Theo Keane
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theochemtheo.bsky.social
Theo Keane
@theochemtheo.bsky.social
Was a theoretical chemist, now I wrangle ML models for materials science. Enjoy a hike every now and then. He/him.
Reposted by Theo Keane
I will be joining the University of Cambridge as an Assistant Professor in the Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry! 🧪🎉

𝐈 𝐚𝐦 𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐲 𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐫𝐮𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐬𝐭𝐮𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐬, and am very keen to support fellowship applications – visit our website for details! ⬇️
September 11, 2025 at 2:27 PM
Reposted by Theo Keane
The Labour government's response to a summer of open racism, including physical attacks and the demonisation of some of its own Cabinet, has been to hide. 'Anti-racism' is something you actually have to do, not something you are. Seriously, why can't people like this hear themselves?
Ouch. I’m talking about a general approach, not a single instance. And I think you’ll find, as a generalisation admittedly, that Labour supporters are anti-racism.
September 10, 2025 at 12:52 PM
Reposted by Theo Keane
The premiere of Python: The Documentary is starting in a few minutes 🎉🎉 join in to watch and connect with Pythonistas from around the world! #python
Tomorrow at 5pm UTC Python: The Documentary produced by @cultrepo.bsky.social premieres on YouTube! 🎬🐍

From a side project in Amsterdam to a language shaping the world— discover the story of #Python. Featuring Guido van Rossum & many more!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfH4...
Python: The Documentary | An origin story
This is the story of the world's most beloved programming language: Python. What began as a side project in Amsterdam during the 1990s became the software powering artificial intelligence, data science and some of the world’s biggest companies. But Python's future wasn't certain; at one point it almost disappeared. This 90-minute documentary features Guido van Rossum, Travis Oliphant, Barry Warsaw, and many more, and they tell the story of Python’s rise, its community-driven evolution, the conflicts that almost tore it apart, and the language’s impact on... well… everything. Thanks to our sponsors for making this documentary possible: Anaconda: https://www.anaconda.com/ @AnacondaInc. Dropbox: https://www.dropbox.com/ @Dropbox Meta: https://opensource.fb.com/ @FacebookOpenSource OpenTeams: https://openteams.com/ @openteams PyCharm: https://www.jetbrains.com/pycharm/ @PyCharmIDE Quansight: https://quansight.com/ @quansight And to all the amazing people who are featured: Armin Ronacher, Barry Warsaw, Benjamin Peterson, Brett Cannon, Drew Houston, Guido van Rossum, Jessica McKellar, Ken Manheimer, Lambert Meertens, Lisa Guo, Lisa Roach, Mariatta Wijaya, Paul...
www.youtube.com
August 28, 2025 at 4:50 PM
Reposted by Theo Keane
think that if "we must debate the fascists not no-platform them!" is your view then we have probably reached the stage, globally, where you may wish to wonder if your preferred way of doing things is actually working
August 21, 2025 at 9:06 AM
Reposted by Theo Keane
Gaza is officially in a famine as Israel starves 2 million people to death. This level of suffering is completely unimaginable.

www.nytimes.com/2025/08/22/w...
Gaza City and Surrounding Areas Are Officially Under Famine, Monitors Say
www.nytimes.com
August 22, 2025 at 10:34 AM
Reposted by Theo Keane
🚀 After two+ years of intense research, we’re thrilled to introduce Skala — a scalable deep learning density functional that hits chemical accuracy on atomization energies and matches hybrid-level accuracy on main group chemistry — all at the cost of semi-local DFT ⚛️🔥🧪🧬
June 18, 2025 at 11:24 AM
Reposted by Theo Keane
Britain has no idea - in terms of its self-image, not economists obviously - what economy it actually has

One of my favourite facts to point out is: at over £8bn annually, the *videogames industry* is more than twice as valuable to the UK economy as fishing and steel combined.
Men are extremely keen to explain to me that Britain *needs* a domestic steel production plant and doesn't necessarily *need* universities. Okay. Steel contributed about £1.7bn to the UK economy in 2024. Universities contributed more than £200bn.
May 29, 2025 at 9:46 AM
Reposted by Theo Keane
Today, we’re announcing the preview release of ty, an extremely fast type checker and language server for Python, written in Rust.

In early testing, it's 10x, 50x, even 100x faster than existing type checkers. (We've seen >600x speed-ups over Mypy in some real-world projects.)
May 13, 2025 at 5:00 PM
Reposted by Theo Keane
“The damage this has done to our country is incalculable.” This sentence would feel right at home in some of the 1970s Monday Club/National Front material that I read for Imperial Island.
If you thought the PM’s speech was punchy, his foreword to the immigration white paper says high net migration has done “incalculable damage” to the country.

That is a serious shift in tone for a Labour government/party.
May 12, 2025 at 10:18 AM
Reposted by Theo Keane
Does anyone know of a recent period when inflation was low and we could have built stuff.
Might have got missed in all the Hornsea 4 fun yesterday but inflation is ripping through any and all infrastructure projects.

Big, big problems stacking up now.

www.bbc.com/news/article...
'Hollow Mountain' hydro power plant expansion put on hold
Drax had been working on plans to build a second facility inside Argyll's Ben Cruachan.
www.bbc.com
May 8, 2025 at 7:34 AM
Reposted by Theo Keane
Frustrating/ironic that this story was overshadowed by the nonsense spouted by Tony Blair about net zero earlier this week - one of his criticisms was that people don't feel like solutions to climate change are based on good policy...

1/🧵
May 2, 2025 at 12:16 PM
Reposted by Theo Keane
I gave evidence to the Lords at the Built Environment Committee today on new towns - it was slightly nerve-wracking (!) but it was a great discussion!

The govts new town agenda is exciting, but there are a couple of things I'd want to see to make sure it's a success

1/🧵
The govt’s planning reforms are a strong start—but key questions remain:
1⃣ Will homes have the right infrastructure?
2⃣ Can govt afford to build new towns?
3⃣ What part of the housing crisis are they solving?

📺 @msingerhobbs.bsky.social at House of Lords Committee 👇

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ecex...
Dr Maya Singer Hobbs at the House of Lords Built Environment Committee
YouTube video by Institute for Public Policy Research
www.youtube.com
April 29, 2025 at 4:59 PM
Reposted by Theo Keane
PhD Timeline xkcd.com/3081
April 25, 2025 at 3:32 PM
Reposted by Theo Keane
What's that? What's that you say? Data center pauses? Data centers being paused by Amazon? Almost as if they're slowing capex spend related to AI? It's almost as if the demand isn't there? is that what it is? Is it??? IS IT????

www.nbcnews.com/business/bus...
April 23, 2025 at 5:52 AM
Reposted by Theo Keane
Trans women ARE biologically women and no biased court can stop that basic fact from being true. Sex is a homeostatic property cluster containing an array of primary, secondary, and tertiary sexual characteristics. Trans people can and do change sex
April 16, 2025 at 11:03 AM
Reposted by Theo Keane
Trans women are women and no court judgement can change that. Without wanting to diminish the negative effect that legal oppression has on trans lives, there is no reason why lawyers and judges are qualified to make this argument over actual experts in the field.
April 16, 2025 at 8:54 AM
Reposted by Theo Keane
If this is the law, the law is wrong.
Having excluded all trans people from proceedings before it, the Supreme Court decides in favour of For Some Women Scotland.
April 16, 2025 at 9:03 AM
Reposted by Theo Keane
getting a bit tiring to think "ah yay, the worst people you know are having a great day" several times a week, every single week
April 16, 2025 at 9:19 AM
Reposted by Theo Keane
Intrinsic & extrinsic (dopant) defect chemistry of trigonal Selenium for PV, incl metastable states & non-radiative recombination ⬇️

Combined theory & expt analysis, we find an intrinsic tolerance to 𝘱𝘰𝘪𝘯𝘵 defects, with GBs/interfaces the limiting factor for PV 📈
pubs.rsc.org/en/Content/A...
Intrinsic point defect tolerance in selenium for indoor and tandem photovoltaics
Selenium has reemerged as a promising absorber material for tandem and indoor photovoltaic (PV) devices due to its elemental simplicity, unique structural features, and wide band gap. However, despite...
pubs.rsc.org
April 15, 2025 at 1:16 PM
Reposted by Theo Keane
This. An emergency recall of parliament on a weekend for British Steel. Nothing at all for UK HE which employs far more people, has already shed 10,000 academic jobs, with several institutions on the brink of collapse.

A reminder: we train all the doctors, teachers, engineers, nurses, lawyers &c &c
British Steel employs 3.6k people. Coventry Uni group, which auditors say may not survive, employs 7.7k. But there is an emergency debate in parliament for British Steel and nothing for the whole HE sector imploding
Why is the government and the news so indifferent to the meltdown happening in UK #HigherEd right now?

Our universities are the envy of the world. Yet we are at risk of losing a generation of academics and damaging the sector beyond repair.
April 12, 2025 at 8:24 AM
Reposted by Theo Keane
PEP 751 has been accepted! peps.python.org/pep-0751/

This means #Python now has a lock file standard that can act as an export target for tools that can create some sort of lock file. And for some tools the format can act as their primary lock file format as well instead of some proprietary format.
PEP 751 – A file format to record Python dependencies for installation reproducibility | peps.python.org
This PEP proposes a new file format for specifying dependencies to enable reproducible installation in a Python environment. The format is designed to be human-readable and machine-generated. Installe...
peps.python.org
March 31, 2025 at 9:28 PM
Reposted by Theo Keane
The atomic spectral lines in this app come from the NIST atomic spectroscopy group, which has provided the world with spectroscopic measurements for 120 years.

Today we got word that the federal government is laying off the entire group. 🔭🧪
Tired of wondering which atomic lines are in your spectra? You need:

*whose line is it anyway?* An interactive tool for identifying atomic spectral lines. 🧪🔭 #stars

install:
pip install whoseline

source:
github.com/bmorris3/who...
March 19, 2025 at 5:26 PM
Reposted by Theo Keane
What is the government’s actual proposed solution to this problem?? How does @teamlabouruk.bsky.social actually think working parents should deal with these costs?? Is the official solution “live near grandparents/have one very high earner and one very part-time worker/put it on a credit card”??
March 14, 2025 at 9:52 AM
Reposted by Theo Keane
🚨I promised I'd say more on the Royal Society and Elon Musk, so here it is. 🚨

I've resigned my position as Associate Editor at Royal Society's journal Open Science in protest at their lack of action over Elon Musk.

My op-ed in @theguardian.com
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
Elon Musk is a proven danger to good science, but the Royal Society won’t say so. That’s why I resigned | Kit Yates
It is vital to act, and I urge colleagues to do so. How can we stand by and laud this man while he undermines scientific integrity? asks academic and author Kit Yates
www.theguardian.com
March 4, 2025 at 3:51 PM
Reposted by Theo Keane
Every time I see a story about shoplifting I think about the @ifbookspod.bsky.social episode about it

"...shoplifting contributed to about £3,000 of “shrinkage” during the last six-month stock take, with common missing items including baby milk"

www.theguardian.com/business/202...
‘It’s very brazen’: retail workers and shoplifters on the UK’s record theft statistics
Staff tell of thieves costing stores thousands, while shoplifters say cost of living crunch drove them to crime
www.theguardian.com
March 4, 2025 at 11:08 AM