NSF update Still looking very bleak. 4/5

Excited to share the groups most recent cluster based work by first-author Linh Le, and collaboratively with @annawuttig.bsky.social and @gagliardilaura.bsky.social groups. Iron-sulfur clusters can serve as direct electrocatalysts for carbon dioxide reduction! pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

oh no he’s got Mr Marbury www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/...

If you like harnessing carbenes from di-chlorides, you’ll LOVE skeletal editing with tri-chlorides! Congrats to Bethany, Hojin, Victoria, and our collaborators from Chicago (Ethan & Mark Levin) and California (Anna, Zhang & Dave Olson)! Open access: authors.elsevier.com/a/1mqdE8jWHE...

Back in 2019 I wrote my first grant, for the ACS PRF, in which I proposed carbon insertion into LSD (truly a pipe dream at the time). After teaming up with @nagiblab.bsky.social and @deolsonlab.bsky.social, the dream is finally a reality! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

And if you think this is just some BS meme image, you can listen to the man himself: www.npr.org/transcripts/...

Resizing Microsoft Word a joke I have about an image

So you think you know KOtBu… Well my colleagues in #PfizerChemistry process chem have done some amazing work to find out a lot more about a very useful base #ChemSky

In @science.org for chemsky this week, @shenvi.bsky.social group report that lutidinium and manganese are the Goldilocks reagents to help nickel and cobalt cross-couple two different olefins www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

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

📢 Join us in welcoming @mikeziebel.bsky.social & @songlin1.bsky.social as they join our dept. and esteemed faculty in chemistry this fall. Their contributions will further advance our mission of academic excellence and research innovation! chemistry.stanford.edu/news/michael... #WelcometoStanford

I just renewed my membership in @aaup.org Their advocacy nationwide and the strong support of @ncaaup.bsky.social and @unc-ch-aaup.bsky.social on our campus has been a breath of fresh air in these challenging times

Now accepted @jacs.acspublications.org 🥳 pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10....

www.organic-chemistry.org/abstracts/li... α-Chlorodiazirines as thermal precursors to the corresponding chlorocarbenes for a synthesis of 3-(hetero)arylpyridines and quinolines

We are pleased to share that Assistant Professor Anna Wuttig has been named a 2026 Sloan Research Fellow! 🏆 This honor from the Sloan Foundation recognizes early-career scientists with the potential to revolutionize their fields. #UChicago #Chemistry #SloanFellow #Electrochemistry #WomenInSTEM

Heart-wrenching.

@merz.bsky.social I read the latest "AI is coming" manifesto by Shumer and was genuinely confused to read a prediction that was a ~year old that did not happen - and it is surprising to me that these folks don't recognize how damaging it is to their credibility

Pro-LLM academics bemoaning how long it takes to write and review papers are telling on themselves. Those tasks are supposed to take a long time because that's how you can be thoughtful, thorough, and rigorous. Filtering yourself is how you only communicate things you think are worth reading.

Publishers are already seeing unprecedented quantities of AI slop and unethical AI use by authors and reviewers, and it's terrifying that tools like this will open the floodgates further. Gen AI is a plague and I wish it a swift death.

Good start www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwcK...

BREAKING Greg Bovino has been removed as Border Patrol "commander at large" and will return to El Centro Calif, where he is expected to retire soon. A stunning turnaround after Pretti killing. Bovino's traveling blue city crackdown is over www.theatlantic.com/politics/202...

This is a wild story

The University of Chicago Department of Chemistry is currently seeking a Managing Director to Lead Department of Chemistry Operations. Follow the link for full job description, qualifications and benefits- tinyurl.com/3p3r8rn9

Today on @chemrxiv.org, we disclose a C-to-N replacement that actually works complex natural products - a pipe-dream when we started. The secret is to lean in to the triplet nitrene. Congrats Dong Il, and thanks to the whole team, including collaborators from Sanofi! chemrxiv.org/engage/chemr...

if you want a long read that involves udders, a hot air balloon, and some extremely dubious data on egg prices, the story I’ve been working on for the last few months where I tried to single-handedly take on every government function myself is now online! www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202...

Considering that IMAN (4) is also in this picture, the concentrated crossword power on display here is overwhelming. Blinding. Nuclear. ☢️

The National Weather Service used AI to create a forecast for Idaho. Low chances of wind for the nonexistent towns of Cocrerrireod, Orangeotild and Whata Bod www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2026...

I continue to be enraged by everything the secretary of health and human services is doing www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/...

is there some way I can quickly unlearn all of history so as to feel better about recent events

✂️ July: Adventures in atom swapping! cen.acs.org/synthesis/me... (see also this very successful feature cen.acs.org/synthesis/Sk...) 🧪 August: Beth Halford, Laura Howes, and I revamped C&EN's first disclosures coverage to put the molecules front and center cen.acs.org/pharmaceutic...

If you can't be bothered to actually write the peer review yourself why should the reviewee have to listen to it? Why write anything at all, ever? If you don't have enough time, fight for better working conditions instead of faking your work

Ok here it is - out of 44 FDA approvals this year, 31 are small molecules (70%), 26 of those are oral drugs (84%), 22 of them are chiral (71%). This is the largest number and percentage of chiral FDA approved molecules in a single year. Fitusiran is not a small molecule, bonus.

Just in time for the new year - we show that you can make either isomer of N-aryl pyrazole selectively from a single TDSO. We really believe in the power of these wacky heterocycles. chemrxiv.org/engage/chemr... Excellent work by superstar Alex Fanourakis, in collab with Osvaldo Gutierrez and J&J

I just taught my lecture course on mid-20th c US history, which starts with Harding and concludes with Nixon. For the first time, I had to pause and stress that those scandals were actually shocking at the time and, what’s more, that Americans actually demanded people be held accountable.

"Schools must adopt effective filters to block inappropriate or misleading content." What filters block misleading content from ChatGPT? Is there a "no disinfo" or "no faked citations" or "no hallucinations" filter? There is not. This is poisoned tech. You have to block the entire product.

Charlie Brown also invented the alkyne zipper reaction, look it up en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alkyne_...

suspect a big reason why many academics and others who work in areas where getting facts RIGHT is key are disinterested in using LLMs for research: they’ve tried it, they keep noticing major errors in output, and they conclude that having to verify all that doesn’t actually save them time.

As a former process chemist, yes. You get such 3am calls such as “There’s yellow foam overflowing out of the vessel, what do we do?” Or “We accidentally charged the vermiculite packing into the vessel along with the hydride reagent, it’ll be okay right?”

makes me want to chew glass wapo.st/4aXfzn5

Nitrogen deletion made easier✏️ Novel N-(benzyloxy)-N-(pivaloyloxy)benzamides enable one-step #deamination & deaminative functionalization of amines🔬 Improved derivatives by Mark @levinchem.bsky.social show faster kinetics & higher yields, shedding light on stereoelectronic effects 👉 buff.ly/c0hBrru

Every morning while making coffee www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazi...

Jonathan Chait on something I’ve noticed: that when you look for a defense on conservative media of many of the President’s actions… you find… nothing. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/1...

God I wish it was only because of DOGE

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Science as practiced in its best form is that if you disagree with it, you set up an experiment that would disprove it. If you can't do that, you shut your fucking mouth and learn something.