Jim Valcourt @jrvalcourt - Bluesky Profile

A simplified, stylized periodic table of elements where large groups of elements are color-coded. Hydrogen (H) is isolated. Group 1 (alkali metals) is labeled "BOOM!". Group 2 (alkaline earth metals) is "rocks & sand & glass & stuff". The transition metals are split into sections: "the foundations of human civilization," "catalysts & superalloys," "ooh, shiny!," "expensive," and "heavy metal poisoning." Technetium (Tc) is boxed separately. The p-block is also grouped: "chips (not tasty kind)," "organic chemistry," and "useful for poisoning your husband." The noble gases are labeled "n o p e." The heaviest elements in the s-block and p-block are labeled "cancer 2" and "cancer alley," with the exception of Bismuth. The transactinides are labeled "more physics than chemistry." The bottom f-block (lanthanides and actinides) is also labeled. The lanthanides are "except for Pm these are all basically the same element," with Promethium (Pm) boxed. The actinides are labeled "rxtors & bombs" and "you probably work at Los Alamos."

please don't @ me like "actually cerium is unique among the lanthanides for its +4 oxidation state"

⚗️🧪 #chemsky

08.11.2025 10:23 — 👍 254 🔁 76 💬 10 📌 8

I’ll be at the ACS Spring meeting next week. Somehow, I’ve never been to one of the big ACS meetings before… if you’re going and want to connect—whether or not we already know each other IRL—please say hi!

21.03.2025 16:58 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Penguin with its arms crossed saying "well now I am not doing it"

wavefunctions when you observe them

26.11.2024 15:23 — 👍 502 🔁 80 💬 7 📌 3

Overview of the BioM3 framework for protein design via natural language prompts.

Wet-lab validation

BioM3: a model that generates proteins conditioned on text prompts, with wet-lab validation!

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

25.11.2024 22:38 — 👍 81 🔁 15 💬 1 📌 1

Optimist: The cup is half full
Pessimist: The cup is half empty
Referee 1: Yeah, cups are fine, but can you do it with jars, mugs & glasses?
Referee 2: You need to cite these 12 papers showing how to fill things (all ref. 2’s papers)
Referee 3: You misspelled ‘container’ on page 6

24.11.2024 15:00 — 👍 120 🔁 20 💬 3 📌 5

Chemistry Children's Classics.

#chemsky
#chemistry

09.08.2024 14:27 — 👍 42 🔁 12 💬 0 📌 0

I’m listening to the Wicked movie soundtrack. In the original, it’s a surprise that the wizard is Elphaba’s biological father. In the movie… that part is in the opening number is sung by Jeff Goldblum. It works less well as a surprise when the wizard has the most distinctive voice in the world 😁

22.11.2024 14:23 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Thrilled to announce Boltz-1, the first open-source and commercially available model to achieve AlphaFold3-level accuracy on biomolecular structure prediction! An exciting collaboration with Jeremy, Saro, and an amazing team at MIT and Genesis Therapeutics. A thread!

17.11.2024 16:20 — 👍 611 🔁 204 💬 18 📌 25