Fun fact- a lot of edtech creates gambling habits in children - and Duolingo and times tables rockstars (as well as Roblox (not edtech) ) are good examples but not the only offenders Streaks, leagues, playing for points you can “spend”.. all of it should be as illegal as ads for sugary cereal are.

A #painting for you. "Mayo Trees" came out of a ridiculously happy day in the west of Ireland. I could tell you about that day, but I'll let the trees do the talking. #art #SpeirGhorm #ArtAdventCalendar

& I had French rain and Welsh stone for one of my suppers last night, while watching Elf.

It’s the 22nd December and therefore I am writing my Christmas cards 😶

From J. G. Campbell’s “Witchcraft and Second Sight in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland”, on Feill Fionnain/ St Finan’s Eve. The winter solstice is also known as “Oidhche nan Seachd Suipearan” - Night of the Seven Suppers, so don’t hold back…

The new fragility.

This is a bugbear of mine: criminalising phone use while driving (rightly so), while manufacturers quietly escalate their in-car entertainment systems. Another example of imposing rules on individuals while big business gets carte blanche. (Hopefully this is fake?! 🤞🏼)

I’ve been telling my child that YouTube s nothing but brainrot, but this is the single most useful beginner to intermediate online #chess tutorial that I’ve ever come across. Fantastic instruction via a rapid game by WFM Anna Cramling: youtu.be/7vt5Lt5VUH4?... (Lots of ads though)

Don’t waste this brief respite in the sempiternel darkness - these are the only suns to appear in the forecastable future!

I received these great stamps, and am not sure what to do with them. The Royal one is particularly interesting, as Charles and Diana were exactly the same height! #butpatriarchy

*Sometimes* I see Christmas as mainly an increase in clutter, which is probably a terrible thing to admit to. But, like, you carry a whole tree into your house, and that’s just the start. www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/the-...

Cycling and walking could help deliver almost everything Brits say they want to achieve in 2026 — if we design streets to support them. Getting fitter, losing weight, being healthier, saving money; enabling active travel quietly does all of it. With no gym contracts.

The statistics in this article are really startling.

There’s a vegetable in here that I don’t actually know what it is 🙈; and I’m tempted to put the parsnips aside and try a wee parsnip & pancetta velouté. I think I tried that once before, but it wasn’t very successful #makingbroth

“…the open source 'valley of death' is getting caught in concerns about purity and competing with each other […] rather than focusing on building a viable alternative to Big Tech” www.theregister.com/2025/11/19/m...

Once again I keep coming back to the story of 7:84's Cheviot, the Stag, and the Black, Black Oil being denied touring funds in 1973. What followed were a series of letters and meetings that delivered a compromise figure. The most celebrated Scottish play of the last 50 years almost never happened...

It is really interesting; a different idea in each paragraph. But something about it rubs me up the wrong way. Maybe it’s the decided, know-it-all tone, the slight archness; or the sneaking suspicion she probably dislikes lower middle class people. Plus I see some people I know in it.

I’ve had a very lethargic day, and I thought I was off the hook for belated football duty, as we met some other young football-daft kids, but they’re operating a barefoot only rule??

The cost of storing my and my son’s bike in a cycle hangar - which takes up the space of one car, and takes 6 bikes - is £3.50 cheaper than the cost of a parking permit for my car on the same street 🤔

“Oh, nothing much, just get me a jumper or something,” said my brother-in-law, whose birthday it is next week. Me, looking at the price of jumpers in John Lewis:

Today's walk.

Fun fact: @lothianbuses.bsky.social carries more passengers each year than the whole Scotrail network.

I was watching something vitally interesting and important on YouTube the other day, and when the ad (for a holiday resort) came on 2 minutes in, the voiceover *addressed me by name*! Too, too much. Creepy. Maybe this has happened to everyone now?

Moonbows, also called lunar rainbows, differ from your average rainbow in that they are created by the shimmers of moon rays rather than the sun. More amazing moonbows and how they form👇 earthlymission.com/moonbow-nigh... 📷 Stefan Lee Goodwin / Arne-kaiser

The Glow Breaks Through. #forest #nature #trees #sunburst #goldenhour #woodland #lightandshadow #naturelovers #sunlight #moody #texture #outdoors #smartphonephotography #photography

For things like replacement bulbs for cooker hood spotlights, the lure Amazon is still hard to resist. But I’ve spent a nice morning in local bookshops, and made a Xmas purchase. The challenge for me is not to leave everything to the last minute. #adhd #smallsteps

Throw your branches in the air like you just don’t care!

Educational attainment & statistical fictions: “An ostensible narrowing of inequalities because graduates increasingly live in socially deprived neighbourhoods may tell us something about the dire state of the graduate labour market. But it does not […] tell us about the quality of the schools.”

'I raise these points not because I am anti-tech, but because I am pro-learning.'

What I should have realised: 1. Framing it as aiming to get Everything Done would cause me to short-circuit, at least temporarily; 2. My child would inevitably fall sick; 3. & then I would. 4. & I should have remembered from last year that undertaking a major house project in December is folly.

50mph gusts would definitely do it.

What skill did you master that you will never, ever use again? In primary school we were taught how to make our own cheques. “IN AN EMERGENCY YOU CAN USE A TABLECLOTH!” (The a/c payee was the crucial bit.) Maybe that was Thatcher’s 80s for you.

A wonderful piece of data modelling 🎩. Someone told me that Edinburgh had more restaurants per capita than anywhere else in the UK, don’t know if this is true, but sounds plausible. Presumably there’s also a weighting in favour of restos that sign up to Deliveroo / Just Eat?

The only person deserving of pity in this whole sorry episode is the wife, standing supportively backstage, all but invisible

Tha seo gu math breagha :

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz while being in London, UK, with Ukraine's President Zelenskyy, UK Prime Minister Starmer und French President Macron: "Ukraine’s fate is Europe’s fate. We’re here to see how we can step up our efforts. No one should have any doubt: our support will not falter."

“Smaoinich le do cheann an àite do làmhan!” is indeed one of our mottos!

late coffee and oranges in an overcast chair

We got off the Tram at McDonald Road, went into the Library, and then, approximately 15 minutes later, remembered. Unfortunately I think it might have been the right hand tap 😩

Here, have a #painting. "Ballycroy" came out of an amazing day's cycle in the west of Ireland which started in Westport and ended up in Bangor Erris - the highlight of which, in a day of many highlights, was the County Mayo wonderland of Ballycroy. #art #SpeirGhorm #ArtAdventCalendar

Even the idea that AI might be stuffed down our gullets, whether we want it or not, just because big corporations and venture capitalists need to recoup their ill-considered sunk investments, is really galling.

1. Some good news at last. This week’s column is about the amazing thing a couple of us stumbled into three years ago, which we’ve now developed into a global research programme. It doesn’t change everything, of course, but it could help change quite a lot. + 🧵 www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

this story isn’t going away www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Stunning lunar halo over northeast Fife this evening

What this little man actually says in the clip is “nearly one in three pupils in Scottish schools only has English as a second language”, which I imagine is an outright falsehood, unless more people than I’d expect recorded Scots as their first language in the last Census.

I’m glad it wasn’t me (this time) who went from M1 to losing in the space of two moves #xcc #rapid

I love this mural on a Strathclyde University building on George Street which highlights, amongst other things, the role the university, and Glasgow as a whole, plays in the international space industry. Cont./ #glasgow #strathclydeuniversity #murals #glasgowmurals ##spacecommexposcotland

This book is so wise, and helpful, and relatable 🔥