No need for Orkney, Shetland or the Western Isles (though nice that Lewis gets included) when discussing the Neolithic #youmissedabit @newscientist.com

In which I learn the word gewgaw

what has me the most excited about ai is how all the companies using it to make their businesses more efficient will soon be passing the cost savings right down to me, the consumer

NNMAN THE -IMSTOEY TO... Bring back comic sans and screenshots of MS Word with the squiggly red spelling error lines not removed

Stan Stane, North Ronaldsay, Orkney 📷 14.05.22 #StandingStoneSunday #Scape #Stunday #Orkney #LandscapePhotography #PhotographersofBlueSky

This whole thread has the cadence of LLM-generated content: "This work is about more than preservation. It is about access."

I think this is the earliest Staffordshire reference I have found mouldiwarps (moles). Commonplace Book of James Whitehall c.1620's. Tho Issak Walton used it some 30 years later.

Another day of folk lapping up AI slop on the Scots Language Forum FB group

it's cool that Gaelic sràid and Arabic صراط ṣirāṭ both ultimately come from Latin [via] strāta "paved/stretched (road)" and also both lost the first /t/

i am now the proud owner of a Scots grammar WRITTEN IN SCOTS

This post is tailor-made for me

Decided to read Ulysses (translated from Homer by J. Joyce) and I increasingly have the feeling that Christopher Nolan hasn't got this right AT ALL.

www.maptap.gg May 21 95🏆 95🏅 95🏆 86🤗 99🎯 Final score: 935

When I was 18 I worked in a care home where there were always films on the TV. An older colleague loved to point out whenever CGI, relatively new at the time, was used. I thought it was utterly banal to comment on something so obvious. I'm worried I'm now that guy with LLM generated FB posts.

me in Scotland right now

Depone's a handy word

Phone Box of The Day: Rousay, Orkney.

Such a massive Susan Rennie fan. This'll be great

Few artists capture the spirit of Orkney quite like Sylvia Wishart. Read 'Sylvia Wishart: the Orcadian painter with a message in a bottle' 👉 https://artuk.org/discover/stories/sylvia-wishart-the-orcadian-painter-with-a-message-in-a-bottle © the artist's estate. 📷 The Pier Arts Centre

For shame Logainair #youmissedabit

Happening now at #ESEAP2026 - WMAU's Alice Woods on improving the representation of the Northern Territory through Wikidata 📍 2,000+ items & thousands improved — Aboriginal place names, outstations, protected areas, even shipwrecks & hydrographic rocks. Place names tell us about place. #ESEAPlive

🇧🇬 🇧🇬 🇧🇬 🇧🇬 🇧🇬 🇧🇬 🇧🇬 🇧🇬

guy who is mad at Nolan’s Odyssey because it depicts the sea as blue instead of wine-dark

They're dogs not lions. Really odd mistake on the wiki page for Flags of the Autonomous Communities of Spain. However, there are some lions on the not too dissimilar flag of the Tooro Kingdom en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flags_o...

I wanted to make a themed Westmoot design! Since it's in Minneapolis this year, what better than with a loon and the Minnesota state flag, but with the Star of Earendil ;) These will be available at the con as stickers! #art #Tolkien

This is my big (2,000+) list of books "written in Scots". But its based on my idiosyncratic view of what qualifies, rather than a more generally held view. docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

Morning re-read of the vital 'Viking Paradigm in Early Med. History' by Alex Woolf: www.cambridge.org/core/service... Probably the most concise and thorough intro (8 pgs) on the use of the term 'Viking', and how it is unhelpful, you can reasonably find

Flag of Viļāni, Latvia There are a fair few flags with bees on them (eg Elba) but this is the first I've seen with honeycomb. Feels like the sort of thing you could query Wikidata for but this and most other flags aren't on there yet en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vi%C4%B...

Flag of Tbilisi, Georgia en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of...

good opportunity to share my favorite paper title of all time www.academia.edu/8242221/A_Th...

Love Tolkien? Love alliterative verse? Want to put them together? The deadline for submissions to the Summer issue of Forgotten Ground Regained, "Alliterative Verse in Arda" is now July 1st. alliteration.net/call-for-sub... #submissions #opencall #submissionscall #alltiterative #poetry

This is a good wee watch www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/epis...

Proposed flag for Fiji (2005) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of...

Shree generations o missin Scots quairs. Insteid we get Scottish scrievers actin like servants whae ur that pleased that the laird's laddie's gaun tae Oxford.

From Radio Orkney on FB: "A stoat is spotted in Rousay - the first time the species has been confirmed in the outer isles" www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

This bit in the article on Norwegian Constitution Day feels like a relic of Wikipedia's early days en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constit...

*sh<th klaxon* Rare tae see in print but ye'll hear eg shree '3' in SW Scotland gin ye lug oot fur it

My 2023 Kathleen Hughes Memorial Lecture, "The Moral Economy in Early Medieval Ireland", is now available as a free PDF download from the ASNC website, for anyone who's interested! #OpenAccess #MedievalSky #Spéirghorm #Speirgorm @ceilteachomn.bsky.social www.asnc.cam.ac.uk/publications...

As someone else noted, "We were not counting. We were always counting" is slop-tastic LLM-ese. I'm confident I didn't move my finger 1,355 times. Probably not bad to be reminded that the internet is a two way street. Doubt this mix of alarmism and inaccuracy is the way to go

For War Graves Week (16-24 May) we are offering a FREE tour of the cathedral graveyard to tell the stories of the @cwgc.bsky.social graves, the local war memorial, and those mentioned on family gravestones but buried elsewhere. Saturday 16 May 12.30pm Starts Kirkwall war memorial No need to book.

Scottish tourist attractions are not what they used to be. [Rev. J. B. Craven, History of the Episcopal church in Orkney 1688-1882.]

Slightly increase a band: The They

Deerhoof last night were magnificent. Here's a great interview with Greg Saunier... politics, art and money... We have brief lives: scrolling AI-curated doom-slop is a waste. Consume books, interviews, music, life, and recommendations like this, from friends! www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQeW...

Disappointed not to recognise the flag in the profile pic but now have it committed to memory

Runner up in the Caithness flag competition

On the boat crossing the Sea of Orcs, having left Hrossey again after a wonderful research trip to Rousay & Stronsay. Highlights include visiting Stronsay for the 1st time (very much enamoured with Rothiesholm), giving a talk to the Rousay SWI about my research & joining a class at Rousay School.

Last day in #Orkney today, so a tour round taking in the best cafe going (Pomona) the #Swannay and Orkney breweries, the fantastic #Birsay Books, and... the obligatory trip to #Scapa distillery to stock up on our #whisky until our next venture northward...

An account of a mermaid sighted, & sadly killed, near Benbecula, c.1820–30 —from the CARMINA GADELICA (1928) A field reconnaissance of “The Mermaid’s Grave” was made in 1994 “at the request of the Keeper of Mollusca at the National Museum of Scotland” #BookWormSat #C19 🧜‍♀️ www.trove.scot/place/92172

That later point being... now! The new Scottish Parliament MSPs are now up on @theyworkforyou.com, see them at www.theyworkforyou.com/msps/ and the debates and information we hold at www.theyworkforyou.com/scotland/