Copper beech leafing

Be the first person to not do something no one has ever not done before – Brian Eno

Sleep well, everybody

“It isn’t just the sadness of what was demolished. Seeing endless piles of concrete brings a second layer of violence — the violence of being forced to live with destruction.” www.nytimes.com/2026/04/10/o...

Just wrote up my interview with Trần Nam who was 6 years old in 1968 and saw his entire family killed at My Lai. Only those who were 10 or older at the time of the massacre are formally considered as survivors, since younger children are not presumed to remember much. But he remembers everything.

“Throughout her life [Woolf] made notes on what it meant to write. And there's one from 1908 where she said that she was hoping to revolutionize the novel so as to capture multitudes of things at present fugitive.” podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/c...

"It’s arguably America’s worst loss ever." On this analysis, the base for the Fifth Fleet ceases to be viable and Trump hands Iran a $100bn annual revenue stream, instead of a one-off reimbursal of $1.7bn for an enforceable nuclear deal

"Suddenly, I understood the racing heart of the modern AI horror genre. It’s not intelligence we fear, but desire." www.quantamagazine.org/why-do-we-te...

Project Glasswing is "entirely voluntary [and] built on trust rather than law... There is no meaningful independent verification, no democratic mandate, no mechanism by which the public – whose infrastructure is at stake – has any formal say" www.exponentialview.co/p/mythos-and...

Put a woodcock on the £50 on the new animal-themed BoE banknotes, suggests Chris Packham. It’s a good choice but what would Darwin do? Maybe he’d go for the humble — but awesome — earthworm

My Undesirable Friends: Part I – an extraordinary portrait of young Russian journalists fighting to report the truth theconversation.com/my-undesirab...

“According to recent polling, the new parliament will be made up solely of rightwing parties: the rightwing Tisza, the far-right Fidesz and potentially the extreme-right Our Homeland Movement” www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Just remembered “Energy In Northampton”, a song commissioned by the Northampton Development Corporation to promote Northampton, in which aliens visit Northampton Silently they came one night / attracted by the glowing light / their scanners led them to the town Northampton youtu.be/4xKjGqefH7U

Osama bin Laden used to cite Israeli attacks in Beirut as a cause for his actions. Round and round we go www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

“People rescue people” www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

“It was our job to study the laws of physics, which remain true no matter who’s in power.”

" In the first three months of this year, oil CEOs sold $1.4 billion worth of their own stock—the fastest pace of selling in 15 years. At a dozen companies, the selling broke all-time records" heated.world/p/chevrons-c...

"Clark et al. (2016) showed that decisions made in the next few decades will lock in sea level rise, ice sheet loss, and temperature change that persist for thousands of years — well beyond any planning horizon human civilization has ever contemplated."

The Red Cross simply never issues statements of this sort. It means that they believe the violations of the laws of war described here are flagrant and intentional. www.icrc.org/en/news-rele...

A single line in this piece just made my day: “The electricity system operator is understood to be preparing to run the grid without any gas for short periods as soon as this summer, in a first for the UK energy system.” Renewables *work*. And progress matters🎉 www.theguardian.com/environment/...

BBC is rebroadcasting a very good radio series from 2012 on Iranian civilisation www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/serie...

Even given Cory Doctorow’s high standard this is an unusually great thread - about Process Knowledge- why it is more difficult to replace people than CEOs and tech bros think.

I'm such an excellent judge of character.

Always exciting to see the Avignon Papacy in the news

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"It’s as if a private firm developed nuclear weapons and the American government refused to work with them because they were too woke. Okey dokey." marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevo...

Most of us want to see our water back in public hands, but never actually had a say. That’s why I’m backing the Sewage Campaign Network’s petition for a referendum on water ownership.

 Let’s reach as many people as we can: petition.parliament.uk/petitions/76...

Marley Wood, Oxon.

Doing a basic calculation using a chatbot instead of a calculator uses between 2.5 million and 62 million times more energy. And using chatbots for calculations is *extremely common* - the companies have marketed these systems as general purpose, everything-apps!

“Arbitrary despotism supercharged by corruption — does this system sound familiar?… it appears to be precisely what the Trump administration is trying to implement… Yet, in Hungary, as in the US…there is a possible chink in the autocrat’s armour: elections” www.ft.com/content/eecc...

This is simply genocidal language and is a horror in itself.

😶

“After reading Chekhov, all other writers seem oddly artificial.” podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/c...

The war on Iran raises doubts that the Non-Proliferation Treaty can hold as a central pillar of international security, writes George Perkovich. If it doesn't, will US-friendly countries seek nuclear weapons, and will China and Russia follow the US-Israeli example and forcibly try to stop them?

Also that of a protection racket. Nice little civilisation you’ve got there. Shame if anything was to happen to it.

“The created world is but a small parenthesis in eternity.” Thomas Browne, 1643

Record wind and solar saved UK from gas imports worth £1bn in March 2026. @carbonbrief.org's analysis revealed the UK avoided the need for gas imports due to record electricity generation from wind and solar. ➡️ Read more here: lnkd.in/eV3C_WAF #SolarEnergyUK

War is Peace. Ignorance is Strength. Freedom is Slavery

“The only place I find much hope is in the unknown.” Meehan Crist podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/c...

Happy International War Crimes Day to those who celebrate it.

“What do plants do when life gets hard? Strew the world with floral beauty” emergencemagazine.org/essay/wildfl...

“In the past,...people viewed privacy and exclusivity as simply going to a private island or renting a yacht for yourself... But now we’re seeing our members taking it to the next level.” www.nytimes.com/2026/04/06/t...

Something I don't think the UK boasts about enough - and a great rebuttal to Reform and the Tories' anti-net zero propaganda: The UK is home to 7 out of the top 10 biggest offshore wind farms in the world. 10 of the top 20. And 6 in 10 of the largest ones in the world currently under construction.

“It’s definitely cheaper than a trip to a theme park” www.theguardian.com/world/2026/a...

“No people were involved in the creation of these opinions”

Fritillaries in Magdelen College meadow

Imaginators and sky dancers. Beautiful documentary about the carved wooden angels of St Wendreda’s and the harriers of the fens www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

BBC guidelines allow reporting Trump that threatens to commit mass war crimes but not the swear word he used.

Does anyone know the story of the thicket of yew trees on a slope between Hod Hill and Hambledon Hill in Dorset? How widespread would yews once have been here? Why was this remnant not felled?

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