From “The Simpsons” house genius John Swartzwelder, interviewed in The New Yorker by Mike Sacks

I know the tweet is Al generated when they use " ," before and.

“I will NOT sacrifice the Oxford comma. We've made too many compromises already; too many retreats. They assimilate the em dash and we fall back. They capture ‘not just X but y’ and we fall back. Not again. The line must be drawn here! This far, no further!”

Insulin Wars Podcast Episode · The LRB Podcast · 1 April · 56min

‘The promise of genetic engineering was that the price of insulin would come plummeting down because you no longer needed to rely on processing carcasses. That wasn’t, in fact, what happened.’

Liam Shaw on the discovery of insulin, on the podcast. Listen here:

podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/t...

Every PI

Our Jasco CD was purchased in 1998 while I was doing my PhD. We’re still using it 👴🏻

Interesting fact, I always assumed it was because of the golden ratio 😳 but reality is far more interesting.

850 Tomahawk missiles could be $3,060,000,000... That is 3 billion sixty million US dollars.

That is 1224 5 year biomedical research grants. Literally, over 6 millennia of biomedical research.

Coconuts

Kids in High School: “I don’t understand why I have to take basic science classes. When I am ever going to use this stuff in my life?!” As adults: “Vaccines cause autism, GMOs are unsafe, climate change is a lie, and the earth is flat. I’ve done my research. If you disagree with me, you’re sheep!”

@simonmaechling.bsky.social
#medsky

The assemblies are non-toxic in the dark but exhibit potent photoinduced cytotoxicity consistent with singlet oxygen generation. By appending a cyclo-(RGDfK) motif, we achieved integrin-selective delivery, enabling cell-specific photodynamic activity. 🎯

Now 🤞 with the submission!!

NSPr encapsulates hydrophobic NGs into uniform ~100 nm nanoparticles, successfully overcoming their aggregation by wrapping around the NG surface, stabilized by pi-pi and CH-pi contacts from Phe, Tyr, and Trp residues.

Solubilization and Selective Integrin-targeted Delivery of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons with Amphiphilic α-Helices | ChemRxiv Large polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons exhibit attractive photophysical properties for imaging and phototherapy applications. However, their biomedical application remains limited by their poor aqueous solubility. We report that the amphiphilic α-helical ...Structure of a representative conformation of the 1/NSPr complex extracted from the MD run. A light blue alpha-helical protein structure wraps around a central, gray graphene-like nanosheet (represented in a space-filling van der Waals model).

Happy to share our last preprint! We’ve repurposed the amphiphilic alpha-helical peptide NSPr, originally designed for membrane protein stabilization, as a biocompatible dispersant for large nanographenes (NGs).

chemrxiv.org/doi/full/10....

#ChemSky #Nanomedicine #PeptideEngineering 🧪

To immortalize the kids and remind themselves of why they do this work, Laura Marquez-Garret has represented each of the children in cases they filed on her forearms. “Each [sun ray] is a kid who has died in connection with social media and AI bots."

296 kids are represented.

One of the chief virtues of the book is that it’s nearly the only remaining form of media that isn’t constantly being interrupted by ads. Between the covers is the last place on earth where no one is trying to sell you shit, a place where you can still be a human being rather than a mark.

I didn’t know the story, and now I wonder if it shouldn’t be the Dunning-Kruger-McArthur Wheeler effect 😄

Glad people are settling on the term "pervert glasses". Bonus points if you also say it while posting a picture of Mark Zuckerberg or call them Mark Zuckerberg's pervert glasses.

I fucking hate proline so fucking much it's the worst amino acid it's so fucking stupid it's incapable of being fucking normal so it forms an ugly ass ring with itself with its own fucking nitrogen cuz it's a loser fucking amino acid I hate it so much I'd rather cut off my right tit than have to ever draw a mechanism with proline ever again

Remember that everyone you meet is fighting their own battle, sometimes with amino acids

I have a lifelong “@alum.mit” forwarding address from my postdoc days. It’s awesome and every university should adopt for their alumni.

Hey, Anyone could help me find the pdf for this publication? shm.to/4zJWLSU
DOI: 10.1016/S0031-6997(25)06847-4

I would normally just email the author asking for it, but this is kind of old... Thank you in advance for your help!
#canihazpdf #ChemSky

US AI giant accuses Chinese rivals of mass data theft Anthropic says three Chinese firms used ‘distillation’ technique to extract information from its Claude chatbot

The absurdity of AI companies whining about intellectual property theft. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

"Moderna's CEO announced the company will no longer invest in new Phase 3 vaccine trials for infectious diseases: 'You cannot make a return on investment if you don't have access to the U.S. market. Vaccines for Epstein-Barr virus, herpes, and shingles have been shelved.” 9:12 AM Feb 12, 2026 604.8K Views

In terms of what cures are being lost:

- Epstein-Barr virus is perhaps the major trigger for multiple sclerosis
- herpes simplex virus causes cold sores, genital herpes, infections in babies, deadly meningitis
- shingles virus causes an intensely painful disease

Photoredox Unmasking of Aromatic C–H Bonds in Living Environments Enabled by Thianthrenium Salts Prodrug strategies traditionally rely on masking polar functional groups of bioactive molecules with protecting units that can be removed by specific stimuli in biological settings. Here, we introduce an alternative uncaging approach that bypasses the need for heteroatom handles, based on reversible masking of aromatic C–H bonds with thianthrenium groups. Unmasking is triggered by low-energy photoredox activation, which generates aryl radicals that are rapidly reduced by endogenous bioreductants to restore the native C–H bond. Beyond establishing the feasibility of photoredox radical chemistry in living cells, we demonstrate a proof-of-concept application of this strategy for the modulation of activity of antifungal agents.

#CiQUS researchers have just published a JACS communication reporting an unconventional strategy to uncage drugs in live settings, based on a photoredox unmasking of aromatic C–H bonds

Congratulations to the authors on this outstanding work!

pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

#FondosEuropeos #RedeCIGUS

You’re mistaken. Ozempic (and the rest of GLP-1 peptide inhibitors) are made through solid-phase peptide synthesis. Insulin is a recombinant protein made in a totally different way.

One thing I tell people over and over and over again is just how much luck I have had in my career... plus, you know, privilege, which is a systemic boost that makes luck more likely for some. Yes, I'm good at what I do. So are a lot of other people who have not had my luck. No shame to admit it.

As a chemist, I really, really, liked his earlier work on caged Ca2+ chelators. Really beautiful and creative stuff.

A poster that reads: you can’t spell hatred without red hat accompanied by a drawing of a red hat

Everything is awful but the creativity behind some of these handmade posters gives me a glimmer of hope in humanity.