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• Post #4309683

  RE: https://kolektiva.social/@Herbivore/117018959729246148 About time. Yet another example of how we treat magical sentient creatures with whom we share this planet. So utterly different from the vertebrate brains we think of as possessing (differing degrees of) sentience and intelligence. Thomas Nagel speculated about what it must be like to be a bat - how much more intriguing to try to imagine what it's like to be an octopus!!

• Post #4214047

  Magical discoveries: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-02312-y?utm_source=Live+Audience&utm_campaign=ab8567a05f-nature-briefing-daily-20260729&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-33f35e09ea-49717696

• Post #4202388

  As Oscar Wilde famously said: "I can resist anything but temptation". Three books currently on the go ATM - dare I risk another? https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/jul/29/alive-by-melanie-challenger-review-a-maverick-study-of-what-it-means-to-have-a-body

• Post #4112855

  Someone correct me if I am wrong. Increasingly I am hearing that we can simply aim for "Net Zero" as though as long as we stop emitting greenhouse gases everything will be fine. As I see it, the first problem with this is that climate forcing will continue for centuries with the CO2 already there - it doesn't simply stop. The second it that when a chaotic system like global weather is perturbed it will settle into a different stable state even if the perturbation is removed. 1/2

• Post #4033404

  At my age I can afford to be mildly amused (or irritated depending on context) by age verification by a staff member at supermarket checkouts. At my age I'm furious that I might be required to have my age verified by a commercial organisation, my details held on a (quite likely insecure) database "to protect the children". The emphasis must be on forcing tech giants to clean up their act, not on compulsory age checks for everyone.

• Post #3966959

  "Astronomers are deeply worried" - the understatement of the year. This is a dreadful escalation of the pollution of low-earth orbit with satellites - this one worse by far. Environmentally damaging (animals and plants that need darkness), polluting the dark skies needed for astronomy and once again tech bros messing up the planet for their own selfish ends. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-02218-9?utm_source=Live+Audience&utm_campaign=7558629e58-nature-briefing-daily-20...

• Post #3816548

  At last. https://www.irishtimes.com/world/us/2026/07/14/writer-e-jean-carroll-receives-563-million-owed-by-trump-in-sex-abuse-case/

• Post #3529724

  RE: https://mas.to/@therightarticle/116848783162226925 This is absolutely shocking. Keir Starmer spinelessly acquiescing when bullied by Trump and his administration. And the cost of the "deal" to be borne by the sick and disabled.

• Post #3314969

  I was looking for some good news to brighten up a grey and soggy morning and, hey presto - it arrived: "It was understood the far-right activist, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, was stopped and had his phones seized under section 3 of the Counter-Terrorism Border Security Act 2019." https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/jun/13/tommy-robinson-detained-at-heathrow-under-counter-terrorism-laws

• Post #3308266

  On a day like today it's worth remembering Dorothy Parker : "I hate almost all rich people, but I think I’d be darling at it. At the moment, however, I like to think of Maurice Baring’s remark: “If you would know what the Lord God thinks of money, you have only to look at those to whom he gives it.” I realize that’s not much help when the wolf comes scratching at the door, but it’s a comfort."

• Post #2479933

  So Starmer seems safe (for now) only because his potential challengers are hated even more than he is? There's nobody even half decent waiting in the wings, is there?

• Post #2324809

  Three good things today : A comment on a book (thank you @artemis) that took me to a review by Annie Wright and dawning realisation Thirteen miles of cycling, on which ride I met An otter in the middle of the road.

• Post #2324808

  "Way back in 2020, the late great David Graeber laid it out: "The Labour Party under Keir Starmer will abandon its core idealism and principles and won't even gain tactical advantage. It will be a party which gives no one a reason to vote for it, and no one will, in fact, vote for it." Mike Small continues the analysis of the political events of the past few days (with particular reference to the Celtic nations). There's a lot to celebrate. https://...

• Post #2324806

  RE: https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/116546837122553408 Oh yes please. Bring on the anarchist piano!!

• Post #2262254

  "The media in Britain is a disgrace" Indeed it is. https://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2026/05/03/smearing-zack-polanski/

• Post #2243448

  If there is one REALLY depressing outcome from the English local authority and mayoral elections that have just been held, it is that I am going to see a great deal more of that grinning fatuous frog face on my screens now. It is more than anyone ought to be asked to tolerate. Bah!

• Post #2061419

  Outside the back door, the fig that I planted a dozen or more years ago received a severe pruning at my hands this year. As a consequence (?), this year it is absolutely covered in tiny little figs that will mature this summer. I must plan what to do to use them all!

• Post #2056816

  Leakey's second hand bookshop in Inverness. The largest second hand bookshop in Scotland.

• Post #1891175

  As I watch the behavior of the leaders of the US and more often than not, the UK, I am reminded of the words of Hannah Arendt, someone who saw more barbarism than most, and who recognised its root causes.

• Post #1507002

  I do not, and will probably never, believe that individuals and organisations that donate money to politicians and their parties do it out of the goodness of their hearts. They expect (and get) something in return. Being able to "buy" politicians like that runs completely counter to the principles of democracy. It has to end. [edited: I definitively do not mean small individual subscriptions or donations bu only those above a certain threshold - say £10,000]

• Post #1364699

  As Mike Small points out: “... there is nothing moral about doing a deal with a neo-fascist party that you point out, quite rightly, is deeply racist.“ If Scottish Labour (the branch office) could ever, in recent years, lay claim to represent ALL the people of SCOTLAND, that claim is well and truly dead. As with head office, the desire to win power trumps all else. A deal with racist reform? Moral? It ought to be the end of any claim to be fit to govern. https://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2026/04...

• Post #1182855

  Even more relevant today than when the words were written by Franklin D. Roosevelt for his second inaugural address. I can't imagine such sentiments from the mind of Donald Trump... <Edited> Not, as I had misremembered, on the walls of the Scottish Parliament building...

• Post #1150364

  Given the (to my eyes) astronomical sums involved, this is long overdue: "Critics ask how politics would be funded if private money was curtailed, but here, too, there are options. Spending limits, ridiculously inflated by the last Conservative government, can be radically reduced. Small donations could be match-funded. Public funding for parties, long a taboo, could be revisited." https://www.thenewworld.co.uk/peter-geoghegan-super-rich-donors-are-distorting-uk-politics-why-...

• Post #1129682

  If any image comes to define the reign of Donald Trump, then it will be that utterly distasteful one of himself as a Christ-like figure. His downfall can't come soon enough and I hope that particular image hastens it. The 25th Amendment, anyone? Now?

• Post #1036333

  Long past time for the UK to grow up and decline to have any relationship, special or otherwise, with Trump and his administration. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/apr/03/relationship-with-trump-may-be-beyond-repair-keir-starmer-told

• Post #1030417

  A sorry reflection on politics generally and particularly in the UK: "We live in an era of polarisation and grift, of blatant lying and blaming institutions. But the British only got here by passing such milestones as the Brexit vote of 2016, in which yet another elite debacle turned into a long and bloody national breakdown that set neighbours and workmates and families against each other. And for what?" https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/apr/09/ten-years-brexit-u...

• Post #1021854

  LLMs are poisoning the knowledge base that has been painstakingly accumulated over the course of human history. We will, if this is allowed to continue, find that we have "destroyed the Library of Alexandria" once again. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-01100-y?utm_source=Live+Audience&utm_campaign=4b50fd2341-nature-briefing-daily-20260408&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-33f35e09ea-49717696

• Post #1019976

  Of all the outcomes I had anticipated, this one escaped my notice - that the US would agree a ceasefire that leaves them in a weaker position than before they began this unnecessary and Ill-advised war. All the loss of life, the consolidation of Iran's position against the "Great Satan", the cost to the US in arms, personnel, embassies and other real estate in the area and reputation - all for nothing. Ranks with Suez as a humiliation if I read it correctly.

• Post #909013

  Roll on the demise of this ill-starred "union". The past is a different land; we must look to a different and brighter future, imagine it into being: “...the assumptions about the conventional roles of the Labour and Conservative parties are long gone, as is the respect for the Royal family, who are now routinely heckled in public in the aftermath of Prince Andrew’s disgrace, in a way that would have been unthinkable only a year ago." https://bellacaledonia.org.uk/20...

• Post #902513

  When we moved into this house seventeen years ago, I planted a camellia outside the bedroom window. It has take a long while to bloom as freely as it is doing in 2026,but it has been worth the wait!!