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@RobGMacfarlane
This Giant Sequoia, the largest tree by volume in the world, now threatened by wildfire, was prob. alive when the Giant Pyramid at Giza was completed.
I dislike referring to it as "General Sherman"; can people tell me if it has any other names?
theguardian.com/us-news/2021/s…
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@RobGMacfarlane
Loweswater (Northwest Lake District) was a pure sky-mirror for a couple of days last week.
Everything doubled.
Photos by my Dad (@johntmacfarlane over on Instagram)
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@RobGMacfarlane
River––a film I wrote w/ the awesome director @jenpeedom, narrated by Willem Dafoe––premiered this week at Telluride Film Festival.
Trailer here: youtube.com/watch?v=efHe-V…
Happy that the first reviews really seem to get what we hoped to achieve in the film.
collider.com/river-document…
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@RobGMacfarlane
"Though we live in a world made of gifts, we find ourselves harnessed to institutions & an economy that relentlessly ask 'What more can we take from the Earth?'"
Robin Wall Kimmerer's great essay 'Returning the Gift', re-published by @humansandnature. Yes.
humansandnature.org/returning-the-…
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@RobGMacfarlane
Niche request: do any field-recordists/sound-recordists out there have good-quality recordings of the sound of moths' wings, or a moth's wings, fluttering?
Asking for a project.
(Told you it was niche).
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@RobGMacfarlane
"Slime mold can solve mazes in pursuit of a single oat flake &, later, can recall the path it took to reach it. More remarkably still, slime mold...doesn't age & it doesn't die."
From this superb essay on the *astonishing* world of slime molds/myxomycetes: orionmagazine.org/article/what-s…
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@RobGMacfarlane
Here's a short round-up of ways to help welcome & settle Afghan refugees arriving in the UK, with particular focus on the work of @Care4Calais.
Do share and/or reply with other suggestions of organisations or ways to help; I know I'd be glad to hear them.
theguardian.com/world/2021/aug…
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@RobGMacfarlane
Question: what was the last novel you read which left you feeling grief when a character or characters died?
Still so strange to experience, this magic trick that fiction can pull of causing us to fall into love, friendship and hate with beings of ink & paper.
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@RobGMacfarlane
My friend the writer Roger Deakin (1943-2006)––author of Waterlog, Wildwood & Notes from Walnut Tree Farm––died 15 years ago today, far too young.
His work still branches & ripples on in the world.
Returned today to what I wrote not long after his death: theguardian.com/books/2006/sep…
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@RobGMacfarlane
"Ice has a memory, and the colour of that memory is blue. It remembers in detail, and for a million years or more."
This is Utuqaq, a beautiful short film on ice's memoriousness & vulnerability, narrated in the Kalaallisut language of West Greenland.
emergencemagazine.org/film/utuqaq/
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@RobGMacfarlane
For those still somehow unclear on the issue, here it is one more time: directing racist & other kinds of abuse at @monisha_rajesh, @chimenesuleyman, @ProfSunnySingh & others for *criticising a book* is wholly, grossly unacceptable.
Here, read this 👇👇
theguardian.com/books/2021/aug…
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@RobGMacfarlane
"Big old trees are the keystone structures of forests on which many species depend...forked, twisted, lightning-struck, rotten [they] harbour the most life"
@GeorgeMonbiot on valuing "slow ecologies".
Send images/stories of gnarled old trees & their lives.
theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
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@RobGMacfarlane
In 10-day isolation, seeing Greece burn, thinking (again) about the convulsive global response to the COVID crisis, contrasted to the calamitously slack, slow global response to the climate crisis.
Can anyone point me to good work comparatively analysing the 2 modes of response?
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@RobGMacfarlane
Pretty huge if it passes; under a draft plan, the US Treasury Department would tax several of the biggest emitters of planet-heating pollution to pay for the climate crisis.
That's $500bn in "climate damages".
nytimes.com/2021/08/04/cli…
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@RobGMacfarlane
To young children, nature is full of doors — is nothing but doors, really — and they swing open at every step.
What we call landscape is to young children a wild compound of dream, spell & substance; place is somewhere they are in, not on.
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@RobGMacfarlane
On the far point of the Pembrokeshire headland you can see here, someone had left a purple plastic bag of dog-shit.
Why wd you both be drawn to walk to that place...& content to leave that behind?
I carried it away, wished I hadn't had to.
How best to solve the shit-bag problem?
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@RobGMacfarlane
“The resilience of aquatic seed banks is phenomenal. Given the right conditions, seeds that have been underground for decades can germinate."
Great story on how re-wetting of dried-up "ghost ponds" can lead to return of rare plant species, buried in mud.
theguardian.com/environment/20…
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@RobGMacfarlane
Hello — just to say that I’m @laurenlaverne’s Castaway on today’s edition of Desert Island Discs, going out 11am, @BBCRadio4.
I think I prefer rocky islands to sandy ones.
Islands of light are pretty cool too.
View from the Pembrokeshire cliffs last night.
bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00…
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@RobGMacfarlane
Superb essay dismantling the “biological deserts fallacy”; the perception that cities are barren of wildlife/nature.
I’ve spent years arguing against this idea.
Tell me the wildlife of your city/town.
Mine, Cambridge: peregrines, bee orchids, grass snakes…e360.yale.edu/features/urban…
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@RobGMacfarlane
Hot weather makes open water even more appealing, but swimming comes with risks.
The @outdoorswimming has put together a vital list of ten top tips for safe summer swimming.
Please do read & share if so inclined.
#BEWATERAWARE
outdoorswimmingsociety.com/10-tips-for-su…
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@RobGMacfarlane
Hello -- just to say that, in case you'd be interested to listen in, I'll be the castaway on Desert Island Discs this coming Sunday.
Guesses at the 8 tracks, book & luxury welcome (but I can neither confirm nor deny, etc...).
@laurenlaverne was the best!
bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00…
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@RobGMacfarlane
“The future is not in oil,” Greenland’s government said, “The future belongs to renewable energy.”
Courageous & exemplary decision, just out, by GL’s government to abandon all future oil exploration (despite c. 18bn barrels of oil under west coast alone). bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
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@RobGMacfarlane
Mesmerised to watch this female golden-ringed dragonfly—longest of UK’s dragonflies; lover of moorlands & peat-bogs—laying her eggs, one by one, in this delicate dipping dance.
Stained-glass lacing of her wings, beautiful banding of her body.
A perfectly engineered micro-craft.
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@RobGMacfarlane
“Rivers are our life support system but we are literally pouring shit into them...you’d think keeping water clean would be job number one? But this government can’t even do that.”
@GeorgeMonbiot & @FrannyArmstrong’s must-watch Rivercide screens tonight. 👇
theguardian.com/environment/20…
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@RobGMacfarlane
Very cool news: first baby beaver (“kit”) born in Exmoor since…a few years after Shakespeare died.
Now around six weeks old.
If it gets a name, I hope it’s better than his mother’s, “named ‘Grylls’ for her survival instincts.” bbc.com/news/uk-englan…
@RobGMacfarlane
Books: Is A River Alive? (WIP) Underland, The Lost Words, The Old Ways, etc. | Films: River, Mountain, Upstream | Nature, climate, people | Prof @Cambridge_uni