Hey fellow team leads. You can tell your team, today, right now, that you don't expect them to perform as well in the heat and that's okay. Cut everyone some slack. We don't need permission from management to recognise reality and extend kindness. #heatwave

Qotd, pride month edition: "I am not explaining cottaging to the CEO"

The reviews for cooling tech on Amazon reveal quite how little sense thermodynamics makes to most people. "Cooled me to start with, but then got hot itself!"... Yes, it was.. absorbing the heat? Not disappearing it?

No, *you* decided to buy your seeds from @realseeds.co.uk (whose account has apparently lapsed) because they have open source seed machine plans, art nouveau packets and photos of their beautiful Victorian filling machine. realseeds.co.uk/brownbagmach...

As a physicist, sometimes you need to get down and dirty with the data. You know. Touch graphs.

Joanne closed her helpline for single parents right around when she announced she'd be donating heavily to anti-trans causes. They closed because of lack of funding. She's a billionaire. She doesn't care about "single mums". www.gingerbread.org.uk/our-work/new...

One charity down then.

11 years since I did my first wet lab placement (the sort of lab with liquids and chemistry rather than electromagnets: not my home turf back then) and made them biscuits to say thanks. There was a lot of work with crucibles and some with barium cobalt nitride. #Science #Baking #chemistry

My love is unable to change his costume in #worldOfWarcraft and I am dying laughing. Left, the dream: right, how it's stuck now.

Very small crew of friends here: I have an issue. My current art project (still in progress) is quite a labour of love, and I'm happy with it and want to show it off but it's sort of.. a bit blasphemous What do?

Apropos of nothing, thinking of James Baldwin today.

I learned on the weekend that mesopotamia literally means 'between the rivers'. Which is a charmingly basic way to name a whole human civilization. I crowbarred this into a meeting today and it did not go well. So hello bluesky.

SEIZE JOY FROM THE JAWS OF PAIN. DO YOU HAVE MEDICINE YOU NEED TO TAKE?

I dreamt my friend from PhD had got three additional degrees, invented a way of making anisotropic gels and got a Nobel prize. I died of jealousy.

I made a new art challenge for reposting your art! The challenge is to find existing works that fits the prompts (get creative!) - no new work needed! woho!! Starting April 1st I will be reposting existing art based on these prompts!! All artists welcome to join :) #repostyourart

Iconic that NASA woke up the #Artemis II crew with Pink Pony Club

Watching the Artemis II transmissions, I can't help but be reminded of fundamental human truths: astronauts are so bloody boring.

Failed to get an emfcamp ticket (organisation bleh). Let me know if you have leads on any!

University of Oxford : maximising oil and gas extraction here would only save UK households up to £82 (€95) per year. A UK fully powered by renewable energy, would save households up to £441 (€510) a year on energy bills. www.euronews.com/2026/03/27/e...

The concept of the British middle class is conveniently elastic. On the one hand, it’s used to refer to anyone with a white collar job and a mortgage, on the other it’s defined as families with nannies and kids at private school who can somehow be presented as the national norm.

More #art. A cute blåhaj with a #trans rights message in the pink notebook I only draw on with blue and pink, which is SO NEARLY FINISHED. (And then what do I do?)

Black on black sigil #art done while listening to the Lovecraft Investigations. Thanks @juliansimpson.bsky.social and team! #PleasantGreen

Went to the optician today. The frames were sorted into men's, women's, and designer. The three genders.

Y'know, I've done pretty well at work this week. I'm trained as a polymer physicist but I've assessed for a client what bugs they could culture on what to achieve <outcomes censored>, and had some opinions that my more fermentation experienced colleagues agree with.

Another escapee from the @beefanddairy.bsky.social world: beef tenderisation with explosives, by an ARS food scientist.

good thing happening in the world:

Just a year ago, we heard reducing the deficit was so important Elon Musk had to fire as many scientists, forest rangers and Black women on the government’s payroll that he could find. Now? 🤷🏾‍♂️

Work quote of the day: "if we get two requests for sorption isotherm measurements at once, we say 'expletive, we ball'" I haven't censored that, he literally said expletive.

PEW PEW PEW

Today at work: "Cadavers are a hard line for me"

Today's not work work activity is mapping DISC work personalities to the Discworld. Because I don't like personality tests (unless just for fun) but I do like Pratchett.

This story, from @natezuke.bsky.social, is absolutely wild. A trans woman who never changed her gender marker was issued a letter invalidating her license. At the DMV they cut up her license, which had an "M" marker. www.assignedmedia.org/breaking-new...

Oh, so you *don't* like it when I call baby potatoes 'vegan veal'. Okay, noting that down.

Upsides of being poly: my partner has someone else to go to the transport museum with Downsides of being poly: SO MANY PARTNERS WANT TO GO TO TRANSPORT MUSEUMS

Okay okay but, stay with me: given that the innermost moon of Jupiter is both gravitationally rounded.and in space, and named after /that/ bit of creepy Greek myth with shape shifting bovine seduction, there /is/ a spherical cow in a vacuum pretty nearby, relatively speaking. #physics

Like Soda (1963-1969): A sugar-free, lemon-lime soda, sweetened with cyclamate, and marketed to girls/young women. When the sweetener was banned in 1969, the drink was discontinued, reformulated with a new sweetener and rebranded/re-released as Diet 7-Up

More #art done with @lycomorpha.bsky.social paints (possibly with others, I cannot remember). I very much enjoy this style I am developing: tracing paper, marker and ink on top, watercolour behind. I label the bottles as I give them to people.

YOU MUST TAKE YOUR MEDICATIONS TO HAVE STRENGTH TO CRUSH YOUR ENEMIES.

I can't figure out what tags or whatever to find art and be found on here. But here is some #workinprogress #art using @lycomorpha.bsky.social 's 'Alchemical resources of the underdark' paints.

Insights into my home life: Me: I've got my hands covered in spray lacquer I breathed in spray lacquer Actually spray lacquer has been involved in a lot of related incidents this morning #diy #maker

I need Audible and Kindle to have a 'never show me harry potter' option. For 'not supporting author who funds transphobia' reasons, but also 'i have a reading age of over 11 and require a plot which is slightly less predictable and holy' reasons. also 'ffs if I wanted to I would have by now'

It’s easy to think that schools in Minneapolis are closed because the Feds murdered someone in the street but no, the actual reason is that while that was happening, the Feds were busy doing other heinous shit across the city like tear-gassing a school

OXIDATION IS LOSS. REDUCTION IS GAIN. FREEDOM IS SLAVERY. IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH. CHEMISTRY IS RIDICULOUS.

*affected I am not giving them credit

#TIL ex-German chancellor Dr Angela Merkel was involved in refurbing the Moritzbastei in Leipzig, an old military fortification whuch is not among other things a club at the world's biggest #goth festival, Wave Gothik Treffen. Unexpected connections.

I am perfectly capable of hating *both* Mondays and capitalism, thank you. Damn single-issue politics.

Some cheering viewing: hacker Martha Root and journalists uncover the user base of 'tinder for nazis', whitedate (yes it's what it sounds like) and unmask users and organisers. Long talk about it here, others in thread. #hacktivism #antifa app.media.ccc.de/v/39c3-the-h...

#TIL silver balls on cake are not technically food according to the FDA. The idea is they sell them and you remove them before use. Implausible, but then again. Worst case scenario if you eat a fuckton and turn blue, so maybe it's not a priority issue. www.huffpost.com/entry/silver...

At last, scientists believe they have an answer to 'why did the Minidisc fail'