This sailed under my radar; apparently 1,000 memorial beacons placed around the UK as part of a nationwide remembrance project to mark the centenary of the end of the First World War. Who knew?

Oh beautiful bridge on the river Moray! You have fallen down, and I'm sorry to say That our public finances are in such disarray It seems (as of the date I write this rhyme) You will remain down for a very long time

Bad news for Firefox users; Mozilla's new CEO, Anthony Enzor-DeMeo, doesn't understand or doesn't care about the browser's USP. Modern AI browser my arse, @mozilla.org.

Regret to report a fair amount of McGonagalling on Bluesky rueing this bridge failure.

Scottish mining memorials, 127 of. * overpass-turbo.eu/s/2gSk

Honestly impressed with Google AI Studio's OCRing & presentation of various pages from a ~1870 Ordnance Survey Name Book. Interesting morning spent trying to school it out of errors, wherein it was a) prone to regression failures and b) slippery as an eel. Can see why it's a substitute for crack.

tfw you've definitely tested your crossword puzzle UI on Firefox, @theobserveruk.bsky.social

Google helpfully showing a picture of Edlingham against a search for Eglingham, b/c it's a halfwit.

Jane Haining's Stolperstein (tr: stumble-stone) mapped on OpenStreetMaps, one amongst now more than 46,000 across Europe. * overpass-turbo.eu/s/2g7n

Fear I may have done for poor Ian at Highland HER, who made the mistake of taking the weekend off :(

Not clear, but possible Gaelic nationalism detected on Finlay Cook's memorial in Reay Old Cemetery; Fionnagh being the Gaelic rendering, afaik. * www.geograph.org.uk/photo/7171975

'To lose one child, Sir Hector, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.' * her.highland.gov.uk/api/LibraryL...

I have for some time been pondering Dr. Grosvenor's objection to a proposed solar farm in the Scottish Borders. bsky.app/profile/bend...

Oddly the Duke(s) of Sutherland tie both the Slater & Ward tragedies together; Ward was the 4th daughter of the 4th Duke of. The 2nd Duke of was probably responsible for Slater's memorial; his surveyors worked closely with Slater's protégé and replacement, Henry Otter bsky.app/profile/tagi...

Thing about mapping memorials is the desperately sad circumstances of many of them. Here's one to Cmdr Michael Slater, Admiralty surveyor who from 1828-42 mapped much of the east coast of Scotland, until he reached the north coast at Holburnhead, where he jumped off a 250' cliff, for reasons.

Morning's work was mainly figuring out that the memorial stele to William and Elspeth Beardmore - lost as far as Canmore and Highland HER are concerned - is most probably in the post-1900 burial ground at Flichity. AMA. * www.trove.scot/place/164800 * maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/...

A simple little hack for laundering Ordnance Survey Grid References so as to get to locations on Google Maps, Bing Maps, OpenStreetMaps, and others which have no truck with OSGR, is to search in Geograph.org.uk and use its excellent mapping links page.

Unclear why Inverness thought Duncan I of Scotland (of Macbeth fame) was buried on Culcabock Avenue, just behind the Spar shop, what with him being killed & interred somewhere Elgin way and then supposedly reburied on Iona. * www.google.com/maps/@57.473...

Inverness's type 1/A CWGC Cross of Sacrifice, found in Tomnahurich Cemetery, looking a little blurry in this Geograph image.

"Gloomy Memories" (1857) - 212 small font pages of Donald MacLeod being *extremely* pissed off with the Duke of Sutherland (for the Highland Clearances), and later Harriet Beecher Stowe (for defending the Duke). Has occasional paragraph breaks. * archive.org/details/dona...

Most recently reported Multiverse results: loss of £60.6 million on a turnover of £58.4 million. Normal for a supposed £1.2 billion company in its 9th year of operation and which has never made any profit. Britain's #1 failson, MBE, speaks...

The Muir of Dinnet wallet inspector. You have been warned. * www.google.co.uk/maps/@57.087...

The Bel Memorial at St Nidan's Kirk, Midmar, Aberdeenshire. It celebrates a family of master masons who would be horrified by the typography of the inset tablet - a chunk of badly positioned left justified text in a plain san-serif font with dubious kerning & line spacing. Carved Microsoft Word.

Remembrance Sunday. 🧵

tfw it's 1877, you're the Laird of Glen Tanar, and you manage to down an elusive stag at 267 yards. "the gentleman, not known for his modesty, had two memorials erected to himself: one where he stood and one where the poor beast fell." * www.openstreetmap.org/node/1328601...

Why yes, I am the author of green ink email missives to @diggermann.bsky.social's people in Aberdeenshire on discovering rifts in the HER spacetime continuum. * online.aberdeenshire.gov.uk/smrpub/maste... * online.aberdeenshire.gov.uk/smrpub/maste...

A rather fine 1961 teak & copper memorial shelter topped by a Rod of Asclepius weather-vane, in Laurencekirk, Aberdeenshire; remembering one Dr T. K. Buchan, who served the local community as a doctor from 1916 to 1958. * www.google.com/maps/place/L...

Just the most barking mad scheme, which seemed to boil down to "oh, so you have a public park / common do you? ... we'll be putting a dual carriageway across that". Sabre's new map: www.sabre-roads.org.uk/maps/index.p...

In which it's suggested that the not very good Trove website may have cost £2M.

One of two Congregational Church Memorial Halls on Baltic Street, Montrose - motto "All were others, All will be others" - arising from now difficult to understand schisms amongst independent-minded Scottish believers; this group part of the 1843 Evangelical Union splinter afaics.

tfw Streetview captures your wedding. June 2016, Ardwell Church, Wigtown, Dumfries And Galloway. * www.google.com/maps/place/5...

@thisismyglasgow.bsky.social l Might you know, does this plaque still exist? Canmore puts it immediately to the west of the George Square Cenotaph, but I cannot see it on Streetview & need an exact position to map it. thx. * www.glasgowtimes.co.uk/lifestyle/13... * www.trove.scot/place/331713

I fear I have exhausted the resources of the Imperial War Museum's War Memorials Register :( It's been on the blink for the last 24 hours or so, with a welcome slight recovery over the last four hours, before this collapse. Oh wells.

Heathrow seems to be having its instrument landing system calibrated again tonight.

Canmore/Trove/Historic Environment Scotland not exactly beating the 'asleep on the job' rap. 301 outdoor war memorials known to the IWM register, but not recorded by Canmore. Represents an 18% shortfall, based on 1674 IWM memorials checked. * overpass-turbo.eu/s/2dMS

Proper obelisk. Good job, Inverkip (and photographer Gregory Beecroft). www.iwm.org.uk/memorials/it...

@bandrdt.bsky.social do you have any clue where in Blairgowrie the Scottish Veterans Garden City cottages are? IWM claims Emma Street, but I'm unconvinced / cannot find this tablet on Google Streetview. * www.iwm.org.uk/memorials/it...

Lost & found (Geograph edition). * www.iwm.org.uk/memorials/it... * www.geograph.org.uk/photo/8142792

For no good reason beyond OpenStreetMaps being down for maintenance earlier today, here are the number of memorials and monuments per million population, and per square kilometre, for western European countries, according to OSM.

Started / going.

The Bronx NYCHA building which partially collapsed earlier today - one of the Mott Haven Mitchell Houses - was built two years before the 1968 Ronan Point collapse, so I guess there's that. Seems like much the same etiology; explosion taking out the entire structure above it.

Is the 1830 French Prisoners of War Memorial in Penicuik the earliest cenotaph in the UK? Seems to indicate outsize regret from the citizens, 15 years after Waterloo. * www.iwm.org.uk/memorials/it... * www.google.com/maps/place/5...

@whippletom.bsky.social has asked me to issue an urgent clarification, explaining that this tweet should not imply that a major newspaper believes there is a causative link between paracetamol and autism. The headline was merely for shits and giggles.

I wrote a thing about digital ID cards. It’s rather long… paulbernal.wordpress.com/2025/09/29/d...

Here's the Winchburgh (West Lothian) War Memorial, erected 2000. Commemorating WW1 & WW2 war dead, the statue about as far removed from sanity as one could hope. The Disneyfication of remembrance.

This sounds like a fun future: techbros with the wealth to buy and control much of the mass media (think CBS, CNN, TikTok, WaPo, X &c), and politicians and think tanks (notably the Tony Blair Institute).

Are you proud of this headline, @whippletom.bsky.social? What's the truth about whether you have any of a spine, a conscience, or agency? It can be confounding. "Science" at The Times.

Still going well, I see, for the sporting genius that is Jim Ratcliffe. Much like his Brexit.

The next millennium has arrived for Tony Harrison; I hope he'll be planted in Beeston Cemetery "behind the family dead, butcher, publican and baker, and now me, bard, adding poetry to their beef, beer & bread." Great injustice if not. Here's V (from about 4 mins in) www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yu3Z...

Important new #OpenAccess article on how slavery in Britain was ended, and who ended it. Taken Not Given: The End of Slavery in Britain by Simon Newman www.cambridge.org/core/journal... #History #EnslavedHistory 🗃️