🌵🌟🌵

Starting to feel like I have to go meet a guy in a back alley to get #semiconductor epi substrates these days. Can we please stop this trade war bullshit? It really hurts when China retaliates. I would like to keep having a job. #Chemsky anyone else feeling indium deficient these days?

Yes, and fabless companies (mostly) don’t have to worry about hazardous waste disposal or reactors asploding

It turns out setting up a fab is, like, expensive?

(For context, this does happen sometimes and it’s DEVASTATING when they’re fully processed)

Wafers lost in shipment

#chemsky #photonics #semiconductor

Honestly I’m kind of upset the sentence wasn’t more substantial. Like, make him do the remediation every weekend for the rest of his life.

Or: anyone want to study a patient who is apparently capable of making antibodies to basically everything? I’m really over these unwanted superpowers 🙄

(I give advance consent to anyone who wants to go full mad scientist and weaponize this capability against the twats who just slashed NIH funding)

Back on my insomniac medical journal reading bullshit, for reasons. Surprised at how much sense the papers make now vs. 10 years ago when I was new to this.

Anyone on #chemsky working on autoimmune kidney disease?

Okay, but now I'm curious...#chemsky what's on your science-themed playlists?

MASTER BOOT RECORD I am a 486DX-33MHz-64MB processing avant-garde chiptune, synthesized heavy metal & classical symphonic music. 100% Synthesized, 100% Dehumanized.

And for those with a computational bent, Master Boot Record is all instrumental and super fun - and plays hella shreddy shows, go see them sometime

masterbootrecord.bandcamp.com

YouTube video by OTG Portal - 'Still Alive'

GladOS-Still Alive
m.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6lj...

Ayreon - The Source (the entire album’s excellent, sci-fi rock opera vibes)

And, for the metalheads, several songs from my sister’s band lastquestion.bandcamp.com/album/u-70 Plus, like, half of Vektor’s discography or so.

quick while the government is shut down let’s all switch to metric

Speckle patterns are goddamn sorcery

A most curious absence of color outside your head Neuroscientists are still working to unravel how humans perceive color.

Color doesn’t exist outside the brain. 🧠

From fruit flies to humans, perception transforms raw light into hues, even nonspectral ones like purple. New work is mapping the neural circuits that make color possible. 🎨

Learn more about color perception in the Sept/Oct issue of #PhotonicsFocus!

Does anyone on Bluesky research proteins that are stable at high temperatures? 👀 #science #biosky #chemsky

Occasionally I have a dream where I’m arguing with someone about organic chemistry and I say something and wake up and…it was perfectly correct and coherent

Damn, It’s in my brain pretty deep. And I miss it terribly. I like waferland but I am, technically, a long way from home 😭

And if you work somewhere that’s in the grey areas of dual-use tech, there are probably some programs and products that align more with building a better world. Give those your time and energy, as disproportionately as possible.

But maybe don’t build hammers for the guy who’s out murdering people with his tools.

We do have a responsibility to not build things for known bad actors. Even if they are going to get their hands on our hammers eventually anyway. At least make it difficult to do evil.

But you can’t *just* whitelist the technology that only helps people and does not have the potential for harm. That list is so short it’s blank. Surgeons need scalpels even if they can also be used to kill.

Humans are vicious, but we still need hammers or nothing constructive gets done.

Like, atomic weapons are a pretty clear no. Really, any kind of weapon. Any kind of surveillance tech. Anything that entrenches existing power structures that are killing the peoples and the planet.

I agree with this and I don’t. There are a lot of grey areas, and humans are vicious and will kill each other with hammers. But we have a responsibility to build only the things that can help us build a better world, and that excludes a lot.

Oh no.

Huntington's disease successfully treated for first time One of the most devastating diseases finally has a treatment that can slow its progression and transform lives, tearful doctors tell BBC.

‘"We never in our wildest dreams would have expected a 75% slowing of clinical progression,”… None of the patients who have been treated are being identified, but one was medically retired and has returned to work. Others in the trial are still walking despite being expected to need a wheelchair.’

Small pellets of 24 carat gold.

Gold pellets in a beaker also containing aqua regia.

Gold dissolving into aqua regia. The solution is orange and bubbles are visible at the top.

Today we're dissolving gold in aqua regia! Gold is expensive, but in the scheme of things for a synthesis lab the price (~$183/g) is not that different to other speciality chemicals. ##ChemSky #OzChem

epoxy is full of cures of a different kind, maybe also healing

YES, dear gods yes. A mid rise is basically in my armpits. Ew.

I don’t have much the way of hips, though, just ass

Slightly diminish a book:

Misdemeanor and Punishment

The Two Musketeers

The Junior Engineer’s Path

Sometimes Coming Home

Catch-21

Monosecure

Moissanite Age

Shack of Leaves

(a series!) The Squire of the Rings

Don’t even get me started

It is SO RARE that there is any advantage to being immunocompromised, but this is one of those cases.

But even IN that case they still won’t let you get the vaccine until you’ve already had shingles 🙃