Barney Grubbs
@barneygrubbs.bsky.social
chemist
he/him
north central long island
linktr.ee/barney.grubbs
he/him
north central long island
linktr.ee/barney.grubbs
learning the building where I took AP exams in 1989 has become a place where my brother is going to see Jonathan Richman play in a few weeks makes me feel old, but wishing @stcauditorium.bsky.social the best & hoping to catch a show there one of these days
November 26, 2025 at 3:34 AM
learning the building where I took AP exams in 1989 has become a place where my brother is going to see Jonathan Richman play in a few weeks makes me feel old, but wishing @stcauditorium.bsky.social the best & hoping to catch a show there one of these days
Reposted by Barney Grubbs
Looks like LLMs are *very* vulnerable to attack via poetic allusion: "curated poetic prompts yielded high attack-success rates (ASR), with some providers exceeding 90% ..."
https://arxiv.org/html/2511.15304v1
https://arxiv.org/html/2511.15304v1
November 20, 2025 at 5:06 PM
Looks like LLMs are *very* vulnerable to attack via poetic allusion: "curated poetic prompts yielded high attack-success rates (ASR), with some providers exceeding 90% ..."
https://arxiv.org/html/2511.15304v1
https://arxiv.org/html/2511.15304v1
What better use of class time is there than to ask your class of students a few years out of high school & presumably mostly there to learn about what’s in the course description to accept your apology/explanations for past bad actions (while still retaining the capacity to assign final grades).
November 19, 2025 at 2:34 PM
What better use of class time is there than to ask your class of students a few years out of high school & presumably mostly there to learn about what’s in the course description to accept your apology/explanations for past bad actions (while still retaining the capacity to assign final grades).
Sunday mornings aren’t going to be the same
Jeff Sarge has announced that the last episode of his Reggae Schoolroom radio show on @wfmu.bsky.social will be the November 30th, 2025 one – ending the popular show's 41-year(!!) run.
#reggae #DJ #dub #WFMU #ReggaeSchoolroom #JeffSarge #music #photograph #portrait #environmental #radio
#reggae #DJ #dub #WFMU #ReggaeSchoolroom #JeffSarge #music #photograph #portrait #environmental #radio
November 17, 2025 at 2:02 PM
Sunday mornings aren’t going to be the same
Reposted by Barney Grubbs
Who’s a pretty boy then? 🦜🦜🦜
November 16, 2025 at 4:04 PM
Who’s a pretty boy then? 🦜🦜🦜
Reposted by Barney Grubbs
Preservation scientists are using polymer chemistry to help prevent old audio and video tapes from degrading beyond recognition: cen.acs.org/analytical-c... #chemsky 🧪
How preservation scientists are using chemistry to save sounds of the past
Preservation scientists are using polymer chemistry to help prevent old audio and video tapes from degrading beyond recognition
cen.acs.org
November 14, 2025 at 12:19 PM
Preservation scientists are using polymer chemistry to help prevent old audio and video tapes from degrading beyond recognition: cen.acs.org/analytical-c... #chemsky 🧪
as somebody also born in Michigan with a chemistry degree from a PUI, I have to say I’m disappointed.
November 14, 2025 at 4:19 AM
as somebody also born in Michigan with a chemistry degree from a PUI, I have to say I’m disappointed.
Listening to Silt Remembrance Ensemble in the car & keep glancing at screens saying ATTENTION !!! and worrying the car is about to break down. As long as the music kept going it wouldn’t be all bad. lukestewart.bandcamp.com/track/attent...
ATTENTION !!!, by Silt Remembrance Ensemble
track by Silt Remembrance Ensemble
lukestewart.bandcamp.com
November 13, 2025 at 2:52 PM
Listening to Silt Remembrance Ensemble in the car & keep glancing at screens saying ATTENTION !!! and worrying the car is about to break down. As long as the music kept going it wouldn’t be all bad. lukestewart.bandcamp.com/track/attent...
unexpected moment of parental joy listening to the kid play The Lung by Dinosaur Jr on her radio show (& then following it up with new Armand Hammer).
streaming.radio.co
November 12, 2025 at 12:17 AM
unexpected moment of parental joy listening to the kid play The Lung by Dinosaur Jr on her radio show (& then following it up with new Armand Hammer).
Reposted by Barney Grubbs
Pre-ACA, I was a postdoc on an NSF fellowship at a university that didn't offer employment benefits to independent fellows. At that time, being a woman meant that my premiums were double that of my male counterparts. The extra cost came out of my grant's budget for benefits, equipment, and travel.
November 10, 2025 at 2:30 PM
Pre-ACA, I was a postdoc on an NSF fellowship at a university that didn't offer employment benefits to independent fellows. At that time, being a woman meant that my premiums were double that of my male counterparts. The extra cost came out of my grant's budget for benefits, equipment, and travel.
Reposted by Barney Grubbs
"Once these platforms are in place on CUNY campuses, they can license them at cost to SUNY, to NYC Public Schools, potentially to any educational institution who chooses them over the always overpriced, often enshittified, ever-extractive for-profit EdTech platforms."
Mamdani Win Could Be The First Step Towards Seizing The Means of Knowledge Production (Let CUNY Socialize EdTech for All of Us)
by Matt Seybold This essay originally appeared on Matt Seybold’s The American Vandal Substack. We are grateful for his generous permission to republish it here. An understandable response to …
moneyontheleft.org
November 6, 2025 at 2:41 AM
"Once these platforms are in place on CUNY campuses, they can license them at cost to SUNY, to NYC Public Schools, potentially to any educational institution who chooses them over the always overpriced, often enshittified, ever-extractive for-profit EdTech platforms."
Great to visit the kid on her new home turf this weekend & meet some of her new friends & see some old friends (& white knuckle through two exciting baseball games in unsympathetic territory)!
November 3, 2025 at 3:39 AM
Great to visit the kid on her new home turf this weekend & meet some of her new friends & see some old friends (& white knuckle through two exciting baseball games in unsympathetic territory)!
Reposted by Barney Grubbs
OK lads, the new @lankumdublin.bsky.social is about to drop and I can not prepare you adequately for Lankum doing techno, you have been warned:
youtu.be/aLLnF4vxaeY?...
youtu.be/aLLnF4vxaeY?...
Lankum - Ghost Town (Official Video)
YouTube video by LankumDublin
youtu.be
October 30, 2025 at 11:21 AM
OK lads, the new @lankumdublin.bsky.social is about to drop and I can not prepare you adequately for Lankum doing techno, you have been warned:
youtu.be/aLLnF4vxaeY?...
youtu.be/aLLnF4vxaeY?...
should’ve made the prop bet that the game would last longer than the two sessions of western regional acs talks I sat through today
October 28, 2025 at 5:23 AM
should’ve made the prop bet that the game would last longer than the two sessions of western regional acs talks I sat through today
Last Javits water bottle report for a while—co-instructor tagging in.
October 24, 2025 at 8:35 PM
Last Javits water bottle report for a while—co-instructor tagging in.
Special Organic Chemistry Exam 2 Engineering Building lost water bottle & extinguisher obstruction report
October 24, 2025 at 12:27 AM
Special Organic Chemistry Exam 2 Engineering Building lost water bottle & extinguisher obstruction report
Reposted by Barney Grubbs
Anyone else think it’s sort of funny how AWS laid off 40% of its DevOps staff in July because AI made them “redundant” and then it suffered a catastrophic outage?
AWS Laid Off 40% of Its DevOps Staff — What They’re Using Instead Will Shock You
- By Sandesh (5 + Years of DevOps | CI/CD | AWS | k8 | DevSecOps)
aws.plainenglish.io
October 21, 2025 at 11:07 AM
Anyone else think it’s sort of funny how AWS laid off 40% of its DevOps staff in July because AI made them “redundant” and then it suffered a catastrophic outage?
Reposted by Barney Grubbs
I had a coworker whose daughter needed neonatal heart surgery, the before insurance cost was close to a million dollars.
Pre-ACA she would have blown through her entire lifetime quota of healthcare *before even being born* in multiple ways.
Pre-ACA she would have blown through her entire lifetime quota of healthcare *before even being born* in multiple ways.
October 20, 2025 at 10:37 AM
I had a coworker whose daughter needed neonatal heart surgery, the before insurance cost was close to a million dollars.
Pre-ACA she would have blown through her entire lifetime quota of healthcare *before even being born* in multiple ways.
Pre-ACA she would have blown through her entire lifetime quota of healthcare *before even being born* in multiple ways.
Reposted by Barney Grubbs
If you're looking for an action to take tomorrow that can help protect millions of people regardless of their immigration status, call your governor to demand a ban on utility shutoffs this winter. Every state has slightly different policy– we got you covered.
Here's your guide to fighting utility shutoffs this winter. W/o the gov't open, few to no states will have funds for emergency bill payment program LIHEAP. This doc has scripts, state context, contact info for governors & commissions, everything you need. Please call! docs.google.com/document/d/1...
NO UTILITY SHUTOFFS scripts by state
🚨 WE NEED AN EMERGENCY BAN ON UTILITY SHUTOFFS DUE TO THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN 🚨 TAKE ACTION: ONE E-MAIL OR PHONE CALL! ⚡ Hello! Welcome to our crowdsourced effort to campaign for ending util...
docs.google.com
October 19, 2025 at 1:35 AM
If you're looking for an action to take tomorrow that can help protect millions of people regardless of their immigration status, call your governor to demand a ban on utility shutoffs this winter. Every state has slightly different policy– we got you covered.
got a little worried when a guy at the rally this morning walked up to a pickup with trump flags in the back & was talking them, then was amused to see he had successfully bummed a smoke
October 18, 2025 at 11:55 PM
got a little worried when a guy at the rally this morning walked up to a pickup with trump flags in the back & was talking them, then was amused to see he had successfully bummed a smoke
Favorite sign from this morning says something about my age & how much TV I watched in the late 70s/early 80s.
October 18, 2025 at 6:48 PM
Favorite sign from this morning says something about my age & how much TV I watched in the late 70s/early 80s.
WEEK 8 Javits lost bottle report. Up to 14 bottles but holding at two umbrellas.
October 17, 2025 at 8:55 PM
WEEK 8 Javits lost bottle report. Up to 14 bottles but holding at two umbrellas.
Usually the surprises this campus offers up are not particularly exciting, but running into an outdoor Ozzy tribute concert on the way back from class is totally rad
October 16, 2025 at 9:10 PM
Usually the surprises this campus offers up are not particularly exciting, but running into an outdoor Ozzy tribute concert on the way back from class is totally rad
Reposted by Barney Grubbs
Hey, so, um, who's monitoring oysters for Vibrio right now? Because the folks I know that test out here are furloughed.
October 16, 2025 at 1:34 AM
Hey, so, um, who's monitoring oysters for Vibrio right now? Because the folks I know that test out here are furloughed.
If you are using Firefox & the slow-loading "Ask an AI chatbot" menu item keeps making you click "open on new window" rather than "open in new tab" it fortunately seems easy to disable (hover over the menu item & click "remove AI chatbot"): www.reddit.com/r/WindowsHel...
From the WindowsHelp community on Reddit
Explore this post and more from the WindowsHelp community
www.reddit.com
October 14, 2025 at 7:03 PM
If you are using Firefox & the slow-loading "Ask an AI chatbot" menu item keeps making you click "open on new window" rather than "open in new tab" it fortunately seems easy to disable (hover over the menu item & click "remove AI chatbot"): www.reddit.com/r/WindowsHel...