A somewhat tatty old fox has moved into his greenhouse, which he’s not pleased about. Still, nice enough evening.

Four months on from his accident, and he’s as good as new, almost. He’s staying inside for a while yet, though.

Most foreign postdocs working in the US have J1 status, but not all (I was H-1B). H-1B visas in academia are treated differently to those in business, so it's unclear to me if this proposed $100k fee applies (but it will be the absolute death of the program for academics if so).

Some new art from Hester Berry for your timeline (- a fan writes).

Afternoon 🤔

Educational Xmas decorations for the right sort of person (it's only 101 days away!).

Morning!

A timeline cleanse, of a sort. The final collection of new poems from John Burnside. On mortality. The Memory Wheel, III. those mornings/ when we shivered from our beds/ and lit a fire/ to magnify the dark.

Link to the hot new 'life on Mars?' paper - open access! (Odds on it's chemistry rather than biochemistry).

Important stray cat news update: somewhat improbably, Wild Jeff, the village’s hardest cat, has found a new home. He’s currently sitting on a sofa (not mine) and purring.

A useful review. Why are plants losing the chloroplast NADH dehydrogenase complex? (spoiler: we don't know).

Bookmarks are here, they’re private, and there’s a migration tool for the bookmark feed!

More mycobacterial business today, but, more importantly, the VPO/Franz Welser-Möst with Berg's Lulu Suite and Bruckner 9 at the Proms tonight. Both fabulous, and the latter always scares the willies out of me. My concert of the year? Could be!

Great beasts washing up from the deep. This is what the public want.

In my long and mostly undistinguished academic career I’ve never been nominated for an award, so I’m delighted to say that my cat has been nominated for the Brave Heart Award for his exemplary behaviour during several weeks of treatment at the local vet. Go Mini!

New Beethoven for 3 just dropped btw (- excellent). Will Yo-Yo Ma et al. get around to tackling the 9th? Inquiring minds want to know.

The holiday weekend read: a delightful soufflé of a book. 50 more-ish essays, to be enjoyed individually or all at once. Nominally a discussion of a single poem by Abigail Parry, but much more than this. The author is a genial and generous guide.

The cats are ripening early this year.

Tonight's listening: finely coloured & lyrical chamber music from Helen Grime, sympathetically performed by the Hebrides Ensemble. Shades of Webern, Ravel, Maxwell Davies, Birtwistle. Recommended as a temporary escape from (waves hands) everything.

Lovely bit of Delius on tonight.

He’s very discerning for a semi-wild fleabag.

First grapes of the year. The vine is old, and the grapes are rather thick-skinned and seedy (make of that what you will). Good for juicing and/or feeding chickens though.

Back to writing about biological thermodynamics today. It's remarkable to me that a discipline developed in the early 19th century to understand and improve the efficiency of steam engines is equally applicable to the biochemistry of cells.

Orchard maintenance today. Stray boy Edward Fleas assisting.

Very happy to contribute to a review of the basic principles & measurement of the light reactions of photosynthesis with a focus on greenhouse/crop studies - it might be useful for newcomers to the field. Not open access, sorry ($$) - so please DM requests for the PDF.

Writing about Mycobacterial terminal oxidases this afternoon; there's more to life than photosynthesis. (It all just boils down to membranes, energy gradients and subatomic particles really).

(Terrific Oscar Peterson night on BBC4 tonight, btw).

All a bit soft and autumnal this morning.

Mahler 2 on the radio, cricket highlights on the box, don’t tell me I don’t know how to have a good time on a Saturday night.

Heaps of fascinating papers here (including PGR5!)

For the NPQ fans, an interesting dissection of the induction kinetics. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Absolute apple scenes in the garden today. Beauty of Bath (I think), which has to be eaten within a few minutes of picking. Floury disappointment otherwise.

Bruckner 7 tonight, serious stuff. (And also an intriguing and poignant world premiere from Ryan Wigglesworth).

An excellent job opportunity in the Netherlands for a postdoc interested in biological kinetic spectrofluorimetry & spectrophotometry. You'll be helping development new spectroscopic techniques for measuring photosynthetic energy transduction. #plantsciencejobs #plantscience

Listening to Bartok's String Quartets tonight, for the first time (despite almost being pre-decimal), and enjoying them a great deal. Better late than never, eh?

Fun equilibrium constant calculations for menaquinone-utilising respiratory complexes; it doesn't take much pmf to push things into reverse.

Our latest paper is out now in @jacs.acspublications.org . In this study we tried to push the limits of #electrochemistry beyond proteins, to studying entire pathways of biological electron transfer ⚡️🦠. Here's a summary 🧵 (1/10) pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

Good morning from the breakfast subcommittee.

Exorcising Maxwell's demon from yet another ATP synthase paper. You'd be surprised(?) how often it appears.

Waking up on a Sunday morning to threatening automated emails from a journal concerning late proofs 💅

Pear mead, who knew? (Rural stereotypes be damned). Cheers!

Plumes of meadowsweet. The fragrance is spectacular.

My first fruitlets of Nashi pears (Pyrus pyrifolia). The tree is six years old, but no fruit until I planted a companion pear nearby. Not as self-y as I was lead to believe!

Too hot? Here’s a chilly bit of Michigan from 2020.

It’s good morning from Coco. Just the merest sprinkle of rain in the air.

The local Gunnera escaping its paddock.

It’s good evening from Izzy, who lives in the orchard.

Probably not a good time to visit the US, tbh.

An auspicious visitor this morning. I think it’s an eyed hawk, but I’m ready to be corrected!

A bumpy old week here, so very much looking forward to getting stuck into this over the weekend. A treat from the ever reliable @julianstannardpoet.bsky.social . A slim volume, but I’m not fooled by that.