3's for luck 🌳🎙️🖼️

Dear reader, it's been a minute, and what a jumbo edition do I have in store for you. With September almost over, the seasonal transition is definitely bestowing many gifts on us. But first, happy birthday to me again 🎉 A day is not enough, so I want to make birth"days" birthweeks or even birthmonths. And if you make it a whole birthyear... you will celebrate every day until the end of time.

I have many announcements and celebrations, and if you are caught up with The A Level Biologist Podcasts you will already have a clue 🎙️ The first of those is on topic - Happy 4 years of the podcast! What started as an experiment inspired by interesting people I'd worked with in the past turned out to be a bona fide thing.

And what better present than LinkedIn introducing Spotify embedding? 🔥 I love, love, love it. Look how easy it is now to listen straight from the newsletter. Have you heard Dr. Marios Kyriazis in our latest episode? It is good.

I will take this opportunity to thank again all special guests over the seasons, with whom I have shared the most interesting topics of our time in science, tech, society and more. The stars are:

Season 1

😷 Working as an NHS Dentist with Mariana Visan (listen here)

🧪 Indefinite Health with Dr. Aubrey de Grey (listen here)

♀️ Intimate Bio Design with Giulia Tomasello (listen here)

🕵️♂️ Scottish Science Secret Agent Ian I. (listen here)

🎶 Science Sing-along with John Hinton (listen here)

🚣♀️ Cambridge Chat with Saba Shirvani, PhD (listen here)

❤️ Putting the Life in Life Science with Toby (listen here)

Season 2

🐳 Lucie's Reef Relief with Lucie Guirkinger (listen here)

💰 Shelby's Venture Adventure with Dr. Shelby (listen here)

🧬 Hilary's Hilarious Science History with Hilary Tunnicliffe (listen here)

🧠 Life Science Consulting with Dr. Íris Luz Batalha (listen here)

🌿 Herbs to Fight PMS with Lauren Lee & Dr. Matthew Crane (listen here)

Season 3

🤖 PhD Premiere: AI & Mental Health with Dr. Katarzyna (Kasia) Kożdoń (listen here)

🎨 How to Freelance Scientific Illustrate with Swedish Entrepreneur Dr. Daria Chrobok (listen here)

📚 Dodging Uni to Help Students Study Better in London with Mohammad Awais (listen here)

📰 The Exclusive Story of the NHS Dentist Who Risked Her Job to Secure Govt U-turn on Vaccine Mandate with Mariana Visan (listen here)

And with podcast celebrations to one side, we turn to things close to home. Small mammals, plants inside and out, birds, insects and arachnids.

Sometimes, a shadow is the mirror.

That is one straight spine on this bipedal squirrel. Truly adorable, and I invite you to spend some time with this squirrel in preparation for the arachnids, for pictures I did take.

(P.S.: I am obsessed with Squirrels at the window on YouTube. You have to!)

Inside, across the chilli plants, this spider built an impressive web where it trapped countless hapless small flies which, no doubt, had just started their ill-fated lives, hopelessly flapping against the hard window. Impressive web, I say, as I lament the cleaning that still I will have to do.

After catching a more substantial moth a couple of days later, I found it resting and digesting under a leaf. And it felt peaceful.

I had noticed something else. It only has 7 legs.

If you think that's sad/endearing/interesting, you need to see this other one, full of palps (I think) and dashed hopes, sitting at an impressive... 5 legs.

"Still more than you!!", he'd spew, lifting one of the remaining legs, and scurrying away, looking forward to the next life.

Further outside, the heaven trees in their full glory. I guesstimated their seeds at several million. This is a factory, a production facility.

Too beautiful to be found on Earth. I think if you pick one, it will bring you luck in whatever you are about to do. Works especially well for parking tickets.

And this brings us to a series of recent pictures, and my next announcement 🎉

I have entered my first photography competition: The Wildlife Photography Awards 2023 from BBC Wildlife Magazine! 🖼️🥳 I am so happy about it, even though I had to spend many hours finding pictures, scouring folders to find dates, using apps to identify insects, plants and fungi... And realising, after submitting tens of entries, that I did not upload full size photos. I find it quite funny. My younger self would be crushed.

That's why enjoying the process is important, friends 🙂 But on the off chance that any entry is preselected and goes to public vote, you bet I will update you.

And that brings me to the last announcement. Some of you (liking and commenting on newsletters!) already know about this, and have been taking part in shaping it up.

I am launching a nature photography line of products for you to purchase 🎉 Our preliminary survey indicated that you prefer framed prints, greeting cards and digital downloads best, with most of the photo subjects such as landscapes, insects, flowers and small animals.

The tea rose pictured above was a test order for me to double check supplier quality - it came out better than I expected! I also ordered a greeting card of the San Pellegrino river, and it was so good and usable that I mailed it to my grandma for her 79th birthday.

ChatGPT, of course, had something to say. I actually used its simple workflow, since I am not a professional in this space, and it helped a lot with the survey, curation of photos, etc. It also suggested using platforms like Etsy, Squarespace and Shopify, but in my experiments so far I have not been pleased with the outcome, so that is a work in progress.

I want it to come out fine. And on that fine note, I wrap up this edition. Jumbo I said, jumbo I delivered ✌️

Have a stellar season!