iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

On good days, I have the silly job. Today I am having research meetings to talk about how different proteins are distributed in a fish eye lens AND what molecules carnivorous plants make when they eat.

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Rachel W. Martin @rwmartin.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

That‘s neat! I love all the ways symmetries come up in different fields.

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Rachel W. Martin @rwmartin.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

Exactly right! Sorry, I didn’t mean to be vague. They are octahedral complexes for an inorganic chemistry class. The center would usually be a metal, and the outer ones could be various organic ligands.

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Rachel W. Martin @rwmartin.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

Ouch, those would hurt extra bad!

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Rachel W. Martin @rwmartin.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

One of my lab undergrads printed these to show her LA students ❤️

Four 3D printed models of octahedral complexes

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Rachel W. Martin @rwmartin.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

It’s about to burst into song or get into mischievous hijinks. I approve.

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Rachel W. Martin @rwmartin.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

Interviewer: Can you explain this gap in your CV? Physical Chemist: that excited state has a very short lifetime.

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Rachel W. Martin @rwmartin.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

One of my lab mates bought me the poster. We had an ok work relationship, but were not close, so that was surprising. He just saw it at one of those pop-up poster stands and thought I needed it.

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Rachel W. Martin @rwmartin.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

I have always loved fish, but now I am gaining greater appreciation for their visual system, since I have a funded project on that.

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Reposted by Rachel W. Martin

Ann LeBlanc @robotleblanc.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

friday is for kafkaposting

tumblr post poem by kleinergeist

I don't care if Monday's stressed
Tuesday, Wednesday, Kafkaesque
Thursday, feeling like a pest
It's Friday, I'm a bug

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Rachel W. Martin @rwmartin.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

I (perhaps unwisely) ignored the @jdwalls.bsky.social theory of luck fluctuations and submitted a paper to Science. Fingers crossed!

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Rachel W. Martin @rwmartin.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

That they do. The proteins in the core of our eye lenses are the ones we are born with. It is wild!

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Rachel W. Martin @rwmartin.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Their genes are sooo superior, their children will be self-educating.

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Rachel W. Martin @rwmartin.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

A crow dropped a gigantic, sloppy shit right in front of me, and I did not get hit. What should I do with the rest of my lucky day? Submit papers? Buy a lottery ticket?

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Rachel W. Martin @rwmartin.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Can you come over and take care of my organisms, too? Just kidding, i know the point of having them is to do it myself, but I don’t feel like it. (The point is that doing it when I don’t feel like it makes me feel better.)

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Rachel W. Martin @rwmartin.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Huge med school, lots of research labs, lots of NIH funding.

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Rachel W. Martin @rwmartin.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

At least there's plenty of candy.

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Rachel W. Martin @rwmartin.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Yeah, mine was like "interests: 3D printers, plant propagation, high-end gardening tools, electronics, maker stuff" - this is not shocking information.

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Rachel W. Martin @rwmartin.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Not now, giant hole in Antarctica.

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Rachel W. Martin @rwmartin.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

My most annoying one was where the EIC specifically told me to send it there (at a conference) and then the AE took almost a month to desk-reject it. An elastic collision with the journal is definitely better!

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Rachel W. Martin @rwmartin.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

This makes me miss my friend Jane so much. She made cursed jewelry and had a large collection of creepy dolls.

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Rachel W. Martin @rwmartin.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

I’m having flashbacks to when my labmates assigned me a celebrity crush (I didn’t play along), and it was Simon Cowell.

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Rachel W. Martin @rwmartin.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

DeLauro is super cool, and she was my rep when I lived there, a million years ago.

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Rachel W. Martin @rwmartin.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

I finally got some uranium glass! I have always wanted some and never found the right thing when I had room in my bag.

3D-printed molecules in glowing green uranium glass dishes (under UV light)

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Rachel W. Martin @rwmartin.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

The non-eye parts of our vermilion rockfish become fish tacos. No reason for it to go to waste. Some lab members eat it, some don't.

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Rachel W. Martin @rwmartin.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

It's totally a sports team! It's a scary thing with local flair.

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Rachel W. Martin @rwmartin.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Fantastic- I hope you were the one who bought it!

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