I recall talking to a coworker, in 2003, about how insane it was that the U.S. was starting a war with Iraq for flimsy reasons. Their response was “well, gas prices will be lower.” It is sadly true that gas prices are the primary way Americans think about the consequences of war in the Middle East.

I have found that many people don't know about configurational temperature, so I wrote a short note about it on my website. www.samuelfoley.com/misc/

As they say: I’d like to report a murder.

NSF Update (Awards through 2/27/26) Directorates to follow 1/10

The latest BPS Bulletin contains a beautiful obituary of Michael Saxton, who passed away in July 2025. Many thanks to Ingela Parmryd, Thomas Jue, and Anne Kenworthy for sharing their memories of Mike. He was a true fixture at all BPS meetings I remember, and he will be missed!

Of course, I am over the moon with happiness that @veatchlab.bsky.social won the 2026 Agnes Pockels Award from the @biophysicalsoc.bsky.social. Moreover, TWO students in Sarah's lab won poster awards at the BPS Meeting! What a year for the Veatch Lab! #bps2026

Let me show you a wardrobe you can build with $1,700 🧵

Today I had the great honor to hand the 2026 Thomas E. Thompson Award, the Prize of the BPS Membrane Structure and Function Subgroup, to Tobias Baumgart. 🏆 🎉 He’s on the right, in case that’s not clear! 😅 He gave a wonderful award lecture. A great conclusion of our Subgroup Saturday Symposium! 🧪

BPS Subgroup Saturday is about to start, and I’ll be chairing the Membrane Structure and Function Symposium. Wish me luck! This is always a highlight of the BPS meeting, and I’m very much feeling the weight on my shoulders! 🧪

How is it possible that Kristi Noem still has this job. Imagine if you’re a family member or a shipmate of this guardsman. www.nbcnews.com/politics/imm...

This is genuinely insane, I clicked to see the years expecting the low part to be 70s or maybe 90s but its 2015!!!!! The entire anti trans panic is a decade old

Currently absolutely losing my shit while trying to combine 5 pptx presentations into a single one, and no slide master transfers automatically, no “keep source formatting” exists anywhere, background images are untransferable, … Rot in the hottest of hells, Microsoft. This is a vanilla use case.

Overheard conversation snipped between two undergrads on campus: A: She’s such an annoying person. B: Like how? A: Like she gets mad at me for getting mad at her. B: OMG!

In terms of what cures are being lost: - Epstein-Barr virus is perhaps the major trigger for multiple sclerosis - herpes simplex virus causes cold sores, genital herpes, infections in babies, deadly meningitis - shingles virus causes an intensely painful disease

Let’s see whether a trophy worth $250 yields a billion dollar return on investment in the form of new coal subsidies.

Happy 94th Birthday to 🇺🇸American composer, conductor and pianist #JohnWilliams KBE born #OnThisDay in Queens, New York City

I have 3 Excel sheets open, none bigger than 30kB. How is it that Excel uses 1,6GB of memory? How, Microsoft??? How have you become SO BAD at efficient programming that I need 20,000 times the memory of the Apollo Guidance Computer, which landed on the moon, to collate student grades? DO BETTER!

Sir Ian McKellen performing a monologue from Shakespeare’s Sir Thomas More on the Stephen Colbert show. Never have I heard this monologue performed with such a keen sense of prescience. Nor have I ever been in this exact historical moment.TY Sir Ian, for reaching us once again. #Pinks #ProudBlue

Awesome colleague alert! One day, @bridgesbio.bsky.social might save your life by disrupting bacterial communication and behavior. No need to kill your enemy—just confuse the heck out of them!

Many have already shared this powerful image by MJ.Hiblen, over on Insta under www.instagram.com/mjhiblenart/. It really makes me well up. May Renée and Alex rest in peace. 💔

Just like I don’t want to go to war zones to bear witness to atrocities first hand, I don’t want to watch snuff videos to confirm that ICE is executing protestors in broad daylight. I want professional journalists to do that. And I don’t want them to both-sides the content. DO YOUR JOB!

Martens, Turkowyd, Hohlbein, and Endesfelder would politely disagree! 🧪

Kudos to the NYT editor who took “Appears to” out of the lead headline (finally)

Oh, apparently just one day. bsky.app/profile/froo...

Jane Richardson was born #OTD in 1941 + Developed the Richardson (ribbon) diagram to represent proteins' 3D structure (becoming a standard representation for protein structures) + MacArthur Fellow, 1985 + Elected, Nat'l Academy of Sciences, 1991 + President, Biophysical Society, 2012 #WomenInSTEM

How long until the word “appear” disappears? Not holding my breath.

“Get it all on record now — get the films — get the witnesses — because somewhere down the road of history some bastard will get up and say that this never happened.” Dwight D. Eisenhower, after visiting liberated concentration camps in April 1945

Alex Pretti was a colleague at the VA. We hired him to recruit for our trial. He became an ICU nurse- I lover working with him. He was a good kind person who lived to help and these fuckers executed him. White. Hot. Rage.

“Freedom is not free. We have to work at it. Nurture it. Protect it. Even sacrifice for it.”

I was a sensitive kid. I loved cats. I had OCD, undiagnosed. When I was 9, a fraternity brother tortured a cat to death in my hometown. The details even now are beyond imagination. archive.is/xdmUL I was traumatized for years from reading the news story. The torturer? Now the head of the NRA.

A reminder to the news media: “conflicting accounts” is what you say BEFORE the incontrovertible video evidence appears. After that, your job is to ask why one side is lying, not to repeat the lie and pretend no one knows the truth.

Ursula K. Le Guin died #OTD in 2018. First female author to win both the Nebula & Hugo awards for Best Novel for 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘓𝘦𝘧𝘵 𝘏𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘰𝘧 𝘋𝘢𝘳𝘬𝘯𝘦𝘴𝘴 (1970). In total, she won 8 Hugo & 6 Nebula awards. Second woman Grand Master of the #ScienceFiction & Fantasy Writers of America. #scifi #literature #booksky

10 years ago today, 1/22/2016, a massive blizzard hit Western Pennsylvania. I measured 2 feet of snow outside my apartment in Pittsburgh on the next day. The city was crippled for a week, Carnegie Mellon was closed for 3 days. That incoming winter storm is probably history trolling us. 🙄

Felix Klein lectured “On Hilbert’s first note on the foundations of physics" at the Mathematical Society of Göttingen #OTD in 1918. He included excerpts from letters in which he and Hilbert give priority to Emmy Noether’s results on conservation of energy in general relativity. (1/n) 🧪 ⚛️ 👩‍🔬

One source of my current heartbreak comes from looking at clips like this. How many people—from composition to performance—came together to create this glorious moment in time! Behold the limitless human potential! The beauty! And then realize that some losers just want to burn the whole world down.

Hey Dems, when we ask you to do something we want you to do something.. where are you? Get the police to free these Americans!!!!

When I think of a funny reply to a post, but then I see that replies are disabled, and so my witticism has to die with me.

Non-protesting dad just trying to hustle his kids, as young as 6mo, out of the neighborhood. ICE threw a flash-bang INTO HIS car, all 6 kids in the hospital now. If anyone wondered how things turn against occupying armies there's a case study playing out in front of you.

I really want ppl w/o Minneapolis connections to understand You might've heard that Mpls public schools went hybrid bc so many families are in hiding. Well, a coworker just told me that today, during his kid's hybrid class, a kid's apt building was raided onscreen *Everyone has stories like this*

Is this the "dynamic duo" in the regime of low Reynolds number?

“When kids weren’t as clumsy as nowadays, they used to build snowstorks in the winter.”

We live in a world where the Norwegian Nobel Committee and the Norwegian Nobel Institute feel it’s necessary to clarify that a Nobel Peace Prize cannot be transferred.

Switzerland has mail-in voting. Germany has mail-in voting. Austria has mail-in voting. Australia has mail-in voting. New Zealand has mail-in voting. Canada has mail-in voting. UK has mail-in voting. ...and a few more Also, *many* more countries permit mail-in voting when you're abroad.

I've been testing Grok vs. ChatGPT and how they compare when generating deepfakes. - ask the chatbot to search the web for photos of me and then regenerate me in a bikini: Grok complies; ChatGPT refuses - upload a photo of myself (not id'ing as a public figure): Grok complies; ChatGPT refuses

It happened again. I saw a post to which I wanted to react. But I first did an online search, then looked up one of my books, then searched for an appropriate link, and when I had everything ready to properly reply… …Bluesky refreshed my timeline. I HATE THIS LIKE THE PLAGUE.

Still time to apply until January, 19th!

I don't think you non-science people realize what it takes to get a grant funded by NIH. Started experiments in Sept 2021 to generate 3 new mouse mutants to model human disease. Prelim dara shows they have relevant disease phenotypes worthy of study. Need a small grant first to characterize /1

Oh fuck.... now I'm late for this, too.

Everything that’s old is new again.

Don't need to imagine, Sinatra had something to say about multicultural liberal democracies 🧵