There is no adult content in small-molecule crystallography, *staring on today's structure* I thought until today. (sorry, cannot show the picture for few reasons)

"Fake of the Day" Part 6. Magnesium Taurate from Cosmo Pharm. This bottle brings a new mineral to my collection - Kieserite. #supplements #chemsky #TaurateCurse #SupplementsSaga

"Fake of the Day" Part 5. Magnesium Taurate from Holland & Barrett. Ah, this is a classic - physical mixture of taurine and hydromagnesite, no magnesium taurate. One of the safest kind of fakes, at least it will not give you a run for a toilet. #supplements #chemsky #TaurateCurse #SupplementsSaga

Aha! Found/confirmed another mistake in European Pharmacopoeia, now just I need to find a publishable crystal. Not important and non dangerous mistake, but still. "Ah, it is you again..." (c) #chemsky #SupplementsSaga

"Fake of the Day" Part 4. Magnesium Taurinate from BLDpharm. www.bldpharm.com/products/927... This is an exception in this series, because is it not a food supplement with "magnesium taurate", but a "pure" compound from chemical supplier. #supplements #chemsky #TaurateCurse #SupplementsSaga

"Fake of the Day" Part 3. "Magnesium Taurate avec P-5-P from" Vitakruid. To add something not so boring as previous cases - this is a record-holder for the moment, I was able to identify 4 distinct minerals! Minerals in the strict IMA definition. #TaurateCurse #SupplementsSaga #chemsky

Resharing for #MineralMonday Fun fact, the NHM has this set (still boxed) registered in the Mineral Collection - you can view its info here: data.nhm.ac.uk/object/829a1... #minerals #SciArt #Lego

The Volcano World Cup Round of 16 begins! In Day 1 matches we get matches like Japan v South Korea, Türkiye v New Zealand, Ecuador v Norway and Colombia v Cabo Verde. Cast your vote to see who moves onto the quarterfinals: eruptions.site/2026/07/06/v... #volcanoworldcup

Fake of the Day, part 2. TAURAPRO from Pronesium - no magnesium taurate, only taurine and brucite (magnesium hydroxide). Boring, except bold claims about superior USA ingredients. #chemsky #TaurateCurse #SupplementsSaga

Me, receiving a parcel with samples from industry on Friday evening (that I asked, not for payed analysis). At least one new structure and chances for other. #chemsky #crystallography

Do diffraction, have fun, they say... @stecanossa.bsky.social , an analysis by single picture? :) #crystallography #chemsky

Ok, I cannot resist it and went on a shopping spree, so you know who to blame for following series of post (one per day). So, here we go, Fake of the Day, part 1. That product contains some herbal stuff, but I still was able to analyze it - contains undeclared taurine and magnesium oxide. 1/3

I thought that I am done with buying (and refunding, so) fake magnesium taurate supplement, but that stuff looks so tempting... "pure, oxide-free raw material from the USA", in fact, "made in USA" is rather a huge red flag, from my expirience. #chemsky #TaurateCurse #SupplementsSaga

Looks suspicious, right? But these are false alerts, cased by sc-to-sc phase transition at low temperature from "normal" P2₁/c and Z'=1 at room temperature to P2₁ and Z=4 at 100 K. #chemsky #crystallography

Oh, that is new, if I am not mistaken. And I like it. #crystallography

I can be considered as experienced crystallographer (>1100 structures, X-ray, neurons, electrons, powder, VT, HP, in situ, in operando, etc, bla-bla), but almost every day, working with small and "simple" molecules, I am asking the question "What The Hell It Is?!" #chemsky #crystallography

The time is now to vote in the first Round of 32 matches for the Volcano World Cup. Some major volcano heavyweights hope to not get upset like certain real World Cup teams. Cast your ballot here: eruptions.site/2026/06/30/v...

GraPhAI: Neural Networks for Solving Centrosymmetric Crystal Structures | Journal of the American Chemical Society pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

Each time a fresh organic student fricking out from the image disordered methyl group in his/her structure. #chemsky #crystallography

Weird coincidence: I never heard about oxime before @xtalgrrl.bsky.social mentioned it and than one month later it appear in a structure. #chemsky #crystallography

A PhD student in organic synthesis who is at the end of her PhD: "I have a lot of intermediate products that already characterised, but it would nice to have X-ray structure". Well, it did not go so simple. Behold a molecule, definitely without heavy atoms! #crystallography #chemsky #RealTimeChem

Last day! Cast your ballots for the Volcano World Cup Group Stage! #volcanoworldcup #worldcup

*grumble as reviewer* - it is not giving a good impression when your second sentence of the abstract contains a serious factual mistake... And quite obvious. #chemsky

PhD position in neighboring group (Belgium, Louvain-la-Neuve): additive controlled enantioselective crystallization. #chemsky #chem euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs/446974

Hey, we (Belgium) have a volcano! Well, almost: www.mindat.org/loc-343029.h...

@b-kajetan.bsky.social is back to his favorite hobby - crystallizing high-quality crystals of beta-CD hydrate. It is fifth dataset of beta-CD for me this year. The problem that you need to collect enough data to understand that it is not good.

"Well, yes, we have a mechanism to suggest a revision to the European Pharmacopoeia via national pharmacopoeia authority, but it the first time when somebody send such request..."

Credit where credit is due, Jamieson contacted me today with adequate reaction, so a point to Canada. #chemsky #SupplementsSaga

Real old-school #crystallography - we tried to solve a structure with intuition and only then we turn to a computer. #chemsky

Today I unexpectedly received a parcel with this supplement - for free. Well, thanks, another point to my collection. They corrected the label on the bottle, good point. But the product itself is a fake - taurine and magnesium hydroxide. #Chemsky #chemchat #SupplementsSaga #TaurateCurse

Second part of Canadian adventures (and last). Thanks (or "thanks") to @nmr900.bsky.social I am now familiar with this cringe advertisement from Canadian TV www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyTZ... . Obviously, a phrase "100% Pure" would trigger any scientist and I was not exception. 🧵 1/x #chemsky

About second part of the parcel - magnesium bisglycinate and "100% PURE" - well, how to say to you politely - not at all. And I thought that magnesium bisglycinate has low SUI.... Detailed post later. #chemsky #SupplementsSaga

Done, as I promised to @fischblog.bsky.social, I made a 5-min video of a complete analysis of "Magnesium Taurate" food supplement. This time form Canada where they have stricter standards (in theory). youtu.be/6Ei2Pw5uu0s Spoiler: it is a fake, as always for magnesium taurate. #chemsky

Finally, with help from @caveneylab.ca, I got two samples of food supplements from Canada 🇨🇦 . I had just few minutes before leave for the day, so I’m not had time to check bisglycinate. Well, there is magnesium bisglycinate dihydrate inside, that is good news. 1/2

Without googling, can you guess what is "The American’s Mont Blanc"?

Fixing the title: "Scientists using AI agents to accelerate catalyst discovery from simulation to scale-up" #chemsky

I was sniffing around the lab, trying to track down a suspicious “chemical” smell, but I couldn't find the source until lunch, when smell moved to the kitchen. It was the perfume of a researcher. 🤦 #chemsky

Help?! I need a catchy title for a scientific manuscript on metal degradation and I was wondering if "Wer rastet, der rostet" is also used in English. Do you say "If you rest, you rust?"

Is the Microsoft Office Ribbon causing people to have fewer children? A provocative new working paper explores the persistent drop in birth rates since Office 2007 was introduced nearly two decades ago.

Only a "small" 1000x mistake - 85 mcg of magnesium per capsule, while it should be 85 mg. Have no idea is it is a mistake in formulation or on the label. My bet for both. #SupplementsSaga #chemsky

Can you spot a mistake here? #SupplementsSaga #chemsky Really, US-made supplements are so boring, because almost every brand has stupid mistakes on the label. I found only few that at least looks fine.

Bismuth has weird coordination sometimes. Sorry, fascinating chemistry, I mean. #chemsky #crystallography

🚨Funding for 2yr postdoc w/me & @geocron.bsky.social on landslide-tsunami-jökulhlaup, but (this is the ridiculous part) I need to select someone NOW or I lose the $. If you're NOT in Canada (can be any nationality) & interested email CV & transcripts by midnight MT, June 12. 🧪⚒️ @igs-egg.bsky.social

And here is the alternative for pentavalent carbon, probably I will stick with this version of refinement. ~80:20 solid solution. #chemsky #crystallography

Yeah, glycine, it is definitely glycine. #chemsky

Well, I have a LT dataset and results are same as for RT data collection. The conclusions are clear - we were able to make first pentavalent carbon. While I am writing an articles for Nature, Science and Heavy Drugs Frontiers, you can try to guess what it is in reality. #chemsky #crystallography

A definition of a “small sample” is very different in food industry. Now I have 2 kg of margarine. Apparently, exact polymorph of margarine 🧈 is very important for perfect croissants 🥐 . #chemsky

The different between BadEvilBigPharma and GoodSweetFoodSupplements is obvious, let me show on this example of an anti-allergy drug Allegra Tab. I bought it (because it is this time of the year again) and analysed it. The label is saying that tablets contain fexofenadine hydrochloride, but what...

I understand that you need to bend the reality in an advertisement, but not so much...