A rare appearance of Mozart in Wadebridge (Cornwall) this weekend. I'll be there, but not singing, THANK HEAVENS.

Two men sunbathing, August bank holiday, Blackpool, 1971, by Don McPhee.

Do we need to rethink the QA quenching model of chlorophyll fluorescence? Probably not, but here's a provocative chin stroker from Győző Garab. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

No fireworks here for miles around, (it frightens the livestock), so here’s some bonus Grandpa Ginger content for you.

So one of us (not me) got wrongly imprisoned in a shed for four days. He said he used his time incarcerated to reflect on becoming a better person.

The first (1955) Danish edition of Ray Bradbury’s FAHRENHEIT 451. Later editions did not convert the title, so this is the only SI-compatible edition! 🎢

So does anyone else eat their avocados with salt and vinegar? (As a treat mind you, I’m not made of money).

The academic experience.

Looking forward to putting all the cats back an hour tonight.

Once again, EVERY R1 research university depends on federal funding for ~15-25% of its budget. You simply can't unplug the largest or 2nd-largest source of $$ of every R1 university & expect it not to have devastating consequences for graduate education, which will spill over to undergrad education.

A gentle introduction to dealing with Maxwell's demon in cellular biochemistry (writes someone in need of an exorcist this afternoon).

Broke the quartz cuvette.

Not the smartest of cats.

An unfortunate incident for a friend on vacation provides AMPLE OPPORTUNITY for a gag about photosynthetic control. Honestly, you can’t buy humour like this.

SimpleFold, a lightweight protein folding modeller from Apple (- I didn't see that coming). arxiv.org/abs/2509.184...

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).

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.