Paul McAuley

A hardback copy of Kim Curran’s novel Brigid.

Currently reading

Canadian wildfire smoke changed the songs of New York birds, study finds The massive wildfires that blanketed New York in smoke in the summer of 2023 affected how often some birds in the state sang and chirped.

www.timesunion.com/environment/...

Two pairs of beavers released in Cornwall by wildlife trust Wildlife experts say the release is a "landmark" for nature recovering in Cornwall and nationally.

Enjoy a full minute of beavers being released into the wild in Cornwall. These little fluffbutts are the first to swim in these waters in a very, very long time - the last official records of beavers in the wild in England are from the 1300s. BBC buff.ly/BnMwCOx
#ShareGoodNewsToo

The squeal of peeling tape, explained Weak shock waves triggered by micro-cracks in the adhesive layer of tape cause it to screech when being unspooled from its roll.

The squealing of the tapes. #science

Large tortoiseshell butterfly confirmed no longer extinct in UK Early spring sightings show colourful insect is a resident species for first time in decades, says conservation charity

A little good news.

Two cactus wrens sitting atop a chollo.

I love the way these cactus wrens (photographed today) have a safe shelter inside a chollo catcus where they built their elaborate nest.

Fine obituary of Kenith Trodd by Ian Greaves. Thanks @illuminations.bsky.social for the link.

Don't Let Anybody Ever Tell You Blood Is Not Good to Drink On "To the White Sea" by James Dickey, and "334" by Thomas M. Disch

My new Reading Project post is up and FREE TO ALL! In this one, I discuss two distinct, and distinctly discomfiting novels: TO THE WHITE SEA by James Dickey, and Thomas M. Disch's science fiction classic 334.

billryan64.substack.com/p/dont-let-a...

Photo of about a third of a large, round, yellow lichen growing flat on reddish/purplish rock. The right half of the photo is lichen, the left half is bare rock. The lichen consists of a middle with a sugared, grainy appearance…hundreds of tightly packed branches radiate outward from the centre.

Polycaulinia sp lichen. #Newfoundland, Canada. Photo covers about 6cm top to bottom. #lichen #fungi #fungifriends

A pair of ducks float on Viaduct Pond, trees and a small stand of flowering gorse lean over their reflections, and beyond Viaduct Bridge more trees recede into mist.

Hampstead Heath, 08:00

the reverse version of those “evolution of man” drawings

It occurs to me that if the government did force UK writers to hand over their work to the big AI companies, that would now among other things mean contributing to the development of US advanced weapon systems.

The State of the Art by Iain M Banks - BBC Sounds A spaceship arrives on Earth and finds a planet obsessed with alien concepts like 'money'.

My BBC Radio 4 adaptation of Iain M. Banks' The State of the Art can now be found and played here: www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

Thank you for asking me to play, Jared & Lavie (@lavietidhar.bsky.social ) !
/ list of those best books here :
endlessbookshelf.net/best-books/

So Philip Glass just joined TikTok. He only has like 4 posts and they’re simply him in what I assume is his living room playing the piano. First comment on one I saw was “your piano is too close to the fireplace, you’ll dry it out” and if that’s not the internet in a nutshell I don’t know what is.

Was a sunny day & I walked 26 km up & down hills & across fields & through woods & along the deep creases of dry valleys in the Chilterns & my feet, a knee & my back hurt but will keep doing this for as long as I can.

Mysterious brain cells clear proteins that contribute to Alzheimer’s disease When specialized cells called tanycytes stop working, disease-causing tau proteins build up in the brain.

Mysterious brain cells clear proteins that contribute to Alzheimer’s disease www.nature.com/articles/d41... When specialized cells called tanycytes stop working, disease-causing tau proteins build up in the brain.

what strikes me most about this is that 1970s kids roamed free and, as the mood struck them, hung out with self-declared witches and vampire hunters

A very large juvenile diamond squid - this one measuring in at a whopping 3” - perhaps the 2nd largest I’ve ever seen!

Shot in the wild, using scuba, while out over the deep abyss, several miles offshore from Okinawa

#diamondsquid #thysanoteuthisrhombus #blackwaterdiving #gug #gugunderwater

A corner where three grassy, sloping fields meet, bare trees to the left and straight ahead under a cloudless sky.

A dry valley in the Chilterns, early spring.

A lot of people say AI isn't very good for the world and its outputs are routinely unreliable, but these haters fail to see how it's revolutionizing how we incinerate schoolchildren.

Are mysterious 'Little Red Dots' discovered by the James Webb Space Telescope actually nurseries for direct-collapse black holes? "It is exciting to think that Little Red Dots may represent the first direct observational evidence of the birth of the most massive black holes in the universe."

Are mysterious 'Little Red Dots' discovered by the James Webb Space Telescope actually nurseries for direct-collapse black holes?

www.space.com/astronomy/bl...

A jagged, dusty rock sticking out of warmer-coloured sand. Illumination is from the left.

Here's a rock on Mars photographed yesterday.

The 2026 Women's Prize for Fiction longlist! Join us as we reveal the 2026 Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction longlist on Wednesday 4 March at 2pm GMT.

We are thrilled to reveal the 2026 #WomensPrize for Fiction longlist. 16 titles that showcase the profound force, resonance and scale of fiction writing: from tackling turbulent global issues to examining the intensely intimate. Discover the longlist here: youtu.be/fyPfDaHddLg

Thanks, Oliver. V. interesting.

Just to say, as I have said passim that a) "transpermia" is a better term for this than "lithopanspermia"
and b) there is a really good paper by Norm Sleep and Kevin Zahnle on why evolution cd be expected to produce this capability

Chelsea Creek pictured in the early morning mist. Lot’s Road power station on the left, Chelsea Harbour apartments on the right. The tide has gone out below revealing the muddy depths.

Chelsea Houseboats approaching Cheyne Pier. Multi-coloured, the high rise apartments behind them shrouded in Thames mist. In the foreground, the mud of the foreshore at low tide.

The V-shaped Saxon fish trap at Chelsea, seen at low tide. Thames kayakers on the river in the background just appearing from under Battersea Bridge.

Another view of the V-shaped Saxon fish trap at Chelsea, upstream of Battersea Bridge. Still misty this morning, the sun had not yet appeared to burn off the cloud cover.

Distracting myself from *waves in the general direction of everything* by a stroll to Chelsea Creek and Foreshore to check on the wondrous Saxon fish trap. V-shaped, carbon dated to the reign of King Offa, 757- 796 CE. It’s comforting amid the madness to think how well this structure has survived.

Life forms can planet hop on asteroid debris – and survive Tiny life forms tucked into debris from an asteroid hit could catapult to other planets – including Earth – and survive, a new Johns Hopkins University study finds. The work demonstrates ...

'We have shown that it is possible for life to survive large-scale impact and ejection. What that means is that life can potentially move between planets. Maybe we’re Martians!' #TheSecretofLife

Global sea levels have been underestimated due to poor modelling, research suggests Analysis shows average levels are 30cm higher than thought, and up to 150cm in south-east Asia and Indo-Pacific

Meanwhile