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mpr_daily_download_feedFranz Schubert - Symphony No. 9 “Great”: 3rd movement
Budapest Failoni Chamber Orchestra
Michael Halasz, conductor
More info about today’s track: Naxos 8.572939
Courtesy of Naxos of America Inc.
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johnridleybillroperseaofstarsrpg_feed
As we move into the holiday season, gaming becomes more challenging, even for Shadowrun. In November, I CHed one live game and played (played!) in one online game. The online game was the delayed Halloween-themed Shadowrun game which all of the characters actually survived! Which was unexpected to say the least but it was great fun.
Later this week (sixth December) is our monthly learn-to-play game at Tyche’s Games! We usually play every first Saturday and if you are in the area come and join in! New players are very welcome. If you come for a few games, you can join in on the campaign play too.
We have the November issue of the Seattle Scream (#114) so you can check out what is happening.This time, we have one article that is the aftermath of a mission. Can you guess which one?
Shadowrun Sundays are as they happen for the foreseeable future due to other commitments. But still managed one place and two Shadowrun adjacent posts over the month:
Top Hat Club, dance the night away to swing and big band music.
Dark Future Ahead 47 and Dark Future Ahead 48, more news of possible futures.
Image from PublicDomainPictures.net and, surprise, it is in the Public Domain!
notalwaysworking_feedRead Seven Of Nine: The Office Manager
Me: "It's called 'Spontaneous Brainstorming Session', scheduled for next week."
Coworker: "Yeah…"
Me: "I didn't know you could schedule spontaneity."
sharonlee_feedI’m condensing this because the story is convoluted and played out over several days, starting the day before Thanksgiving,
Short form: I was scheduled for an MRI this Saturday in Brunswick, which is about 110 mile round trip from the Confusion Factory. It turns out that I need TWO MRIs and I have opted to have both done at the same time, rather than drive 110 miles back-to-back. All of this took a lot of time and angst, and produced much confusion, and too many phone calls, and I am … rather low because this is exactly the sort of thing that sets me on my ear.
The good news is that I now have Friday-Saturday-Sunday-Monday to write.
That said, I’ve been thinking lately about Jessica Rabbit and her famous line, “He makes me laugh.”
Now, I bow to none in my admiration of Jessica Rabbit, but in this, she was wrong. “It’s not, “He MAKES me laugh.” It’s “He LETS me laugh.” Which is to say, he — let’s call him, oh, Steve — creates a space in which it’s safe to experience joy, to be glad, to laugh, and to be yourself without fear and without editing.
And on that note?
Everybody have a good evening. Stay safe. I’ll check in tomorrow.
sharonlee_feedRegarding Last Night’s Eye Candy and Liaden Universe® Constellation, Volume 6.
I hear that this volume will be published in “Spring 2026.” I do not have a specific date, and thus I do not know when it will be available for preorder so! Watch the skies.
The cover illustrates (beautifully) Liaden Universe® Western, “Last Train to Clarkesville,” which first appeared in The Last Train Outta Kepler-283C, edited by David Boop, published in November 2024.
Stories included in LUC #6 are:
Standing Orders
Gadreel’s Folly
Last Train to Clarkesville
Wise Child
Songs of the Fathers
From Every Storm a Rainbow
Our Lady of Benevolence
Chimera
Neutral Ground
Mother’s Love
Core Values
Text of Sharon Lee’s Heinlein Acceptance Speech
Also included are! An Author’s Foreword original to this volume, and the little introductions at the top of each story that nobody reads.
rolanniI'm condensing this because the story is convoluted and played out over several days, starting the day before Thanksgiving,
Short form: I was scheduled for an MRI this Saturday in Brunswick, which is about 110 mile round trip from the Confusion Factory. It turns out that I need TWO MRIs and I have opted to have both done at the same time, rather than drive 110 miles back-to-back. All of this took a lot of time and angst, and produced much confusion, and too many phone calls, and I am ... rather low because this is exactly the sort of thing that sets me on my ear.
The good news is that I now have Friday-Saturday-Sunday-Monday to write.
That said, I've been thinking lately about Jessica Rabbit and her famous line, "He makes me laugh."
Now, I bow to none in my admiration of Jessica Rabbit, but in this, she was wrong. "It's not, "He MAKES me laugh." It's "He LETS me laugh." Which is to say, he -- let's call him, oh, Steve -- creates a space in which it's safe to experience joy, to be glad, to laugh, and to be yourself without fear and without editing.
And on that note?
Everybody have a good evening. Stay safe. I'll check in tomorrow.
rolanniRegarding Last Night's Eye Candy and Liaden Universe® Constellation, Volume 6.
I hear that this volume will be published in "Spring 2026." I do not have a specific date, and thus I do not know when it will be available for preorder so! Watch the skies.
The cover illustrates (beautifully) Liaden Universe® Western, "Last Train to Clarkesville," which first appeared in The Last Train Outta Kepler-283C, edited by David Boop, published in November 2024.
Stories included in LUC #6 are:
Standing Orders
Gadreel's Folly
Last Train to Clarkesville
Wise Child
Songs of the Fathers
From Every Storm a Rainbow
Our Lady of Benevolence
Chimera
Neutral Ground
Mother's Love
Core Values
Text of Sharon Lee's Heinlein Acceptance Speech
Also included are! An Author's Foreword original to this volume, and the little introductions at the top of each story that nobody reads.
notalwaysworking_feedRead All They’re Gonna Find In That Purse Is Trouble
Then, while on the road, with the car going at 110 km/h on the highway, she just leans down to look for something in her purse, her head below the dashboard, and completely ignoring the road and the other cars ahead.
redbirddorktower_feed
This strip was first published in 2012. (Time has no meaning anymore.)
MANY DORK TOWER strips (though possibly not this one) are now available as signed, high-quality prints, from just $25! CLICK HERE to find out more!
HEY! Want to help keep DORK TOWER going? Then consider joining the DORK TOWER Patreon and ENLIST IN THE ARMY OF DORKNESS TODAY! (We have COOKIES!) (And SWAG!) (And GRATITUDE!)
notalwaysworking_feedRead When ‘End Task’ Has A Threatening Aura
Coworker: "Yup, looks like [process] got stuck. I'll just kill it."
Me: "Go ahead."
Coworker: "Actually, do I need HR approval for that?"
Me: "…For what?"
Coworker: "For killing a process. I don’t want to get written up for workplace violence."
notalwaysworking_feedRead A Uniform Response From Both Generations
During the course of them working there during the ninety-day trial, the Casino switched their policy to an eighteen-month trial before getting insurance. So, they then proceeded to "find" reasons to fire all of their employees who were coming up on the ninety-day mark so that they would not be grandfathered in.
sharonlee_feed59 Emilie and the Sky World,(Emilie Adventures #2) Martha Wells (e)
58 The Thursday Murder Club, Richard Osman (e) (bkclb)
57 The Bookshop of Dust and Dreams, Mindy Thompson (e)
56 Remarkably Bright Creatures, Shelby Van Pelt (e) (bkclb)
55 Hunting Ground, Patricia Briggs (Alpha&Omega 2)(re-read) (e)
54 Cry Wolf, Patricia Briggs (Alpha & Omega 1) (re-read) (e)
53 Alpha and Omega, Patricia Briggs (Alpha&Omega.5(re-read) (e)
52 Blind Date with a Werewolf, Patricia Briggs (e)
51 The Women, Kristin Hannah (e) (bkclb)
50 Emilie and the Hollow World, (Emilie Adventures #1) Martha Wells (e)
49 Black Tie & Tails (Black Wolves of Boston #2), Wen Spencer (e)
48 Shards of Earth, Adrian Tchaikovsky(The Final Architecture #1)e)
47 Hemlock and Silver, T. Kingfisher (e)
46 Outcrossing, Celia Lake (Mysterious Charm #1) (e)
45 Outfoxing Fate, Zoe Chant/Murphy Lawless (Virtue Shifters)(e)
44 Atonement Sky, Nalini Singh (Psy-Changeling Trinity #9) (e)
43 Stone and Sky, Ben Aaronovitch (Rivers of London #10) (e)
42 Regency Buck, Georgette Heyer (re-re-re-&c-read)
41 I Dare, Sharon Lee and Steve Miller (Liaden Universe #7) (page proofs)
40 To Hive and to Hold, Amy Crook (The Future of Magic #1) (e)
39 These Old Shades, Georgette Heyer, narrated by Sarah Nichols (re-re-re-&c-read, 1st time audio)
38 Faking it (Dempsey Family #2), Jennifer Crusie, narrated by Aasne Vigesaa (re-re-re-&c-read, 1st time audio)
37 Copper Script, K.J. Charles (e)
36 The Masqueraders, Georgette Heyer, narrated by Eleanor Yates (re-re-re-&c-read; 1st time audio)
35 Everyone Here Spoke Sign Language: Hereditary Deafness on Martha’s Vineyard, Nora Ellen Groce (e)
34 Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, Winifred Watson, narrated by Frances McDormand (re-re-re-&c-read; 1st time audio)
33 The Wings upon Her Back, Samantha Mills (e)
32 Death on the Green (Dublin Driver #2), Catie Murphy (e)
31 The Elusive Earl (Bad Heir Days #3), Grace Burrowes (e)
30 The Mysterious Marquess (Bad Heir Days #2), Grace Burrowes (e)
29 Who Will Remember (Sebastian St. Cyr #20), C.S. Harris (e)
28 The Teller of Small Fortunes, Julie Leong (e)
27 Check and Mate, Ali Hazelwood (e)
26 The Dangerous Duke (Bad Heir Days #1), Grace Burrowes (e)
25 Night’s Master (Flat Earth #1) (re-read), Tanith Lee (e)
24 The Honey Pot Plot (Rocky Start #3), Jennifer Crusie and Bob Mayer (e)
23 Very Nice Funerals (Rocky Start #2), Jennifer Crusie and Bob Mayer (e)
22 The Orb of Cairado, Katherine Addison (e)
21 The Tomb of Dragons, (The Cemeteries of Amalo Trilogy, Book 3), Katherine Addison (e)
20 A Gentleman of Sinister Schemes (Lord Julian #8), Grace Burrowes (e)
19 The Thirteen Clocks (re-re-re-&c read), James Thurber (e)
18 A Gentleman Under the Mistletoe (Lord Julian #7), Grace Burrowes (e)
17 All Conditions Red (Murderbot Diaries #1) (re-re-re-&c read) (audio 1st time)
16 Destiny’s Way (Doomed Earth #2), Jack Campbell (e)
15 The Sign of the Dragon, Mary Soon Lee
14 A Gentleman of Unreliable Honor (Lord Julian #6), Grace Burrowes (e)
13 Market Forces in Gretna Green (#7 Midlife Recorder), Linzi Day (e)
12 Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent, Judi Dench with Brendan O’Hea (e)
11 Code Yellow in Gretna Green (#6 Midlife Recorder), Linzi Day (e)
10 Seeing Red in Gretna Green (#5 Midlife Recorder), Linzi Day (e)
9 House Party in Gretna Green (#4 Midlife Recorder), Linzi Day (e)*
8 Ties that Bond in Gretna Green (#3 Midlife Recorder), Linzi Day (e)
7 Painting the Blues in Gretna Green (#2 Midlife Recorder), Linzi Day (e)
6 Midlife in Gretna Green (#1 Midlife Recorder), Linzi Day (e)
5 The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison (Author), Kyle McCarley (Narrator) re-re-re&c-read (audio)
4 The House in the Cerulean Sea, TJ Klune (e)
3 A Gentleman in Search of a Wife (Lord Julian #5) Grace Burrowes (e)
2 A Gentleman in Pursuit of the Truth (Lord Julian #4) Grace Burrowes (e)
1 A Gentleman in Challenging Circumstances (Lord Julian #3) Grace Burrowes (e)
_____
*Note: The list has been corrected. I did not realize that the Gretna Green novella was part of the main path, rather than a pleasant discursion, and my numbering was off. All fixed now.
notalwaysworking_feedRead Hold, Please. I’m Crushing It!
Call Center Manager: "[Coworker], you've been on the same call for almost half an hour."
Coworker: "Yeah, it's a really complicated one, [Boss]."
Call Center Manager: "My screen shows that they've been on hold for the last seven minutes."
in_the_pipeline_feedSome chemistry today, drawn from real life (mine, anyway). I was setting up a short series of palladium-catalyzed couplings the other day (Buchwald-Hartwig type, C-N bond formation), and since there were very close precedents to my structures in the chemical literature, I naturally just borrowed the known conditions. There was nothing out of the ordinary about them; it seemed as if they’d work about as well on my starting aryl bromides as it did on the ones already described.
Well, they didn’t, of course. Which is the way of such metal-catalyzed couplings, which is why there are fifty gazillion ways of running them in the literature. They work until they don't! You can vary the catalyst ligands, first off, and boy are there are lot of them out there. You can change up the solvent, and the base needed for the reactions to go. There are other additives to try, and you can even vary the source of the palladium. (These days, if you know the system well enough and have some money to spend, you can order “pre-cat” materials where the ligand/Pd complex is already formed for you). In fact, here’s a recent Organic Process Research and Development paper that investigates that last variable in great detail: some catalyst systems don’t seem to care where their palladium comes from, while others care very much indeed, in case you were wondering.
But I had no desire to wander off and try a whole list of reaction conditions. In the manner of discovery biopharma chemists everywhere, I didn’t want to perfect my reaction - I just wanted it to make a reasonable amount of product so I could get on to the important stuff! I was staring at my compounds and trying to think about what made them different from the known examples, and the main thing was that I had an extra functional group at the other end of the molecule. I hadn’t thought it would be a problem, but I wondered if it was perhaps sensitive to the base I was using (which was good ol’ cesium carbonate). So I was very interested indeed when I saw this new JACS paper from the Hartwig group themselves.
It goes into great detail about the use of a base that I’d heard of but never actually tried, potassium 2-ethylhexanoate (K-2-EH). That might be an obscure-sounding reagent (along with the starting 2-ethylhexanoic acid) unless you’re a Real Industrial Chemist. Those compounds show up in a lot of polymer, coating, formulation, and materials science applications, and the acid is one of the largest-scale compounds of its kind produced industrially. So you can buy big ol’ bottles of the sodium and potassium salts relatively cheaply, and the potassium one is especially notable for dissolving in all kinds of organic solvents (where a lot of other potassium salts and carboxylates may not).
The Hartwig group found that it’s an excellent choice in the C-N couplings that bear the name, partly because of that solubility and partly because it’s a much milder base than many that people reach for. I read up on that, checked our inventory, and found a bottle of the stuff one floor below me. A milder base was about the only idea that I had to fix my problem, so it seemed like a good opportunity to try it out.
And by golly, I checked this morning and the reaction is making beautifully clean product, as opposed to the mixture of dark gunk I got with the cesium carbonate conditions. It is relatively rare that we get to actually figure out what’s going wrong with our reactions (unless you’re a process chemist, in which case that is your entire job!) But it’s also rare to fix things cleanly on the first shot - I can count the number of times I’ve been able to turn things around like this with one change on the fingers of my hands. Maybe just one hand, and that’s after forty years at the bench.
That’s not as grim as it sounds, because remember, over most of that span I’ve been in the world where (as I like to say) there are two yields for reactions: Enough and Not Enough. Most of the time, even a relatively crappy conversion, the sort of thing a process chemist would not put up with for ten seconds, has been Enough, and I move on. But when all your starting material turns to gorp, you don’t have that option. Honestly, I would have settled just for a better product/gorp ratio, but what I got was the cleanest coupling reaction I’ve run in a long time. So thanks to Hartwig and collaborators, and those of you troubleshooting Pd reactions, try a K-2-EH run and see if it helps!
Now I can move on (after another step or two) to the real reason I'm making these compounds, which is to do something very odd to an unsuspecting protein, and sadly I can't talk about that. But without making the needed compounds, you can't test out those weirdo ideas, can you? I'm glad these are now unsnarled.
mpr_daily_download_feed - Franz Schubert - Symphony No. 9 "Great": 3rd movementrmjwell - Burlesque Picture of the Day, 2025-12-04: Ruby Joule!johnridley - Workroom cleanupmarycatelli in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
girlgenius_lair - Friday's Comicbillroper - Fixedseaofstarsrpg_feed - November Shadowrun Campaign News with a new Seattle Scream (#114)notalwaysworking_feed - Seven Of Nine: The Office Managersharonlee_feed - Thursday short formsharonlee_feed - Business Firstrolanni - Thursday short formrolanni - Business Firstnotalwaysworking_feed - All They’re Gonna Find In That Purse Is Troubleredbird - dentist, and insurancedorktower_feed - Dork Friday – DORK TOWER 03.12.25notalwaysworking_feed - When ‘End Task’ Has A Threatening Auraprisca in fic_promptly - Thursday, December 4 - Free for Allnotalwaysworking_feed - A Uniform Response From Both Generationssharonlee_feed - Books read in 2025notalwaysworking_feed - Hold, Please. I’m Crushing It!in_the_pipeline_feed - Fixing A Reactionbranchandroot