Andy Napper

The national museum of Prague has one of the most impressive stone and mineral exhibits I’ve seen!

They look so cool... and I can't wait to show them off to my gen-chem and p-chem students this fall! 🤩

I definitely don't need any more coffee mugs, but gosh darn it - now I own two more for work. 🤣

Wonderful designs!

If I see anyone else saying you don’t need to learn Excel formulas anymore thanks to the new =COPILOT then I will do absolutely nothing except cry silently into the abyss.

That sucks! Starting to feel old now that The O, F&F, Uncle Sam's, Peter's Pub, etc. are all gone. What's left?

What’s pumpkin spice flavor, and why do we fall for it every autumn? The popular latte and treat seasoning contains no actual pumpkin, but it boasts plenty of food chemistry

Sorry summer but I'm over you -- already thinking about fall. Loved this story about the chemistry of pumpkin spice by @carmendrahl.bsky.social for @cenmag.bsky.social. And now I know what cinnamic aldehydes are! cen.acs.org/articles/92/...

For @seafury.bsky.social. 😜

Original post: aus.social/@dgar/115044...

📌👇

Now that's a word I haven't heard in a long time! I don't believe it's used here in the US, but it was definitely in common use in the early 90s when I still lived in the UK.

SkiFree - Wikipedia

Sounds like it came on a "Microsoft Entertainment Pack" from what I can read: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SkiFree

I'm pretty sure I still have the original Win 3 install media that came with our UV-VIS. I'll have to check out if they included this! Might have to fire up DOSBox and give it a whirl. :)

Ha - I don't remember that! :) I think maybe it just came with Othello and/or Klondike if memory serves?

That skiing game sounds pretty amazing, though!

I work at a small public university. We're too cheap to get rid of working instruments! :)

And just to clarify - we kept the instrument (HP8453), but upgraded the PC three times:

- Win 3.11, ISA GPIB/HPIB card
- Win XP, USB > GPIB
- Win 10, Ethernet

UV-VIS Chemstation looks and feels about the same running over a 30 year timespan! 🤣

I should elaborate—we kept the instrument (it's still running today), but upgraded the PC three times:

- Win 3.11 ISA GPIB card
- Win XP, USB > GPIB adapter
- Win 10, Ethernet connection

The old 8453 works like a charm! And UV-VIS Chemstation looks about the same same on all the OSs

A screenshot of Windows 3.11 for workgroups from: https://winworldpc.com/product/windows-3/311

We had an HP diode array spectrophotometer that was running on a Windows 3.11 for workgroups PC. Honestly it worked great!

We upgraded it bc our undergrads were confused about the OS. They'd never seen anything more ancient than Win 95 before (and that was 15 years ago)

Aww, you're a good dad! ❤️

Sounds like you've working on this story mentally for quite the time. It showed. A lot of what you wrote resonated with me (and probably a good fraction of the OG PBI community). Thanks and hope all is well with you! 🖖

We get 0.4 workload hrs per credit of research, up to a max of 3.0 (?!) total per semester. No research funds though, although that would admittedly be smart.

All of our sci degrees max out at 4-hr of research that can count for their program, although they can use it for free electives after that.

YES! About half the time my fingers smash Ctrl +, I zoom in, then I remember to hit SHIFT to fix it. Annoying.

I just realized that you can actually redefine the keyboard shortcut on Mac/PC *back* to super/sub-script instead of zoom. Oh, that felt so good! 💚

support.microsoft.com/en-us/office...

Gosh, that was such a good read! I shudder to think how long you worked on that. It's so refreshing to hear these more nuanced takes about AI.

I get tired of seeing 100% hype or 100% demonization articles.

Are you going to start blogging again on your data-goblins site, or was this a passion post?

Tons of people have "PhD-level" intelligence. The fun secret is that you don't have to be all that smart to earn a PhD. You just have to be willing to work yourself into the ground for years on end.

Also...PhD's often seem extra smart 'cause you generally encounter them on their chosen terrain.

So, Did I Miss Anything? “Confessions of a Community College Dean” author Matt Reed returns to his column at Inside Higher Ed.

It’s good to be back! www.insidehighered.com/opinion/colu...

Too pissed to comment. // Trump requests 93% cut to Appalachian Regional Commission. Ohio would take a huge hit. • Ohio Capital Journal https://ohiocapitaljournal.com/2025/07/15/trump-requests-93-cut-to-appalachian-regional-commission-ohio-would-take-a-huge-hit/

Photoelectron spectroscopy and molecular orbital theory : Ballard, R. E. (Roy Ernest), 1932- : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive ix, 192 p. : 25 cm

This book on the internet archive has a few PES spectra of some homonuclear diatomics in chapter 6 (free to borrow with an account): archive.org/details/phot...

It also lists doi.org/10.1016/0368... as a reference for the N2 and O2 spectra. If you can't access the paper, feel free to DM me.

Photoelectron Spectroscopy | PDF | X Ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy | Molecular Orbital Scribd is the world's largest social reading and publishing site.

There are some PES spectra given (and I think cited) in this document: www.scribd.com/document/816...

The peaks don't quite correspond to MO energies IIRC (Koopman's theorem), but the ordering of states going across the second period is (I think) what you're looking for, right?

Visualisation of different causes of food poisoning showing people vomiting, with the length of the vomit proportional to the number of cases.

The data journalists were so busy wondering if they could do something they never stopped to think if they should.

www.theguardian.com/news/datablo...

A map showing South West England and Wales, labelled "Graph of British Rivers". Two river courses are shown, labelled 'Wye axis' and 'Exe axis'. Does anyone read these descriptions, or am I wasting my time?

Graph of British Rivers