Gond Orod

Scientist who now focuses on philosophy and trying to work out how the universe works

[Mark Hammond @MarkHam80780803]

“Where is Vader today?”
“He’s escaped in a catering truck, sir. We’re his decoys.”

[REPUBLICANS AGAINST MAGA @michaelt5656]

Never allow politicians to dictate your choices for your children.

[Cheryl @chuerta1]

That's exactly what's happened/happening in the U.S.
👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻

[Single Market Minded 🇪🇺 @SingleMarketPls]

When you stand in the queue to go into EU, give thanks to the instigator of your delay.

When you want to retire to Spain, raise a glass to the instigator.

When you see the lack of UK public services, give thanks to the man that lowered our tax take by billions.

He's a sham.

[Gond Orod @GondOrod]

@BarnabyHistory Many RAF messes have a Sqn bottle, usually painted so that you can't see how much is left and if you finish the bottle then you buy the next

[Simon Maechling @simonmaechling]

Chemist here - there is something I need to say.

I have made molecules that, as far as we knew, had never existed before.

Think about that for a moment.

I could draw a structure on a piece of paper, look at the arrangement of atoms and bonds, and then spend days or weeks trying to turn that drawing into something real.

Sometimes it worked.
Sometimes it spectacularly didn’t.

But occasionally, at the end of a synthesis, there would be a tiny amount of material sitting in a flask that probably had never existed anywhere in the universe before.

That is what “synthetic” means to me.

Which is why I find it strange that the word has become almost an accusation.

Synthetic chemical.
Synthetic pesticide.
Synthetic ingredient.

Put “synthetic” in front of almost anything today and it immediately sounds slightly more sinister.

But there is nothing sinister about synthesis.

Plants synthesise chemicals everyday.
The human body is one big chemical factory.

It is simply the ability to rearrange matter deliberately.

And that ability changed civilisation.

We stopped being limited to the molecules nature happened to provide us and started asking a much more interesting question:

What molecules could exist?

Some turned out to be useless.
Some were dangerous.

Some became medicines, materials, crop protection products, dyes, electronics and technologies that transformed our lives.

That’s the part of synthetic chemistry I wish more people could see.

It isn’t a factory pouring mysterious chemicals into the world.

It begins with curiosity.

A chemist, a piece of paper and an idea for a molecule with certain properties that might not exist yet.

Then comes the difficult part: finding out whether we can actually make it, what it does, and whether it is useful.

Of course, being synthetic tells you nothing about whether that molecule is safe. That requires toxicology, exposure data and evidence.

But it tells you something else.
Someone imagined a molecule.
And then chemistry made it real.

After spending years doing exactly that, I find it difficult to hear “synthetic” as a dirty word.

To me, it is one of the most remarkable things humans learned how to do.

[Roman Sheremeta 🇺🇸🇺🇦 @rshereme]

This is a brilliant explanation by the Vice-President of the European Commission, Kaja Kallas on why it is senseless to “negotiate” with russia.

There is a clear pattern to russian negotiations and it was best summed up by the former Soviet foreign minister Andrei Gromyko:
- First, demand the maximum, do not meekly ask but demand.
- Second, present ultimatums.
- Third, do not give one inch of ground because there will always be someone in the west that will offer you something maybe half that you did not previously have.

If we allow russia to get something from the war against Ukraine, that would mean that aggression pays off and that others should do the same what russia did.

[Gavril Ducu 🇷🇴🇩🇪🇺🇲🇳🇱🇪🇺@🇺🇦 @DucuGavril]

I went looking for old anti-vaccine propaganda and expected an interesting historical curiosity.

Instead I found arguments from 1802, 1885 and 1920 that would barely need rewriting to circulate online today.

That raises a rather disconcerting question.

[Negan @Roger_Negan]

This

[Doug Crown @Bellagiotime]

One of the most beautiful airplanes and the pride of the British, Spitfire. Over 20,000 built.

[Polish Heritage Flight @FlightPolish]

Hawker Hurricane G-HURI starts up to taxy our for its first leg to Poland - Due to arrive tomorrow at Pila!

PHF Pilot Nigel Willson began the fulfilment of our biggest dream.

Thank you to everyone who came to see us depart Duxford today. It was very special. 🇬🇧🇵🇱

📖We are still taking your messages and dedications to go in the Pilots Log Book so do visit our website or the Just Giving Page 🙏

https://t.co/nNLcFK5vTE

[Polish Heritage Flight @FlightPolish]

Poland awaits its Hurricane. 🇬🇧🇵🇱

With this flight is the memory and the spirit of all who served during the Second World War.

Remember. Inspire. Unity.

[Sama Hoole @SamaHoole]

Over 1,300 British farms have joined a new app in about twelve weeks. It is called Only Farmers, it was named deliberately after OnlyFans, and the parallel runs deeper than the joke intends.

Both are platforms where the producer sells direct access to themselves, because the people who used to pay them stopped paying enough to live on.

Lisa Hogan built it with her son Wolfe Bentinck, after five years of farmers coming into the Diddly Squat shop to thank her for the programme and then tell her their own version of it. Her words: this is for smaller farmers who do not have a marketing budget or Amazon.

Look at what is being sold.

Farm stays. Vineyard tours. Cheese-making. Beekeeping. Weddings. Lambing days. Clarkson's own summary this week was that you could walk an alpaca or milk a cow.

Every item on that list is something a farmer does anyway. Unpaid, at four in the morning, in February, as part of a job that a government review found loses money on nearly a third of British farms.

The novelty version pays. The work does not.

A family will hand over real money to stand in a shed for two hours and watch a ewe give birth. That same lamb, reared for months and sold through the proper chain, goes at a price the farmer is not allowed to set.

The second half of the app is grimmer still, because it also runs farmer-to-farmer equipment rental. Farms hiring kit to each other, because too few can justify owning their own.

None of which is a criticism of Hogan. She has built something useful, after listening at a till for five years. Book the alpaca. The money goes where it should.

But 1,300 signups in twelve weeks is not enthusiasm for an app. It is 1,300 farms reaching the same conclusion in the same season, which is that the dependable money is in the experience rather than the food.

We have arrived at a country where a farm earns more reliably from charging strangers to watch it farm.

Nobody thought that was worth remarking on.

[Алёна Попова @alyonapopova]

Глава МИД Польши Радослав Сикорский:

«На Западе некоторые считают, что Россию нельзя победить. Напомню, что она проиграла:

Крымскую войну
Русско-японскую войну
Первую мировую
Афганскую войну
Холодную войну»

Но история Россию ничему не учит. Так что этот список скоро пополнится

[WarMonitor🇺🇦🇬🇧 @WarMonitor3]

North Korea has deployed a whole missile unit to the Vorenzh Region of Russia in order to launch missiles into Ukraine everyday 90 personnel and 120 ballistic missiles have been deployed along with six launchers.

North Korea is essentially at war with Ukraine...

[Brian Groom @GroomB]

Remembering astronomer Bernard Lovell, who died on this day 2012, aged 98.

[Rebecca Vincent Art @printreb]

Sunset on the Rolling Hills is a summer sunset that radiates with soft colours. I use changes in tree scale to create distance and an expansive panorama, with a light-hearted feel in the sweep of the land and the small trees clothing the hilltops. https://t.co/6uvUhikaH5 #SunsetLandscape #RollingHills #LandscapeArt

[Count Binface @CountBinface]

There now follows a party election broadcast by the Count Binface Party, And if I do say so myself, it's a banger. #VoteBinface #Clacton

[Annie @AnnieForTruth]

🎯🎯🎯💯💯