The President's fiscal year 2027 Budget was released today. Important---Important---Important The President's Budget is always fundamentally a political document that Congress may or may not (usually not) take very seriously. www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/u... 1/9

Watch Director Bhattacharya's performance at CPAC really got to me. I chose to share some of my observations with him. Hold on... 1/11

Melania Trump's robot stunt was unsettling, but here reason is worse: to promote replacing human teachers with robots. This is no one-off. It's the newest front in the GOP war on education. Conservatives hate kids learning to think for themselves. www.salon.com/2026/03/30/w...

Roasted chicken lecture today in my chemistry of cooking class featuring the Zuni Cafe chicken (which should bless your table at some point in your lives). Also talk about @hels.bsky.social & hairdryers www.newyorker.com/culture/anna... And any class I get to say "spatchcock" is a good one

My column in Chemistry World reads a little differently this month:

I defended my PhD 10 years ago today. That was the least remarkable thing that happened that day. Sharing something I wrote about it last year. Since then "the horrors persist but so do we." And with dignity.

I just resigned from NASA. It breaks my heart to leave, but I’ve become convinced the best path forward is to do the best science I can, and that can’t be here anymore. I’m still in love with the promise of those four magic letters. Ad astra per aspera, and remember: Earth is the only good planet.

My quote of the day When we were children, we used to think that when we were grown-up we would no longer be vulnerable. But to grow up is to accept vulnerability... To be alive is to be vulnerable. Madeleine L'Engle

It’s incredibly hard to study lipids in biological membranes on the nanoscale. You need near-perfect information on both membrane ultrastructure and lipid density. Lipid-CLEM, now out in @natcellbio.nature.com brought to you by @mathilda95.bsky.social changes that: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

There are many problems with this statement from Director Bhattacharya. (1) As @michaeldgreen.phd notes, applicants have no option to requests multi-year funding. An applicant may request a front-loaded budget with more funding in early years with justification (may or may not be approved). 1/6

file sent to me: manuscript_file_final_version.docx subsequent file sent by me: manuscript_file_thats_fucking_adorable.docx

Hi! I write historical (and some contemporary) romances. Here's a list of my books by series in reading order. www.courtneymilan.co... /jb #HistoricalRomance #ContemporaryRomance #Romance #Romancelandia #HEA #RomanceAuthor

I have a joke about a grant but you probably won’t get it

More details and context about what being a woman math major in the early-2000s was like and why it was so damaging here: cooperativeoverlapping.substack.com/p/a-fuller-s...

📣 To celebrate Biophysics Week, the Membrane Structure and Function Subgroup (MSAF) of @biophysicalsoc.bsky.social will host a webinar on March 24 at 11am EDT. Our speakers are @mejohnson81.bsky.social, @ibudin.bsky.social, and Cecília Leal (not on 🦋). 🧪 👀 More info in the alt text! Please share! 🔄

NSF Update through March 13, 2026 1/2

For those who may have missed it over the weekend: chemistry, fertilizer, and the Iran War.

The Canterbury Tales-tellers were on a pilgrimage to give thanks for surviving the winter. For those of us who aren't religious, who are some secular saints we should praise and thank? I list a few but would love to hear yours. (1/2) lastwordonnothing.com/2026/03/16/i...

Some great tips here on making Google work for you rather than serve up stuff tailored to existing biases and sponsored links: open.substack.com/pub/cardcata....

There are already great translations into Hungarian, Indonesian, Romanian, Tamil, Ukrainian ... We could use more help with Chinese, German, Hindi, Japanese & Portuguese #chemsky

Curve Appeal: The Architecture and Engineering of Membrane Bending -Membrane Structure & Function Subgroup- March 24, 11AM-12PM Learn how lipid composition, protein assemblies &membrane mechanics work together to generate & regulate membrane curvature in cells.

Chemistry in current events: the connections between fertilizer, the Haber-Bosch process, and the Persian Gulf. Read this and your knowledge will exceed that of most of our current political leadership after only a few minutes of light work:

New paper showing that much of the apparent success of protein language models in predicting mutational effects is a mirage: These models mostly memorize sites. 1/ www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

It's the birthday of Douglas Adams! Time to share favorite quotes!

New email to Director Bhattacharya about a new Scientific Freedom lecture to be given my Matt Ridley on The Search for the Origin of COVID-19. Ridley is a British scientist and journalist who published a book in 2022 on the subject. 1/5

A short Bluetorial on plots of NIH application success rates as a function of percentile. 1/20

Just read the abstract 🫠 via Alexander Magazinov. I don't believe he is on Bluesky.

Rochester reunion dinner at #bps2026. Some current lab members, former Mathews lab members, and lab friends. Dumplings and science talk for the win!

Emily just gave an excellent talk on the same work. #bps2026

My former student Dr. Emily Weed-Nichols is presenting her poster on computationally characterizing new compounds to treat opioid overdose today. Come check it out at B45! #bps2026

If you’re interested in developing new methods to analyze molecular simulations, come see my poster today at B400.  #bps2026

My student @aksharasharma.bsky.social is presenting his work on pKa shifts in ionizable lipids at B192 #bps2026

Waiting to hear @jeremymberg.bsky.social speak at #bps2026 about how to convey the value of biophysics to the public. I think the last time I heard Jeremy give a scientific presentation was when I was a graduate student and he taught NMR and FFTs.

If you’re at #bps2026, keep an eye out for editorial board members wearing “tell me about your poster” buttons. We can advise you about submitting your work to Biophysical Journal @biophysj.bsky.social#bps2026and we can discount the publication fees.

#CPOW sponsored PI to PI mixer today at #BPS2026 @biophysicalsoc.bsky.social

My former student Dr. Emily Weed-Nichols is presenting her poster on computationally characterizing new compounds to treat opioid overdose today. Come check it out at B45! #bps2026

is it good that everyone i know being made to find a use for AI at work is just having to manage the politics of the fact that they're expected to use it whilst fixing all of its mistakes? it seems to have the same impact on the workplace as a bad intern who's only there cause hes the CEOs son

I just did the dumbest thing of my entire career to prove a much more serious point. I tricked ChatGPT and Google, and made them tell other users I’m a competitive hot-dog-eating world champion People are using this trick on a massive scale to make AI tell you lies. I’ll explain how I did it

Writing is thinking. It's not some marginal boring task you can skip. It's the heart of it.

Hey #chemchat #chemsky question - an app I used to track journal feeds will be dead soon. Any good tools to keep track of new literature articles? Ideally I'd like something I can 👍👎 and filter out topics or authors (e.g., "exclude this paper mill") Suggestions welcome - I'll post a summary

Hello bluesky, I'm a theoretical chemist at University of Bayreuth. My group works on atomistic modeling of energy materials with electronic structure methods and ML. I'm hoping to connect to other #compchem and #materials folks!

Katya was feeling very insecure tonight

Fuentes, yesterday: “Our #1 political enemy is women because women constrain everything, every conversation, every man, everything. They have to be imprisoned. They are the ones that are hurting the fertility rate. They're the ones making us sympathetic to poor people, which are also brown people.”

Is GitHub flaky for anyone else this morning? I keep getting “No server is currently available to service your request”

At Findlay Market in Cincy. It’s called Yee Mama; i think it’s relatively new; first time for me and the fam today. The food is EXCELLENT but that is not the reason i want to keep going back again and again, spot the reason

Small pleasure: reviewing decisions on papers by editorial board members this morning, and every reviewer appeared to be thoughtful and respectful. It makes me feel proud to be associated with Biophysical Journal @biophysj.bsky.social

Lately I'm regretting that we didn't talk about space data centers in A City on Mars, but tbh the idea just seemed so transparently silly. Now Musk and apparently the CNA (www.reuters.com/science/chin...) are talking about it.

Floored by this story. A man wrote a pollite email to a federal prosecutor objecting to the deportation of an Afghan seeking asylum. DHS responded with an administrative warrant to get the man's info from Google, then visited his home to intimidate him.

This is a truly timeless piece... harpers.org/archive/1941...

I am hearing that RFK Jr.’s minions are going to go after HPV vaccines. I’ve got problems with these people and now you’re going to hear about them, first from a personal perspective and then from a professional one. It all boils down to this: WE HAVE A SAFE VACCINE THAT PREVENTS CANCER.