Just finished coding & graphing a dataset 10 min ahead of a meeting. Does this teach me to do better next time, or that I can get away with regular last-minute rushes? I suspect the latter.

Philosophy major? I couldn't hack it. Philosophy minor? Just right. The "partially-examined life" is still plenty rich.

This felt better than it should have. Going to get the "bilingual bonus" yet

Convocation was more fun than I imagined it would be. I'm especially glad my kids prepped me to have fun with dress-up 🙂 Now it's Dr. Dad forever and always.

"No matter how hard I work, every year it seems more difficult to get by" Agree: 64% Neutral: 19% Disagree: 15% Innovative / Oct 27, 2025 / n=2500 / Online

You gently run your hand through the rack. You can feel it—pure cotton, rich wool, Irish linen. The plump buttonholes are handsewn; the buttons attached with a firm shank. You flip the price tag over. It's affordable You buy the jacket and go home, which is only 15 mins away. Your apt is $600/month

Was my first CEW experience, but will not be my last. Thanks to the folks who let this chemist cosplay as a toxicologist the last few days ❤️

We’re not there yet. We still have 21 days to reach our 300,000 signatures. Please, take a moment and sign the petition. It’s up to you now. www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6NW... #ForeverCanadian

Too late, Batman. Once this Tylenol floods the city's water supply, my wiki won't run out of editors ever again

All *this* is a bit much. Time for a comfort watch.

Grateful for gracious, supportive friends ❤️

Evergreen

So, Silksong is good. Very, very good.

Twitter had me addicted checking the feed. BlueSky has me feeling like Duolingo - I *should* check, but it feels like more work. Why? Just me?

This paper is *fascinating* to me. At my PhD defense 2 months ago, someone asked me if naphthenic acids are volatile, and I answered "probably not" for a bunch of reasons. I guess I need to eat my hat. dx.doi.org/10.1021/acse...

Look around, the case for more, not less, liberal arts education remains stronger than ever.

My last dissertation chapter is now out open-access. An oil sands operator gave us access to a pilot-scale treatment wetland on their mine site, and we monitored naphthenic acid fraction compounds (NAFCs). Long-story short, the treatment strategy works pretty well. dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.je...

www.ipsos.com/en-ca/canada... It's wonderful that Canada holds a privileged position among our allies. There are good reasons for this. We only supply "ethical oil" as long as we commit to continuous improvement and learning for effective reclamation. Stewardship isn't free.

Proud to say I successfully defended my PhD thesis today.

Update - he's gotten big. Probably 40 lbs by 6 months. But Pippin's a (mostly) good boy.

When did www.howcanishareit.com get nuked? It hasn't been usable for me for ~6 months at least, and it was a great resource.

"Wolf of Theseus" was genuinely amusing

Absolutely chilling.

Canadians don’t take kindly to repeatedly being told our country shouldn’t exist. All of us have many American friends and colleagues, many have relatives. We are looking to you to stand up as Americans and be as incensed as we are about this affront to Canadian sovereignty.

America: whatever you might think my level of enthusiasm for Canada being absorbed by America is, it's less than that.

Is this all a climate issue? Not everyone can articulate that *something* is wrong, and that scarcity is coming. It almost makes sense that a percentage of pop then wants to smash and grab. The present context almost reads like pre/post-disaster looting on a global scale.

This is a great story, and a great example of why it's important to support research generally, even where the outputs aren't immediately obvious.

Collective ignorance is not an accidental or contingent outcome of autocracy, it is essential to it. www.latimes.com/california/s...

Just in case my American followers are in any doubt: No f*cking way. Don’t flatter yourselves. We don’t want what you have to offer. Happy to be your neighbour. We’re pretty good neighbours; don’t make many demands, or cause much trouble. Happy to help out when needed. Not conjoining out lots

This is going to be specialized, but whatever - Google is getting me nowhere. It seems that the mass spec I care for is suddenly having space charging in its ESI source. Anyone have tips about minimizing this? It's killing my method sensitivity

Submitted my dissertation for evaluation by my committee over the weekend. Wish me luck through the last stretch.

Here's to the Globe, the Canadian paper most likely to throw its panties onstage at a Trump rally.

I keep seeing people post that Canadian universities should scoop up all the American academics who are losing their research funding. I’m guessing these people have no idea what’s going on in Canadian universities after decades of deliberate underfunding.

Eight years ago this would have been an option. Not anymore, not without staggering amounts of investment from the provincial and federal governments. Ain't gonna happen because the payout on such investments isn't within a single election cycle and our politicians can't think that far ahead.

Canadians, don't just "boo" the Stars & Stripes at sports games, take a knee. Kaepernick was signaling that his nation was wounded, and now more than ever I think that's the case. Wounded, concussed, confused, convulsing... Take your pick.

Because it was so cold (~-25°C) around Christmas, my 3-y/o has now associated those things. Therefore, we should all be giving each other presents during cold snaps. I see nothing wrong with this idea.

Corrigendum to our latest is out. It's too bad I didn't catch mistakes sooner, but c'est la vie www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Fully deactivated on Twitter. "If it steps like a goose..." Finding it harder to unplug completely from the Facebook ecosystem. Marketplace is too good, and Kijiji is terrible.

pluralistic.net/2025/01/15/b... If respecting US IP is part of a trade deal, and the USMCA is being dismantled anyways, why respect US IP in Canada any further? Take it, claim it, make it better.

A reminder as Musk-bots, Trump-bots, and other bots start hitting Bluesky: blocking users removes their replies from your posts entirely. The correct way of handlin antagonizing parties is to block. Not reply. Not dunk. Not mute. Block. It stops their reach and effectiveness right there.

I suspect this is the case in analytical chemistry as well? Last Canadian conference I went to with a focus on analytical Chem had plenty of later-career folks, but relatively fewer trainees Happy to be corrected

Hey NY Times fuck off. Then keep fucking off. Keep fucking off until you get to a gate with a sign saying "YOU CANT FUCK OFF PAST HERE" climb over the gate, dream the impossible dream... With love and a lot of concern, your happily independent neighbours in Canada. www.nytimes.com/2025/01/11/o...

Petroleum production is messy, no doubt about it. Mud, grease, flowback, produced water, not to mention the oil itself. Chemically, it's a Pandora's Box of complexity. One of those pieces of complexity that keeps staying interesting are the naphthenic acids & related acid fraction compounds (NAFCs).

Danielle Smith, as Premier of Alberta, Canada, cannot, as Premier of Alberta, Canada, go to Washington to celebrate Donald Trump’s inauguration while he continues to make threats against Canada’s sovereignty. #abpoli #cdnpoli open.substack.com/pub/womenofa...

"Sorry, we can't make this technology that sucks and nobody wants and that uses enough power to blow up the moon unless we *also* steal people's shit to throw into our content woodchipper in order to produce mediocre digital particleboard out of the cumulative artbarf." futurism.com/the-byte/ope...

Now our fellowship grows by one. Meet Pippin.

Here's the Food Professor's recent list of items that saw the biggest increase over the last year. What drove those increases? Not the carbon tax, folks. Climate change.