I'm constantly trying (/failing) to get this point across. If you're a trained expert in a field, then it may be worthwhile to question the scientific consensus of your peers. If you're not, the scientific consensus is absolutely the best you can do and it's arbitrary foolishness to disregard it.

It can be exhausting to navigate the need for accommodations, and it can feel as if you are simultaneously far too visible and entirely invisible thewalrus.ca/how-universi...

Tea, too! Both caffeinated beverages also appear to be linked to a lower risk of Parkinson’s disease. Caffeine, not just fueling my students‘ late night study sessions. wapo.st/4rUaxwW

Qapla' (success!)...I think. We'll see what the copy editor has to say about a standfirst in Klingon!

Today is the #InternationalDayOfWomenAndGirlsInScience 👩‍🔬 This graphic highlights women of the periodic table, the elements they discovered, and the two elements named after women. Plenty more graphics on women in chemistry here: www.compoundchem.com/category/wom...#InternationalDayOfWomenAndGirlsInScience #ChemSky 🧪

Somehow I don't think the blessing gets attached to individual molecules?

TIL about Ostwald, his Nobel, and constructed languages - and his fight with van 't Hoff over the language his Zeitschrift für Physikalische Chemie should use for abstracts. Spoiler, it wasn't German. Also lots of chemists with skin in this game in the early 20th century. Who knew? #chemSky

A decade ago I wrote about the improbably named (and decidedly odd) Lancelot Hogben in a Thesis column for @natchem.nature.com (here: rdcu.be/e1YS8). And he just showed up in a literature search for my next column?!? #ChemSky

Wandering down the rabbit hole of journals published in constructed languages, are there chemistry articles in Esperanto? Klingon? #chemSky

Adding to my weekend podcast playlist!

And the NYT doesn’t note Trump’s reaction? In a phone interview Tues pm w/ABC’s Rachel Scott, Trump accused Omar of staging the attack. "I don't think about her. I think she's a fraud," Trump said. "She probably had herself sprayed, knowing her." www.nytimes.com/2026/01/27/u...

If you develop software for research, consider responding to this survey trying to help understand who develops research software and how they work so as to get more robust support: softwaresaved.limequery.com/611257?lang=en #chemSky

Will tea be next? It’s a big source of dietary fluoride.

Welcome to this month’s crossword, constructed by Christopher Adams, a trivia writer from Iowa City, and George Barany, professor emeritus at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities. cen.acs.org/physical-che... #chemsky 🧪

Happy #NationalHotTeaDay! A great graphic on my (and the world’s) favorite beverage!

📢 Get ready for #RSCPoster 2026. Join @errantscience.com for a live webinar on the history of cartooning & pick up some tips. The webinar will take place on LinkedIn & is sponsored by the School of Chemistry & Chemical Engineering @unisouthampton.bsky.social#RSCPoster👉 More info to come – stay tuned #ChemSky

Working on a piece about reading scientific journal articles in languages other than English. I got my PhD (chem) in 1983, no language requirement; my youngest got his (math) in 2024 and had a language requirement. Wondering what #chemsky's experiences have been. Did you have a language req?

Who would say this? The same people who blame Ukraine for the Russian invasion of…Ukraine? Up is down and we are living in 1984.

When I wrote my latest for @natchem.nature.com on the appropriation of the quantum mechanical lexicon by scam artists, could I have imagined that the surgeon general of Florida would be peddling the woo? Alas, probably. rdcu.be/eXQL (1/3)

Voted!

Trump flips and decides to starve people after all www.dailykos.com/stories/2025...

"How would less fortunate corporations like Walmart, McDonald’s, and Amazon get by without SNAP and other programs to subsidize their sub-poverty level wages that leave many of their workers reliant on benefits?"

Look up! A SUPERMOON will happen on Nov. 5, 2025. This is a repost of an article from 2024 by Brother Guy Consolmagno. www.vaticannews.va/en/world/new...

The best cup of tea is the one you love...lovely article by Shabnam Weber betweenleavesandletters.substack.com/p/the-myth-o...

Wondering what you can do if you are able in this emergency? Suggestion here:

Speaker Johnson isn't Catholic, but this isn't a sectarian statement; it's a plain reading of the Biblical text Johnson and so many in the Trump administration (and in the R Congressional caucus) claim to accept as inerrant. Camels and needles' eyes ain't in it.

(Very fancy) kitchen chemistry!!

When the tea book came out, someone asked me about these (as it turns out, fake) tea plantations in Scotland.

This is what the President of the United States thinks of people exercising their constitutional right to peaceful protest? Appalling.

Brilliant!

The following is REAL footage from Portland, 2025. Viewer discretion is advised.

Innumeracy at work! Each vaccine dose is roughly 0.5 mL, if a child gets 80 doses over the course of many years that is not even a shot glass in TOTAL. You can often find the lies and misdirection by doing a quick analysis a la Fermi.

Today is a day when arts degrees are worthless, but the product of those degrees is so valuable it would kill an entire industry if they were made to pay for it.

Why should scientists write op-eds? It's tempting to say the facts ought to speak for themselves. But the facts are largely whispering among themselves in the scientific literature. They need us to give them a voice. How? Advice in my latest @natchem.nature.com Thesis rdcu.be/eJlGL #chemsky 1/3

I’m just going to keep repeating that undocumented immigrant workers actually _help subsidize federal programs for everybody else_. In 2022 alone, they paid $25.7 billion into Social Security and $6.4 billion into Medicare—both programs they can’t access due to their legal status👇🏽

It always feels more real in print. share.inquirer.com/Q7hgO6

The skeet that got me to write this: share.inquirer.com/Q7hgO6

Science is the art of the real, not the art of the deal. My op-ed in today’s Philadelphia Inquirer. share.inquirer.com/Q7hgO6

A post for #SciArtSeptember day 28: scientific art is not just biological (imo). There is beauty in this depiction of the trajectory of a comet by American astronomer David Rittenhouse based off his 1770 observations. From my 1789 copy of Transactions of the American Philosophical Society. 🔭

My medications, which are life-altering, will double in price. They aren’t made in the US at all.

So, crystallography folks, can guess what it is? Single-crystal related, device is complete and I know the answer. #crystallography #oldschool

St. Paul?? maybe before that episode on the road to Damascus?

Should someone demand Brian Kilmeade donate to a local homeless shelter?

If you are wondering when we ceased to be a democracy, this might be the moment, when the president of the United States says that broadcast news cannot criticize him.

Sometimes McSweeney's isn't really funny, it's just really real. www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/how...

This is false. For example, the libertarian @cato.org breaks down the numbers, showing about 6 deaths from right-wing politically motivated attackers for every 1 from left-wing attackers. Moreover, the claim that shooters represent anyone other than an unhinged fraction of society is the deeper lie.

There's no excuse for the Vice President of the United States to use a heinous killing as an occasion to baselessly frame political opponents as accomplices to murder while threatening to use the power of the government to attack them. This dangerous rhetoric will only fan the flames.

Bryn Mawr College is looking for an analytical chemist! #chemsky www.brynmawr.edu/inside/acade...

A deep dive into the destruction of US cancer research by @jonathanmahler.bsky.social “It’s an absolutely unmitigated disaster,” a former top official at NIH told him. “It will take decades to recover from this, if we ever do.” Gift link: nyti.ms/48iH3Cr

Anyone from the University of Montreal here? Please DM. Please RT.