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• Post #4142743

  Message for the day – Commit a random act of maintenance! Listen to it, look at it, wipe it, clean it, lube it, brush it, tighten it, grease it, turn it, check it, test it, sweep it, mop it, paint it, tape it, sand it, tweak it, tune it, adjust it, wash it, oil it, dust it, align it, scrub it, wind it, fill it, seal it…

• Post #4118713

  RE: https://cyberplace.social/@GossiTheDog/116986533493228804 Remember that this man is STILL a Fellow of the Royal Society!

• Post #3703747

  It may not be immediately obvious, but it seems pretty shallow to write off a very serious bit of science. Niche, sure. But it sounds a bit like George Pimentel’s legendary dismissal of lanthanide chemistry. There’s plenty of arcane and seemingly dull things (binary and ternary phase diagrams??? Stability constants? LFER?? endless crystal structures??) and then things move on, new tools appear and suddenly they’re the bedrock of a new mash-up. Beware what you dismiss.

• Post #3689179

  This could be Count Binface's big chance. C'mon Clacton. Given the shocking waste of money of having to run a by-election the least you can do is to elect someone sensible. #Garbage

• Post #2966256

  RE: https://mefi.social/@MissConstrue/116636353064366780 I’ve been reading it too. It is quite the document. Forget that he’s Pope. A mind for our times. A light in the gloom.

• Post #2966255

  RE: https://mastodon.green/@SusiArnott/116637364129839125 A Pope for our Time!

• Post #2966254

  The due diligence required to moderate and check our electronic final exam experiment is going to drive me to drink. We now have three versions of every question on the paper (about 80 some shared between 3 papers) and the fiddliness of making sure that each of these versions is the same is going to drive me mad. And I've discovered that one of my beloved colleagues does not know that when you are generating SMILES strings there's a difference between benzene and cyclohexatriene...

• Post #2966253

  The unmistakeable and BRILLIANT voice of Rhiannon Giddens is on BBC Radio 3 from Wigmore Hall. I'm gutted that I'd not spotted her gig in advance as I've only ever heard on "wireless". https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/live/bbc_radio_three If you've forgotten the marvels that is America, she embodies so much of the best in America represents.

• Post #2966252

  RE: https://mastodon.social/@wchr/116652424129301471 If Chrome is a threat to the security of US military personnel then it's clearly a threat to everyone else. Odd that they didn't learn from the Strava incident that @eliothiggins.bsky.social and @Bellingcat uncovered a few years back. Memories are short.

• Post #2966251

  Lovely exhibition inspired by The Second Law by the Japanese artist Reijiro Wada. The man does things to titanium that will make you marvel. At the Anglo Japanese Davies Foundation in Regent’s Park. #free #microstates #entropy #Boltzmann #titanium

• Post #2577290

  This article, in which Paul Nurse compares Elon Musk with Isaac Newton (“a nasty piece of work”), leaves me completely speechless. I don’t even know where to start. https://www.ft.com/content/088b804f-15e0-4a8e-b32d-146a826b8d6c?shareType=nongift

• Post #2096733

  It is with great sadness that I am doing what I would once have thought unthinkable. Following Salim Abdool Karim's superb Faraday Lecture 10 days ago, i have decided to return my own Faraday prize, awarded in 2014. The silence of the Royal Society in the face of Elon Musk's rampage (a member of the RS since 2018) across US science is incomprehensible to me. We must all draw the line somewhere in the face of authoritarian attacks and this is mine. https://www.ft.com/content/...

• Post #1971945

  I have been reading “La Resistenza delle Donne” by the writer and journalist Benedetta Tobagi that won the Premio Campiello 2023 (the top literary prize in Italy, first one by Primo Levi). It a gripping account of the role that #women played in the Italian resistance to the Fascist regime. It is grim but extraordinarily uplifting reading. It includes photos of a couple of friends of my grandmother’s who were #partisans. I know little of her activities as she never spoke of it to anyone. 1/n

• Post #1971944

  Catching up with a pile of old newspapers, I find @MarcAbrahams staring out of the 23 April edition of Le Temps. It’s a great paper with smart journalists and little clickbait. IgNobels excepted, of course. 😜 A very good interview with trenchant comment on the threat to US science. And even a passing reference to two banana-clad “badauds” (gawkers/flâneurs).

• Post #1971941

  In my dotage I think I'm developing a taste for InfoWars. This is much more to my gourmet tastes. Bottoms up! https://twitter.com/TheMaineWonk/status/2050598724938747925?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

• Post #1891079

  Every so often there is a hilarious detail amid the never ending car-crash that is the Trump “administration”. “I was at an industry meeting this week, and I can tell you one of the biggest concerns was that we might see diesel prices [in the US] go to $10, and the equipment, you know, the pumps and the dispensers and so forth can’t handle a number that high. That’s incredible,” he said. From the FT.

• Post #1823517

  RE: https://eupolicy.social/@Akshay/116397375680946291 A reminder that storms are thermodynamic heat engines. They use temperature difference to generate “work” (ie wind and motion). So hot seas amplify their intensity.

• Post #1779084

  I'm only just catching up with Ember's 2026 Electricity report and it is just staggering. 75% of new elec generation capacity came from solar last year, typically with battery back up. And both China and India are just flat in terms of emissions because the roll out of renewables is so fast. I'll temper that by reminding us all that Jevons' Paradox applies to this but wow! Just wow! Read this to stop you wasting the rest of your day with some AI slop. https://em...

• Post #1779083

  @joriki Yup. Will fix. Ironically i did a PhD exam in a room named after Jevons himself on Friday

• Post #1779082

  Exam question idea: “Using the quantities listed on the label calculate the pH of the buffer solution in this enema bottle.” Thoughts? #chemistry #teaching #applications #academic #enema

• Post #1304040

  Antonio Spadaro is a Vatican spokesman who knows how to hit Mr Trump where it hurts. From the FT which reports Trump’s latest rantling (a neologism that is the mix of rant and ramble that has become his hallmark)

• Post #1092614

  A unnamed Iranian official quoted by the Tasnim news agency in Tehran sums up the state of play. America’s Suez.

• Post #992891

  UK people: KLAXON - today is the last chance to submit your views to the government's BBC Charter Review! There's a lot to think about and not much time. Please set aside some of your rage about "BBC bias". The BBC is imperfect but supporting it is crucial to resist the slide towards news media entirely controlled by rich fascistoid techbros, and the injection of AI slot into everyone's feeds. Democracy needs non-commerical organizations like the #...

• Post #972058

  RE: https://hachyderm.io/@inthehands/116354480071471219 Read this to the end. It’s in our hands.

• Post #933245

  Astonishing comment in the FT summarising the situation in Hormuz etc. Not sure if paywalled. https://www.ft.com/content/77e5184d-9854-4a30-b53c-498223b436a5?commentID=7f2917fd-62f0-49de-8d44-bb5082137338

• Post #889034

  Does anyone out there have access to the "Journal of Chemical Health and Safety". I'm looking for volume 14 (2007) page 25-30 which might have a useful reference or two. UCL doesn't subscribe. Will trade for chocolate.

• Post #856671

  I’ll be talking about the very serious helium shortage that is looming (actually, it’s already upon us) and risks crippling semiconductor chip production and diagnostic instruments like MRI scanners, not to mention low temperature science.. It’s maddening because we’ve known that helium is very limited but it’s cheap so no one recovers it. It’ll be on BBC World Service Newshour around 13:45 BST. #elements #chemistry #economics #profligacy

• Post #852110

  Interesting view from Peter Atkins at the RSC Historial Group - don't tell students that there's a lot of hard maths in chemistry. He argues that there's not a lot of real mathematics. There are a lot of physical ideas that are underpinned quantitatively. Tell students instead to focus on the ideas, and that the maths is easy and will follow. Lovely account of the growth of PChem in the last 50 years, in part illustrated by acronyms used in his textbooks. Fascinating.

• Post #537710

  Scathing/sobering assessment of CCS and hydrogen tech in the context of climate change from Julian Allwood. Not a comfortable read. He must have had a hard time with referees because he comments: Given the vast investment of academic effort …it is hardly surprising that the message of this paper is challenging, and this was made evident in the extensive process of manuscript review… the conclusions of the paper, reflected in the title, should be seen not as heresy." https://www.nature....

• Post #515675

  For those not on LInkedIn, here is a sample of the brilliance of Patrick Gathara who holds up a mirror for those of us in the "old world". #trump #tribalism ALT text had to be truncated. Sorry.