“I am accumulating ambitions at a bit of a clip.”

"Anything on the list I haven't heard about yet?"

“Setting up a system that asks me questions I’ll fail to answer at different backlash levels and gives me corresponding prompts!”

"Ooh, I like it. If you think you can avoid just - memorizing the answers and having the test re-curve itself over time -"

“Hmm. Well, I’m sure I’ll end up iterating whether that happens or not.”

"Yeah, it'd be surprising to get it right on the first try. - why are such a disproportional fraction of tropical fish specifically yellow, black, and white, over any other color scheme."

“I don’t specifically know but I’m sure there’s some environmental reason for that combination to converge to evolve.”

"Presumably, but there's plenty of others represented, that one's just convergently evolving a heck of a lot."

“I don’t know! Maybe it’s good for blending against a specific species of coral.” She gets out her phone and types for a bit. “Google has failed me,” she announces solemnly.

"Tragedy. We'll simply have to wonder forever."

“Or I could do research in an actual library with books.”

"I find that approach useful for learning background about a topic and kind of disappointing for answering specific questions about for example the color schemes of tropical fish."

“That’s how I feel about Wikipedia, and oh of course you were thinking of a public library. I mean, like, an academic library, at my university.”

"I'm not sure I know how that'd help! The process of looking through a book and following a citation can't change that much based on what books are present in the building, can it?"

“Nnnooo, but the process of asking people for help does? Academic librarians or, like, biology students, or even in a pinch marine biology professors…this might be an introvert/extrovert thing.”

"Oh, if you expect any of those people to ask them that might work great, but then the library's factored out of the equation except insofar as that is where you would find the academic librarian."

“No, because there’s a good chance none of them know the specific answer but they know where I should look for it, and if the answer involves any journals that use paywalls I use the library accounts to access them anyway.”

"Makes sense. I have a connect for university journal access but half the time I just email whoever wrote the paper I want and they send me a copy."

“That probably works better if you know exactly what paper you want than if you’re combing through several.”

"Yeah, my research process is not really oriented to questions quite like the fish question."

“I’m very easy to nerdsnipe with questions like the fish question. It’s part of why I know such a broad array of largely unconnected facts!”

"What's your favorite unconnected fact?"

“Oh, I think it’s probably just how human our nearest relatives are, living and dead. I—like people, in general if not always in particular, and…seeing those things mirrored across our most distant ancestors and cousins, not to mention, like, elephants—language, loving your children, grieving your dead—I think, the way I feel about that, those are the kinds of emotions religious people feel.”

"Do we have much evidence for language in other hominids?"

“Yeah! Simpler language, but still language! With syntax and everything!”