My eternal gripe with almost all commencement speeches.

MAGA folks might delight in this tone, but I bet this will not land well with the judges hearing this case.

Special issue call for papers: Foundations of Membrane Biophysics: Dedicated to Wolfgang Helfrich.

We currently have a new position for a PhD student available in my group. If you are interested in alchemical drug design and could imagine coming to beautiful Vienna, check out the announcement below! #compchem 🧪🧪 @bokuvienna.bsky.social boku.ac.at/fileadmin/da...

Mike Brock masterfully deconstructs Ben Shapiro’s talking points on Sam Harris’ podcast. Incisive, eloquent, and utterly devastating. He unmasks the well-rehearsal spiel of an apologist who labors hard to hide his intellectual and moral bankruptcy. This view behind the curtain is instructive.

This may be shocking, but despite being a vocal e-bike proponent I had never actually ridden one before last night. I had two takeaways: 1. It was remarkable how easy it made riding. Cruising at 18 mph while pedaling lightly was incredible. 2. E-bikes are so much fucking fun.

I firmly believe presidents & people with control over medical agencies should understand percentages! If *you* don’t, no judgment; I will explain in the next couple posts how they work. The short version is that Senator Warren is correct in the clip, and there’s NO interpretation in which RFKJr is

Lady parked her SUV and walked toward the store, saw a cart blowing in the wind toward her SUV, stopped it, left it there, and walked in the store. I need to know more about this psychology because I think it might be what's wrong with humanity.

“We are going to protect the American people from outrageous claims by woke scientists that up is up and down is down.”

We just tried to submit mmCIF coordinates of some predicted protein structures to a journal as supplemental data, & they said they could not handle the files unless we turned them into Word or pdf files. Why do we pay for journals to publish our papers when such incompetence and ignorance prevails?

Lately, it’s taking like 5–10 seconds to post something on Bluesky, and sometimes it even fails and I have to try again. Is this the beginning of the end? 😬

Today I learned that Bill Hrusa has passed away. He was a remarkable person, very smart, very kind, and deeply dedicated to education and fostering a bright career for all his students. He will be sorely missed. May he rest in peace.

CMU physicist Vlad Kozii is developing testable theories to explain exotic superconductors. Backed by an NSF CAREER award, his work links theory with experiments to guide the search for new materials. 🧪⚛️ www.cmu.edu/mcs/news-eve...

Our REU renewal was funded! We found out today so we are accepting applications now! Like right now! Application review is going to happen swiftly as we know we’re are late in the typical cycle. pa.msu.edu/undergraduat... #reu #physics #astronomy #research

Die top-drei Ausreden der Deutschen Bürokratie: 1. Das haben wir schon immer so gemacht. 2. Das haben wir noch nie so gemacht. 3. Da könnte ja jeder kommen.

I think this is the most likely explanation for what unfolded after the fact. #DonaldJChrist

What Spadaro says, though it's something Trump and his cohort are incapable of understanding.

No Viktor for Orbán.

Best analysis I have read so far: www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Your regular reminder that the US had a pain-stakingly negotiated and workable deal with Iran when Trump came to power, but he tore it up. He's now desperately trying to secure a deal much worse than the one he set aside.

Who could have possibly predicted that a bunch of untrained, inexperienced, unqualified, and overconfident ignoramuses would be poor negotiators?

This. Writing is more than the process of putting thoughts on paper. It’s the process of bringing them into being in their fully worked out form. A pen and a piece of paper are a powerful extension of my brain. I’m a better thinker with both of them available.

He NEVER went up his own ass, NEVER. And for a global superstar out of Hollywood this is a rare rare thing. From Carpenter to icon. A credit to my profession. Love the guy. A visibly moved HARRISON FORD accepting his AFI Life Achievement Award in Los Angeles this month.

Please stop saying TACO. We’re talking about an ungodly number of people who could die or maimed. It’s not time for cutesy little internet slang. We have to get away from this bizarre desensitization.

The City of Pittsburgh just passed legislation banning cooperation with ICE. The vote was unanimous. 🎉🎉🎉

This made me laugh way harder than it should have.

I've recently heard Shostakovich's 9th at the @CMU All University Orchestra. And I've been obsessed ever since with its second movement. The 9th is famous for its irreverent trolling of the Soviet regime, but hidden inside is this infinite heartache and longing for a better world. Truly amazing.

This is in many ways a very good movie.

look at that you son of a bitch thats all we have. thats it. that's all there is, this impossibly delicate little egg in the endless black nothing. this water droplet. its our home, its where we all live and hating each other just makes no sense when its this precarious

This is so, so well-articulated.

What times do we live in when the president firing the attorney general is only the *seventh* headline down the NYT feed…

The brave men and women who serve our nation deserve to be led by people who know what they are doing.

there was a young man from cork who got limericks and haikus confused

This 1990 speech by Carl Sagan is timely times two: #war #climate

Happening soon!!! SOOOOOON!!!! Heavily stoking your FOMO feelings! Tick tick tick. . . . . . . Don't miss out on this!!!

Emmy Noether was born #OTD in 1882. She made groundbreaking advances in abstract algebra, but is probably best known for her eponymous theorems articulating the deep connection between symmetries and conserved quantities in physics. 🧪 ⚛️ 👩‍🔬 Image: Public domain, photographer unknown

Self-gravitating systems have a negative heat capacity. What could possibly go wrong?

Heute feiert Emmy Noether Geburtstag (23.3.1882)! 🎉 Sie war ein absolutes Genie und gilt als "Mutter der modernen Algebra". Einstein bewunderte sie zutiefst. Ihr "Noether-Theorem" verbindet Symmetrien mit Erhaltungssätzen und ist ein Fundament der modernen Physik. Eine wahre Pionierin! ♾️ #Gittepedia

Fascinating how people think this can be fixed in less than one term.

50 years ago today, ‘STAR WARS’ began filming. George Lucas fell behind schedule in the first week of shooting due to malfunctioning props, electronic breakdowns and Tunisia’s first winter rainstorm in 50 years. History was then made.

This is one of the most useful posts I have ever read. open.substack.com/pub/cardcata...

🫧 Smoke trapped in a bubble on water: surface tension, soap film physics and fluid mechanics in action

Whiteboards suck, because board markers are such duplicitous jerks. I never looked at a piece of chalk and wondered, gee, I hope there’s chalk left in it.

This is insane.

📣 To celebrate Biophysics Week, the Membrane Structure and Function Subgroup (MSAF) of @biophysicalsoc.bsky.social will host a webinar on March 24 at 11am EDT. Our speakers are @mejohnson81.bsky.social, @ibudin.bsky.social, and Cecília Leal (not on 🦋). 🧪 👀 More info in the alt text! Please share! 🔄

Wow - I am definitely telling my research group about this one! @ibudin.bsky.social, @mejohnson81.bsky.social, and Cecilia Leal will discuss membrane bending in a way "accessible to undergraduate students interested in biochemistry and biophysics as well as specialists in the field."

Join for a set of three great talks by three amazing membrane scientists! 🧪

We have spent (to date) roughly 38,000 3 year NSF grants on the war with Iran. We can't afford healthcare, research, education, consumer protections... But we can release the taps to kill Iranian civilians in an unnecessary war. The US doesn't have a budget problem, we have a values problem.