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robgmacfarlane.bsky.social
Books: Is A River Alive? (May ‘25), Underland, The Lost Words, The Old Ways etc | Films: River, Mountain, Upstream | Music: The Moon Also Rises, Lost In The Cedar Wood, etc Nature, climate, people. Prof at Cambridge. https://linktr.ee/robmacfarlane
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Great to see spine-stiffening example of @harvard.edu; refusal to bow to Trump's demands for staggering federal interference. Others following suit. Assault on universities = * assault on public purpose of education * on freedom of thought * on life-saving research www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...

submitted 16 hours ago • 1 comment

A 450-yo oak is felled without permission by a Toby Carvery (don’t eat there), who falsely claimed it was "dead". A tree alive when The Gunpowder Plot was hatched, which supports a web of 2000+ species, is in pieces. Legal protection for heritage trees needed. enfielddispatch.co.uk/toby-carvery...

submitted 16 hours ago • 31 comments

I cannot convey enough how grateful I am to the millions of you all supporting us with your time, resources, and energy. Your support has allowed us to rally people together at record scale to organize their communities. All with an average donation of $21. THANK YOU & Pa’lante 🙏🏽♥️

submitted 16 hours ago • 1140 comments

“Water is also being used as a weapon of war. In early March, a week after stopping any food…from getting into Gaza, Israel cut off the electricity supply to Gaza’s main operational desalination plant. The situation now could not be more desperate. ‘Gaza is a killing field’.”

submitted 2 days ago • 2 comments

It's making me very happy to see American readers & reviewers taking Nan Shepherd's slender, glittering classic of mountain literature, The Living Mountain, to their hearts. The first US ever edition is out this month, some 80 years after Nan wrote it. www.nytimes.com/2025/04/06/b...

submitted 7 days ago • 12 comments

Hello—I’m trying to help heal a river: the wild, spectacular Mutehekau Shipu in Nitassinan/Quebec. We're raising funds to clean up a junk-heap we found c.100 miles up the system. Stove, fridge, oil drums...gah. Images of river + junk below. Details & fundraiser here: www.gofundme.com/f/mutehekau-...

submitted 7 days ago • 0 comments

this is a staggering amount of money to build camps—suggesting that building & running a gulag will be the primary function of the otherwise gutted Trump-state in last fiscal yr: "D.H.S. allocated about $3.4 billion for the entire custody operation overseen by ICE" www.nytimes.com/2025/04/07/u...

submitted 8 days ago • 287 comments

An Teallach horseshoe today. Nine glittering hours on 400-million-year-old sandstone. White-tailed eagle riding the thermals; ptarmigan on quartzite; raven gleaming silver. Blue ridgelines receding; next stop Newfoundland for the eye looking westwards. But June conditions in April; where is winter?

submitted 9 days ago • 15 comments

ChatGPT ass presidency

submitted 11 days ago • 717 comments

“Grief, like an apple tree, grows crooked not straight.” Each year I mark the day when this little apple tree first flowers, & remember my friend the writer Roger Deakin, who brought it back as a pip from Kazakhstan, then died soon after. Full story here: emergencemagazine.org/essay/east-t...

submitted 12 days ago • 19 comments

Recently taught this, one of Hopkins’ so-called “Terrible” or “Desolation” sonnets. An astonishing, shattering poem; the self splitting & re-splitting; self-invigilating, self-flagellating. A syntax of contortion & depression; words eliding, consuming—until, oh, that wild (“betweenpie”!) ending…

submitted 17 days ago • 6 comments

In the 1960s Switzerland had some of Europe's filthiest waterbodies. Now its cities boast near-pristine rivers & lakes: "We are united by a love of water". Lessons to learn here, about building emotional connection to water as well as infrastructure investment. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

submitted 17 days ago • 16 comments

Hello US readers––we've made a special limited edition hardback of my new book Is A River Alive? It’s only available to pre-order from 60 US indie bookstores & comes with a 48-page @fieldnotesbrand.bsky.social "river" notebook. Artwork by the great Stanley Donwood! Orderable here: isariveralive.com

submitted 17 days ago • 13 comments

Happy publication day to @danzep.bsky.social for this banger of a book. It's funny & moving & generously various in its voices –– a journey after dark in two senses.

submitted 19 days ago • 1 comment

Just out: figures for sewage dumping in England for 2024. * 3.61 million hrs of sewage released. * That's c. 412 years of sewage. * First yr all 15,000 CSOs were monitored. £85bn paid out to shareholders since privatisation = underfunded, collapsing infrastructure. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

submitted 19 days ago • 5 comments

Hamdan Ballal, one of the directors of the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land, has been assaulted & injured by settlers at his home in the West Bank & arrested by the IDF. No trace of him since. The vengeance is clear. Do not let Hamdan disappear. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/m...

submitted 22 days ago • 3 comments

In a targeted attack on his car, Israel has killed Al-Jazeera's Hossam Shabat, who was only 23 years old and was one of the last remaining journalists in Gaza. There are no words.

submitted 22 days ago • 40 comments