This is (I think) a Greater Blue-Eared Starling (Lamprotornis chalybaeus) & the amazing chrome job is their super-power.

They've evolved to manipulate light in VERY specific ways, attracting mates, intimidating rivals.

Let's look at the nanostructures that bring this bling into being.

If anyone else's personal Gmail suddenly started giving AI summaries of your emails with no option to turn them off:

I already took the elevated blood pressure hit for you and figure out how to get rid of it WITHOUT getting rid of the multiple inboxes (which I personally need in order to function)

Honored to be featured by ChemSci! I always love reviewing and try my hardest to make sure my reviews are of high quality (which has definitely been a learning process).

I had my students do exam corrections after our first midterm. They were allowed to use whatever resources they needed (me, their classmates, the internet/AI) to correct their mistakes.

Seeing some of them still not get the right answer hurts my soul 😭😭

The official website of the Nobel Prize - NobelPrize.org The Nobel Prize rewards science, humanism and peace efforts. This is one of the central concepts in the will of Alfred Nobel, and it also permeates the outreach activities that have been developed for...

Six of the nine Nobel Prize winners this year work in the U.S.
Three of the six were born outside the U.S., which is the pattern most years. No country has benefited more from welcoming immigrants from around the world.
www.nobelprize.org

I know we all have lots of issues with MS Word, PPT, etc, but all I am asking for is a reverse numbering feature

Thanks! Have seen the first (and indeed it's what I was thinking of/trying to remember earlier today!) but not the second.

Yes, I know I need to, I just really don't want to install Discord 😭 Slack is already too much. Why must we have all these apps!

#chemsky I am introducing the field of inorganic chemistry to our first year chem majors. Does anyone have any resources on this topic?

Looking for an overview of the field as a whole, like active research areas

eg "five slides about inorganic chemistry" 😅 to quote the VIPEr resource categories

The only thing I am sure about as a new instructor of inorganic chemistry is that all three commonly used textbooks of inorganic chemistry do a terrible job

😭

Come be my colleague at @hopecollege.bsky.social !

We are hiring a tenure-track open rank #chemprof to teach #GenChem & #Inorganic and establish a thriving experimental #undergradresearch group in our exceptional #PUI #Chemistry department!

#chemjobs #facultyjobs

jobs.hope.edu

"We don't give hotel vouchers when there are cancelations due to weather"

It wasn't the weather, it was your inability to plan ahead and avoid your crew timing out

Well I can now confirm that both United AND American aren't capable of getting planes/crews to a given location in order to transport passengers in exchange for money. Will somebody please just get me home 😭

So does anyone else always call it "Ted Paella" or is that just me

The attempt to destroy Columbia (opinion) The Trump administration has the symbolic fight it wants, Brian Rosenberg writes.

". . . it is not, in any real sense, about Columbia. Neither is it about antisemitism or free speech. It is not even at its root about education." www.insidehighered.com/opinion/view...

Just had a bottle of DMSO arrive as a completely solid chunk... apparently the melting point is ~18 °C? Definitely colder than that outside today 😅

They are making me return the tubes 😅

So today I went to go open up my brand new centrifuge for the lab and inside the box I found a single box of 10 uL centrifuge tubes

So, not at all a centrifuge, and in fact completely useless to me WITHOUT said centrifuge

Inconvenient truths about the fires burning in Los Angeles from two fire experts For years, renowned fire experts Jack Cohen and Stephen Pyne have tried to shift the conversation on fire prevention strategies. This week’s destruction, they say, could have been minimized.

Some of my LA friends have told me that the problem is climate change, and it is. It’s January for fucks sake. But that doesn’t mean we have to solve climate change to better control fire. If we wait for that, cities will keep burning. There are ways to mitigate risk. www.latimes.com/california/s...

Ooh that was a fun word today

Oh I have no doubt that learning the new system afterwards is going to be a complete disaster 🫠

hello I would like everybody to imagine for a second that you are a new faculty member and that your university is switching to a new purchasing system, such that you will not be allowed to make any purchases for a FULL WEEK while the transition happens

please pray for me

They definitely push out lots of sets and force a feeling of FOMO to try to get people to make in app purchases, but the game is very playable without any purchases

But yes, it's mostly about walking. So if you're looking for a good way to get steps in it's great for encouraging that

Not many more days to open, I hope you've all finished purifying your products from door 16 to mix with the product of door 22

Well, it happened... I turned 30 and then I hurt my back moving furniture 😭

What I find more fun is when schools let you know that the search has closed in like, July. Or October, at which point the next cycle has begun. Like thanks I had figured that out by now that is not helpful

This is my life as well. I try to be good now about bed = sleep and couch = work which is obviously how it should be

Desk is only for meetings 😅

where is your SO when you need him?

I have been working on the couch/bed my entire life

There was a glorious ~2 years where I did not have Comcast as my ISP. This other company just showed up one day and said, hey, we are installing internet in your building, do you want to switch? And we were like hell yes. Amazing times.