The ups and downs of academic life: a story told in two Acts (from two consecutive days)

A cracking weekend in Annecy with a whole load of old friends and their families. Good times. Even a >3 h delay to my flight back from Geneva can’t dampen my spirits.

On Saturday, we gathered two teams from IBB-PAS to run the Relay Marathon #Ekiden in Warsaw. It was a good day for running, but it made for a sore Sunday (for me, at least). Thanks to all of our runners for a great team effort!

Finally, we're recruiting! If you'd like to do a PhD using NMR structures to study the dynamics of a metalloenzyme, then you're in luck! Come to Warsaw for this project, in collaboration with Simone Ciofi-Baffoni's group at CERM, Florence: ibb.edu.pl/app/uploads/...

Lots of new stuff to share today...

Happy 99th birthday to the man who gave voice to the wild. 🎉 Sir David Attenborough, thank you for a lifetime dedicated to the natural world, and for sharing its story with wisdom, wonder, and grace. You've inspired generations to fall in love with nature.

They were careless people, Tom and Daisy- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made. -FS Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, published 4/10/1925.

Prediction: Today (4/9/25) registered the greatest ill gotten gains from insider trading in history.

Grant number 2 submitted for this calendar year. Two down, two more to go. But for now, on to the manuscripts that have been backing up for the last couple of months.

Florence never fails to take your breath away

A great week at the IPNC conference in Florence. Learned a lot about this interesting group of bacteria which will help in our forthcoming project, and nice to meet a whole new community of researchers.

Termination notices going out this afternoon to more than 300 employees of the National Cancer Institute. Access likely ends today. Four weeks paid leave and that’s it. Strong power move for Team Cancer.

Good morning to this man, and this man only #bbcqt

This weekend, my parents came to visit me in Warsaw, so I gave them a tour of the lab. Turns out it was the first time they'd visited any of my labs, which is weird. But I think they're now convinced that I really do have a proper job 🤷‍♂️

That’s nothing. I found 13 contracts awarded to SpaceX since December totaling $77M. 1/

Incredible: Russ Vought’s daughter has cystic fibrosis and benefits from a “miracle drug” made possible by the National Institutes of Health—an agency Vought now aims to gut as part of the Project 2025 attack www.motherjones.com/politics/202... Scoop from @motherjones.com’s @metrauxjulia.bsky.social

When the Bar is publicly stating your country’s laws are being destroyed right in front of you, things are… er, not great www.americanbar.org/news/abanews...

Selective outrage of the right.

Of course it’s a coup. Miss the obvious, lose your republic. open.substack.com/pub/snyder/p...

Deadline tomorrow, get your application in

Last few days to apply...

Your regular reminder Delft’s market square was a surface parking lot as recently as 2004. A razor-thin coalition (19-18 votes) initiated a six-month pilot to help merchants realize cars don’t spend money, people do. Years later, no one remembers the controversy or regrets the decision. *Sound on*

🧪 If I were Canadian PM I would immediately: 1. Create a new $15B science fund 2. Offer any credentialed US scientist funding for lab startup and replacement of NIH grants if they move to Canada 3. Immediate permanent residency 4. Citizenship after 2 years Overnight a science superpower

Looking for a postdoc position? Want to apply your biochemistry skills to answer interesting evolutionary questions of how metalloenzymes evolve? Join my growing team in Warsaw at @IBBPAS. We're seeking a talented new postdoc to work on the superoxide dismutases. ibb.edu.pl/app/uploads/...

One more week to get your applications submitted

Are you a graduate seeking a research post in Warsaw? Looking to gain experience working in a biochemical lab? Have good organisation skills, and want to be part of a team making fundamental discoveries? Join my group at @IBBPAS as a Technician studying metalloproteins. ibb.edu.pl/app/uploads/...

"Open science is not a new thing. People have been talking about how to reconcile scientific messiness and rigour for a long time"- @maddipow.bsky.social #QRS2025 @cqr-bath.bsky.social

Chandrashekhar Azad the Indian freedom fighter once evaded British police looking for him on a train by disguising himself as the conducttor and escorting them from car to car helping them search

Siri… show me what joy looks like 🖤 🔊 🎥 orbplanet

We are recruiting for my lab in Warsaw. One postdoc position available for a biochemistry project on superoxide dismutases (of course). ibb.edu.pl/app/uploads/... We're also looking for a technician. ibb.edu.pl/app/uploads/... Get your application in!

I love this so much! At the inauguration, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wore a distinctive collar adorned with cowrie shells, which are believed to offer protection from evil in African traditions. This choice mirrors the late Justice Ginsburg’s practice of using collars to convey a message.

My GPU has 45 billion transistors in it. Like, we have this magic rock that we carved 45,000,000,000 miniature switches on it to create images of worlds that do not exist on a screen. We really, really not appreciate enough how insanely magical technology is.

RIP David Lynch. We will avenge the five Woodys.

Last couple of days to apply

I don't know how many of y'all are watching the migration of American TikTokers to RedNote, but it's the most fascinating thing I've EVER SEEN HAPPEN ONLINE. 🧵

Three hour lab meeting to start 2025? ✅ We’re back!

Given the immense vastness of all the music ever created by humanity, it’s such a weird coincidence that the very best songs all happened to be released when I was aged 14-21.

"This has led to comparisons with the events of autumn 2022, and a suggestion that Reeves may be having a Liz Truss / Kwasi Kwarteng moment. This is obviously bollocks, but how obviously bollocks?" 👏 @financialtimes.com 11-8227-404d-8629-ae7dca82d0b8

Snoopy knows

I don't really use TikTok that much, but I find it fascinating that our government is on the verge of banning an app for national security reasons that are still unclear in the same week that Meta, the largest social media company, says it's now fine to hate LGBTQ people and call us mentally ill.

The photo before THE photo. THE BEATLES ABBEY ROAD (1969)

End of first full work week of the NY Two of my group gave a talk 🥹 One manuscript making progress, two others being planned out It’s gonna be busy month

So it turns out that I really am a micro-manager 🤦🏻‍♂️

“We’re going to be the social network that lets you - encourages you - to say slurs”

My letter in today's Guardian. Just asking, like. But I think we know the answer.

Good resistance news: An 'Achilles heel' discovered in antibiotic resistant bacteria. Scientists in Canada found the critical vulnerability: bacteria need zinc. Deprive them of the nutrient & their stability is disrupted making them susceptible to antibiotics again www.genengnews.com/topics/infec...

Maureen Cleave describing the Rolling Stones to Evening Standard readers in 1964. I think this is my favourite passage in all music writing. It's packed with detail and tension, but nothing is unnecessary.

This is breathtaking. Aurora borealis... from *above*. Credit: Don Pettit from the International Space Station

On Jan 6 1912, Alfred Wegener presented his theory of continental drift and supercontinent Pangaea's breakup into today's continents. Despite initial rejection, modern seismology and ocean drilling in the 1950s/60s validated his ideas, leading to the current understanding of plate tectonics. ⚒🧪