Meg Taintor

BBC International Editor Jeremy Bowen has confirmed that the entire Al Jazeera team in Gaza City has been killed.

YouTube video by The Tom Lehrer Wisdom Channel Tom Lehrer - We Will All Go Together When We Go

In one final gift to us all, since news of his death broke, Tom Lehrer’s songs have been filling my timeline and making me laugh yet again. Legend. youtu.be/frAEmhqdLFs?...

WeTransfer is just quietly changing their TOC to give themselves “perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, transferable, sub-licensable license” to user content. So they can do whatever they want with your content and also sell it on. I can’t imagine that their user base will stay.

Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought. To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears. To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool. To be led by a thief is to offer up your most precious treasures to be stolen. To be led by a liar is to ask to be told lies. To be led by a tyrant is to sell yourself and those you live into slavery.

Octavia Butler was a prophet.

As the kitten recovers from her surgery, I’ve been playing the “Cat Sleep 🐱Relaxing & Calm Music 🌙” playlist from Spotify. We are in hour 20. My house has never been so peaceful.

A brindle kitten sleeps on a floral blanket. Her toebeans are on prominent display.

I know the world is chaotic but could you send some love and good thoughts to Eowyn this morning? Poor wee soul heading into surgery in just a few hours for her broken leg.

A timely reminder this morning: “the future is being made in the present, does not yet exist, and committing to it means a shrugging off of all the false prophets who as cynics, defeatists, and even optimists pretend that the future has already been decided.”

We are utterly dismayed by this news. The loss of ancient woodland to a development anywhere is shameful. To see it destroyed in a National Park beggars belief. This proposal contravenes multiple regulations and sparked vast opposition locally and nationally. 🧵 1/2

👉 buff.ly/OIP5tbf

As the spokesperson for Balloch and Haldane Community Council says, "This decision rides roughshod over the principles of community empowerment, environmental protection, and democratic accountability".

Loch Lomond Flamingo Land resort set for approval after appeal The theme park operator wants to build a £40m resort with a waterpark, monorail, hotel and restaurants.

Absolutely insane that Scottish Government is granting permission for this development. The community has strongly opposed this, as have the National Park (who unanimously refused the planning application), SEPA, the National Trust for Scotland, & the Woodland Trust.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

A round of hills soar above a pine forest and the loch. The water is flat and reflects the hills and sky.

Good morning from the Great Glen Way.

This is a great chance to join our team at @communitylandsc.bsky.social!

I cannot get over that picture of the activists celebrating the UK Supreme Court’s abhorrent decision today. Just so much joy over such a horrible cruel verdict. Trans liberation now.

Little Dog and Big Cat.

The absolute joy of discovering that I have a new 2 hour and 45 minute video from @contrapoints.bsky.social in my future.

I’ve been working my way through Parable of the Talents for months now. It’s great, but I keep having to walk away from it because it’s just too terrifying.

The next round of Primaries will be interesting. If we make it that long…

YouTube video by Mick MacNeil Castlebay School 2025 Freestyle

Incredibly proud of my former high school on the #IsleofBarra that lifted top prize in the Freestyle category of the schools pipe band championships for this amazing musical arrangement.

Delighted that @eilidhstrust.org.uk helped fund them to attend.

#musiceducation #youthmusic #outerhebrides

Exclusive | Draft of Trump Executive Order Aims to Eliminate Education Department Secretary Linda McMahon would be directed to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure” based on “the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law.”

Just restating the simple point: President lacks the constitutional authority to close a department created by Congress. Full stop. Both the creation and on-going funding of these Depts are LAWS not suggestions. This is criminal conduct. www.wsj.com/politics/pol... via @WSJ

Who Gets to Own Scotland? A new land-reform bill aims to unwind a long history of inequality. But centuries of feudalism are difficult to shake.

It’s weird when the details and debates of your work suddenly get brought to the attention of a new audience. The comments on this are really interesting.

Who Gets to Own Scotland? www.nytimes.com/2025/02/26/r...

So much this. There is no ethical way to participate in what Twitter has become. As a friend said to me recently, I feel like this is one of those times where nuance isn’t needed. Sometimes the right choice is easy: just don’t be part of a platform owned by and overrun with facists.

“We have an obligation to resist kings. We have an obligations to resist oligarchs. We will resist. We will prevail. We outnumber them.”

Easy to forget that last point. But we do. We absolutely do.

I lived in Maine while Janet Mills was State AG, and she inspiring then too, refusing multiple times to represent the state when then-Gov LePage’s administration’s policies had … questionable legality.

So grateful to her for her continued integrity - and for standing up for trans rights.

From the fednews community on Reddit Explore this post and more from the fednews community

Yesterday many thousands of federal employees were terminated. This is a Reddit thread for federal employees that got laid off.

I’m particularly grateful to @legaleagle.bsky.social and @lizdye.bsky.social these days for helping navigate through the absolute chaos. Still feeling powerless — but at least I’m coming to grips with the legal structures that are being tested right now.

This is a venn diagram showing how 69 Trump actions map onto domains covering: undermining democratic institutions; suppressing dissent and media; dismantling social protections; attacking science and education; destabilising the global order. A table version is available here https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1LZN7QnbSyFfUZJG8Sn1MWpK0VnfBtb0OSyZ1jxP3xBk/edit?usp=sharing

🧵"So this is how liberty dies..."

Trump’s first 3 weeks have been a relentless flood of actions. It's incredibly hard to keep up.

I’ve gone through 69 actions & mapped out the pattern - showing how they fall within 5 broad domains consistent with authoritarian states 1/9

Reading this book about grief and loss and the seductive pull of nihilism and the miraculous ability of ours to endure until we have the strength to fight again … reading all this during these horrible ugly days of Trump’s presidency was therapeutic and hard and luminous all at once.

I know that the tsunami is the point, that they are trying to overwhelm us with these nightmarish acts - but waking up to this fresh horror hurts so much.

More of this please.