Dear average reader of Synthetic Remarks, I am dying to know

If you feel the need to get into details or ask me something, the comments are open.

Take a long good look at this reaction, recently reported in a respected journal. Have you ever seen anything like it? “Unusual formation…” — an understatement of the century, if you ask me. What the Hell is going on here? A porphyrin-ish type material spitting out a C7H5 unit (a toluene minus a handful of […]

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I would never […]

I confess to having been quite inactive here lately. Lots of things to manage these days. But, I have certainly not given up writing!

Evidence A

“Numerous nitrogens”
Nature Chem. 2013, 5, 79 (DOI: 10.1038/nchem.1553)

Alternatively, if you can’t make it through their pay wall, Nature Publishing Group kindly presents the whole […]

Aldehydes to esters in one step. Palladium catalyzed. Acetone(!) as the oxidant. Brilliant on so many levels.

Org. Lett. 2013, ASAP (DOI: 10.1021/ol303298g)

I admire their honesty about the fact that the stumbled upon this protocol when identifying byproducts from other planned reactions, and then realized […]

It just struck me. There has never been a chemistry genius. You can quote me on that, but don’t
get me wrong and please do read the entire post first.

Amazing discoveries in chemistry have been made, are being made and will be made. Chemistry has
so far given us penicillin that has […]

This recent mini-review neither has a written nor a graphical abstract (at least not at the time of writing), but its kick-ass title forced me to download and check it out.

M. McLaughlin, S. Paul, A. Remirez, P. Richardson, J. M. Muhuhi, A. Zlota, J. Knight
“Some Items of Interest to Process R & […]

The substance is 3,4-diflurothiophene, CAS # 19259-15-5. Let there be no confusion; the compound is small, but the picture is big.

When you look in the literature, you find

A lot of computational chemistry Some who magically had it as a starting material One or two lengthy preparations and miserable atom economy

Long story […]

To the best of my knowledge, only once before have I resorted to posting a lolcat. In a feeble attempt to properly wrap up year two of Synthetic Remarks (Volume 2), here we go again. I give you:

Yay, I did live to see it! The very reaction I requested here, a little more than a year ago. Check out this fantastico, shmantastico cross-coupling, in the latest issue of the best journal on Earth:

Org. Lett. 2012, ASAP (DOI: 10.1021/ol3029109)

Do you see what I […]