I've reached the stage of fatherhood where my work from home lunch is the leftovers from the wee man's dinners ...

“Climate change is real - the burning of fossil fuels and other human activities is resulting in fundamental changes to our planet. It is increasing the risk of extreme weather, warming the ocean and causing ice caps to melt resulting in sea level rise,” 1/3

First it's removing 'illegal' small boats migrants. Then it's removing legal migrants with indefinite leave to remain. Then it'll be removing freedoms of minorities - religious, LGBT+, disabled. Then it'll be persecuting anyone who thinks differently (labelled 'leftists') for opposing 'patriotism'.

Our collaboration w/ @markstradiotto.bsky.social and team is now out in Chem. Eur. J. (@chemistryeurope.bsky.social)! Mark's team used DalPhos ligands for Ni-cat. C-P couplings, which we supported with DFT calculations of reductive elimination. doi.org/10.1002/chem... @cathweetman.bsky.social

@ukri.org I note that here (www.ukri.org/who-we-are/w...) you use the term 'biological sex' and not gender when balancing SATs. Why does what is (or was) in people's underpants matter here? Surely this is about lived experiences and perspectives?

Keir Starmer welcomed Israeli president Herzog to Downing Street as 200,000 Palestinians were forced to flee Gaza and Israel prepared for a further offensive.

The multimillionaire class pretending to be on the side of the working class.

Powerful new Banksy mural on the Royal Courts of Justice building shows a judge hitting a protester lying on the ground with his gavel, with blood splattering the placard.

Solidarity with colleagues at Edinburgh, fighting threatened job cuts proposed by their ineffective 'leadership'. (And I STILL don't understand how senior heads didn't roll over the whole People and Money shit show)

Shocking that our UCU 'leadership' deploy these horrific tactics to suppress industrial action

Ending the week on a high! Check out our comparison of manganate and magnesiate now published in ChemComm! Great team effort @bathchem.bsky.social with @tobiaskramer.bsky.social in understanding these elusive bimetallics!

Don't ever be fooled into thinking Farage is a 'man of the people' - he is a grifter and a pound shop Trump.

A man on the streets of the UK is asked about the “problem of immigration” and dismantles talking points with ease.

every damn day

Working the tills at a DIY store circa 2002. £3.26 per hour for doing the same job that someone over 18 got over £4 for ...

Yvette, I'm confused.

Anyone got any good suggestions for brunch in York on a Wednesday morning...? (There will be a toddler too, in case that makes a difference)

PhD opportunity in my group at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow! 🧬 Develop imaging & computer vision methods to monitor oligonucleotide synthesis. 📸 ℹ️ UK applicants 🕰️ Deadline 7 Sept 2025. ✍🏼 Email CV + cover letter to [email protected] (Subject: PhD 2025).

My colleagues (Billy Kerr, Nick Tomkinson, Craig Jamieson, Glenn Burley, Dave Lindsay, and Rebecca Beveridge) are looking for a total of FIVE postdoctoral researchers for a large collaborative programme of oligonucleotide research. Details here: www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DOH515/p...

Congratulations to Hayley for passing her PhD viva! Thanks to @nataliefeynls.bsky.social and Craig Jamieson for examining.

Say hi to the newest member of the team... Thanks to a surprise win of an Amazon voucher from Apollo Scientific's recent marketing survey...

Latest paper from the group chemistry-europe.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/share/KMS9U6... Amazing series of alkali metal phosphides. Thanks to @felixkraemer.bsky.social and Michelle especially. Watch out for the follow up applications in challenging hydrophosphination catalysis!

Cis people being weird about trans people makes me think about king crabs. Bear with me for this one because it will make sense. You know king crabs, right? Giant crab, lives up north, has long legs, very expensive and tasty, featured on many a mukbang Did you know they are technically not crabs? 1/

Genuine pleasure to host Makoto Yamashita Institute of Science Tokyo to hear his excellent Aluminium Heterometallic research @unistrathclyde.bsky.social @rsc.org @davidjn.bsky.social

Is awarding a >£1M grant to a PI who *owns* a substantial proportion of their 'partner' not an enormous conflict of interest ..?

**US-CAN Doctoral Excellence Award @WesternU -$160,000 to 25 PhD students for up to 4 years. - Must've had offer rescinded/cancelled from US school. -Expedited admission process. -Feel free to reach out, if interested in a PhD in inorganic chem! www.forbes.com/sites/michae...

The academic’s mid-summer crisis is a mid-life crisis in miniature: You realize summer is half gone, & not only that: you see that the longest & least burdened days came early, & they are well past. You compare all you thought you’d do against the days remaining & grieve for what never will be

So, I've spent the last year or so trying to make the switch from Gaussian to ORCA - mostly because ORCA has some toys that I really really like (r2SCAN-3c, DLPNO-CCSD(T), etc.). It's been a learning curve, but some reflections ...

Daria's collaborative paper with Professor Billy Kerr and Dr Dave Lindsay was published today in @chemicalscience.rsc.org. This explores how many C-H deuteration events occur per binding event in iridium-catalysed hydrogen isotope exchange. The article is open access: doi.org/10.1039/D5SC...

The team attended the annual RSC Organic Community meeting, in Edinburgh this year, and Nico presented a poster on the reactions of aryl triflates with nickel(0).

Time for some long overdue updates on group activities! Kieran gave a talk at our annual organic chemistry (broadly defined!) symposium, on his work on understanding and overcoming limitations in nickel-catalysed C-C cross-coupling.

This is a vital message: one of the larger reasons BlueSky is refreshingly free of alt-right shitlords is because in the early days we made a gentleperson’s agreement to starve these fuckos out and it worked. No likes, no quotes, no engagement. They got bored and left. Please keep the Old Ways.

Together with @forthe100.bsky.social, we are conducting survey to find the Hateful Eight The 8 worst UK universities for discrimination, bullying, harassment & lack of care Whether staff or student, if you've been mistreated, tell us in our survey 21percent.org?p=2124 Who'll top the Hateful 8 ?

Pleased to see that @rsc.org has now officially discontinued all corporate accounts on X. Absolutely the right move.

Home PhD funding available to work with us on catalytic nitrous oxide transformations via @centa.bsky.social. Apply before the 6th June with full details here: warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/life...

#UCU2025 congress has passed a motion to prepare to raise a formal dispute with the Education Secretary over the devastating funding crisis in higher education. Our message is clear: if Labour won’t intervene, we will. #UCU2025 #ProtectEducationNow #UnionPower #Post16Crisis #HigherEducation

Sharing so you can block it

I used to think the academic quip that "I should be writing" was all about having the discipline to sit down and finish writing papers and grants. Now I think it's about finding the *time* ...

Impossible to communicate to people that once you decide that a group more vulnerable than you can be sacrificed in the name of your own safety or interests that you have already entered into an tacit agreement that you can also be sacrificed in the interests of a group less vulnerable than you.

Nothing says a quality journal like a 15% limit on plagiarism.

Our holiday in Sicily is nearly over. I am now 35% pasta and 25% ricotta. My repertoire of Italian words has probably doubled ... to about 20. I know more about the production of salt than I ever knew that there was to know.

Disappointing judgement from the UK Supreme Court - this won't placate the transphobes, but will only empower them. Trans rights are human rights.

16 cores, 32 threads, 64 GB of memory ... and ChemDraw can't handle a full-page scheme without grinding to a halt. (Can we add a field to the next TRAC survey for 'time spent waiting for expensive but poor software to do its thing'?)

Cowards

This. Those with power do not want others to have human rights - the basic unalienable rights to which all people are entitled. That is why they sneer at human rights, use the media to deride those rights, and cut off legal aid so rights cannot be asserted. And some unwise people clap and cheer.

Exciting news for #chemsky - you can now follow all of your favourite @rsc.org journals on Bluesky! 🥳🧪⚗ go.bsky.app/QAaTTZ3

There are now over 3000 signatories to my letter asking the Royal Society to explain why it has taken no action and said nothing about evident contraventions of its code of conduct by Elon Musk FRS. forms.gle/dBGaHk7SYUNA...