Emily Peterson 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️

The amount of AI generated art in slides at this conference, primarily used by older scientists, is killing me. Scientists please. Don’t use these ai platforms to make your figures or slides. They look bad and I have yet to see them meaningfully improve the message of talks.

A Kimono decorated with skeletons, from Japan, 1840-1860 CE,
now housed at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London

PNAS: Six-million-year-old ice discovered in Antarctica offers unprecedented window into a warmer Earth via our NSF COLDEX & US Antarctic Program. ❄️ www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Totally fascinating.

Someone has labeled their -20 C freezer with a taped-on sheet that says "I.C. Wiener, 405 W. ..." a reference to Futurama, where Fry is cryogenically frozen while delivering a pizza to a cryonics facility.

My general guideline for lab cold storage:

Trying to stop fungus from funging? 4 °C
Trying to stop enzymes from enzyming? -20 °C
Trying to stop chemistry from chemis-trying? -80 °C
Trying to stop molecules from moleculeing? -200 °C (liquid N2)

Trying to stop *all of it*? -273 °C

No kings only kingfishers, kinglets, and kingbirds!
Rally in Bend, Oregon, drew thousands ….
#nokingsday #birders

I’m just happy we reclaimed the frog from the assholes. 🐸

Mods are asleep post brassicas

The following is REAL footage from Portland, 2025. Viewer discretion is advised.

Researchers turn plastic into paracetamol Engineered <i>E. coli</i> can metabolize plastic waste into acetaminophen

ICYMI: Researchers at the University of Edinburgh have engineered a strain of Escherichia coli that relies on small molecules from waste polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic bottles to survive. cen.acs.org/biological-c... #chemsky 🧪

People get so angry about this, I’ve found that interesting. There is definitely some resistance to the idea of reading, not just the act of doing it.

But yeah I am not watching a video, ever, if I can help it.

After Trump cut the National Science Foundation by 56 percent, a venerable Arctic research center closes its doors The Arctic Research Consortium of the United States funded programs that aided Indigenous communities and tracked melting sea ice, among dozens of initiatives.

"After nearly 40 years, the Arctic Research Consortium of the United States, or ARCUS, will close September 30."

"The Arctic Research Consortium of the United States funded programs that aided Indigenous communities and tracked melting sea ice, among dozens of initiatives."

Now we’re talking ❄️

Trump Cancels Trail, Bike-Lane Grants Deemed ‘Hostile’ to Cars The Trump administration canceled grants for street safety measures, pedestrian trails and bike lanes in communities around the country this month, each time offering a simple rationale for yanking ba...

"The Trump administration canceled grants for street safety measures, pedestrian trails and bike lanes in communities around the country this month, each time offering a simple rationale for yanking back federal aid: the projects aren’t designed for cars." www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Trump just ordered the military into Portland, and he’s giving them the green light to use lethal force on American citizens.

Authoritarianism is an abstract concept but Trump is making its impacts real and tangible. Let’s be real about it: This is the beginning of dictatorship in America.

East of Eden is my favorite classic and Paolini’s To Sleep in a Sea of Stars is my favorite from the last decade

Marc Andre Fleury back in Pittsburgh my beloved

I am begging Canadians to understand that Canada Post, like public transit, should not be a business - it's a service.

Canada Post is a lifeline for rural, remote and Northern communities and overall, we need to re-evaluate why people think they "need" random shit delivered ASAP.

If people put even half as much energy into saving trans people as they did saving Jimmy Kimmel, we'd have this all fixed! We have seen the power of collective action when it comes to entertainment. Let's apply that towards trans civil rights!

a, WATSON nighttime image of Cheyava Falls with both white-light LED groups on acquired on sol 1188 at a stand-off distance of 3.91 cm. Image resolution: 21.0 ± 0.4 µm per pixel. b, Colourized SHERLOC ACI image acquired on sols 1201–1202 outlined with a white box and overlain on the WATSON image from a. The ACI image is a focus merge of 13 ACI images acquired between stand-off distances of 4.035 cm and 4.335 cm and has an image resolution of about 10 µm per pixel. Three 1 × 1 mm SHERLOC spectral scans were acquired at the orange square location at stand-off distances of 4.01 cm, 4.035 cm and 4.06 cm. One 1 × 1 mm spectral scan was acquired at the blue square location at a stand-off distance of 4.035 cm. The black dotted rectangle shows the footprint of the PIXL scan acquired from this target. The magenta cross at the corner of the scan provides a reference point for comparison with c, which is the colourized SHERLOC ACI image from b. The image shows the authigenic nodule and reaction front features as well as the SHERLOC and PIXL scan locations. d, SHERLOC Raman spectra from representative targets in the Bright Angel unit with fits to an instrument –O-stretching overtone feature from the SHERLOC fused-silica optics (light grey, labelled ‘Bknd’) and the G-band signal at about 1,600 cm−1 associated with organic carbon in the targets Walhalla Glades (blue), Cheyava Falls (red) and Apollo Temple (green fit on grey spectrum). Malgosa Crest (yellow) shows no G-band signal above the instrument background. Scale bars, 5 mm. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS.

Ah... we found organic-carbon-bearing mudstone (fine-grained sedimentary rock) and some things strongly suggesting a diagnetic redox gradient.
It's not strictly evidence for past life on Mars - but it's damn close. 🧪⚒️

Link: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Time to break out the chart

#chemsky 🧪⚗️

A school of fish that are different types of fish a bigger fish so that they can eat that fish

It's funny I remembered where I put it at 10PM AFTER Labor Day is mostly over, but after having lost if for several years, I finally found the diverse fish graphic I made in 2018.

It always bothering me that the school of fish was the same type.

That erases the modern, diverse labor movement.

Warming and thawing permafrost is confirmed by data from nearby monitoring stations. 2025 will be another bad year for the permafrost in Svalbard. Still some weeks left of the thawing season..

Another round of draft edits :)

A pika sits on a mossy rock.

Tighter crop of the same pika, focusing on its head.

An even tighter crop, focusing more on the pika's eye.

An extremely tight crop of the pika's eye, emphasizing their reflection of an early morning mountain scene.

"Pat, why do you carry that ridiculous 600mm lens on long hikes?"

Buddy, I can see mountains reflected in the eyes of a trailside pika.

Fun fact: among the 6 or so different simultaneous apocalypses that was the permian extinction, ubiquitous and massive harmful algal blooms was one of them. You can literally see it in the fossil record.

Funny how it’s never *their* healthy kidneys they’re eager to sell

James Cameron made over 95 million dollars directing the second avatar movie.