Woah. Another chemical plant explosion. I don't recall this frequency in prior years. Would be great to have statistics on this but the only funds for the Chemical Safety Board are to shut it down...

Hibbing MN... birthplace of Nobel laureate Robert Zimmerman and where guy in Deadpool shirt shoots a stranger in the face to 'see something funny'

@theonion.com Trump administration continues fight against climate change... this time through mandatory cuts to domestic flights. 10% cuts to flights potentially reducing CO2e emissions by 35k metric tons each day (assuming that the flight cuts are average emissions)

Will carbon capture be greater than quantum? Shake your magic 8 ball to get the answer.

Let's see, maybe AI will figure out that burning that much coal to fuel it may lead to its ascent to the apex species as warming temperatures lead to mass extinction

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Difference is one had more hair.

Apparently there was a Gatsby party at Mar a Lago, while Trump is trying to kick 42 million off SNAP

I hope that Jaime Dimon has more J.P. Morgan in him that I think if a major crash does happen. Can he lock some bankers in a room to avoid a crisis like Morgan did on this day in 1907?

166 yrs ago John Brown was convicted for his role in Harper's Ferry and sentenced to hang. One of the sparks for an actual insurrection that led to the Civil War

This might be THE Onion but it might be happening in reality with large investments by so many companies... some of these may not look like good decisions in retrospect.

Favorite reference to bubble gum in cinema...

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One positive outcome from AI proliferation... may Chegg go the way of MySpace

This is dark futurism.com/robots-and-m...

Although satire, likely better than the current status of negotiations with Canada... imagine what happens if Toronto wins the World Series.

The NIT used to be the big tournament for college basketball... point shaving was a nail in the coffin. I wonder if there will be any fallout the NBA for this gambling scandal... at least no referees involved this time

Since it is Mole day, I thought I would highlight a chemical engineer from Pennsylvania that had a tremendous impact on humanity... failure to consider impact on the environment has its consequences. Hopefully the Cuyahoga river doesn't need to be on fire again but I'm cynical.

Here is a comic on the use of AI in education that @makinaro.com and I made for Chemical Engineering Education. Maki's art is otherworldly in this one, and I'm very pleased to have gotten this published in the journal.

Circular water... hopefully that is more successful than polywater web.archive.org/web/20091227...

I will climb aboard by any means available however improbable and you will simply never see me again

Another sign that science fiction is likely less fiction than some HHS press releases www.nationalgeographic.com/science/arti...

If I was looking for spice, I would need a rocket ship...

"We need to stop trusting the experts" is quite the statement from the head of US health and human services. Some of us have committed our lives & professional work to illuminating new frontiers and teaching others how to do the same. The abject cruelty tied to that statement is ... whew.

Great to see all of the innovation in the national lab space in increasing automation for large user facilities. Hopefully, DOE is also looking at data management and potential for data mining of these large datasets.

2025 is the new 1922 The Young Republicans are essentially the HJ based on the released chats. www.politico.com/news/2025/10...

Latest publication from a fun collaboration with Brian Long and Bert Chandler... polyethylene segregation within porous supports is molar mass dependent. We are now looking at pore size engineering to control product distribution from catalytic deconstruction of plastic waste doi.org/10.1021/acs....

Military intelligence

My happy place for the day...

We need another Dee Snider moment to explain issues with censorship again... this time it isn't Tipper Gore trying to trample rights

Would like to see these stats updated in 2026 to see how things are going

It appears that the administration is okay with open season on all government data from foreign adversaries with the focus on cybersecurity IT in this round of RIFs...

There seems to be an uptick in explosions and fires at chemical plants across the US in the past 6 months or so. I'm sure that there is no correlation with cuts to EPA and OSHA enforcement www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uc-...

Teaching faculty position with focus on computational integration with the curriculum including AI, LLM, etc. psu.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/PSU_Academic...

We have a tenure track opening in sustainable energy or separation science in the Waltemeyer Department of Chemical Engineering at Penn State. We just celebrated our 100 year anniversary - looking for leaders to help to define the next century www.engr.psu.edu/academic-pos...

Rollbacks in oversight from OSHA and EPA. Plan to close US Chemical Safety Board in October... probably no relation to events outside of LA www.youtube.com/watch?v=JONs...

And is going after the same universities that agreed to major fines for "antisemitic tendencies". A continual slide with appeasement... Ask Neville how well that worked in the past

Isn't this obvious as PFAS is surface active? It will preferentially concentrate at air-water interfaces and foam is mostly interface.

Fun to have student on a fellowship decide that they want to see what happens when you circularly recycle 3D printed plastic parts and the literature has conflicting answers. We find that degradation leads to new crystalline phases that is sourcing dependent

Why stop here? @theonion.com better come up with some good fake government website overhauls to stay on their game... And where is RFKJ with HHS website declaring the radical left is the cause of autism, listeria outbreaks because they shop at Trader Joe's, measle outbreaks...

Biodegradable labeling is going to destroy public trust in sustainability... PLA is industrially compostable and when that is not clear, people try to use their home composting with poor results.

Depressing video of current Secretary of Education barking like a dog in 1987... there is no way to shame as Department of Education is dismantled

@barneygrubbs.bsky.social thought you would appreciate the craic...

And in other unrelated news, there seem to be many untrackable flights in the US... it is like the planes vanished too

I remember something about Sinclair from John Oliver but didn't put it together until they wanted to get rid of the former host of the Man Show from his talk show... there's a lot of them out there.

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So a Kennedy is acting solely on ideology against most liberal interests with vaccines, while Karl Rove is attacking conservatives based on their demonization of the liberal "they"? Not what I would have expected in 2000

Even more glad that I moved to PA...

Luckily, Sinclair has a helpful database of all their stations, so you can see if they're operating in your area and respond accordingly. sbgi.net/tv-stations/