The Gulls are back in town.

Seven dead puffins on the beach this morning. They were caught by the recent storms and have become exhausted and drowned. The storms have been an absolute  disaster for the local bird life :https://insideecology.com/2026/02/20/mass-death-of-seabirds-across-uk-and-europe-following-winter-storms-underlines-fragility-of-populations/  The farmers son will be along soon to bury them.

The Gulls don't venture far from shore and haven't suffered in the storms. In fact they're back to patrolling the town as if it's their own. A large specimen looks disapprovingly at us from a pile of lobster creels by the harbour. From the noise they're making it can be assumed that the seasons are changing.

At the old abbey down by the river  there are more aconites coming into bloom. According to the church elder this is set to be a bumper year for wild flowers. He says he hasn't seen the snowdrops grow rampant like this since he was a wee bairn in 1945.  Scottish village conversation is punctuated with gloriously imprecise 'factoids' like this. 

The locals claim the tree at the abbey  is 800 years old. The National Trust takes a more 'detached' view of its date.

Voting finishes today in the elections for the new university Chancellor. We'll know the results tomorrow. Our betting is that this candidate will prove to be the winner: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4VP9J95y6M&t=4s  The campaign was conducted with old fashioned ( might you consider voting for me ?) courtesy and all of the candidates were worthy of the job.

The lady who cuts 'The Fonts' hair has had one of the two Cordyline plants at the front door of her studio stolen. She blames the students. In a small university town things that go  'missing' on a Saturday night often re-appear on a Sunday. Sobriety does that.

We see a poster advertising a spoof Nobel Peace Prize ceremony that's being run by some Scandinavian students.  Until recently the Peace Prize was a dourly unexciting affair that would be hard to parody. Times have changed.

There is a warmth to this piece of writing. Watching the Olympics in Ukraine :https://snyder.substack.com/p/watching-the-olympics-in-ukraine

Animal conversations:https://www.popsci.com/environment/parrots-complex-language-conversations/

Difficult conversations :https://miniphilosophy.substack.com/p/conversations-like-sex-are-better

For a foreigner this was the clearest explanation I've seen :https://www.apricitas.io/p/the-supreme-court-ruled-against-trumps

One of those subjects that I need to spend a lot more time trying to understand.The US and China view AI in totally different ways :https://afraw.substack.com/p/an-ai-maxi-new-year  Long but worth the read. The AI New Year movie ( with the Pet Shop Boys background ) is worth watching :https://x.com/FrankYan2/status/2023257752017981446/video/1