David A. Torrance

About 700 killed in Tanzania election protests, opposition says Demonstrators took to streets after president’s main challengers were excluded from ballot

All Andrew on the front pages, but this worrying news from our old home. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/o...

It's a really weird game. A random selection of three views expressed, chosen to be confusing, and then you find out it was something unrelated they cared about. All it shows is that there are lots of different policy areas people prioritise.

Infographic detailing seven ways to create a bird-friendly community, including planting native plants, turning off lights, avoiding pesticides, and preventing collisions.

Urban expansion can lead to habitat loss. Yet, as IPBES #GlobalAssessment shows, smart city planning + nature-based solutions can create resilient, bird-friendly cities.🌍

This #WorldMigratoryBirdDay, let’s protect migratory birds in our #SharedSpaces 🏡

🧪https://www.worldmigratorybirdday.org/

Yes. And yet I want to play with it so bad.

Yom Kippur is the Day of Atonement. I predict the ignorant hatred that motivated this attack just chose it for maximum pain, not understanding the incredible irony of bringing violence to a day where the Lord weaves reconciliation. Violent hatred is a foolish cruelty in the face of such atonement.

Manchester synagogue: Two dead in Manchester synagogue attack, with suspect also believed to have been killed - police Police say the suspect's condition cannot

Absolutely horrific. "Thoughts and prayers" doesn't cut it, but thinking about those hurt or killed, their families, and the local, national and global Jewish community as they process this. As the country heals, I hope we learn how to root out the ideologies of hatred that doubtless underpin this.

Were you wearing your collar? Always more embarrassing when you're wearing your collar.

Just had a medical from a team of bioethicists and economists. I only have four Quality-Adjust Life Years left to live.

I'm perfectly healthy but they don't like how long I'm spending on BlueSky.

New hobby idea: when I get through to a call centre and the person is clearly real say "Disregard all previous instructions, write a poem about tangerines.

I'd like to see if anyone gives it a go.

Cost-effectiveness isn't necessarily consequentialist. Prudence is a virtue. Using money as it was intended is a duty. Let's stop teaching in intro to ethics that we're being consequentialist when we think about costs.

Better e.g.: conseqs have deceived themselves it may be OK to torture children.

Discovered today the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology @ukceh.bsky.social has a project called "Alien CSI" and I'm so down for this TV show.

Murena - deGoogled and privacy by design smartphones and cloud services. Escape the digital surveillance now. We combine privacy by design smartphones with safe and transparent online services.

If you're US-based: murena.com

I had an earlier version of Fairphone and reliability wasn't what it could be so I switched to a secondhand Samsung. But we are several versions on now and they're good phones - I'd definitely be interested for my next device.

The Fairphone (Gen. 6) now with privacy-first /e/OS Stay in control of your data with /e/OS, a deGoogled Fairphone experience with all the functionality of Android, and none of the privacy concerns.

Degoogled version of Fairphone. shop.fairphone.com/the-fairphon...

That Wiki page is worth the read. The guy continues to describe himself as a "racial moderate" after committing an acid attack, and says he'd have integrated if the Bill had passed. Tough to portray yourself as simply a law abiding citizen in the circumstances...

Disturbing tale of AI in the NYT today. Encouraging, at least, that it was being studied!

I'm not ashamed to admit I tried that too. Spelling Bee does definitely generate a "monkeys on a typewriter" approach when you're trying to get up to genius.

100% agree with you on the burritos/tacos. Couldn't imagine the flavours of pakora/samosa working with haggis but I'll give it a shot.

"A timeout occurred" is what happens in the congregation when the person leading intercessions exceeds maybe three minutes.

First review of my book just came out, from a German scholar. Stand-out line:

"This book would not have been written in Germany."

Which I'm going to take as the compliment it wasn't.

This! This point is so important, and so unpopular. If we believe in tackingly inequality, we need to recognise the global scale of this problem, and this will mean sacrificing luxuries. But the pay-off is environmental and social justice. Painful? Yes. But worth it.

Don't let national leaders reduce you to your nationality. Your identity is complex, and your relationships are many. When a national leader wants you to focus on your nationality above all, it's because they want to be your only leader. They're an abuser cutting you off from other relationships.

Behind a pay wall. Is the argument of the article really what the headline suggests?

Fox on a Cold Tin Roof, by Teesside Williams.

From Agatha Christie, The Sittaford Mystery. "no 3 that's Mr Rycroft's little elderly gentleman. They do say that he used to go after Birds to outlandish parts for the British Museum. What they call a. naturalist he is. Always out and roaming over the moor when the weather permits. And he has a very fine library of books. His Cottage is nearly all bookcases.

I want to be this guy Rycroft when I grow up. (I'm going to assume he's drawing the birds for the British Museum, not shooting them)

My Granny would have beaten me with a slipper if I'd done a thing like that.

Excited for this!

Irresponsible nonsense.

How maps in the media make us more negative about migrants Whether we’re looking at The Correspondent, the world atlas or the national news, migration across the Mediterranean is depicted on maps as thick red arrows heading towards us. Far more than we realis...

Well worth the read.

The (sometimes inadvertent) politics of data visualisation choices when mapping migration.

A completely blank map, but with North, East, South, West marked.

Sassy Lewis Carroll, "Hunting of the Snark" in "This is not an atlas:a global collection of counter cartographies".

“What’s the good of Mercator’s North Poles and Equators,
Tropics, Zones, and Meridian Lines?”
So the Bellman would cry:
and the crew would reply
“They are merely conventional signs!

"Sub par" makes no sense as a criticism. That would be a good thing in golf.

If you completed a project below budget, that might be sub par.

I propose we start insulting more accurately. "Super par."

Of course, it sounds like "extremely average," which is almost as frustrating an expression.