stuffthatworks

Best of Twitter , haven't felt like writing these words for some time , unsurprisingly ...

Peregrine Falcon (Falco peregrinus) at a site in Co. Limerick over the weekend. This species has made a remarkable comeback thanks to protection under the EU Birds Directive and the banning of certain persistent toxic chemicals. Traditionally associated with coastal and upland cliffs, peregrines now also nest on tall buildings in towns and cities, where they feed mainly on common wild birds such as pigeons and starlings. Although still subject to persecution and facing challenges in some upland areas, this species is a conservation success story.

It does not have to be like this. Time to stop behaving like helpless victims of corporate greed. These are our waters, not the water companies'. And together we have the power, not just to make it a bit better, but to make it stop.

Zoe Ball feels 'blessed' as she celebrates upcoming career milestone with Bob Harris tribute msn.com/en-gb/health/o…

Never forget on 29th January 2024, Hind Rajab, six years old, was shot to death with 355 bullets by Israeli troops. The ambulance crew who tried to go to her aid, Yusuf al-Zeino and Ahmed al-Madhoun, were killed too.

You know that thing about Israel's right to exist? If Israel occupies southern Lebanon, then Lebanon's right to exist in its present form is threatened, isn't it?

'Barbaric': The war in Iran is damaging one of the most beautiful cities in the world haaretz.com/life/2026-03-2…

Israeli settlers are putting massive rocks so that ambulances cannot aid the Palestinians in tonight's pogrom. This is what the Zionist government protects.

"Israeli society has gone full fascist. It's like Berlin 1930." Abby Martin describes her horrifying experience in Jerusalem where every single person she spoke to espoused casual genocidal rhetoric against Palestinians. The footage speaks for itself.

Israel spent two years physically destroying Gaza's entire healthcare system. This was done in plain view of two American administrations that were all too happy to subsidize the slaughter of doctors and nurses. Now, the US and Israel are repeating this horror in Lebanon. And still, more than two years in, major American medical associations like @AmCollSurgeons and @AmerMedicalAssn refuse to adopt statements from their members condemning the wholesale destruction of healthcare with American weapons and under the aegis of American diplomatic cover. Shameful doesn't begin to describe this kind of institutional cowardice. haaretz.com/middle-east-ne…

Despite laws 60,000 UK workers didn't get the minimum wage. Culprits include Browns Manufacturing, BUPA, Busy Bees Nurseries, Costa, Hays Travel, Hovis, ISS, KPMG None forgot to the pay the bosses. Corporate fines passed to customers. No exec fined gov.uk/government/new…

A Danish scientist counted bugs on the same windshield, same road, same conditions, every year for 20 years. By year 20, 80% of the insects were gone. In Germany, a group of volunteer bug scientists did something even bigger. They set traps in 63 nature reserves, not farms, protected land, and weighed everything they caught. Same traps, same method, 27 years straight. The total weight of flying bugs dropped 76%. In midsummer, when insects should be peaking, it was 82% gone. A follow-up in 2020 and 2021 checked again. No recovery. In the UK, they literally ask drivers to count splats on their license plates after a trip. The 2024 count came back 63% lower than just 2021. Three years. A 2020 study pulled together 166 surveys from 1,676 locations around the world. Land insects are disappearing at roughly 9% every ten years. Here’s where it hits your plate. About 75% of the food crops we grow depend on insects to pollinate them, everything from apples to almonds to coffee. One 2025 study modeled what a full pollinator collapse would look like: food prices jump 30%, the global economy takes a $729 billion hit, and the world loses 8% of its Vitamin A supply. Birds are already feeling it. North America has lost 2.9 billion birds since 1970. A study from just weeks ago found half of 261 bird species on the continent are now in serious decline, and the losses are speeding up in farming regions. The birds that eat insects lost 2.9 billion. The birds that don’t eat insects? They gained 26 million. That ratio tells the whole story. One of the German researchers behind the 27-year study drives a Land Rover. He says it has the aerodynamics of a refrigerator. It stays clean now.

Today in 1847, at the Choctaw Agency in Scullyville, in what is now Oklahoma, Native Americans met to organise relief of the starving poor of an island of strangers thousands of miles away called Ireland. The chair was William Armstrong, himself the son of a man from Fermanagh, who told them of the potato blight that had turned our staple into black mush in the ground. Just sixteen years earlier, the Choctaw had been driven from their ancestral lands in the American Southeast, forced west along what would become known as the Trail of Tears. Thousands died in that forced exodus, communities were broken, traditions uprooted, a nation made to suffer exile and loss on a vast scale. So they recognised our pain. At the conclusion of the meeting, a collection was taken. The figure most often cited is $170, though some accounts place it as high as $710. The exact sum matters less than the context. This was sincere generosity from a people who had very little, given to a people who had nothing. And we still remember with gratitude. In 1995, President Mary Robinson travelled to meet the Choctaw Nation and thank them in person. She spoke of how “thousands of miles away… the only link being a common humanity, a common sense of another people suffering as the Choctaw Nation had suffered.” In 2017, Gary Batton, the 47th Chief of the Choctaw Nation, came to Ireland with a delegation. They travelled to Bailick Park in Midleton for the unveiling of Kindred Spirits by artist Alex Pentek, a sculpture of nine great eagle feathers, rising and curving into a bowl-like form. It has a companion piece The Eternal Heart that stands at the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma's capitol in Tuskahoma created by Choctaw artist Samuel Stitt.

Funding for populist-right ‘media-political complex’ exceeded £170m in five years, research finds msn.com/en-gb/news/ukn…

Good morning

Another two for your #FoxOfTheDay today , shared by Eileen O'Neill , thank you Eileen

Trump and Israel killed this baby boy today in Iran — dropping a bomb on his home, murdering him and his mother. He was only 20 days old.

This is primarily due to the ongoing wars in the Congo and Sudan. This is heartbreaking 💔💔

If you’re an Israeli occupier, you can murder a family, including children aged 5 and 7, without even being questioned. What level of impunity is that?