de-extinction deconstructed

I have some sympathy for the idea of repopulating the Arctic tundra with big beasts to restore its natural ecosystem functions, although I'm not sure that elephants dressed up as mammoths are the most cost-efficient way to do this. By contrast, I was quite a bit annoyed by the recent hype over the claimed "de-extinction" of the dire wolf, which won the world's attention simply because there was footage of cute puppies.

So I've tried to write up a reasonably balanced account of the recent news from the de-extinction people, and I found that they are doing some collateral good work eg in elephant conservation and in funding genome research, but the bottom line is that I'm not convinced.

My feature is out now:

Can extinction be reversed?

Current Biology Volume 35, Issue 16, 18 August 2025, Pages R783-R785

Restricted access to full text and PDF download
(will become open access one year after publication)

Magic link for free access
(first seven weeks only)

See also my new Mastodon thread where I will highlight all this year's CB features.

My mastodon posts are also mirrored on Bluesky (starting 22.2.2025), but for this purpose I have to post them again, outside of the thread. (I think threads only transfer if the first post was transferred, so once I start a new thread it should work.)

Last year's thread is here .

The South Island giant moa (Dinornis robustus) is among the species that the company Colossal is planning to recreate. (Photo: York Museums Trust staff/Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).)

carbon ring hooked up

I don't write about real chemistry very often these days, but it's always great to hear about the creative (supra)molecular architectures and new allotropes of carbon developed in Harry Anderson's lab here in Oxford. The latest news from his lab, published in Science magazine this week, is the first molecular carbon ring stable enough to be investigated in solution by normal spectroscopy methods. Previous carbon rings were produced by atom manipulation on solid surfaces, a method requiring extremely low temperatures (see here and here).

I wrote a news story for Chemistry World about this new work, which is out now:

Ring of pure carbon stabilised by its catenane connections

Chemistry World 15.8.2025

I believe it is freely accessible as long as you haven't used up your monthly quota of free articles from CW.

The three macrocycles helped to stabilise the C48 molecule, allowing the first isolation in solution of this class of molecule. Image source: © Yueze Gao et al 2025

colours of time

Some thoughts on

La venue de l'avenir
Cédric Klapisch
France 2025
starring Suzanne Lindon, Cécile de France ...
released in Germany 14.8.2025

I was lucky to catch a subtitled preview of this latest oeuvre by Klapisch in a Düsseldorf cinema this week. The advance info wasn't very clear so I was expecting something family-heavy like Ce qui nous lie (Back to Burgundy). It turned out to be a much broader and more ambitious film that serves an astonishing number of my obsessions including family history,old photos, the handover of visual guide culture from sculpture and painting to photography and film (see the biographies of Renoir father and son), Paris in the Belle Epoque, as well as the music of Pomme (who plays a very cute supporting role that has nothing whatsoever to do with the story).

So the central and ancestral character is Adele (Suzanne Lindon), born in 1873 (which places her in the generation of my great-grandparents, six of whom were born before and two after that year). Her house in rural Normandy hasn't been opened since 1944, but now the local council wants to put up a shopping centre and a massive parking lot in its place, so Adele's 30 or so living descendants are convened to come to an agreement regarding the property. The four family delegates sent to the location discover lots of old photos inside as well as letters and an impressionist painting, so are able to piece together the life story of Adele, which is very cleverly (and very Klapisch-ly) interspersed with the present day lives of the descendants. (There are probably similarities with Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris, which I need to rewatch some time, to compare and contrast.)

Although I prefer the untranslatable word play of the original title (literally: the arrival of the future, which reflects all that excitement about modernity in the period), the German and English titles (Colours of time / Farben der Zeit) have a justification in referring to the colours, as those are obviously of prime importance in impressionist art, and the flashbacks are remarkably colourful even when they are pegged to monochrome photos.

There is a lot of art in the film, with the Musée d'orsay at Paris, the Musée d'art moderne André Malraux at Le Havre and Monet's garden all playing significant parts.

Official poster design. The red dress serves as a reminder that Paris in 1894 was just as colourful as today's world.

Monet's painting Impression, Soleil levant plays a role in the film.

NB the film was shown at Cannes this year but the Grauniad hasn't reviewed it?! Shocking.

PS: I have been following Klapisch's films on and off ever since Chacun cherche son chat (When the cat's away) was shown at the Phoenix Picturehouse in Oxford, back in 1996 - those were the days when weird little French films still got a UK release! Strangely, I haven't reviewed any of those that I saw since then, so I should at least list them if only to jog my memory:

• 1996 Chacun cherche son chat
• 1996 Un air de famille (I hated that one, and I have avoided the Jaoui/Bacri comedies ever since)
• 2002 L'auberge espagnole (I rewatch this at least once every 10 years when a sequel comes out)
• 2005 Poupees russes (sequel to Auberge espagnole)
• 2008 Paris
• 2011 Ma part du gateau
• 2013 Casse-tetes chinois (Auberge part 3)
• 2017 Ce qui nous lie
• 2025 La venue de l'avenir

29 street libraries

Two years ago, I wrote a blog entry about the 23 street libraries set up within the city limits of Düsseldorf. I embarked on a quest to visit them all, but didn't quite make it to Knittkuhl, which is not only remote but gloriously unconnected to the tram system. So that's 22 visited (marked in bold below).

This month, I checked the official website and discovered a whole bunch of new ones, including some in faraway parts of the city, so that will be another struggle.

If I have got my ducks in a row, there are new ones in Flingern, Garath, Heerdt, Lohausen, Oberbilk, and Rath, so that should make 29 overall. I did a small cycle trip to the new ones in Oberbilk and Flingern (Dorotheenplatz) already, bringing me to 24/29), but the others will need some strategic planning. This way, I will get to know all parts of the city, eventually!

City Centre:

• Mannesmannufer, next to KIT (Kunst im Tunnel), photo below
• Kö-Bogen

  Angermund (way out north, behind the airport!):

• Kreuzung Angermunder Straße, In den Blamüsen und Kirchweg

  Benrath:

• Marktplatz

  Bilk:

• Friedensplätzchen - this one is my local and the one that got me hooked. Both the range of offerings and the turnover rate are amazing. Without exaggeration, it's worth visiting every day.

  Derendorf and Pempelfort (north of the city centre) - these five are lined up very neatly:

• Frankenplatz
• Roßstraße, intersection with Klever Straße/Jülicher Straße
• Maria-und-Josef-Otten-Platz (Marschallstraße/Blücherstraße)
• Rochusmarkt
• Berty-Albrecht-Park (near the centre of this lovely park which stretches a long way, more than 1 km)

  Flingern:

• Hermannsplatz near S-Bahn Flingern
• Dorotheenplatz (not far from Hermmansplatz, actually, but I'm not complaining. I'm sure the posh neighbourhoods of Flingern have lots of nice books to give away)

  Friedrichstadt:

• Fürstenplatz

  Garath (a suburb newly built in the 1960s, deep in the south, beyond Benrath even):

• Matthias-Erzberger-Straße/Carl-Severin-Straße

  Gerresheim:

• Apostelplatz
• Gerricusplatz (historic centre of the town, worth visiting)
• „Roter Platz“ on the corner Hatzfeld- and Heyestraße, near S-Bahn station

  Grafenberg:

• Staufenplatz near eponymous tram station

  Heerdt (out west, on the wrong side of the river, beyond Oberkassel):

• Nikolaus-Knopp-Platz

  Kaiserswerth:

• Markt

  Knittkuhl (way out east, not served by the otherwise perfect tram system!):

• In der Flieth

  Lohausen:

• Alte Flughafenstraße/Niederrheinstraße (between the airport and the river, so not on the side from which one would normally approach the airport with the S11 or regional express trains)

  Oberbilk:

• Oberbilker Markt (I knew the address as a horrid intersection of two major roads, but now discovered there is also a nice little square in one of the corners, which is where the street library is).

  Oberkassel:

• Werner-Pfingst-Platz

  Rath:

• Rather Kirchplatz (not on my map, but must be near one of the two churches at Rath, both of which are near the S Bahn station)

  Volmerswerth:

• Volmerswerther Straße (next to the loop where the tram turns around)

  Wersten:

• Liebfrauenstraße
• Ickerswarder Straße Ecke Kölner Landstraße

  Zooviertel:

• Brehmplatz

Here is a recent photo I took of oldest of them all, on the river promenade near KIT (Kunst im Tunnel), showing that these are really popular. There are shelves on three sides, and it can happen that all three are occupied by people browsing:

Note that you can find books in all sorts of languages as well. On my first visit to the one at Oberbilk, I spotted at least five books in a language I really struggled to identify. After a while I spotted in one the section which gave the original title and the equivalent of translated to "language in question" and it said Shqip, so based on the "Skipetaren" in the title of a novel I read as a child, I guessed Albanian.

PS The things I discovered in these street libraries include:

• Die Meistergeige
• Ullsteinroman
• two books with kitchen songs
• High times
• the travelling hornplayer
• ... and lots of vintage rororo paperbacks - I collect the ones with the cloth around the spine - they are older than I am. Later reprints appeared without the cloth spine.

Street libraries elsewhere:

• Münster
• Strasbourg

oceans acidified

I've covered ocean acidification many years ago, when it was beginning to emerge as a threat to corals and other calcifying sea organisms, and I've written about the planetary boundary concept (most recently, when chemical pollution was found to have exceeded the boundary).

Thus the new research suggesting that ocean adicification is also outside the planetary boundary (as the seventh of the nine parameters in the original planetary boundary paper) presented a good opportunity to visit both issues in one go.

My feature is out now:

Oceans acidified beyond boundary

Current Biology Volume 35, Issue 15, 4 August 2025, Pages R739-R741

Restricted access to full text and PDF download
(will become open access one year after publication)

Magic link for free access
(first seven weeks only)

See also my new Mastodon thread where I will highlight all this year's CB features.

My mastodon posts are also mirrored on Bluesky (starting 22.2.2025), but for this purpose I have to post them again, outside of the thread. (I think threads only transfer if the first post was transferred, so once I start a new thread it should work.)

Last year's thread is here .

The cover image is not really related to my article, but to me it also symbolises the interaction between the oceans and the atmosphere, because: "Bluebottles or man-o'-war, cnidarians in the genus Physalia, use a gas-filled float and sail to catch the wind and sail the ocean surface."

Cover of Current Biology, vol. 35, issue 15, 2025.

on the origins of Femen

Some thoughts on

Oxana
France/Ukraine/Hungary 2025
Charlène Favier

The Ukrainian protest group Femen denounced the tyranny of Putin and Lukashenko long before it was fashionable, but has been widely ignored and belittled in the UK media. Even now, while everybody loves to hate Putin and love the Ukraine, we don't hear much about them. I have occasionally looked up their activities, if only because as a veteran of WNBRs, I have a cultural interest in naked protest activities, but without that, I wouldn't have heard anything about them in the last ten years.

So I was grateful to stumble over this biopic of Femen founder Oksana Shachko (1987-2018) and found it very enlightening in that it taught me a lot about the history of the organisation that I hadn't known.

In a nutshell, Shachko and two friends founded Femen in their home town of Khmelnytsky (western Ukraine) in 2008 to protest against the marketing of Ukraine as a destination for sex tourism. According to the film, a radio competition in New Zealand was about to send a man to Ukraine for a week's worth of free adventures with a local escort of his choice, and Femen's underwear protest succeeded in getting the trip cancelled. A year later, the activists moved to Kyiv and started using bare breasts as their main means of protest - and the space to write their slogans on.

They attempted protests in Belarus and in Russia as well, which led to violent persecution from the KGB. The three founding members fled to Paris to seek asylum there, and found that one of their members, Inna Shevchenko (who had joined the group in Kyiv in 2009), had set up a Femen training camp there and styled herself as the leader of the global Femen movement without consulting the founders (the film seems to suggest). Shachko returned to her career as an artist, combining the aesthetics of orthodox iconography with "blasphemic" content. The film sets glimpses of the last day of her life against flashbacks to her life in Femen.

All in all a very moving and tragic life story, and very timely too, as the issues haven't gone away. Released in Germany on July 24, 2025 (trailer). I don't have much hope for a UK release (therefore added it to the films not shown list), but would watch it again if it happened, if only because I had to put up with the dubbed dialogue in the German version.

Film poster for the release in Germany, X-Verleih.

PS: there's also a documentary with the real Oxana, called "Je suis Femen" (2014). Stop press, just found it on YouTube. This film gives the impression that as of 2014, the three founders were still ok with Inna Shevchenko's role as supreme leader. Separately, she talks about her art (in faltering French) here - and mentions that she left the Femen movement in 2015. This was filmed less than two weeks before she died.

Update 13.8.2025: My first attempt at catching the original version failed - it turned out that the cinema (in Germany) only had French or Ukrainian subtitles for it, and after it started running with the French ones, one of the five spectators complained. I'm sure the rest of us would have been fine, but the cinema insisted on switching to the dubbed version, so I left.