OK. Green smoke. Coloured smoke grenades have existed for decades. They are for signalling purposes. They are not meant for riot control purposes. As with any smoke, they are irritating, but they are not meant for that purpose, so use as "riot control" agents is an off-label usage.

Got meself a wee project which took up my whole evening, I think people call this kind of thing a "timeline cleanse"?

Amazingly, no broadcasters scratching around for content during Twixmas asked me about my predictions for enterprise tech in 2026, but sovereign cloud would have been right at the top of the list. Along with more edge computing (partly for reasons of tech sovereignty), & reaching the FO stage of AI

Sensory overload: In the latest #Newscripts for @cenmag.bsky.social, @bribarbu.bsky.social explores scratch-and-sniff stamps and "deliciously unhinged" lickable wrapping paper. cen.acs.org/business/con...

Seeing a lot of attention to a story pointing out major flaws in that highly publicized spoon full o' microplastics in your brain study. Worth reading my @opinion.bloomberg.com colleague Faye Flam's piece from last month on the problems w/the study (🎁): www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

Excellent use of a backronym

Looking for someone who studies vaccine hesitancy for a story in Nature. Short turnaround, so need someone today or Monday. If that's you, drop me a line!

I agree with so much of this, excellent piece

Die zahlen nur Baaaaa

The history thread is interesting but I'm mostly pleased it reminded me of Round The Twist while I'm in bed feeling poorly on a Feiertag

You've just opened a chemistry themed pub, what are you calling it? The polar protic #chemsky

Carol of the Bells in # Kyiv subway. Voices of the Embassies of Germany, France, and the United Kingdom came together to perform Shchedryk in the Kyiv metro as a sign of solidarity with Ukraine. Thankful to everyone who stands with us!

Unbelievably, #DuvetKnowItsChristmas generates such good will on social media that over the years we've raised somewhere approaching a quarter of a million quid for homeless charities. If you can spare a bob or two, sling some to Centrepoint, and here's the link: www.gofundme.com/f/duvet-know...

Adore this hashtag, every year

Hear us out: This is a Christmas tree, but it’s also a step toward 3D-printed moon igloos. cen.acs.org/materials/3-... #CENChemPics #Chemistree #chemsky 🧪

"It is going to get so much worse." For the first of two end-of-the-year episodes of @pandemia.bsky.social, I talked to @drdemetre.bsky.social about what happened in 2025 at the CDC and how he thinks about the future of vaccines and public health in the US. A quick 🧪🧵

This would be a great job, the team are really great

Well, it's finally up. Thanks @sarahbraner.bsky.social @cenmag.bsky.social for profiling me and my journey from @cmu.edu to @ucddublin.bsky.social. It's been a hell of a ride. I'm glad I'm here safe, at least. ⚗️ #newpi #disabledinstem #lgbtqinstem #transinstem #leavingus #howtoleave #ireland

Wow. CERN has secured a promise of $1 billion (!) towards its planned Future Circular Collider from private donors (such as the Breakthrough Prize Foundation & Eric & Wendy Schmidt Fund) - the first such donation for CERN, which has until now been taxpayer funded home.cern/news/press-r... 🧪⚛️

Biochemistry fam, help a sleep-deprived reporter out. Let's say you wanted to explain the GPCR/G protein cycle to someone who hadn't heard of it. Would you call GTP and GDP ligands? Cofactors? Small-molecule buddies?

Merriam-Webster’s human editors have chosen ‘slop’ as the 2025 Word of the Year.

Methylene blue, known to chemistry students and teachers as the indicator in the “blue bottle” experiment (which goes from blue to colourless to blue again). Also turns your brain blue.

This profile is very worth a read

Amid a firehose of falsehoods about vaccines, new CDC data show that last year’s Covid booster reduced the risk of severe illness by 76% among kids aged 6 months to 4 years old and 56% among kids aged 5 to 17 years old.

Fire starters, 400,000-year-old twisted fire starters... @bethanyhalford.bsky.social for @cenmag.bsky.social #chemsky 🧪 cen.acs.org/analytical-c...

I am genuinely fascinated by how this is going to change things, and there are some really fascinating titbits for nerds like me in here

What chemical weapons may still be in Syria? How much progress has the OPCW made in identifying and securing undeclared remnants of Assad's chemical arsenal? What more can the international community do to expedite the verification and destruction process? thebulletin.org/2025/12/curi...

"It’s also, @georgwinter.bsky.social says, grounds for looking very closely at the proteome-wide effects of any compound in development, no matter its putative mechanism." PREACH #biotech #chemsky

Well that was 2025 in Pharma, and what a year it turned out to be

And the molecule of the year for 2025 is...🥁... ...hexanitrogen! (I had a feeling this one would win 🤭) Thanks for voting, everyone! #chemsky cen.acs.org/synthesis/Mo...

I do think it's telling that Brian and I immediately jumped in the car because we though the urgency was to avoid getting attacked. Excellent post-conference jaunt.

A few thoughts on the new US national security strategy that was released today. 🧵 www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/u...

Bitopertin was once a failed drug candidate gathering dust in Roche's portfolio. Thanks to work from Disc Medicine, FDA could soon approve it to treat a rare blood disorder. Read @rowanwalrath.bsky.social's excellent story in @cenmag.bsky.social.

Fellow chemists, scientists, and lab rats, Next semester, my Crime Scene Chemistry class is focusing on miscommunication. Do you have any stories about improperly labeled items in the lab that led to confusion or an accident?

Advisory panel on vaccine policy in the US votes to scrap recommendation of #hepatitisB vaccination for newborns. One panel member called decision "unconscionable" @maxhenrybarnhart.bsky.social for @cenmag.bsky.social cen.acs.org/pharmaceutic...

Excellent, if depressing, work from @leighkboerner.bsky.social and the @cenmag.bsky.social team 🧪 cen.acs.org/environment/...

This remains one of the most disturbing stories of the year. A 1st trimester fetus incubated in a dead woman's body against the will of her family until a very early term birth when the corpse could no longer sustain life. www.cbsnews.com/atlanta/news...

This time last year, I was on the South Lawn of the White House helping to lay out the AIDS Memorial Quilt. This year the White House did nothing and the State Department instructed empoyees and grant recipients to “refrain from publicly promoting World Aids Day through any communication channels”

...and we have many of these manuals @thejohnrylands.bsky.social @manchester.ac.uk! Wonderful to see our @historians.org American Historical Review article sparking wider discussions across disciplines! @uomhums.bsky.social @uomsalc.bsky.social @uomhistdept.bsky.social

Reflections on COP30 now that it's over. (Or is it??) First, idk if this was Lula's goal, but the physical chaos of the venue—fire, deluge, diesel fumes—sure seemed like a metaphor for climate change to me. cen.acs.org/environment/...

So, remember that MAHA summit 2 weeks ago that @statnews.com broke the news of and @maxkozlov.bsky.social somehow got into for Nature, even though it was closed to the press? The organizers posted the entire 6.5-hour conference proceedings to YouTube last week. cen.acs.org/policy/MAHA-...

Do you have recipe books with annotations and stains on the most popular pages? Me too, and so does the University of Manchester. Except their recipe books are medieval medical manuals. @bethanyhalford.bsky.social for @cenmag.bsky.social 🧪 #chemsky cen.acs.org/analytical-c...

From now on, when discussing the budget, please use “is this measure bigger than the cost to the exchequer of gen Z drinking less” as your metric for assessing whether something actually raises or costs a significant sum

It's still up, despite everyone accessing and downloading it in the last 15 minutes. Incredible scenes

Wie bitte?!

Fun fact, it's cheaper for me to post my cards to the UK from Germany than to wait until I'm back in the UK and therefore able to use the Royal Mail

Thoughts with staff at Leicester as this awful situation develops while they're also busy teaching.

The @wpk.bsky.social (which I am a member of) politely but firmly requests that the German Bundestag opens up its research committee meetings, or otherwise provides a platform for journalists to ask questions. Transparency being fundamental to a healthy democracy.

One point to add about fake AI journalists: the people that will suffer most are young newbie journalists. I’ve been writing for years and have an extensive footprint: no editor is going to think I’m AI. But someone new, with few published stories, will necessarily look “less real”.