Out in the forest picking mushrooms today. Great success: porcini, hedgehog fungus, yellow chanterelles, funnel chanterelles…but now I have to clean them all.

Highly recommended! Hanna’s team is doing ground-breaking research, Stockholm is a lovely city, and a Swedish PhD position is very attractive - an actual job with paid holidays, sick leave, parental leave and pension rights.

Amazing TV coverage today of the church in the mining town of Kiruna in Lapland being moved to allow expansion of the mine. It will move 1.5 km at a slow walking pace. So far, everything is going well.

Approaching Drottningholm.

Today’s outing: by century-old steamer from Stockholm to Drottningholm Palace, there to see Telemann’s wonderful opera “Orpheus” at the 18th century court theatre.

Back in Uppsala, and at last this is turning into a descent butterfly summer! Lots of action in the garden today. Here's a small copper, Lycaena phlaeas, feeding on a coneflower.

A timeline cleanser for those who need one: a small waterfall on the flank of Meall Mor, Glen Coe, Scotland, filmed today. There are still places like this.

Live update from the foot of the Glencoe Radio Mast, altitude about 400 m.

I'm holidaying in Oban on the West Coast of Scotland, just as the country is battered by Storm Floris barreling in from the Atlantic. But the weather has its compensations: a storm petrel (Hydrobates pelagicus) is feeding just below our living-room window!

The hoverflies have decided to adopt our white amaryllis as their new clubhouse.

More water lilies! I make no excuse, because this is the best show I've ever had.

AI “thinks” in the same way a mirror looks at you

Yesterday I went out with my telephoto to try to capture some different aspects of life in and around the pond. Here's a frog, Rana temporaria, hiding under kingcup leaves at the edge of the water.

Not such a great photo because these are difficult to capture, but the other great joy of my pond at the moment is water plantain (Alisma plantago-aquatica), a European native. Rosettes of emergent leaves and upright flower stalks bearing clouds of small white flowers.

Two more flowers of James Brydon, because why not. And here’s a possible surprise for North American readers: would you believe, my latitude is equivalent to the northern tip of Labrador? Strange but true. 🌱🌱🌱

At last, both my water lilies are flowering! Pink ‘James Brydon’ and off-white ‘Arc en Ciel’.

Now that everyone's back home from #EAVP22, I would just like to comment on the offensive claim by David Marjanović that I was "hiding" in Uppsala and had sent my junior lab members instead, supposedly because I was too afraid to face criticism of our recent paper in Nature on the earliest 1/3 🧪

If anyone needs a timeline cleanser as an antidote to the unfolding horror of US politics, I can share some images from today’s visit to York Minster, one of the greatest gothic cathedrals. 13th to 15th century. Here’s the west front. 🧵

Even linkedin gets it

High Force, Teesdale. Biggest waterfall by volume in Britain. The lip is created by the basalt of the Great Whin Sill, overlying Carboniferous sandstone and limestone.

On the Pennine Way in Northumberland. Spectacular landscape underlain by Carboniferous rocks. A block by the path suddenly reveals a Stigmaria root from a giant Lepidodendron tree that grew in a coal swamp more than 300 million years ago. 🧵

On holiday in the Pentland Hills of Scotland. Dramatic landscapes and delicate orchids (Dactylorhiza maculata).

Tensions are rising in the garden! I collect ancient rose varieties, and two of my treasures are the Red Rose of Lancaster (Rosa gallica officinalis) and the White Rose of York (Rosa alba semiplena) - emblems of two noble houses that tore England apart with endless civil war during the 🧵

New equipment purchase! The battery charger of the old one died, so I took the opportunity to buy a Bigger and Better one. Yes, it was time for the annual UPPSALA HEDGETRIMMER MASSACRE

A lovely encounter today, by the bank of the Dalälven river at Älvkarleby: a stand of our only wild slipper orchid, Cypripedium calceolus.

It's out! We describe probable reptile tracks from the earliest Carboniferous of Australia. This pushes the amniote record back by some 35-40 million years and implies that the tetrapod crown group originated deep in the Late Devonian. The paper is Open Access. 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Later today, the timeline of early tetrapod evolution will be challenged. 🧪

Spring has arrived and my pond sports a golden coronet of kingcups (Caltha palustris, a European native). In the dark water, life is stirring.

Trump lunacy, Swedish edition: The American Embassy in Sweden has written to Stockholm City Council's Urban Planning Department, instructing (!) it to no longer apply Swedish DEI legislation. A Councillor replies: "A totally bizarre demand. No way!" www.dn.se/sverige/usas...

In the Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford, waiting for the beginning of a performance of Carmen. My daughter is singing second soprano in the chorus.

May morning in Oxford!

“People call [the antiscience movement] ‘misinformation’ or ‘the infodemic’ as tho it’s just random junk out there on the Internet or social media, and it’s not— it’s organized, it’s well-financed, and it’s politically motivated.” — Dr. @peterhotezmdphd.bsky.social in @sciam.bsky.social

With the state of the world as it is right now, we can all do with a timeline cleanser - and here's the ultimate one, the very Mount Olympus of slow TV: The Great Elk (or Moose, if you're North American) Migration! 🧵 It's an annual Swedish TV event following the migration of elk (Alces alces)

@bluestormcomin1.bsky.social @coko.bsky.social @errincs.bsky.social @thinker2thinker.bsky.social @sbh08mae.bsky.social @qm-b.bsky.social @bill-maxwell.bsky.social @myra134.bsky.social @reneechris.bsky.social @gailrebecca.bsky.social @kazlove.bsky.social @theogccd.bsky.social @ltwlauren.bsky.social

"Only fools or kremlin tools" is a nice little rhyme that benefits from being the truth.

🇺🇦🇺🇸When NATO’s article 5 was invoked for the first time in history after the 9/11, Ukraine NON-NATO ally, deployed to forces Afghanistan. Not because they had to, but in solidarity with the United States.

A friend included this anti-acknowledgement section on her PhD thesis. She also added the proposition: “Systematic bullying and undermining of girls and women in STEM starts early on and is the reason why they do not stay in science and related fields.” Absurd we still need to go through this 🧪👩‍🔬

A wonderful collaboration! 🧪

Alexander Stubb - President of Finland gave a very empassioned speech about Ukraine which I think we should all listen to. Full video: x.com/frontlinekit...

This is Marco Rubio explaining how the USA promised to defend Ukraine forever if they got rid of their nuclear arsenal left after the Soviet Union fell. This is why lil marco was sinking into the couch. He was hoping we wouldn’t find it…so don’t RT right now this very second.

And there we have it.

@juliadavisnews.bsky.social: "Don't think for a second that aid to Ukraine was stopped because Zelensky didn't wear a suit or disputed Vance's 'stories' that originated with Russia-funded bloggers. Trump was going to do this all along, and the Russians knew it. 'Trump is ours' remains their motto."

NEW: JD Vance describes UK & French troops in Ukraine as “20,000 troops from some random country that hasn’t fought a war in 30 or 40 years”. Spits in the face of UK & EU troops that died supporting the US in Iraq & Afghanistan. So revealing. The Atlantic alliance & “special relationship” is dead.

Trump might not know but of course Vance will be well aware of the many wars fought by European soldiers in the past 40 years. Vance will also know that the minerals deal is basically meaningless, having no chance of generating serious investment. So the objective is to end the Atlantic alliance.

No one in DC can bargain in good faith with Trump because he will not follow laws passed by Congress. No one internationally can bargain in good faith with Trump because he will not respect agreements made by the United States. Being a counterparty just makes you a target for another shakedown.

This. As I set out in a post, Trump is not a 'transactional' politician, but an anti-transactional politician. Those pundits that trot out that he is 'transactional' don't get his approach to supposed deals. His MO is breaking deals not making them. My post: emptycity.substack.com/p/why-donald...

The Trump betrayal of Ukraine & of America’s standing in the world continues - combined with stopping investigations into Russian cyber crime & hacking against US targets (a known problem) It’s hard not to conclude he’s betraying America www.nytimes.com/2025/03/03/u...