it was the julia version, 1.9.0 is brokey

as reported at conda-forge/julia-feedstock#253 the latest release of julia (1.9.0) is brokey, don't use it (put !=1.9.0 in the environment file)

environment.yml

@@ -46,7 +46,7 @@ dependencies:
   - conda-forge::openbabel >= 3
 
 # general-purpose external software tools
-  - conda-forge::julia>=1.8.5
+  - conda-forge::julia>=1.8.5,!=1.9.0
   - conda-forge::pyjulia >=0.6
 
 # Python tools