Giving this a boost, if you need a little light in the darkest month

Reading about Kash Patel prioritising workouts over security meetings and the whole MAGA-bro obsession with strength and body-sculpting "The men are weeping in the gym ... they don't hear the thousands of tiny fracturings needed to build something stronger"

Bravo @ben-cooke.bsky.social. Brilliant scoop, and hard to imagine a more important one. “This government is hiding the true danger of climate change from the people”. Spooks don’t mess about when they leak. www.thetimes.com/article/4a1c...

Would you believe me if I told you a new international law dedicated to environmental protection is coming into force today? And that it covers nearly half the surface of the planet? 🌊

Missing from the coverage of redundancies at Edinburgh: this was done in such a haphazard, uncoordinated way, there are now core teams who have gone from 5 people to 1 with no change in workload or pressure and huge loss in knowledge of institutional process. www.heraldscotland.com/news/2576321...

I had the great pleasure of chatting with @mandascott.bsky.social for the Accidental Gods podcast. Listen here! accidentalgods.life/what-ought-w...

We live in an ever-changing world, but how thin is the ice on which we are skating? And how can we change the ways we do things so we don’t fall into the void of extinction. accidentalgods.life/what-ought-w... #AccidentalGods #Podcast

The government sits and watches as Heba dies. It's heartbreaking, horrible, almost impossible to compute. Didn't people vote in the hope (however forlorn) of ending the Tories' psychopathic mode of government? Yet on it goes, under Keir Starmer. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

Blow-by-blow account of an extrajudicial killing. Chilling that the shooter is close enough to look the driver in the eyes as he opens fire.

2026 looking good already @calflyn.bsky.social

We did Jolabokaflod for the first time this year. Not a bad haul.

🔊New Podcast out now: a conversation with @david-farrier.bsky.social on how we might learn to live in “The what ought to be.” He talks about adaptation, resilience, and what nature can teach us about recovery in a changing world. 🎧https://naturerecovery.ox.ac.uk/podcasts/ @ecioxford.bsky.social

1000 people turned up in Falkirk today to say no to Nigel Farage's message of hate and division

I was thrilled to take part in the Nature Recovery podcast @naturerecovery.bsky.social Listen here: www.buzzsprout.com/2135393/epis...

@sadiahqureshi.bsky.social One more to add to the list 🍾

Amazing turn out of Edinburgh University staff outside the parliament building right now to defend education against needless cuts @ucuedinburgh.bsky.social

If Edinburgh Uni, with no operational deficit, gets to sack 1800 people, imagine what this will signal to more fiscally challenged Scottish universities? MSPs need to realise that this is more than a local crisis – we need urgent public scrutiny of Edinburgh’s governance.

I wrote about why we need to grow food in cities for @theguardian.com www.theguardian.com/books/2025/n...

What can evolution teaches about how life will adapt to our changing planet? Find out at the seminar on Friday…

If you're in Oxford next Friday, come along!

Still can't quite believe it, but Vanity Fair Italy interviewed me about Nature's Genius www.vanityfair.it/article/davi...

When you consider the *ecocide* alongside the genocide being perpetrated in Gaza, you begin to grasp the totality of the Israeli state’s attempt to eliminate both the Palestinians and their homeland. My column today. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Many species won't survive without our help, but what should that help look like? I wrote about this for @aeon.co aeon.co/essays/shoul...

Nature's Genius is published in Italian!!

Can't think of a government in my adult life that has failed to meet the moment like this one.

I think about this poem by Ian Duhig — about Jo Cox, the Labour MP assassinated by a man shouting ‘Britain first’ — every day at the moment. No other contemporary poet has looked so clearly at the political reality of the far right as a minority who must always be appeased

This has absolutely thrilled me!

I had an amazing time @wainwrightprize.bsky.social yesterday! So many inspiring writers and extraordinary books. Congratulations to @guyshrubsole.bsky.social, a hugely deserving winner for conservation writing, and fellow @canongate.co.uk writer @chloedalton.bsky.social for book of the year!

This should be headline news - the implications are horrifying …

North Edinburgh people: if you haven't seen it already, the report on a new tram route is here: consultationhub.edinburgh.gov.uk/sfc/tram-nor... Worryingly, it shows a clear preference for Roseburn over Orchard Brae. If you value the Roseburn path, please respond to the consultation!

The UK government will evacuate nine of the 40+ students in Gaza with scholarship at UK universities. My PhD student Shaimaa isn't included. We must now make sure they help the other students - email your MP today. www.theguardian.com/education/20...

Latest from the Edinburgh Book Festival: Catching up with fellow Edinburgh prof @david-farrier.bsky.social & Alex Riley, both brilliant nature writers, both with new books that celebrate the resiliency and adaptability of nature. Check out: Nature's Genius & Super Natural! @edbookfest.bsky.social

Can't wait to speak with Alex Riley and @calflyn.bsky.social tomorrow @edbookfest.bsky.social about all that makes life extraordinary. Come along!

Necropolitics: “the death-inflicting politics of colonialism…where those in power don’t have to care who lives or dies. The priorities of the colonisers are elsewhere, in land, power and wealth grabs. The colonised are left in conditions where their lives are not even secondary, but irrelevant.”

It was such a thrill to be on stage @edbookfest.bsky.social last night with the next Future Library author, Amitav Ghosh(@amitav.bsky.social)! No other writer is so alert to the living forest and the way forgotten lives endure in the archive. And as gracious in person as you could hope for.

Exciting news!!!!!! Thanks @wainwrightprize.bsky.social!

Update: no one can identify a single person as belonging to a group that The Times says has 130 academic staff. Totally unnamed and likely fictitious academics being quoted by the Daily Express, The Times, the BBC & the Times Higher.

Every strand of this Edinburgh University report could be its own front page. Yes, some of it will be familiar to historians, but this kind of frank public recognition is all too rare. Incredible work by many different scholars.

Durham council is run by fantasists, idiots, and grifters.

Who's going to tell him what 3 degrees of warming will do to Bronte Country www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

I had a great time chatting to @littleatoms.bsky.social about Nature's Genius - somehow, in 30 minutes we touched on almost the entire book!

Just received news that 27 people have been arrested in Parliament Square under the Terrorism Act 2000 for holding signs saying "I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action". This is real police state behaviour.

We're delighted to have two books on the @wainwrightprize.bsky.social longlists! Congratulations to @david-farrier.bsky.social for Nature's Genius, a remarkable story of how we shape the lives of animals and plants – and how they shape us, longlisted for the Conservation Writing Prize

I'm thrilled beyond words that Nature's Genius has been long listed for the @wainwrightprize.bsky.social Conservation Writing prize! Congratulations to all the fantastic authors on the list. Sincere thanks to the #wainwright judges and for everyone @canongate.co.uk for supporting the book!

Heard them over north Edinburgh late last night

I'm thrilled to see this fantastic review of Nature's Genius in Literary Review! "Farrier's achievement is to make change feel not just possible but also exciting."

"'It's a Killing Field': IDF Soldiers Ordered to Shoot Deliberately at Unarmed Gazans Waiting for Humanitarian Aid"

Just seen #28yearslater and my main takeaway is: if they walk south past the Angel of the North to meet Ralph Fiennes' character, does that mean the bone temple is in Chester-le-Street?

I had a great time discussing Nature's Genius on The San Francisco Experience podcast open.spotify.com/episode/11om...