Jesse Kroll
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jessekroll.bsky.social
Jesse Kroll
@jessekroll.bsky.social

atmospheric chemist at MIT; also does other stuff sometimes

Environmental science 45%
Geology 17%
Google at its peak was basically the best information retrieval system in human history and they and every competitor decided going from there to “you didn’t want answers you wanted half-assed auto-complete 80%-wrong hallucinations” in a few years was the right idea

Another terrifying article about Stardust, with (what I think is) some new info:
- they claim they'll finally release info on their secret particles starting in early 2026
- they plan a first atmospheric test in 2027
- they've been funding academic research (with one PI named)

Reposted by Jesse H. Kroll

This is a VERY long piece about solar geoengineering that starts, scientifically speaking, badly, but gets better, but still has a few issues.
The Strange and Totally Real Plan to Blot Out the Sun and Reverse Global Warming
A 25-person startup is developing technology to block the sun and turn down the planet’s thermostat. The stakes are huge — and the company and its critics say regulations need to catch up.
www.politico.com
America putting most of its eggs in the generative AI basket, China going hard into green tech. When history looks back on this period, someone is going to look awfully stupid.
The party that promised "free speech on campus" has made sure there can be no free speech on campuses.
This week, I withdrew from a speaking engagement at a public university because they sent me a list of prohibited “words & concepts.” I will not humor this censorship. It does a disservice to the stories I’m discussing & the audience, who deserve unfettered access to information & conversation.
This week, I withdrew from a speaking engagement at a public university because they sent me a list of prohibited “words & concepts.” I will not humor this censorship. It does a disservice to the stories I’m discussing & the audience, who deserve unfettered access to information & conversation.
Postdoc opening: airborne NH3 measurements

Join our team! The UMN atmospheric chemistry group is recruiting a postdoc to collect and analyze airborne NH3 measurements as part of NASA FarmFlux.

See z.umn.edu/aw67 for details, & contact Julieta ([email protected]) and I ([email protected]) with questions!
PostdocAd-FarmFlux
Postdoctoral Associate: aircraft-based measurements of atmospheric ammonia Join our team! The atmospheric chemistry group at the University of Minnesota (UMN) seeks applications for a Postdoctoral A...
z.umn.edu
#BREAKING: Former Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers will immediately leave his role as an instructor at Harvard while the University investigates his ties to child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

Dhruv T. Patel and Cam N. Srivastava report.
Summers Will Not Finish Semester of Teaching as Harvard Investigates Epstein Ties | News | The Harvard Crimson
Former Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers will immediately leave his role as an instructor at Harvard while the University investigates his ties to child sex trafficker Jeffrey E. Epstein.
www.thecrimson.com
If you work on sources and impacts of VOCs (biogenic or anthropogenic) from measurement to modeling perspectives please submit an abstract to our atmospheric organics session at #EGU26! Our invited speakers are @dbm.bsky.social and @jacquirickard.bsky.social See you in Vienna! tinyurl.com/55vda8u7
Session AS3.2
meetingorganizer.copernicus.org
A guy makes ONE tiny mistake (has a years-long friendship with the world's worst sex trafficker; brags about sexually harassing colleagues; is racist; says women are stupid) and his whole LIFE is blown up (does slightly fewer speaking engagements; keeps teaching at #1 university)??!?!?!?!?!
So Harvard is keeping this guy, but Claudine Gay had to step down over ginned up plagiarism accusations and bad-faith accusations of anti-Semitism.

Got it.
Larry Summers tells @theharvardcrimson.bsky.social
he’s stepping back from all public commitments in light of his messages with Epstein, saying he is “deeply ashamed” and hopes “to rebuild trust and repair relationships.”

He will continue teaching.

www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...
So Harvard is keeping this guy, but Claudine Gay had to step down over ginned up plagiarism accusations and bad-faith accusations of anti-Semitism.

Got it.
Larry Summers tells @theharvardcrimson.bsky.social
he’s stepping back from all public commitments in light of his messages with Epstein, saying he is “deeply ashamed” and hopes “to rebuild trust and repair relationships.”

He will continue teaching.

www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...
NEW: Epstein survivors release the most powerful PSA I have ever seen.

Make this go viral so every member of the House of Representatives sees it.

Reposted by Jesse H. Kroll

Boston ❤️ Nova Scotia

So we've been working through tariff-exemption paperwork so we can purchase a Swiss-manufactured instrument. The tariff (and hence the instrument cost) just went down by $13K ... because the Swiss basically bribed Trump. Yay?
To negotiate a trade deal with the President of the United States, the Swiss government arrived with a "special Rolex desktop clock" and "a 1-kilogram personalized gold bar"

www.axios.com/2025/11/14/t...
How to lobby Trump with Swiss precision: gifts, gold and gab
How the Swiss broke a diplomatic logjam on tariffs by arriving with tributes fit for a king.
www.axios.com

Reposted by Jesse H. Kroll

larry summers is genuinely, deeply misogynist in a way which is not even captured by his public contempt for women
please don't do this. MAGA hats are made from an acrylic blend, which will release toxic chemicals when set on fire, potentially harming you and downwind woodland creatures
The emails have Summers reporting to Epstein about his attempts to date a Harvard economics student & to hit on her during a seminar she was giving.
To negotiate a trade deal with the President of the United States, the Swiss government arrived with a "special Rolex desktop clock" and "a 1-kilogram personalized gold bar"

www.axios.com/2025/11/14/t...
How to lobby Trump with Swiss precision: gifts, gold and gab
How the Swiss broke a diplomatic logjam on tariffs by arriving with tributes fit for a king.
www.axios.com
It’s useful for people of my generation to be reminded that this wasn’t that long ago. Ruby Bridges isn’t just still alive—she’s only 71, not ancient!
65 years ago on Nov. 14, little Ruby Bridges was escorted into an all-white elementary school in New Orleans. Norman Rockwell, renowned for blissful depictions of Americana, did this remarkable painting for Look magazine. Printed as a double page, over-size spread, it's his masterpiece.
Nuzzi's fawning coverage of the sociopathic conspiracy crank she was having an affair with aided his rise to political power, which he is using to perpetrate the worst intentional public health catastrophe of our unnecessarily shortened lifetimes, and THAT is the STORY.

Reposted by Jesse H. Kroll

“a shining example for all of us to emulate”

www.harvardmagazine.com/2022/10/jhj-...
Portraying Larry Summers | Harvard Magazine
Celebrating the twenty-seventh president—and assessing his legacy
www.harvardmagazine.com
Something absolutely perfect about Larry Summers riffing about the scourge of woke cancel culture being unfair to predatory men in a friendly email to his pal JEFFREY EPSTEIN.
Today is a good day to remember, and to say, that the #MeToo movement was right, and was righteous, and has been vindicated over and over again. There was no overreach. There was no excess. There was no they-went-too-far.

So much work remains to be done.

New air cleaner paper! @airqing.bsky.social challenged an oxidation-based cleaner with an air freshener, and saw tons of chemistry. In particular, ethanol (a common ingredient in cleaning products, and ubiquitous indoors) oxidized to form acetaldehyde and formaldehyde.
pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...
Changes in Volatile Organic Compound Composition from an Oxidation-Based Air Cleaner
Air cleaning devices, or “air cleaners”, have the potential to improve indoor air by decreasing levels of air pollutants, including volatile organic compounds (VOCs), in indoor environments. Many comm...
pubs.acs.org

Reposted by Jesse H. Kroll

Yes, having grown up in the 1990s when this was the prime dark fantasy of the NRA, this is really something to behold. From a social science perspective, it's another piece of evidence that most of what we call ideology is really just identity politics.
It still blows my mind that the lawless government paramilitary stormtroopers from every 1990's conspiracy theory have arrived and all the don't tread on me 1776 people just pulled a fade.
Video of Greg Bovino in Waukegan, with residents following and shouting, “You a bitch!” Taken by Armando Sanchez
please don't @ me like "actually cerium is unique among the lanthanides for its +4 oxidation state"

⚗️🧪 #chemsky
It still blows my mind that the lawless government paramilitary stormtroopers from every 1990's conspiracy theory have arrived and all the don't tread on me 1776 people just pulled a fade.
Video of Greg Bovino in Waukegan, with residents following and shouting, “You a bitch!” Taken by Armando Sanchez
In case anyone is wondering if Watson was really THAT bad, @lpachter.bsky.social compiled a list of quotes that are absolutely not for the faint of heart.
liorpachter.wordpress.com/2018/05/18/j...