Government has now - belatedly -published the impact assessment for the changes to skilled worker and care worker visas announced in May. Impact is estimated between -£2 billion and £-10 billion (central - £10 billion). assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6937e6...

Surprised to discover that the winner of the inaugural #FIFA Peace Prize is US President, Donald Trump😮

Well that’s really going to screw my Ethnicity Estimates 😀

Yesterday I was in hospital for my annual check-up. Saw this poster inviting Medical students for a week of Pre-Christmas viewings of live operations (while enjoying a glass of warm Glühwein)😮 I still can’t decide if this is a real thing or some brilliant joke I don’t understand 🤷‍♂️

Great to see ancient DNA results coming from under-represented southern Africa. 👏👏

I see #Ancestry Thrulines has a new Pedigree View. Sadly I've yet to get access, but I like the idea. More info via Roberta Estes blog: dna-explained.com/2025/12/03/a... #Genealogy

A quick recap of some of my favourite Black Week offers for your #Genealogy research: DNA kits from @myheritageofficial.bsky.social only €27. (If you are lucky then you also can get a year's sub for €9 😀) 15% off courses @pharostutors.bsky.social up to 30% off subs @findmypast.bsky.social

Today Mrs K-G and I paid homage to the Salian kings of Germany at their spiritual home in Speyer. The Kaiserdom, began in 1030 under Conrad II, is the largest remaining Romanesque church and a UNESCO world heritage site.

One other Black Week discount. I see that @myheritageofficial.bsky.social are now offering their DNA tests for the ridiculous price of €27. 😮 #AncestryHour

Hi #AncestryHour I’m taking advantage of the Black Week 15% discount to sign up for this course. My many Ag Lab ancestors will be happy 😀

If you want to read something completely nuts from the unregulated world of direct to consumer genomics, look no further. And when I say completely nuts, I’m being restrained and polite. Criminal is another word that springs to mind.

Dig deeper into your Scottish roots at the Scottish Indexes Conference on 31 Jan 2026. Free online talks on marriage, DNA, illicit distilling, church records & more. Save the date! #Scottish #FamilyHistory #ScottishIndexes #Genealogy #Archives

TiL that it’s Buß- und Bettag, the Day of Repentance and Prayer. I gather it’s still a public holiday in Sachsen (Saxony) 🤷‍♂️

Wish me luck, I’m hoping to get WGS 🧬 FWIW. Probably not a bad idea to get retested at MH. My current results are a transfer from a very early chip from Ancestry. Also, it’s good that MH do collection in 🇩🇪, so no problems sending packages to the 🇺🇸

FWIW I don't think this DNA analysis of Hitler and his small penis is particularly useful. Hitler was evil, but the real tragedy of WW2 and the Shoah was enabled by many other evil people and the unfortunate circumstances of history. www.independent.co.uk/news/science...

Yes, I know, o. But that's not the joke here.

I love this new research on the remains of Béla of Macsó, a 13c Hungarian noble who was apparently the grandson of Hungarian King Béla IV on his mother's side, and on his father's side belonged to the Rurik dynasty of northern, Scandinavian origin. 😀 phys.org/news/2025-11...

30 years ago today I started working in Amsterdam on a six month contract as an IT Specialist (working on cc:mail, an early email system). In the end I ended up spending 7 years in the Netherlands, and never returned full time to Blighty🇬🇧 #HalfALifetime

🎃 Happy Halloween 🎃 I was wanting to write something scary like “Mixed ethnicity families in British Tv Ads”, but it didn’t fit🤦‍♂️, so I just went with IRUME😀

It feels like MyHeritage are almost giving away their DNA kits. €29/kit, plus an offer of their Complete plan for €9 for the first year (my existing sub recently expired 😀). Given that MH have stated new kits will be processed with WGS it was a bargain too good to miss. #GeneticGenealogy

It seems #Duolingo are stirring up trouble in Germany 😀

Complex results from a new study on late life virginity.

For anyone in London on the 13th November…

Good to see this result 👏

Just seen that 23andMe has a new "Reconstructed Ancestors" feature. see customercare.23andme.com/hc/en-us/art... I'm pretty sure it's not going to work for myself - I just don't have enough close relatives to generate the DNA information. 🤷‍♂️ #genealogy #geneticgenealogy

If you’re thinking of leaving all your money to your cats …

Hi #Genhour, bit late but nevertheless. I’m still cleaning up my wife’s side of the family tree. This week I’ve been working on the Langnese/Langnäse (Longnose) side. (Image somewhat related😀)

Temporary Profile Pic - not at all AI generated. Perhaps I should run for President 😀

🚨NEW blog post 🚨. I wrote some thoughts on the WGS Sequencing announcement from MyHeritage it's imaginatively titled "Some Thoughts on the Whole Genome Sequencing announcement from MyHeritage". I'd welcome any feedback. learnalittleeveryday.wordpress.com/2025/10/19/s... #GeneticGenealogy

3/ Here's a plain language of #Amazon #AWS updates: 12:11AM Pacific: something is up, error rates spike 12:51: Getting worse 1:25: Looks like the hotspot is DynamoDB at US-EAST-1 2:01: It's problem with DNS resolution [Root cause!] 2:22: We've put in initial mitigations, not over yet.

You have to chuckle at the subtitling from the Times. I wonder what makes the French police *think* the thieves used an extendable ladder to reach the first floor. 🤔

🚨NEW blog post 🚨. I wrote some thoughts on the WGS Sequencing announcement from MyHeritage it's imaginatively titled "Some Thoughts on the Whole Genome Sequencing announcement from MyHeritage". I'd welcome any feedback. learnalittleeveryday.wordpress.com/2025/10/19/s... #GeneticGenealogy

There’s a good reason @barbaraagrass.bsky.social and I have spent the last couple of days driving back and forth across the width of Germany. 😀 We went to see the fabulous #NebraSkyDisk, one of the earliest (c.1800 BC) depictions of astronomical phenomena linking lunar and solar cycles.

Guten Morgen from Sachsen-Anhalt

Hi #AncestryHour. I'm super excited to see that MyHeritage have announced a switch to WGS (see: finance.yahoo.com/news/myherit...). I have a spare MH test so really hope that MH are doing WGS for all new samples 😀

Doing some tidying up today and found some of my old #Subbuteo figures (c.1975).

Hi #GenHour. I have a technical Q. I'm looking at my mtDNA results. Mutations are all recorded AnnnnnD (A is Ancestral, nnnnn is the location, D is the Derived value). Most of the Derived values are upper-case, but some are recorded with lower-case letter e.g. C16259g.What does lower-case indicate ?

So the 2025 Ancestry Heritage Update has, erm, dropped. A great chance to add new regions I don't have ancestors from. The East Midlands and West Midlands might be this years Welsh DNA, but good to see that I'm also getting South Wales and Leinster.🤦

Aaaargh, I've just seen someone's family tree referencing the "Aisle of Wight" and now I can't un-see it 😱 #IsleofWight

Reluctantly went on Fb today and saw these two great graphics from Dave Vance (GM at ftDNA). These show the yDNA and mtDNA haplotrees. Admittedly you can't do much with these images, apart from go oohhh.

Nothing is more “Back-Endish” than making green tomato chutney (before and after photos for effect 😀) Also, somehow not everybody is as happy as I am about the wonderful aroma of vinegar and cloves floating around the house 😬

Time to say farewell to my Win 2000 install diskette, the last of its kind 😢

Today in Germany we're celebrating the #TagderDeutschenEinheit, so it's basically like having a bonus free October Sunday. Shops are closed, so a big win for Amazon and Netflix. Also, any Germans who can are off shopping in France or the Netherlands.

A day late (whoops) but Happy Family History Month to all who celebrate. 🎉 #Genealogy #FamilyHistoryMonth

You say Cianti, I say Shandy 😀 Watching the film adaptation of the fabulous book “Remains of the Day” and spotted this bizarre subtitling error. Clearly A beer and lemonade drink isn’t as well-known as it should be. 🍺

A nice shift in perceived colour between central and peripheral vision. The fixated disc looks purple while the others look blue. The effect presumably comes from the absence of S-cones in the fovea. From Hinnerk Schulz-Hildebrandt: arxiv.org/pdf/2509.115...

Registration for RootsTech 2026 is now open 🌳 Sign up for over 200 free online classes and more here 👉 bit.ly/4pzYEMl

🚨This is going to be an interesting story. Ancestry wants to access the genealogy records that are mostly published on the ScotlandsPeople (.gov.uk) site. It’s unclear (to me) if they want the poor-quality SP scans or rescan. Either way it disrupts the SP business model.

Der Sommer ist vorbei. Die Ventilatoren laufen nach Süden.

A bit more detail on the telecoms network attack in the US. Over 100,000 SIM cards 😲 Also, bonus points for SIM city headline 👏👏