Well-tarred Flask 🇮🇹🇺🇦🇨🇦

@chemprofcramer

UMN ChemProf Emeritus. Army vet. MOOC vet. Cancer vet. Dad of 3(🙎)/2(🐈‍⬛). Chicagoan. Armed with a keyboard; eerily immune to shame. NOT speaking for UL Research Institutes here.

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Bluesky

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Well-tarred Flask 🇮🇹🇺🇦🇨🇦@chemprofcramer· 7d

But, I admit that what I REALLY want to know is whether Big Thief used the same graphic design firm as the ACS for their Double Infinity album cover... #ChemSky

A lime with 3 rings of lime peel organized around it concentrically

Well-tarred Flask 🇮🇹🇺🇦🇨🇦@chemprofcramer· 7d

Huh. OK? 🤷‍♂️ #ChemSky

Well-tarred Flask 🇮🇹🇺🇦🇨🇦@chemprofcramer· 9d

It's the little things... 😉

NYT Connections badge for 200 Purple First puzzles

Well-tarred Flask 🇮🇹🇺🇦🇨🇦@chemprofcramer· 13d

I feel you are missing an opportunity to give your children a proper education: we are simply returning to how things used to be!

A Calvin & Hobbes comic strip in which the father is explaining to Calvin that old movies and pictures are in black and white because there was no color in the world back then...

Well-tarred Flask 🇮🇹🇺🇦🇨🇦@chemprofcramer· 23d

mildly apocalyptic with stage in red, Lucy in black, and AQI = 146 smoke drifting above…

Well-tarred Flask 🇮🇹🇺🇦🇨🇦@chemprofcramer· 23d

right chuffed to be here in Millennium Park getting ready to hear Lucy Dacus perform with the #Chicago Philharmonic!

Well-tarred Flask 🇮🇹🇺🇦🇨🇦@chemprofcramer· 25d

me finally getting a chance to tell more than 100 K-12 educators at once that THEY are the giants upon whose shoulders we (erstwhile, in my case) university faculty stand when our own efforts help students continue in their learning journey... #HigherEd

yours truly with a mike in front of a picture wall addressing 100ish Xplorlabs Fellows

Well-tarred Flask 🇮🇹🇺🇦🇨🇦@chemprofcramer· 26d

Merlin grudgingly accepts that one benefit of being an indoor cat is that he has NOT been exposed to the worst air quality in the world on 7/16/2026... #CatSky

Gray tabby Merlin on a gray pillow atop an oak table with gray, gray wildfire smoke blurring the Chicago skyscape behind him

Well-tarred Flask 🇮🇹🇺🇦🇨🇦@chemprofcramer· Jul 3

#Winning

Predictions from NYT showing heat index Dangerous for New York and Houston, but only Extreme Caution for Chicago...

Well-tarred Flask 🇮🇹🇺🇦🇨🇦@chemprofcramer· Jul 3

Sky over #Chicago reasonably exciting just now…

Well-tarred Flask 🇮🇹🇺🇦🇨🇦@chemprofcramer· Jun 30

you sorta haveta drink the last one to believe it…

beer list with a Luxardo cherry imperial stout at end

Well-tarred Flask 🇮🇹🇺🇦🇨🇦@chemprofcramer· Jun 14

do love it when my grappa glass celebrates the wave function! #ItaliaSempre

grappa barricata in a traditional glass etched with a trident (psi)

Well-tarred Flask 🇮🇹🇺🇦🇨🇦@chemprofcramer· Jun 5

people sometimes ask me if I miss higher ed. here's a message to my Prof. Emeritus account, today. so... 🫤

text reading: Higher education is experiencing significant structural change. At the University of Minnesota, we are also adjusting to a shifting economic reality. With flat or declining state funding and rising inflation, we are seeing a $25 million to $30 million reduction in purchasing power and $25 million in increased pharmacy costs within our insurance program. Ten years ago, the state provided 16% of our operations and maintenance funding through unrestricted funds. Today, that number sits at 13%.

text reading: Prioritizing the funding we have: To balance the budget, we are making program and scope reductions across our campuses, schools, colleges and support functions averaging just under 3% in FY27. This follows the difficult choices made across units last year. We are deeply grateful for your continued partnership as we evaluate programs, streamline administrative operations and eliminate duplicate offerings to ensure funds go where they matter most.

Well-tarred Flask 🇮🇹🇺🇦🇨🇦@chemprofcramer· Jun 5

I appreciate Mayor Johnson showing up to help celebrate the 80th anniversary of Italy’s democracy.

Chicago’s mayor at a podium before US, Italian, and EU flags

Well-tarred Flask 🇮🇹🇺🇦🇨🇦@chemprofcramer· May 24

a steaming ramekin of chicken pot pie goodness

Well-tarred Flask 🇮🇹🇺🇦🇨🇦@chemprofcramer· May 24

embrace the Darkness

Well-tarred Flask 🇮🇹🇺🇦🇨🇦@chemprofcramer· May 23

Er. Seriously praying for a benign outcome, but needing foam vs water to put out a potential fire is not a methyl methacrylate thing -- that's just a burning pool of generic liquid thing... #ChemSky

Text reading: "Crisis scenarios: Mr. Covey said the tank would either fail and spill up to 7,000 gallons of toxic chemicals — a situation he called the “best-case scenario” — or it would blow up and potentially cause a chain reaction. Experts said a release of the toxic gas could produce a large fire that could be extinguished only with a special foam, not water."

Well-tarred Flask 🇮🇹🇺🇦🇨🇦@chemprofcramer· May 17

yo, somebody cue up Pomp and Circumstance!

Well-tarred Flask 🇮🇹🇺🇦🇨🇦@chemprofcramer· May 9

Well, shit. Now I don't know whether to feel guilty or empowered... www.sciencemagazinedigital.org/sciencemagaz...

text reading (with citation numbers): Early studies suggested a decline in creativity with age (5), whereas others found little or no relationship (6). Classic life-cycle analyses of scientific productivity and creativity likewise reveal diverse age patterns (7). One view holds that longer careers and deeper expertise help scientists keep pace with expanding knowledge (4). Yet empirical evidence often shows the opposite: Innovation tends to come from younger scientists who are less tied to convention (8). A likely resolution to this paradox lies in how aging reshapes the balance between two kinds of creativity. Familiarity with established ideas may expand a scientist’s capacity for recombination—creating novel links between known concepts— but also strengthens attachment to these ideas, making them harder to abandon (5). Experience aids recombinant novelty (9) but limits disruptive innovation, which challenges prior work and drives the creative destruction of ideas (10).

Well-tarred Flask 🇮🇹🇺🇦🇨🇦@chemprofcramer· May 5

ah... gonna be one of THOSE days, eh?

A Wordle grid showing the final 5 guesses all having the correct final 4 letters but missing the first letter every. single. time.

Well-tarred Flask 🇮🇹🇺🇦🇨🇦@chemprofcramer· Apr 30

JUST when you thought the timeline couldn't get any darker...

Text reading: "Reboot: Amazon is in talks to relaunch the reality show The Apprentice with Donald Trump Jr. as host."

Well-tarred Flask 🇮🇹🇺🇦🇨🇦@chemprofcramer· Apr 30

yup. at the Boss’ concert in the United Center tonight. Fuck ICE. Rock and roll!

Well-tarred Flask 🇮🇹🇺🇦🇨🇦@chemprofcramer· Apr 16

It just tickles me no end that LifeFitness running machines worldwide have a Chicagoscape run as one option. Just spent 40 min in Frankfurt literally looking at my own apartment (building to left in below pic) while running different angles through Millennium Park!

Chicago skyline looking northeast from Buckingham Fountain

Well-tarred Flask 🇮🇹🇺🇦🇨🇦@chemprofcramer· Mar 27

"Snakes can dislocate their what, now?" #CatSky

Merlin, a male gray tabby, lounging on a pillow, yawning more widely than any cat ever born

Well-tarred Flask 🇮🇹🇺🇦🇨🇦@chemprofcramer· Mar 16

Now the cat's out of the bag? Not where I live, brother... #CatSky

Stella, a female gray/brown tabby with striking green eyes, stares from a paper lair she never intends to exit

Well-tarred Flask 🇮🇹🇺🇦🇨🇦@chemprofcramer· Mar 4

Jazzed to be visiting the European Commission Joint Research Center in Ispra today! 🧪

yours truly smiling into the camera while holding a sign that reads "SCIENZA" and a Bohr model atom

Well-tarred Flask 🇮🇹🇺🇦🇨🇦@chemprofcramer· Feb 28

So, Stella (north) hates her brother, Merlin (south). Hisses at him whenever he gets near; swipes if he gets nearer! But ... look whose carrier she went into for comfort after finding nowhere to hide in the exam room at the vet's this morning. Just like when they were kittens... 🥲 #CatSky

A shot from above shows a brown-and-gray tabby (Stella curled close to a gray tabby (Merlin) in a cat carrier meant to hold only one, so they are close-packed (and hoping to escape the notice of the veterinarian...)

Well-tarred Flask 🇮🇹🇺🇦🇨🇦@chemprofcramer· Feb 22

#OldestSelfie on your phone. As long as involving a mirror -- and including a special someone -- be allowed 😘

A younger me and LG reflected in the mirror finish of a pedestal outside the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis in 2012.

Well-tarred Flask 🇮🇹🇺🇦🇨🇦@chemprofcramer· Feb 17

lord help me, but I do love this girl... #CatSky

Stella, a medium-hair gray/brown tabby, caught lounging on the back of a couch at peak open-mouthed yawn, tiny fangs and lolling tongue foremost

Well-tarred Flask 🇮🇹🇺🇦🇨🇦@chemprofcramer· Feb 14

Merlin just GETS the importance of hull defilade… #CatSky #Caturday