PROFESSOR TURNS SPIDER SILK INTO DUBSTEP, WINS PRESTIGIOUS AWARD WHILE ACTUAL SPIDERS REMAIN UNEMPLOYED
In a stunning development that has left arachnids nationwide filing for unemployment benefits, MIT Professor Markus J. Buehler has been named recipient of the 2025 Washington Award for basically stealing spider jobs and turning their work into EDM tracks.
NATURE’S INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY THEFT CELEBRATED BY ENGINEERING ELITE
The prestigious award, given to engineers who have “preeminently advanced the welfare of humankind,” completely ignores the welfare of the eight-legged creatures whose intellectual property Buehler has been digitally appropriating for years. Previous recipients include Herbert Hoover, who at least had the decency to just vacuum things up without pretending it was “groundbreaking research.”
According to the award committee, Buehler earned this honor by “playing God with protein structures while making them drop sick beats.” His 500+ peer-reviewed publications have revolutionized how we understand biological materials like silk and collagen, which spiders and other creatures have been quietly perfecting for millions of years without a single PowerPoint presentation.
“What Professor Buehler has done is nothing short of miraculous,” gushed Dr. Obvious Fanboy, head of the Sycophantic Engineering Association. “He’s taken things nature spent billions of years perfecting and said ‘nice job, I’ll take it from here’ with the confidence only a tenured professor could muster.”
TURNING MOLECULES INTO MUSIC: SCIENCE OR MIDLIFE CRISIS?
In what colleagues describe as “definitely not just a way to seem cool at faculty parties,” Buehler pioneered “materiomusic,” a process of converting molecular structures into musical compositions. This revolutionary approach has allowed him to transform the complex protein structure of spider silk into what witnesses describe as “the kind of dubstep that makes you question your life choices.”
“You haven’t lived until you’ve heard collagen drop the bass,” said Professor Ima Nerd, who attended one of Buehler’s molecular music concerts. “It’s like Skrillex, if Skrillex understood hydrogen bonding at the atomic level.”
An estimated 97.3% of students who have experienced materiomusic report being “completely f@#king confused but too afraid to say anything.”
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE MEETS ARTIFICIAL IMPORTANCE
The award also recognizes Buehler’s work in “physics-aware artificial intelligence,” which sources confirm is just like regular artificial intelligence but with added anxiety about gravity.
“His algorithm can predict protein structures better than actual proteins can,” explained silicon-based thinking rectangle expert Dr. Silica Valley. “It’s like having your calculator tell you what you’re going to have for breakfast tomorrow, and somehow it’s always right.”
EDUCATIONAL CONTRIBUTIONS OR ELABORATE RECRUITMENT SCHEME?
Beyond his research, Buehler has been praised for his educational contributions, including K-12 STEM summer camps that critics suggest are merely “indoctrinating children into the cult of computational materials science before they’re old enough to realize there’s no money in it.”
“My son went to Professor Buehler’s summer camp and came back talking about ‘hierarchical architectures’ and ‘nano-scale properties,'” said concerned parent Karen Helicopter. “He’s seven. He’s supposed to be eating dirt and playing Fortnite.”
When reached for comment, a spider who wished to remain anonymous said, “We’ve been making silk for 380 million years without a single Washington Award. This guy comes along, makes a computer simulation, and suddenly he’s the silk expert? What the actual f@#k.”
The award ceremony, attended by members of various engineering societies and nearly 100 pre-college students, concluded with Buehler demonstrating his latest achievement: an AI-generated rendition of “Baby Shark” performed entirely using the vibrational frequencies of elastin molecules, proving once and for all that with enough grant money, even the most sophisticated scientific minds will eventually just mess around with expensive toys.
