Nice little article on 80/- beer, still popular in Scotland. Can you still get a pint of Scotch in Newcastle?

https://www.pelliclemag.com/home/2026/10/21/youve-got-the-money-ive-got-the-soul-scotlands-enduring-love-for-80-shilling

bird feeling beautiful

Phil Harding Opens Saxon Hall 50 Years After Helping Excavate it

https://youtu.be/g22MFQuEnIw?si=wFmCcr7R86givXwS

A recreated Saxon Barn based on the ancient foundations. https://www.butserancientfarm.co.uk/buildings-and-experiments

£78 for a replacement 24V battery charger, absolute rip off https://www.mowermagic.co.uk/acatalog/Sherpa---Battery-Charger-for-SPB500-Power-Barrow-SPB5.html#SID=5513

A non-AI tool for making gig posters (via webcurios) https://www.desloppify.diy

@randahl

It is existential to democracy around the world that the next POTUS break up Musk's and the techbros' empire.

It is a dangerous cartel with bad intentions.

- Starlink must be nationalised
- Twitter must be banned
- Social Media and AI need serious regulation and restrictions.
- Palantir and all of them need to have data privacy strictly enforced.

Other countries can start with local bans on the bad actors

Edit: ...and moving off their platforms.

Some general knowledge questions to get you going this morning:

1) What Spanish name translates as "God has been gracious"?

2) Complete the song title "Stairway __ Heaven".

3) What's the magic number?

4) Name a popular private key.

5) Which English boy band comprised Abz Love, Scott Robinson, Ritchie Neville, Sean Conlon, and Jason "J" Brown?

6-7 (combined question): Name an Internet meme from 2025ish.

8) What is the past tense of "eat"?

9) What is the German word for "no"?

If you work in the tech industry this whole thread is a spec for the product we should be working on instead of whatever bullshit we’re doing now. We are failing these people and eventually they will turn on us.

https://glammr.us/@jessamyn/117487748124291597

So little is being done about 38,000 hectares of UK woodland being destroyed by invasive Rhododendron Ponticum and Cherry Laurel (that for some reason are both still legal to sell in the U.K.?!) that the BBC noticed our event and came along to shine a light on the process. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cmn9r7nzdw2jo

to stop me using my phone when I wake up in the middle of the night, I've seen Brick, a £45 device that you have to physically take your phone to to unlock it - https://getbrick.com/

I also found NFCGuard, which does the same, but with an NFC sticker you can buy for about £1 on ebay

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.andebugulin.nfcguard&hl=en-US or https://github.com/Andebugulin/nfcGuard

just checked our island manual, although it's quite old and we're stricter at rationing water now, it suggests, for 3 - 4 people:

toilet: 60 - 70l per day (10l cistern)
Bathroom handwashing sink: 5 - 10l per day
Kitchen sink: 20 - 30l per day

..which matches what I read elsewhere, 20 to 30l of utility water per person per day. No showers though!

This is interesting. The Cheviot Goats in College Valley are an ancient breed, and tests show little or no signs of crossbreeding with other breeds. However the current relatively small population size does show genetic signs of inbreeding, though without manifest physical issues yet.

#Goats #Northumberland #UK

https://from.ncl.ac.uk/cheviot-goats-northumberland-national-park

Anyway. Best is probably to buy a stack of sealed drinking water bottles, they'll keep indefinitely and you don't have to use them all at once. We use 20l jerry cans at work to take onto the island, but they need sterilising regularly, are heavy, and the stupid taps always leak

It is mad that the government is asking us to stockpile water. 3 litres per person per day would barely cover my tea, and for washing and cooking, flushing the toilet, it's much more. I'd say at least 5l per person per day for just cooking and drinking, but you have to keep it sterile so refresh and sterilise those bottles every week. Where are you going to store all of this? Good luck if you live in a pokey little HMO

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/oct/22/britain-prepare-infrastructure-attacks-hostile-states-wes-streeting

Does anybody know how prey animals distinguish predators from other prey animals, especially if they've never seen them before?

My backyard chickens (most of them hatched in June 2026) had an extreme freak-out the first time they saw a coyote, which is exactly what they are supposed to do. They made a ton of noise and scattered to the four winds,. Hours later we were still finding them hiding up in tall trees around the neighborhood - all of them survived.

On the other hand, there's a groundhog (Marmota monax) who lives under my shed. He comes up on the front porch frequently to sunbathe, and sometimes grazes in the yard. The chickens share space with him all the time and just ignore him. Apparently they didn't react the first time, because I never heard a ruckus, and they all just continued with their chicken-y routine.

Does anyone know how they know which other animals are safe?

Tryfan Downhill Dash 2026 - descend about 600m from the summit to the car park as fast as possible - here's a video of the record set last month of 6:46 by Euan Patton

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5a_gvCQCKQ

Your Knees Will Hurt Watching This

@sarahdalgulls
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cqm2mjl0568no
"However, he confirmed the trust had agreed to take out a low-interest loan to cover any funding gap between what has been raised and the total needed."

https://www.wildlifetrusts.org/appeals/rothbury-estate-nature-and-nation

90% funded, £3m to go - the Wildlife Trusts have done an incredible job to raise over £27m to buy the Rothbury Estate, but I am fascinated to find out what happens if they don't quite make it. Do they already have something arranged?

I hope they do, it's ambitious but superb and would connect with both NT's Wilder Wallington (https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/visit/north-east/wallington/wilder-wallington) and Hepple Wilds (https://www.hepplewilds.com/)

#Northumberland #Rewilding

So, as a social scientist, I am absolutely fascinated with the longstanding issue about AirBNB guests being requested to do the cleaning of a home that they then have to play a cleaning fee in anyway.

I want to know: has there been any sociologist or economist who's taken a look at this moment where we can, for the first time, put an actual price tag and some data on the economic cost of the maintenance of a home? The ongoing work of homemaking is one of continuous tasks throughout a day, including exactly the list that guests often get, like stripping beds to start loads of laundry with very explicit directions on the washing machine settings...that would normally be stored in the emotional and logistical load of the primary homemaker/caregiver. This is often seen as "too much work" or "not important" or "why are they so picky about the washing machine settings" and the answer, of course, is that for the first time, people who don't have to manage a home have to understand the sheer effort it takes to manage a clean and welcoming home. And now, there has been a specific price tag on it.

I hope someone goes and does this work now, because the data is likely there.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/oct/22/airbnb-guests-freed-from-chores-involving-significant-effort-under-new-global-rules

I think that the ongoing enshittification of the search experience on the web is an active campaign to normalize the use of LLMs for search.

This is a two-pronged approach:

• search providers who are also LLM providers make their classic search unusable
• the web is flooded with sloppage, making it nigh impossible for search providers which do want to provide a good service to function

I think I need a new internet, this one seems broken.

#enshittification #search #llm #aislop