* millimolar. aka millimoles/liter

inhales

Complex 1a was prepared according to well-known synthetic procedures. The reduction potential of the complex was increased due to the nephelauxetic expansion of the occupied FMOs induced by photolytic epimerization of the auxiliary tetrahydrophosphazolidine sulfide ligand to enable a strongly σ-donating dihaptic coordination mode.

translation: we made molecule 1a, we shouldn’t need to tell you how, it’s obvious, lmao, git gud. the molecule became less likely to gain extra electrons because shining light on it made one of its weird-ass totally-not-bullshit parts wiggle around a bit so that it could bind more strongly to the metal atom through two of its own adjacent atoms, making the metal atom’s relevant electrons floofier.

It happens in industry, too, but often it’s even the stakeholders’ fault :) I’ve still got so many reports to write…

Papers!

(jk my company mandates it after unilaterally deciding to stop paying for endnote and forbids other software im miserable send help)

In grocery stores in many parts of the US at least, it is extremely hard not to find bread in plastic bags. Even the one of 3 near me that has its own bakery puts the bread in a plastic bag, and then in another bag that is paper with a plastic “window”, and the paper part has a PE wax lining for god knows what reason.

I feel your pain on sodium; anything convenient always has absurd amounts. One suggestion is street tacos with low-sodium tortillas (for me usually corn, though storebought suck and are bitter if not steamed immediately before serving) if you are willing to prep the toppings in advance. Lunch the day of is about as much effort as assembling a sandwich: reheat toppings on tortillas, and then add freshness (e.g., cilantro, citrus juice, raw onion). Chopped onions and lemons last maybe a week in the fridge but lose a bit of their pungency.

For prep, I add a bit of oil and black pepper to chopped veggies like bell peppers, hot peppers, onions, garlic, or corn and char broil the lot in the oven. I also usually presoak 1 cup of black beans and then blast them in my instant pot for 1 h with 2.5-3 cups water, half an onion, a couple cloves of garlic cut in half, and a bayleaf or two (don’t bother chopping anything, remove before serving). Then, I add 3 oz tomato paste and mexican-adjacent seasonings and simmer until it thickens up. I like this premade salt-free spice blend, but I ran out recently and am using 1 tsp cumin, 1.5 tsp ancho chili powder, 0.5 tsp each of smoked paprika and hot chili powder, and < 0.25 tsp salt. The same mixes go well on e.g., chicken breast prepped however you like if you also want meat on your tacos.

If you’re looking for ways to cut sodium but are annoyed by blandness, I’ve found that smokey things like paprika and the char on the veggies can go a long way toward compensating for reduced salt. Nutritional yeast is also maybe 70% of the way there umami-wise to high-sodium cheeses like parmesan.

Also also, if you are reducing sodium for blood pressure reasons, and if you are not on ACE inhibitors, salt cut with potassium chloride (“low-sodium salt”) can help, as can foods rich in potassium like tomatoes and beans. If you are on ACE inhibitors, check with your doc; they make your body retain potassium and can cause problems if you eat to much of K.

Sorry for the long post, it’s 01:00 and my rambling got the better of me.

something to do with liquid nitrogen? /s

But… but… muh thulium…

jk all lanthanides are the same don’t @ me physicists

also Ce(IV) catalyst stans

also also total synthesis tryhards who think SmI2 is ever the right call

Phosphorus, sulfur, …?

Most chem PhDs don’t even know the whole thing lol. We had to memorize just the symbols in high school, but positions weren’t required. In my grad-level inorg course, the first test was a blank table that we had to fill in, but even then the f-block and transactinides were not required.

Mitochondrion

I mean… just rotate it 90 degrees ((()))

Or when you ask for feedback on the structure and what to include before you polish a bunch of stuff that would be cut or rewritten, only to be returned a half-finished low-effort style (“grammar”) nit-pick of a draft with increasingly angry comments about repeated “errors”, culminating with swearing at you, how dare you waste his time, how dare you not read his Grammar_Lesson.docx (God help you, you did) and submit a draft that doesn’t follow its rules (it was largely compliant), you’re a native English speaker anyhow and should know better, and what the fuck is compound 12a, you didn’t define it anywhere but keep referring to it (it was defined in-text in the previous paragraph and in the figure above it), fix it all and the rest of the doc before you bother him again.

that yellow and that green are problematically close

Depends what is meant by green. Acetone is decent for health and safety (flammability notwithstanding) but is produced from petrochemicals and tied to the production of phenol (petroleum -> benzene and propane (or natural gas -> propane), propane -> propylene, benzene + propylene -> cumene, cumene + O2 -> phenol + acetone). Not much chlorophyll involved. Also has somewhere between a moderate to obscene CO2 burden depending on how you draw that box in and around the oil industry, but so do most commodity chemicals.

I for one haven’t used heavy metal catalysts in a year

Maybe not directly, but a lot of commodity chemicals rely on some truly vile metal mixtures for catalysis :)

Aqua regia ain’t no piranha, and also ain’t the most concerning thing in my post lol.

Ah bromine. Super dense, low MW, and low bp, all making dosing accurate amounts a heroic feat. If you store your bromine cold, you can precool the pipette by sucking up and spitting out a few times before transfering, which helps cut down the vapor.

That’s just bad management / just put it on high vacuum

Yes. The whole thing is satirizing the “Safety -> Against” bit. Each piece, though exaggerated for effect, has a basis in something I’ve seen over the years.

Regarding NMR tubes though, the answer in my old group was precious metal complexes, which have a tendency to mirror out once they’ve done their bit. Or just existed for too long; a lot of them were touchy. The mirror tends to resist solvents and scrubbing. Nitric acid alone sometimes was enough to remove it depending on the metal, but often not. At some point the cost, effort, and danger are all supposed to outweigh just binning the lot and buying new tubes, but my PI was allergic to buying new things.

Like, so what if we store our tBuLi with other low-flash point flammables? And pyrophoric oxidizers? In the same bin? That’s stuck in a block of ice in the 30-year-old freezer because it hasn’t ever been de-iced?

What if the power goes out for a long period of time and the tBuLi goes for a swim? Or we say you have to de-ice the freezer?

Haha sounds crazy. And, I wouldn’t have to do the shitty quench before disposal. Or work on that project anymore.

Because you’re injured or because PI fires you?

Haha, yeah :)

:|

:)

:|

Oh, while you’re here, does this still smell like DCM? I can’t tell if I rotavapped it all off and the NMR tubes all need aqua regia (sorry my b).

That’s some expensive cereal…