Martin JN

@drmartinjn.bsky.social

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Swedish physicist exploring electrochemistry in Poland.
Cycling, climbing, electrochemistry, some politics. He/Him.

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Lots of broken trees on Warsaw after some recent violent thunderstorms. Another one is just coming in.

Nice summary by @dereklowe.bsky.social on the situation with AD drugs. This statement is quite damning.

A good summary of why many of us in drug discovery are unhappy with the recent FDA approvals of anti-amyloid antibodies:

Does It Work? Does it Do Harm? And More Basic Questions.www.science.org

Just saw this really cool red rainbow just before sunset. Never saw something like that before. If course my photos through the car window don’t make it justice.

At the Stena Line to Sweden and the inane, easy-listening covers of classic songs they keep playing is getting on my fucking mind.

Comment from my Polish mother-in-law about the presidential debate: Biden looked liked Brezhnev when he was propped up for the May Day parade.

Waiting for my number to come up. How is it that for every new number on the board, I compulsively check which number I have? As if it changed from 20 seconds ago.

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this is the way #academicsky

attn scholarly organizations, this is now considered best practice

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Why on earth would I want to automate something joyful like wishing a friend happy birthday? No one is asking for this.

Apple, Microsoft and Google say AI smartphones and computers will automate tasks like editing photos and wishing a friend a happy birthday. These companies need something from you to make that work: more data. Our tech columnist breaks down what to know.

What the Arrival of A.I. Phones and Computers Means for Our Datawww.nytimes.com Apple, Microsoft and Google need more access to our data as they promote new phones and personal computers that are powered by artificial intelligence. Should we trust them?

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Contender for favorite chart of all time: Predictions vs. Reality for solar energy.

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I just learned that mathematicians David Cox and Stephen Zucker decided to write a paper together specifically to create an algorithm they could name the Cox-Zucker machine and this might be the best joke in the history of academia. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cox%E2%...

Cox–Zucker machine - Wikipediaen.m.wikipedia.org

At the airport on the way home from the great Matrafured conference. It was four fine days of fantastic science, good friends and free drinks. #chemicalsensors #electrochemistry

Caught in a very hot lecture hall and zoning out because of heat a bad ventilation, I am really feeling this article now. 🥵 I wonder if bringing a foot bath to the lectures is well seen 🤷

Cooling your face, palms of your hands and soles of your feet is an efficient way to cool off when you're hot. Those patches of skin have special blood vessels that shunt blood from arteries to veins directly, bypassing capillaries 🧪 www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/epis...

How to Cool Down Fast in Summer Heatwww.scientificamerican.com Your body has a secret cooling method, and scientists explain how to use it.

We gave just finished a summer school in redox processes I was co-organising. One thing that several of the tutorial speakers brought up is that climate change is now basically the only scientific problem worth working on. If we don’t solve that, everything else is moot. 🧪

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This is an excellent description of the editorial failure behind The NY Times' decision to run Alina Chan's lab leak article. What's the value proposition to the readership of presenting a one-sided argument that most scientists find lacking? Did no editor bother to ask that question?

Organising a student workshop with very good speakers. More than 70 people are signed up, but less than half of that bother to show up. I guess they feel that since it was free of charge they don’t lose anything by skipping, but it’s really a poor take.

Anyone else who longs for the time when you bought a one-time licence and could use the program as you wanted without needing to be constantly connected. As a hobby photographer, I stopped using Adobe when they turned to subscription-only licence.

This Adobe thing is… not good. “you grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free sublicensable, license, to use, reproduce, publicly display, distribute, modify, create derivative works based on, publicly perform, and translate the [your] Content.” www.thestack.technology/adobe-joins-...

Adobe joins Microsoft in admitting it's now basically spywarewww.thestack.technology Updated terms give Adobe the right to “access your content through both automated and manual methods”.

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Every time I read articles about extremely wealthy people/companies engaging in unethical behavior to become even more wealthy, I think about this excerpt from the book the psychology of money. The endless quest for more is so damaging, especially when pursed by those who already have enough.

Excellent op-ed yesterday from @andrewdessler.bsky.social on renewables already being the cheaper option and how the fossil fuel industry is trying to salt that particular bit of earth to stop their rollout. These companies are *absurdly* rich and they're not gonna stop. Gift link:

Opinion | Oil and Gas Companies Are Trying to Rig the Marketplacewww.nytimes.com Fossil fuel interests are spreading misinformation that renewable energy is harmful, unreliable and worse for consumers.

This seems like such a good idea… On the other hand, filling rooms with inert gas is also not really helpful for the survival of those trapped in the room.

Later, they contained *carbon tetrachloride* which when heated produces Phosgene and Hydrogen Chloride gas, which are fire-inhibitors, but also deadly to humans trapped in the fumes! They could be hand-held missiles, kept in a convenient carrying case... (📷: 1stdibs.com)

Nice thread! Pet Shop Boys is an amazing band and Go West a fantastic song! This story makes both even better!

In 1994 the Pet Shop Boys were invited to perform 'Go West' at the Brit Awards. They agreed and brought with them 3 separate choirs of miners. Some of those miners had marched with the gay and lesbian members of LGSM in the 1980s. It is one of the great, near-lost music moments vimeo.com/293437684

Pet Shop Boys • Go West (Live At Brit Awards) • 1994vimeo.com Pet Shop Boys выступают вживую на Брит Эвордс 1994 с шахтерским хором.

Grant deadline looming, but we had a long weekend and nature beckoned.

The ridiculous stingray-shark pregnancy from a few months back was absurd from the onset, but it seems it’s more about a cash cow than a fish. www.theassemblync.com/environment/...

What Is Really Going On With Charlotte the Stingray?www.theassemblync.com It’s been months since a Hendersonville aquarium blew up the internet with Charlotte the stingray and her “miracle” pregnancy, and experts and fans are concerned.

I just realised that I am registered to vote in the EU elections both in 🇵🇱and in 🇸🇪. It is illegal to vote twice, and apparently registering to vote in one country should remove you from others. 1/2 t.co/EazM6BQI9y

Vote twice and go to jailt.co EU law makes it illegal to vote for the European Parliament in two member states, but national rules make it difficult to monitor compliance.

This is a very cool story.

1/ In the 1930s, a group of young French mathematicians who had some pretty radical ideas were having trouble getting those ideas published. They decided to all publish under the same pseudonym, N. Bourbaki. They made up a fake backstory for Professor Bourbaki and began to publish.

Case in point, who the fuck needs AI assistance for a pdf reader! 🙄

The speed at which everything now has completely unnecessary “AI assistance” is mind boggling. Case of tech making something too easy to do even if it is worse

A “mishap”!! A mishap is when you accidentally pour wine in your tea. Not when you bomb a fucking refugee camp. Multiple times. www.bbc.com/news/article...

Deadly strike on Rafah a tragic mishap, Netanyahu sayswww.bbc.com Scores were killed in the camp for displaced Palestinians which Israel says targeted "senior Hamas terrorists".

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This is a level of evil that I find genuinely difficult to contemplate

Radical Israeli settlers have expanded their attacks on aid trucks passing through the West Bank this month, blocking food from reaching Gaza as humanitarian groups warn that the enclave is sinking deeper into famine.

Far-right Israeli settlers step up attacks on aid trucks bound for Gazawww.washingtonpost.com The settler groups use a web of publicly accessible WhatsApp groups to track the trucks and coordinate attacks, providing a window into their activities.

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Standplaats Krakow

My work subscribes to Grammarly, and almost every time I write an email, I get the prompt "Want to sound more confident?" with suggested changes more in line with "Want to sound like an unbearable prick?" I guess in Grammarly's corporate world trying to be nice to people is a sign of weakness!

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I can’t get enough of these studies about how amazingly effective the HPV vaccine is at preventing cancer. What an extraordinary public health intervention. Also thank you to the editors who are rightly illustrating stories about vaccines not with needles, but with people who are smiling and happy.

This is great news. The HPV vaccine is cutting cases of cervical cancer by 90%.

HPV vaccine stops 90% of cervical cancer caseswww.bbc.co.uk England began vaccinating teenage girls in 2008 and results show it is paying off.