Interesting Links for 15-10-2025

[andrewducker]

1. The Commissioner for human rights for the Council of Europe warns that Britain's treatment of trans people could breach the ECHR

(tags:rights europe uk transgender lgbt )

2. Have you made the Ur-Ur error?

(tags:language history )

3. A human-faced stone from 12 thousand years ago was found in Karahan Tepe (Turkey)

(tags:turkey archeology prehistory )

4. Afghanistan commando who served with British Army is deported to Taliban (because the Home Office failed to get paperwork done)

(tags:Afghanistan UK military migration OhForFucksSake )

5. How UK recognising Palestine helped win Arab support for Trump's Gaza deal

(tags:UK Gaza Israel diplomacy )

6. Enzymes successfully converted a kidney to universal type O for transplant, marking a major step toward faster, more compatible organ donations.

(tags:organdonor technology GoodNews )

7. Waymo's Robotaxis Are Coming to London in 2026

(tags:taxis automation Technology london uk )

8. So far, in 2025, Britain has wasted more than £1Billion switching off wind turbines and paying gas plants to switch on.

(tags:waste electricity uk OhForFucksSake )

Comments

[cmcmck]

1. And no doubt this will encourage this lot to pull us out of the ECHR!

[andrewducker]

Which would be deeply unpopular: https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/53134-what-do-britons-really-think-about-leaving-the-echr

Ur-ur

[wildeabandon]

So I did some looking into this recently, and it's actually an error to think that the prefix ur- meaning first stems from the name of the Mesopotamian city. In general, very short words that are similar in different languages are much more likely to be coincidence than longer ones, and there's no relationship between German (whence the prefix entered English) and Sumerian, the language spoken in Ur and Uruk.

Re: Ur-ur

[andrewducker]

Well now that's ruined the joke!

(It has not)

Re: Ur-ur

[zz]

it's an urful joke anyway

Re: Ur-ur

[andrewducker]

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