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jamesashon iNaturalist strikes out on its own

Comments like these are why I lurk on HN. Genius solution.

As a birder I have thousands of bird photos and would pay for this service.

jamesashon Northern summer was hottest on record by a significant margin

This would be primarily aimed at the large number of students who have to take organic chemistry as a requirement.

For organic chemistry graduate students and professional organic chemists, all this stuff will largely be so ingrained as to not to require these kinds of resources.

There are, however, a large number of people who are in chemistry fields who need occasional refreshers on introductory concepts and for that purpose, these are excellent.

jamesashon Gallery – Making Molecules

On one hand I love this level of nitpicking.

On the other hand, by the standards of what an undergraduate organic chemistry student is looking for from a free online resource, and given that it is just one guy doing this, in his spare time, I think this is absolutely fine.

(I have a competing website on organic chemistry and I think this guy does a much better job on graphics than I do.)

jamesashon A new instrument found unusual success

A childhood friend of mine invented the Lumitone, a microtonal keyboard with colored backlit hexagonal keys. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfNIxTiApig

About 10 years ago I visited him in his studio where he had all mocked up in paper and cardboard, putting all the pieces together. Fun to see it finally out and in people's hands.

jamesashon Replace peer review with “peer replication” (2021)

Started in 1924 and still going strong 100 years later. The gold standard for organic chemistry procedures.

"If you can't reproduce a procedure in Org Syn, it's YOUR fault" - my PhD supervisor

jamesashon Ask HN: Could you share your personal blog here?

https://www.masterorganicchemistry.com

Been doing this 12+ years, mainly focused on teaching sophomore organic chemistry. Started as a blog, don't know if it really qualifies anymore as I've organized many of the posts into chapters that follow the typical order of topics as taught in most North American schools. Still write rants from time to time

jamesashon Google search's death by a thousand cuts

Similar situation here.

jamesashon Google search's death by a thousand cuts

Put "Pieces of me" in quotes and I get reddit discussion. https://www.google.com/search?q=%22pieces+of+me%22+is+actual...

jamesashon Blue Ocean Strategy

Having read both the book and the article, I think the article was sufficient in getting the main point across.

jamesashon I bought the only physical encyclopedia still in print

Bought a World Book set at last year's Berkshire Hathaway meeting, for something like $650 including shipping. Awesome deal.

My kids (10, 8) earn "check marks" for each 20 minute chunk of time they spend reading it, which they can trade in for various goodies. Usually before they go to sleep

Edit: Also, they have used it for school projects. 2nd grader had projects on Poland, Neil Armstrong, and pygmy rattlesnakes this year. Very handy as an introduction to a wide variety of topics.

jamesashon A mental health crisis in science

>Also, there is the third category: Small business. Few grad students, and relatively low pressure.

These can be the saddest cases in my opinion. Lower downside, but lower upside too. You work your butt off and knock the ball out of the park with your project: who notices? A few experts, in a very narrow field, may recognize the significance of what you've done. Can be lonely.

jamesashon A mental health crisis in science

Two most extreme stories I am most familiar with (did not experience first-hand) were of a PI throwing a chair in the direction of a postdoc, and of a PI having a screaming fit directly in the face of a graduate student. Both assistant profs.

One got tenure and became more mellow in a relative sense. The other was subsequently unable to attract any more graduate students to their lab, and left for another, slightly less prestigious institution.

I am also familiar with one case of graduate students resigning en masse, leaving a PI with a hollowed-out research group of 2-3 that they had to rebuild. Prof had a subsequent attitude adjustment.

In all these cases the stories spread pretty quickly and profs realized that there were costs to abusive behavior. These stories pre-date social media BTW.

jamesashon A mental health crisis in science

It's pick your poison, like choosing a startup vs BigCorp. My observations pertain to organic chemistry specifically, I'm less familiar with other fields.

With an assistant prof you will be asked to do unreasonably long hours on ideas that haven't been fully validated, but you get a lot of face-time with the PI (for better or worse) and have a chance to get on the ground floor of a potentially great research program. Your boss has a lot more invested in your success because their career depends more on you. It can be exciting.

With a more established prof you are more likely be plugged into the n-th iteration of an established research program. You're more expendable because the prof has more options to hire your replacement; you can get lost in the crowd; the prof won't be in the lab as much (travel, service responsibilities) so it's more sink or swim. Lots can go wrong in this environment. As the group gets larger, internal politics can create frictions, especially if the supervisor is away a lot.

I see A) as better than B) but that is just me.

jamesashon A mental health crisis in science

An early stage lab has a lot in common with a startup. The PI is given seed money to validate an ambitious idea and has limited time and resources to do it. The work is extremely labor intensive and in the early stages the PI will be in the trenches with the early employees working in the lab and setting an example for them to follow. Fast failure and pivots are extremely common. Furthermore, at any time the research idea could get scooped by another hard-working research lab, resulting in publication in a lower-tier journal. The PI must get early results that can be used to obtain further research grants. A good PI in this situation will set expectations accordingly that 60+ hour weeks will be required and hopefully those who are not willing to do so will self-deselect. From their perspective I completely not understand not wanting to invest $50k/year of their startup funds in a graduate student who is not putting in the necessary time to succeed. The prospective graduate student's maximum power is at the time when they are choosing a research advisor. Choose wisely, and remember you are always free to choose not to go if you don't see a good situation. I advise that people think long and hard about whether or not they truly want to do graduate school. There are far better ways to spend your 20's than in a lab. I had two great experiences in "intense" labs in my field (organic chemistry) after a very poor experience with a prestigious but absentee graduate advisor in another field - but it is definitely not for everyone.

jamesashon Hundreds of changes made to latest editions of Roald Dahl's books

If I understand correctly, you are saying that the parent comment is evidence that the core algorithm for self-selection and other-exclusion are similar regardless of what group the members identify as being a part of. No higher moral principle is in operation here. All that has changed is who/whom.

jamesashon Berkshire Hathaway buys more AAPL stock, ditches most of TSMC

I attended the annual meeting last year and though I historically love the company, came away less than impressed. I can see how people in the past would take a pay cut to work closely with WB or have him invest in their company. But does Greg Abel really have anywhere near the kind of gravitas necessary to attract top talent or get good deals? I don't see it. Lots of bland corporatespeak from him.

jamesashon Berkshire Hathaway buys more AAPL stock, ditches most of TSMC

This is an investment by either Todd Combs or Ted Weschler, not WB

jamesashon Berkshire Hathaway buys more AAPL stock, ditches most of TSMC

Would be interested in learning more on poor management of BRK companies, do you have a source?

jamesashon Making chloroform so I can sleep better at night [video]

Wow. That's not something you want to have an oopsie with.

jamesashon Making chloroform so I can sleep better at night [video]

I run a fairly well-known organic chemistry website. Occasionally I receive notes from amateur chemists who want advice on various aspects of lab prep. Sometimes they are amusing, like getting late night calls from amateur CBD chemists. Other times they are scary. Two of my correspondents turned out to be so completely in over their heads there was no helping them.

One guy, a former electrical engineer, was making elemental chlorine and pirahna solution in his condo. The other was convinced he was close to finding a new drug for curing cancer - he sent me a Chemdraw file with impossible structures - and was hell bent on fluorinating a compound using DAST.

I had to cut off all contact with both, lest it be seen that I was aiding and abetting their reckless behavior...

jamesashon Making chloroform so I can sleep better at night [video]

I pass along this amusing advice, no doubt familiar to you, but probably not to the general HN readership.

"Gattermann (Ann. 357, 318 (1907)) recommends that the operator smoke during the preparation [of HCN], for he found that a trace of hydrogen cyanide is sufficient to give the tobacco smoke a highly characteristic flavor. This preliminary warning is useful in case of leaky apparatus or a faulty hood" - from Org Syn http://www.orgsyn.org/demo.aspx?prep=CV1P0314

jamesashon Free online textbooks work

I would start by just publishing articles to a Wordpress site. You'll get long-tail SEO on articles and often helpful feedback. Build up from there and eventually you'll find you've written a textbook.

That's basically what I did with organic chemistry.

jamesashon Satellites give clues about the coming global harvest

Backward rather than forward-looking, so slightly off topic, but for a high-level understanding of US crop production, nothing beats the US Crop Production 2021 summary. [Here - https://downloads.usda.library.cornell.edu/usda-esmis/files/...]

Skip the first 92 pages and go straight to 93-96 which give a total rundown of all US crop acreage and production, from corn and soybeans down to maple syrup and peppermint oil. Continue with page 97 which has a complete month-by-month rundown on US weather with comments on impact on specific crops.

Comprehensive.

jamesashon Study of pet dogs shows breed does not predict behaviour

One can start with an already tame population of foxes/dogs and select for aggression. Aggression would be a useful trait in a breed desired for protection/guarding.

jamesashon Study of pet dogs shows breed does not predict behaviour

The Siberian silver fox study makes it very difficult to avoid the conclusion that behavior (e.g. tameness) in canines is a heritable trait that can be selected for.

Beginning in 1952 wild silver foxes have been bred in Siberia selecting solely for friendliness. Notable changes were found after 6 generations. By the 30th generation, 70-80% of the selected population were "domesticated elite", which "are eager to establish human contact, whimpering to attract attention and sniffing and licking experimenters like dogs." Similar experiments were performed in the opposite direction, selecting for aggression. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesticated_silver_fox

jamesashon These are real compounds

Interestingly, cyclobutane and cyclopropane do not have a large difference in ring strain (within about 4% of each other). Cyclopropanes are well known in natural product structures. One of the weirdest is this natural product, U-106305, which has 6 cyclopropanes. Made by a strain of Streptomyces! https://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/ja9619420

jamesashon An ultimate guide to memory palaces

It was like taking a walk around the perimeter of a huge mansion before actually exploring it. I learned the names of lots of birds and was able to associate them together, but didn't really learn their characteristics. In time I let the associations fade. Mostly it just gave me the confidence that I was capable of doing something like this if needed. Thanks for all the time you took in answering people's questions on this thread.

jamesashon An ultimate guide to memory palaces

Moonwalking with Einstein de-mystified memory for me. As mrock described, in the beginning it was a lot of work building palaces and making associations, but like a muscle, things quickly got easier. In time, memorizing a list of 30 or so became pretty easy. I was able to memorize a list of 875 North American bird species and then recite it from memory. Took about 35 min to read it all back.

jamesashon Illustrated Glossary of Organic Chemistry

I have been working on this site for 11 years, has 400 free articles on intro organic chemistry: https://www.masterorganicchemistry.com Probably the most fun thing I ever did was breaking down the mechanisms of 25-30 reactions into individual steps, and then assigning a musical note to each step. Playing the sequence of notes helps you recognize the patterns behind the reactions. One pattern in particular (protonation-carbonyl addition-deprotonation-protonation-elimination-deprotonation, or PADPED) covers the mechanism of at least 8 superficially different reactions. Another great organic chemistry resource: https://organicchemistrydata.org/hansreich/resources/pka/#pk...