"The mission was practically impossible: to immerse high-brow experimentalists in the most commercial, most hackneyed of all musical genres!" A lovely reflection on our Christmas album from one of its architects substack.com/inbox/post/1...

The trees are bare, save for gentle holly and stubborn ivy, but the robins, thrushes and King Wren are singing, giving voice to the new spring they can feel stirring beneath the leaf litter. As the light fades and the fog gathers, you can feel a tingle in the air as the year comes to a close

Proud to have my photo essay out in the publication Current Conservation. I got really into photography during my PhD including using a film camera. I hope it conveys some of the visual experience of being in a bird market and the sense of place. Enjoy 🐦 www.currentconservation.org/visual-stori...

The question I would love to ask LLM-enthusiast higher-up types is this: once you've fired half your staff and made your organisation dependent on AI, what's there to stop the tech companies jacking up your subscription price to more than you used to spend on wages?

Dmitry reminded me yesterday that our Christmas album is five years old. Struggling to get my head around that one! makersofaemc.bandcamp.com/album/from-t...

Sorting through the year's photos, and this is definitely one of my favourites - a woodland grasshopper, Omocestes rufipes

Question for #academicsky - when a job ad says they're after 'a strong commitment to your own continuous professional development', what does that actually mean in practice? What are they wanting you to tell them about?

One of my PhD chapters: 'Designing user-centered technologies to address the illegal wildlife trade' is OUT NOW in the @society4conbio.bsky.social journal Conservation Science and Practice! Please check out the graphical abstract and give it a read: conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Me: I have so many great quotes from the archives that prove exactly my point! I'm gonna put them all in the paper! Reviewer: this paper is far too descriptive Me: but...but...my quotes :(

We're already looking foward to our next speaker, Richard Warren at the University of Bern, who will be speaking about 'Volcanos and Climatic Instability in Early Nineteenth-Century India' on the 2nd at 1500 GMT. Sign up to join us online here: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/volcanoes-...

Life is already very complicated, so why make complicated music?

PhD: you need to do something completely new and different and novel which no-one's done before! Postdoc job ads: we're looking for someone with experience of these standard and established methods within this longstanding subfield, preferably also in this previously-studied geographic area

There are three guards. One always lies, one always tells the truth, and one generates a mathematically probable answer to your question which is often just publically-available information but is sometimes complete bullshit

I have a new single out! This track was inspired by ancient hillforts and medieval mottes. Dramatic earthworks now eroded, overgrown and forgotten, home only to birds and beasts. Settle down, close your eyes, and climb the ramparts of ancient earth… jdrobertsmusic.bandcamp.com/track/rampar...

Castle Naze, an Iron Age hillfort. Cliffs on two sides and a very impressive rampart on the third. Climbing up, my thought was you'd have to be mad to attack it, but possibly not as mad as you'd have to be to live there

Historians - could anyone recommend me a good introduction to Iron Age & pre-Roman Britain, ideally with a decent amount on Northern England? I've been over a few hill forts lately, and I'm curious to learn more about what is known about the people who built them

The path over Whaley Moor

Live life one note at a time, that's what I say

I'm always a bit surprised this isn't happening faster - all a journal really needs is a website (pretty cheap nowadays), a couple of editors (free), reviewers (free), and a pipeline into the scholarly search engines. What work are the big publishers actually doing for all the money they charge?

Come along next Tuesday to hear all about Californian health myths and their impact on perceptions of TB and the 1918-19 Flu. I'm excited to share my findings and delve into all the details that didn't fit into my recently submitted PhD thesis, reincarnating zephrys and mammoth oranges included!

There's something about autumn which always makes me want to go for deep, warm sounds

Today, @danielmacfarlane.bsky.social on "Finding Environmental History in 'The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.'" The Edmund Fitzgerald sank on November 10, 1975 in Lake Superior. niche-canada.org/2025/11/07/f... #envhist #musichistory #greatlakes #envhum

Looking forward to this online @northernenvhistory.bsky.social talk next week! www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/california...

Three random thoughts on graduate & youth unemployment: 1) I have a million criticisms of the institutional university, but if employers don't want to hire intelligent, educated and thoughtful graduates, that is a failure of capitalism, not a failure of education

One more for hallowe'en - a spooky folk ballad about a demonic hound set in the Yorkshire Dales. The lyrics are from 1830, and tell a tale of forbidden witchcraft on lonely moors... (special thanks to Allan Myers and Fedir Tkachov for this one!) jdrobertsmusic.bandcamp.com/track/the-sp...

Revisiting my dark ambient album 'In Search of Dead Knowledge' for Hallowe'en. This is 'There is no Way But Onwards', which is one of my favourite tracks on the album. I think the combination of distorted chords, arrythmic percussion and minimal piano worked pretty well! Video by Sarmad Munir

With it being hallowe'en and all, I thought I'd take this chance to revisit my dark ambient album 'In Search of Dead Knowledge'...listen for spooky vibes and creeping horror Video by the inimitable Sarmad Munir

The walls of Carl Wark, looking southeast towards Longshaw

I wee reminder that this is comming up on tuesday afternoon!

"When the war reached Kyiv, I literally saved my sanity with music. At first, it was the kalimba; this small, resonant, magical instrument filled the house with the feeling of a fairy tale that would definitely end well" - Dmytro and me on our album cadenceandsignal.substack.com/p/bayun-the-...

Very interesting read! doi.org/10.1017/S001...

'Trust the experts!' and 'trust the science!' are phrases which make me veeery nervous because I've worked on colonial medicine long enough to know what scientific experts are capable of when we think we know what's good for people better than they do

Fungi growing in a cracked rowan tree

My main irritation with the biological literature is the tendency to talk about 'human impacts' and 'human effects' as though humans are one single unitary and homogeneous thing

One of my favourite photos from the summer - large marsh grasshopper (Stethophyma grossum) on cross-leaved heath (Erica tetralix)

Entering the postdoc world has vastly increased my sympathy for those curates in old novels who are desperately seeking a vacant parish where they can become a vicar and earn a living

Flooded bridge after heavy rain

Bog bush-cricket (Metrioptera brachyptera) - sat in some bog myrtle (Myrica gale), appropriately enough

Dark bush-cricket, Pholidoptera griseoaptera. Always nice to get a photo of this one, the adults have such a lovely chesnut colour but also tend to hide in brambles where you can't see them and chirp at you

Take a break from doomscrolling, relax and immerse yourself in exploring the Wildwoods... (I have a new single out) youtu.be/PeN4k-THfPs

Wood cricket, Nemobius sylvestris. Tiny little animals, but they make the most amazing sound!

Lesser stag beetle, Dorcus parallelipipedus. I think this species gets a bit overshadowed by its larger relative, but it's still a very impressive beastie!

Very proud to have been part of this awesome project - 11 experimental electronic musicians came together to make an acoustic album, now out for you to listen to! aemc2.bandcamp.com/album/undres...

Johnny was a patriot He bedecked the town With Union Jacks on ev'ry street All flying upside down

Heath grasshopper, Corthippus vagans. Brown and nondescript, but charming nonetheless, with a sandy colour to match the sandy heaths it lives on, as well as stripy legs and an orange abdomen which contrast rather nicely with the green gorse and purple heather

Woodland grasshopper, Omocestes rufipes - in black and red!

Trevor’s Virtual Cassette Library 112 ///landed.embraced.deaf. Welcome, traveler.
You’ve just tuned into Trevor’s Virtual Cassette Library, Episode 112.
This one’s titled Landed Embraced Deaf—your metaphysical coordinates: ///landed.embraced.deaf.This is a 90-minute sonic transmission.
Built for…

Sat in the woods with a little synth and an amp. Nice to keep things simple! youtu.be/GudaORtvmCk

Large marsh grasshopper, Stethophyma grossum. They live in sphagnum bogs, so I got very wet feet photographing them

Heya. I got a bit bored by people asking me how to navigate away from the cycles of exhaustion and exploitation that the academia seems exceptionally well inclined to produce. So I decided to run a workshop on it. An antiwork-antishop, in effect. Sign up below. janabacevic.net/against-acad...