1. FFS 2. How many words for "number" does one language need?! 🇸🇪

Wow, there's yet another, 11-person, manel coming up on the conference list. Is that the third one I've noticed this year, or 4th?

In a way, I'm finding comp chem more complicated than synthesis. Not because it inherently is - just that newbies who haven't built up experience/understanding can still set up a simple lab-scale synthesis as a "pair of hands" and will just get less analysis out of it than an experienced chemist

Reddit answers for non-chem: "hi I'm an expert in this very niche topic. Here are my thoughts based on 35 y in-depth experience" Reddit answers for chemistry: "hey so basically it's because carbon never does SN2. If you hybridize the electrophile your sterics are probably too old. So it's orbitals"

Beautiful friend at the towpath side of the cottage this morning #UKWildlife 🦋

A facility housing large tanks of methyl methacrylate, the monomer form of polymethyl methacrylate was overheating this May. @chemjobber.bsky.social explores the lessons learned & how risky runaway polymerisation can be prevented in the future: www.chemistryworld.com/opinion/earl...

Early lessons from the Garden Grove chemical incident

A runaway polymerisation raises questions about safety measures and their backups

chemistryworld.com

Thanks Bluesky for not giving me notification dots for any new DMs since 2025, leading me to not check them [I still refuse to do the age verification thing, so it takes effort], believing nobody had sent any... 🙈😂

I shared one Swedish language learning video in a private conversation last week and since then my phone thinks it needs to serve me content about Sweden, Swedish, and Swedishness 24/7 The latest is particularly special and was -not- remotely on my mind...

#2, recounted by the prof it happened to FamousChemProf: I bumped into [VeryFamousNobelist] at the ACS. He said he'd forgotten more chemistry than I could ever know FamousChemProf's postdoc, extreme sassy American tone: You should have replied, that's because you're _old_. (I mean he is, very old)

Artologica aka Michele Banks @artologica.net · last wk.

Hey 🧪! I was just reminiscing with a friend about the time a very senior academic called a mid-career guy's work "completely meaningless" at a meeting and now I want to hear your best (public, academic) disses

I've posted this online before, & it was 14 y ago (gosh), but, in the Sheldonian Theatre so speakers could not hear the audience: Speaker: "ah yes, and this is currently a hot topic in biology..." Old posh FamousChemProf, directly in front of me, loudly: "Pah! He is nothing but a man of fashion!" 🤣

Artologica aka Michele Banks @artologica.net · last wk.

Hey 🧪! I was just reminiscing with a friend about the time a very senior academic called a mid-career guy's work "completely meaningless" at a meeting and now I want to hear your best (public, academic) disses

Damn, I missed it! A comma butterfly emerged from chrysalis on my house today. It stands to send but I didn't know the empty chrysalis would suddenly be so pale #UKWildlife 🦋

Not... sure how often I'll be breaking this one out, to be honest 😬 #Duolingo

Good luck to all those involved (Evening Standard says that number is 1,800 staff). #chemsky #chemchat www.bbc.co.uk/news/article... www.standard.co.uk/business/bus...

Pharma giant GSK quits Stevenage for Cambridge

GSK says the relocation will put 1,000 staff at the "heart of the UK's life sciences Golden Triangle".

bbc.co.uk

Photocatalytic deaminative amination! Take your (ideally, (hetero)benzylic; others are viable too) amine, and switch it for another amine. This could be so much fun in med chem. Doesn't tolerate a whole load of functional groups, but still a cool method #chemsky pubs.acs.org/jacsat/artic...

Light-Driven Deaminative Formal Nucleophilic Substitution Via C(sp3)–N Bond Cleavage: Nucleophilic Transamination of Alkyl Amines

Abstract. Herein, we report a photoredox-enabled catalytic transamination strategy that enables direct amine-to-amine interconversion without prefunctional

pubs.acs.org

I have just learned about acridine red not being an acridine, because (to paraphrase) "early biological stains were often named descriptively based on their color output or similarity in usage to other dyes". FML, guys #chemchat

I know my settings have Swedish as preferred language (to help me learn) and English also ok... but I didn't really mean like this #Swinglish

Went with my brave boy to the vet's (he has a clean bill of health!) and we met three doggies. None of them were a worry (apparently) other than the tiny one, who was cat-sized 😂 probably trying to figure out what was wrong with the very strange, big-eared cat 🐶

Now online: Comment article by Linjiang Chen, Xiaobo Li, Quan Lin & Jun Jiang Self-driving laboratories need an autonomy safety harness www.nature.com/articles/s44... ($) #Chemsky

Self-driving laboratories need an autonomy safety harness - Nature Synthesis

Industrial self-driving laboratories need more than safe robots and instruments. They need an autonomy safety harness that defines how AI-generated intent becomes executable experiments, monitored act...

nature.com

Not often it's starting to get dark when I get out of giving a seminar 🙂 but it's lunchtime at Caltech! (And they all got pizza in the room – I'm very jealous) 🍕

Of all the wild programming stories I have read (and it is a genre I enjoy), this thread probably takes the entire cake...

Caliban Darklock@darklock.com · 2w ago

Early in my career I was called on to figure out what the hell was wrong with a FORTRAN program which had worked just fine for years, but when a contractor updated some formulas, it stopped working.

Now online: Q&A with @supersciencegrl.co.uk, an Associate Principal Scientist at AstraZeneca, who talks to @natsynth.nature.com about the challenges in developing self-driving labs and overcoming barriers for the adoption of these labs in industry. www.nature.com/articles/s44... ($) #Chemsky

Autonomous laboratories and digital chemistry in industry - Nature Synthesis

Nature Synthesis - Autonomous laboratories and digital chemistry in industry

nature.com

Cocktail garnishes. How long do they actually take to imbue flavour to your drink? We seem to accept that you just place them in and your drink is made. With the ethanol content and if you stir with a straw, could it be true? 🍸

Arrrrgh inorganic chemists be labelling neosilyl groups as Ns... it doesn't mean nosyl. We really speak different languages sometimes #chemchat

Initially published with responses to 15 points, Thermo Fisher’s transparency FAQ was later amended to 7 shorter questions & answers. A representative for Thermo Fisher says the change reflects ‘learnings from our ongoing review’. Read on here 👇 #ChemSky www.chemistryworld.com/news/thermo-...

Thermo Fisher antibody data manipulation is a breach of trust, say researchers

Science sleuths say the problem is impacting research progress and Thermo's response falls short

chemistryworld.com

What a brilliant day yesterday! 🌊 We were delighted to jointly host ‘Transitioning from FAIR to AI-Ready Data in the Physical Sciences’ together with @psdi-uk.bsky.social and the energy throughout the event was incredible. A huge thank you to all the speakers and everyone who joined us! 🎥✨

Hej #chemchat, Yuka is looking for our views on working with chemistry automation. Non-automation chemists especially wanted for balance! It doesn't take long to complete ✨✨

Yuka Spencer@yuka-spencer.bsky.social · 4w ago

🧪 Chemists Wanted! Share your views on working with autonomous robots 🤖 for a University of York study. Who: 18+ with 2+ years of chemistry lab experience Time: 10–15 mins (online) Perk: Win a £50 voucher 👉 Click here www.lifelikelab.science/chem-robot-s... 🎓🙏 #Chemistry #LabAutomation #SciSky

Reading this as I spend 15 minutes and counting trying to load anything further than the title of a Fierce Biotech article on a >£100 CrossCountry train 😂 Why Britain's notoriously bad train wi-fi might soon be a thing of the past www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

A tiny elderberry tree is shooting up under my pear tree, and I've been trying to figure out whether this is a bad thing or not. 🤔 (Ignore the avens and bramble "weeds" – what looks like the floor is raised above head height so they're not really too offensive)

My hot take is that "creates molecular complexity quickly" is 95% of the time a euphemism for "in a direction nobody wants and is essentially non-useful". However this paper - this is a very cool transformation. Great work! #chemsky

C&EN (Chemical & Engineering News)@cenmag.bsky.social · 4w ago

The reaction creates molecular complexity quickly and constructs scaffolds not previously imagined from alkyl halides: #chemsky 🧪