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comptonscatter.bsky.social
Compton Scatterbrained
@comptonscatter.bsky.social
240 followers 65 following 7.2K posts
Bad hearing, bad sight, scattered brain.
Full of PFAS, but a true believer in radiation hormesis.
Why isn't rutile rutilant?
I like valence electrons (but K shell too) & deep time.
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comptonscatter.bsky.social
Compton Scatterbrained @comptonscatter.bsky.social · Jul 1
Me. Every day.
Reposted by Compton Scatterbrained
eth-eaps.bsky.social
Do you have a strong background in laboratory-based analysis of terrestrial and/or extra-terrestrial geological samples? The Planetary Geochemistry group at ETH Zurich is looking for a Postdoctoral Researcher in Isotope Geochemistry and Cosmochemistry. #postdoc #jobalert
Postdoctoral Researcher in Isotope Geochemistry and Cosmochemistry
The Planetary Geochemistry group (Prof. Maria Schönbächler) investigates the pathways that led to the formation and evolution of planets in our Solar System. The group is part of the Institute of…
www.jobs.ethz.ch
January 26, 2026 at 10:32 AM
Reposted by Compton Scatterbrained
amwclark.bsky.social
gift link

Sr. St. Mary, who turned her on to chemistry at Holy Angels Academy, "focused her students on hands-on laboratory work."
...
"There were other obstacles—like men with doctorates unwilling to work for her—'but to tell you the truth, they were not serious enough to block my advancement'" 😆
January 26, 2026 at 2:36 AM
comptonscatter.bsky.social
that last line, omg
sarahjeong.bsky.social sarah jeong @sarahjeong.bsky.social · 17h
part of this is like, conservatives projecting; part of this is conservatives unable to imagine politics without money; and part of this is dudes who are so out of touch with feminized labor that they think children's birthday parties exist as a spontaneous act of parthogenesis
naomikritzer.bsky.social Naomi Kritzer @naomikritzer.bsky.social · 20h
I mostly just stay off Twitter altogether but after double checking that the Walter Hudson post was still up I ran across this and just had to share so the Romancelandians who bought hand warmers could hear about the PROFESSIONAL GRADE LOGISTICS.
January 26, 2026 at 10:14 AM
comptonscatter.bsky.social
this is like a terry gilliam horror film
nanoporous.net FX Coudert @nanoporous.net · 8h
L'équipe de ma délégation régionale a gagné un prix pour la mise en place d'un système de ticket pour gérer les échanges avec les labos. Ce système et la reconnaissance associée pour l'institution montre le décalage entre la vision des dirigeants et "managers" et celle des chercheurs.
a woman in a red shirt is holding a microphone and says you get a ticket
ALT: a woman in a red shirt is holding a microphone and says you get a ticket
media.tenor.com
January 26, 2026 at 9:53 AM
Reposted by Compton Scatterbrained
simonhammann.bsky.social
I don't even know what to say
When two years of academic work vanished with a single click
After turning off ChatGPT’s ‘data consent’ option, Marcel Bucher lost the work behind grant applications, teaching materials and publication drafts. Here’s what happened next.
www.nature.com
January 22, 2026 at 9:10 PM
comptonscatter.bsky.social
🧵
January 26, 2026 at 9:21 AM
comptonscatter.bsky.social
Just finished listening to Layne Norton talk about seee-eeed oooils and the biochemical details of atherosclerosis w Peter Attia, and it was fun!

cc @smootasaurus.bsky.social

peterattiamd.com/laynenorton4/
#380 ‒ The seed oil debate: are they uniquely harmful relative to other dietary fats? | Layne Norton, Ph.D.
“The scientific method is perfect. It is a perfect method, but it is done by people who are not.” —Layne Norton
peterattiamd.com
January 24, 2026 at 7:33 PM
Reposted by Compton Scatterbrained
seismosocam.bsky.social
🌟OPEN ACCESS🌟Mantle earthquakes below the Moho are unexpected because they occur in rocks that are ductile; so how do they break? A new #TSR paper considers this question using 7 deep earthquakes that occurred below Wyoming. ⚒️

buff.ly/N49GZJZ
January 24, 2026 at 2:00 AM
Reposted by Compton Scatterbrained
inseismoland.bsky.social
Instantaneous time mirrors (ITMs), creating a "time interface" by abruptly changing material properties, have fascinated physicists for decades. Experiments demonstrating time mirrors for optical and electromagnetic waves exist. But can we also “reflect” a 3D seismic wavefield in time?
January 24, 2026 at 6:08 AM
Reposted by Compton Scatterbrained
datagraver.com
De petitie voor stop Amerikaanse overname DigiD is toegevoegd aan de lijst met Nederlandse petities met meer dan 100.000 handtekeningen.
datagraver.com/grootste-pet...
actie.degoedezaak.org/petitions/st...
Screenshot tabel: Rang Aantal % bevolking Naam petitie (jaar einde) 58 120.736 0,7% Een 1,5meter wet NEE !! (2020) 59 120.559 0,7% Dierenrechten in de Grondwet (2018) 60 119.944 0,7% Stop de Amerikaanse overname van DigiD (2025) 61 118.233 0,7% Stem voor post-COVID-klinieken (2024) 62 114.338 0,7% Tegen het op corona testen van kinderen op school (2021)
January 23, 2026 at 10:29 AM
comptonscatter.bsky.social
#chemsky 🧪 🦠
tessafisher.bsky.social Dr. Tessa Fisher @tessafisher.bsky.social · 3d
Happy to announce I have a new paper out in Nature Chemistry Communications!

The idea of this paper was pretty simple: what's the *minimum* set of chemical compounds that you need to 'boot-strap' terrestrial biochemistry into functionality? And where might that set have come from?
Potential metabolic viability on asteroid chemistry - Communications Chemistry
Pristine material from asteroid sample-return missions can provide information to assess whether the chemistry of specific asteroids could have supported life on Earth. Here, the authors use metabolic...
www.nature.com
January 24, 2026 at 6:30 AM
Reposted by Compton Scatterbrained
semifossorial.bsky.social
Introducing a new Permian reptile: Scyllacerta creanae

With a tympanic fossa on the quadrate and no lower temporal bar, Scyllacerta challenges long-standing ideas about when-and-how hearing evolved in reptiles 🦎👂

🔗 doi.org/10.1111/pala...
Skull of Scyllacerta, reconstructed based on scans of four nearly complete skulls.
January 23, 2026 at 1:56 PM
Reposted by Compton Scatterbrained
cjmoose.bsky.social
With Alt Text of the full announcement.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE January 22, 2026 Contact: HHS Press Office 202-690-6343 United States Completes WHO Withdrawal WASHINGTON - January 22, 2026 - The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the U.S. Department of State today announced the United States' completion of its withdrawal from the World Health Organization (WHO) due to the organization's mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic that arose out of Wuhan, China, its failure to adopt urgently needed reforms, and its inability to demonstrate independence from the inappropriate political influence of WHO member states. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued a joint statement on the termination of U.S. membership in the WHO. President Trump on January 20, 2025, announced the U.S. plan to leave the WHO. During the yearlong process, the U.S. stopped funding WHO, withdrew all personnel from WHO, and began pivoting activities previously conducted with WHO to direct bilateral engagements with other countries and organizations. With the exit from WHO, the U.S. will be coordinating with WHO solely in a limited fashion to effectuate withdrawal. The WHO delayed declaring a global public health emergency and a pandemic during the early stages of COVID-19, costing the world critical weeks as the virus spread. During that period, WHO leadership echoed and praised China's response despite evidence of early underreporting, suppression of information and delays in confirming human-to-human transmission. The organization also downplayed asymptomatic transmission risks and failed to promptly acknowledge airborne spread. …alt text continued …alt text continued (same image) After the pandemic, the WHO did not adopt meaningful reforms to address political influence, governance weaknesses or poor coordination, reinforcing concerns that politics took priority over rapid, independent public health action and eroding global trust. Its report evaluating the possible origins of COVID-19 rejected the possibility that scientists created the virus, even though China refused to provide genetic sequences from individuals infected early in the pandemic and information on the Wuhan laboratories' activities and biosafety conditions. The U.S. is the world's leading force in protecting public health, saving lives, and responding rapidly to infectious disease outbreaks. Going forward, the U.S. government will continue its global health leadership through existing and new engagements directly with other countries, the private sector, non-governmental organizations, and faith-based entities. U.S.-led efforts will prioritize emergency response, biosecurity coordination, and health innovation to protect America first while delivering benefits to partners around the world.
January 23, 2026 at 3:23 AM
Reposted by Compton Scatterbrained
carlbergstrom.com
And just like that, the US has left the World Health Organization.

Link goes to the official announcement—lies pretending to justify a decision that will kill countless numbers—from people too stupid to even include a proper twittercard.

www.hhs.gov/press-room/u...
United States Completes WHO Withdrawal WASHINGTON —  January 22, 2026 — The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the U.S. Department of State today announced the United States’ completion of its withdrawal from the World Health Organization (WHO) due to the organization's mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic that arose out of Wuhan, China, its failure to adopt urgently needed reforms, and its inability to demonstrate independence from the inappropriate political influence of WHO member states.Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued a joint statement on the termination of U.S. membership in the WHO.President Trump on January 20, 2025, announced the U.S. plan to leave the WHO. During the yearlong process, the U.S. stopped funding WHO, withdrew all personnel from WHO, and began pivoting activities previously conducted with WHO to direct bilateral engagements with other countries and organizations. With the exit from WHO, the U.S. will be coordinating with WHO solely in a limited fashion to effectuate withdrawal.  The WHO delayed declaring a global public health emergency and a pandemic during the early stages of COVID-19, costing the world critical weeks as the virus spread. During that period, WHO leadership echoed and praised China's response despite evidence of early underreporting, suppression of information and delays in confirming human-to-human transmission. The organization also downplayed asymptomatic transmission risks and failed to promptly acknowledge airborne spread.After the pandemic, the WHO did not adopt meaningful reforms to address political influence, governance weaknesses or poor coordination, reinforcing concerns that politics took priority over rapid, independent public health action and eroding global trust. Its report evaluating the possible origins of COVID-19 rejected the possibility that scientists cre…
January 23, 2026 at 3:05 AM
Reposted by Compton Scatterbrained
figgityfigs.bsky.social
Man the implication that somewhere deep in our brain there is a “see tiny people all over the place” button and a mushroom can press it, that’s deeply unsettling.
rachelnuwer.bsky.social Rachel Nuwer @rachelnuwer.bsky.social · 4d
With most psychedelic drugs, you never know what you're going to get. But this mysterious mushroom from China - without fail - causes users to hallucinate tiny people: crawling up walls, popping out from under furniture and marching under doors. www.bbc.com/future/artic...
'They saw them on their dishes when eating': The mushroom making people hallucinate dozens of tiny humans
Only recently described by science, the mysterious mushrooms are found in different parts of the world, but they give people the same exact visions.
www.bbc.com
January 23, 2026 at 2:40 AM
Reposted by Compton Scatterbrained
figgityfigs.bsky.social
Yeah, like from an evolutionary perspective it’s wild! Like did a brain evolve this button from a fitness perspective, or is it just one of those weird bits of detritus that came along because it didn’t affect fitness enough to matter?
January 23, 2026 at 2:48 AM
Reposted by Compton Scatterbrained
wxdam.com
Sleet is the devil's precipitation, and lemme tell you why.

Sleet looks pretty at first because it accumulates like snow.

BUT.

If you don't shovel or plow it right away, the blanket of sleet solidifies into an immovable sheet of glacial ice. Good luck getting traction on even the slightest hill.
January 22, 2026 at 5:45 PM
Reposted by Compton Scatterbrained
allochthonous.bsky.social
🧪⚒️ “the first giant organisms on the Earth’s surface were not closely related to anything alive today.”

Read this whole thread which explains everything wonderfully.

Makes you wonder how many other weird and wonderful lineages have been culled over the long grind of Earth’s geologic history…
transitionalform.bsky.social Laura Cooper @transitionalform.bsky.social · 4d
Our paper on the mysterious Devonian organism Prototaxites has now finally been published! See the paper here (www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...) and our explainer thread below!
Prototaxites reconstruction by Matt Humpage
January 21, 2026 at 11:11 PM
Reposted by Compton Scatterbrained
jamiecummins.bsky.social
10/🧵

If you’re interested in:
- using RegCheck,
- stress-testing it,
- identifying bugs,
- or formally evaluating its performance,

I’m very happy to talk.

App: regcheck.app
Preprint: arxiv.org/abs/2601.13330
Code: github.com/JamieCummins...
RegCheck
RegCheck is an AI tool to compare preregistrations with papers instantly.
regcheck.app
January 22, 2026 at 11:05 AM
Reposted by Compton Scatterbrained
jamiecummins.bsky.social
8/🧵

Finally, I fulfill something long-promised: a full, open-source release of the entire RegCheck codebase.

This comes with instructions on how to run RegCheck locally, both as a local implementation of the GUI, and as a standalone CLI application. Find the code here:

github.com/JamieCummins...
GitHub - JamieCummins/regcheck
Contribute to JamieCummins/regcheck development by creating an account on GitHub.
github.com
January 22, 2026 at 11:05 AM
Reposted by Compton Scatterbrained
jamiecummins.bsky.social
5/🧵

Crucially: quote extraction is NOT done by a generative LLM.

Instead, it uses embeddings-based comparisons between text chunks and user-defined comparison dimensions.

This means extraction is deterministic: run RegCheck with the same inputs, you'll get the same quotes as outputs.
January 22, 2026 at 11:05 AM
Reposted by Compton Scatterbrained
jamiecummins.bsky.social
Comparing registrations to published papers is essential to research integrity - and almost no one does it routinely because it's slow, messy, and time-demanding.

RegCheck was built to help make this process easier.

Today, we launch RegCheck V2.

🧵

regcheck.app
RegCheck
RegCheck is an AI tool to compare preregistrations with papers instantly.
regcheck.app
January 22, 2026 at 11:05 AM
Reposted by Compton Scatterbrained
watershedlab.bsky.social
Friends, I’d like to show @ucalgary.bsky.social that @bsky.app is where the cool kids hang out and that they should start posting here more and less/none at TheBadPlace™️. Show them some love by reskeeting this 100000000x. 🧪
January 22, 2026 at 12:42 AM
Reposted by Compton Scatterbrained
geophysichick.bsky.social
The absolute best part of being an educator and scientist is the students I get to mentor. How proud I am of @infrasound.bsky.social who took an undergraduate project and turned it into a scientific career. ❤️
infrasound.bsky.social Anna Perttu @infrasound.bsky.social · 5d
Twenty years ago, an eruption occurred in Alaska that had a profound impact on my career: the 2006 eruption of Augustine Volcano. At the time, I was an undergraduate at WWU studying geology, with no long-term plans, taking things one quarter at a time.
The plume is oranges and purples over the silhouette of trees it was taken between about 1645 and 1700 on 13 January 2006 from Kokhanok on the SE side of Lake Iliamna, Image courtesy of Gerald Andrew.
January 22, 2026 at 5:18 AM
Reposted by Compton Scatterbrained
courtneyherms.bsky.social
So, when my contract at the university is over in 2.5 months (!!!), I'm stepping out into the great unknown. What will I do? Industry research, venture capital, patent law...?
My call for help is: what are you doing after a science PhD, how did you get there? Or just leave a word of advice 👇
January 21, 2026 at 1:08 PM