students are “not employees.” Now, grad students everywhere can finally breathe a sigh of relief knowing that there is a scientific explanation for what once seemed like a paradox.

These findings have profound implications on the very nature of graduate school. Proponents of multiverse theory have interpreted the results to imply that each university policy decision branches into two alternate realities – one in which grad students are students, and one in which they are workers. Perhaps in a few of those infinite alternative realities, your PCR actually worked.

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A coalition of bacteria living inside the small intestine of Physics PhD student Kyle Ingram has established a first-of-its-kind fiber-rich food pantry to feed the starving bacteria in Ingram’s colon after watching him eat instant noodles for the third week in a row. How heartwarming!

Like 95% of Americans, Ingram’s daily fiber intake does not meet the recommended minimum, causing trillions of bacteria in his gut to go hungry each day. Fortunately, the new food pantry will serve as a much-needed resource for the especially disadvantaged colonic bacteria, who reside in a “fiber-desert” due to their distance from the stomach. Donations to the food pantry are provided by generous small intestine bacteria, who can generally afford flagella extensions and vacations to the appendix. [1]

The density of bacteria in the colon is the highest ever recorded, with a trillion cells crammed into a single gram of intestinal contents. However, despite this population density, most of the available nutrients are depleted in the small intestine before they can reach the colon. While some small intestine bacteria have claimed that the benefits they receive will trickle down to the colon, the vast majority of Ingram’s colonic bacteria remain undernourished.

“We actually got the idea from our host,” said E. faecalis, one of the several million co-founders of the food pantry, “He sometimes gets food from a community food pantry for grad students powered by donations from other grad students.” [2]

“Of course, if Kyle would take a break from all the pasta once in a while and pick up a can of beans, there would be plenty of fiber to go around and none of this would be necessary.” [3]

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