New blog post: An updated #pandoc letterhead template. Basically a guide to an arguably overthought customizable template for writing letters in #markdown.
blog.hartleygroup.org/2026/01/31/a...
A new post in my dormant blog: my adventures in fixing crappy YouTube autocaptions using AI, specifically #Gemini. Really useful, but took a lot of tinkering to get it working reliably.
#chemsky
blog.hartleygroup.org/2025/12/05/f...
The ACS has deleted its website on Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Respect. And with that move, have shown they are worthy of none of the latter.
People ask why no-one stands up to fascists, this is why - they are too worried about their own standing to challenge it.
www.acs.org/about/divers...
The US is an exceptional place to be a scientist for two reasons. 1. No country spends as much on research as the US (not even close); 2. It's less hierarchical than many places; hence, many opportunities to lead in academia, government, non-profits, and the private sector. Let's try to keep it.
Have any academic researchers started hearing about cuts/holds on federal grants from other federal agencies outside of NIH? I got a concerning message today about a grant hold, and it seems to be the same politics. Not surprising, but further worrying ... 😨
I am a former incarcerated firefighter. I served in a California fire camp from 2009 to 2012.
Misinformation is afire on the internet, so here are facts about the prison firefighter program, all in one place.
A thread.
Physical organic chemists - is there a good (non textbook) collected series of graduate-level problems on pericyclic reactions? Looking for problems involving mechanisms, stereochemistry, and application of W-H, FMO, and Zimmerman methods.
Every paragraph of this classic Times obit of the heir to the Bovril fortune contains an absolute gem of the genre. Choose between the monkey peeing off the balcony, regularly taking 90 pairs of pants back to your mum to wash and the evisceration of Bruce Chatwin www.thetimes.com/uk/obituarie...
🧪
Dear PIs: Don't work on weekends & holidays.
And if you do, don't brag about it.
It's NOT cool. It reflects a bad set of values that promote unhealthy work-balance practices in the team you lead.
You're an example for your students and colleagues, live up to it.
A word of caution: it might feel like that grant/paper/review cannot possibly wait over the Christmas period, but you can't get time with friends and family back. You likely won't be like "really wish I'd submitted that" in 5 years time but you might regret not spending time with those you love.
Instead of giving grants to profs, let’s just give it all to the students and let the profs convince them to join their groups instead of the other way around….
The only time I really have imposter syndrome is when reviewing fellowship/award applications from students (or junior faculty). It’s astonishing how accomplished these young folk are. All I did as an undergrad was study chemistry with occasional breaks to shoot my housemates in Quake 3.
To celebrate finishing grading final papers, my favorite writing meme from over on the other site that–year after year–still applies.
(posted there by a W. Andrew Barr)
Today I wrote an email to myself and, reflexively, signed it “Best, Scott”. Feels like I’ve achieved peak academia.
I am endlessly behind on the literature, but read this immediately when I first saw it weeks ago. Well worth it.
No kidding. I’m old and cynical enough that I don’t really care if my review is ignored and the paper is accepted. But if the authors ignore all of my suggestions, I’m not sure what the editor expects me to say when they send it back to me for comment.
I don’t get why some editors presumably can triage all sorts or manuscripts at submission, but then once it’s past that and being reviewed we all have to be holding hands at the end or else they seem to be paralyzed by indecision.
I’ve now written long reviews for the same manuscript three times in the last 2.5 weeks. I’m just (politely) arguing back and forth with the authors at this point. We have differences of opinion and the editor needs to make a call rather than wasting more of everyone’s time.
Word of the day is ‘sequaciousness’ (16th century): the slavish and reckless following of another person in matters of thought or opinion.
Akron is also about 1 highway stop from Kent State, another pretty large public university. It’s a lot within a relatively small area.
OK - since we're all here now.
Any students interested in asymmetric catalysis / data science phd at leading European universities - with industry placements and lots of interaction
www.tu-chemnitz.de/cataloop/
please share
We still have classes Monday and Tuesday. University is still open Wednesday. We do have a “fall break” long weekend in October.
Interesting. So RFK Jr does believe in childhood interventions to give people immunity to things, it’s just that at some point he mixed up “racism” and “the measles”.
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
AI summary of whoopee cushion reviews on Amazon: Customers find the product fun for kids and well worth the laugh. They mention it's a great idea for parties and keeps them engaged with family for hours. However, some customers have reported issues with durability, seam quality, and hole size. They also say it's hard to inflate and doesn't hold air. Opinions are mixed on the sound quality, with some finding it awesome and perfect, while others say there is no farting sound.
If anyone needs me, my new hobby is reading AI summaries of Amazon reviews for mediocre whoopee cushions.
In this case, opinions are “mixed” on the sound quality.
Who should you nominate as reviewers for your manuscript? After a long chat with a post-grad it appears that there's a lot of misguided advice out there. Thread 👇
May be an organic chemist thing? Memorizing pKa’s is still a sort of rite of passage. I had a phys org prof whom I distinctly remember chanting “pKa, pKa, pKa, …” at one point in class.
For me, knowing that the pKa is the pH at which an acid is half deprotonated feels like an important part of internalizing my understanding of acids and bases.
