iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Murray Lark 🇿🇼 @geostatlark.bsky.social · 18/03/2026

"One previous attempt to engage Trump on the status of the [nuclear] talks deteriorated when the president switched the conversation to one of his favourite topics: shoes" How ignorance, misunderstanding and obfuscation ended Iran nuclear talks www.theguardian.com/world/2026/m...

theguardian.com

How ignorance, misunderstanding and obfuscation ended Iran nuclear talks

Negotiators had reached agreement on key issues despite Trump team’s idiosyncratic approach. Two days later, war began

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Murray Lark 🇿🇼 @geostatlark.bsky.social · 25/02/2026

A blog on the CABI website about a new tool for designing networks of on-farm experiments. Part of a strategic collaboration Rothamsted, Universities of Nottingham and Warwick,IITA, Kano University and Savanna Agriculture Research Institute 🇳🇬🇬🇭 www.cabi.org/news/introdu...

cabi.org

Introducing ICoN - CABI.org

The AgVACS project has created a cutting edge, multi‑metric tool for designing and evaluating cereal–legume systems. The ICoN tool has been developed as part of the AgVACS project (Climate-Smart Agron...

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Reposted by Murray Lark 🇿🇼

Led By Donkeys @ledbydonkeys.org · 19/12/2025

The story of Farage and Putin, told by British-Ukrainian soldier Shaun Pinner on a destroyed apartment block in Kyiv.

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Reposted by Murray Lark 🇿🇼

CAFOD @cafod.bsky.social · 10/01/2026

Here's a good news story from 2025 you may have missed! In Kenya, the laws that criminalise farmers for saving their own seeds were successfully challenged and declared unconstitutional. More on why this sets a positive precedent. ⤵️ bit.ly/49fFq8Q

cafod.org.uk

Landmark ruling in Kenya allows farmers to save their own seeds

A group of farmers supported by civil society organisations, including CAFOD's partner BIBA-Kenya, have successfully challenged Kenya’s seed laws that criminalised farmers for saving their own seeds.

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Murray Lark 🇿🇼 @geostatlark.bsky.social · 03/12/2025

Morning in Tamale, northern Ghana. Here for a meeting of the AgVACS project on legume crops for savanna environments.

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Murray Lark 🇿🇼 @geostatlark.bsky.social · 28/09/2025

High point of the week was realising a long ambition to visit Broome Bridge over the Royal Canal in Dublin, where Hamilton discovered the rule for quaternions.

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Murray Lark 🇿🇼 @geostatlark.bsky.social · 26/08/2025

A new paper with colleagues in Zambia in the InSTAnZa project. The moral of the story is "never throw away old soil maps just because you have a new one" authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S...

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Murray Lark 🇿🇼 @geostatlark.bsky.social · 26/08/2025

A new paper out of the CEPHaS project: measuring water retention in soils from conservation agriculture trials and using the Van Genuchten parameters to model infiltration. authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S...

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Murray Lark 🇿🇼 @geostatlark.bsky.social · 31/07/2025

aje.io/yvague This week the Israeli ministry of science & innovation asked me to review a proposal on technology for improved land management. I told them not while the IDF continues it's murderous campaigns. And this week we also heard how 95% of Gaza's farmland has been laid waste by Israel. 🇵🇸

aje.io

More than 95 percent of Gaza’s agricultural land unusable, UN warns

Israeli attacks on land, wells and greenhouses exacerbating the already critical risk of famine in Gaza, the FAO says.

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Reposted by Murray Lark 🇿🇼

The Journal of African History @thejah.bsky.social · 10/07/2025

In our latest #OA #HistoryMatters piece, the team of Milo Gough, Bryson Nkhoma, Elias Chirwa, @davidwilsonhist.bsky.social‬, Charles Knapp, Tracy Morse, and Wapulumuka Mulwafu explore the history of present day #Fisheries management in #LakeMalawi: bit.ly/4lmkjoT

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Murray Lark 🇿🇼 @geostatlark.bsky.social · 07/07/2025

£440 for a two-day meeting in Manchester, about £10 short of what EGU costs for 5 days in Vienna. What does British Society of Soil Science think it is for, @pdhallett.bsky.social ?

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Reposted by Murray Lark 🇿🇼

Charlotte Lydia Riley @lottelydia.bsky.social · 25/04/2025

“‘Today’s builders of Babel tell us that there is no room for losers, and that those who fall along the way are losers,’ Francis wrote in his last meditations on Good Friday. ‘Theirs is the construction site of Hell.’”

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Murray Lark 🇿🇼 @geostatlark.bsky.social · 21/03/2025

Ornithological distractions in Harare this morning. Red eyed doves, laughing doves, red waxbill, bulbul, weaver bird and a purple-crested turaco (lourie).

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Murray Lark 🇿🇼 @geostatlark.bsky.social · 20/03/2025

theconversation.com/us-isnt-firs.... The Tories trashed Dfid's international reputation for efficiency and expertise. Labour came in and decided that the Development portfolio was a part-time Government job. And then they brought in swinging cuts. Not sure why I wasted my time voting for them.

theconversation.com

US isn’t first country to dismantle its foreign aid office − here’s what happened after the UK killed its version of USAID

In 2020, British Conservatives cited cost-cutting to force the UK’s foreign aid office into a merger. Five years later, it hasn’t recovered its budget or expertise.

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Reposted by Murray Lark 🇿🇼

Chris Havergal @chrishavergal.bsky.social · 19/03/2025

Inconsistent approaches to how sex is recorded in publicly-funded research has led to “widespread loss” of data over past decade, warns government-commissioned review by @profalices.bsky.social www.timeshighereducation.com/news/widespr...

timeshighereducation.com

‘Widespread loss’ of sex data in gender question confusion

‘Default target’ of sex questions should be sex at birth, with ‘male’ and ‘female’ the possible answers, says government-commissioned review

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Murray Lark 🇿🇼 @geostatlark.bsky.social · 09/03/2025

Kopjes at Chiremba bear Harare. See Ollier's Two cycle theory of tropical pedagogy for one hypothesis about their origin

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Murray Lark 🇿🇼 @geostatlark.bsky.social · 08/03/2025

Locust on a Euphorbia milii, Alex Park, Harare

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Murray Lark 🇿🇼 @geostatlark.bsky.social · 27/02/2025

Currently back home in Zimbabwe 🇿🇼 doing a teaching block at UZ. My walk back each evening through northern Harare passes jacaranda and other exotic trees, but pleased to see this Erythrina abysinnica, an honest indigenous African tree, holding its own.

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Reposted by Murray Lark 🇿🇼

CAFOD @cafod.bsky.social · 22/02/2025

Loving and Merciful God, We come before You in prayer, lifting up Your servant, Pope Francis, in his time of need. cafod.org.uk/pray/prayer-...

cafod.org.uk

Prayer for the health of Pope Francis

We join our voices with all those around the world who are praying for Pope Francis' health.

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Murray Lark 🇿🇼 @geostatlark.bsky.social · 21/02/2025

Harare limbering up for more rain, while I think about dambos.

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Reposted by Murray Lark 🇿🇼

The Marsh Family @marshfamilysongs.bsky.social · 14/02/2025

The people of Europe stand with Ukraine against the threat of a false peace as much as brutal war. Because of our shared history. Because of our shared future. Because it is just. Because it is necessary. And because they deserve nothing less. Don't abandon them. #SlavaUkraini youtu.be/u8GftJEa4_8

youtu.be

"Don't Abandon Them" - Marsh Family adaptation of Bob Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind" about Ukraine

YouTube video by Marsh Family

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Murray Lark 🇿🇼 @geostatlark.bsky.social · 14/01/2025

Visiting IITA at Ibadan, Nigeria, with @Rothamsted colleagues for project planning. A beautiful site with forest and wetland as well as field plots and labs.

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Murray Lark 🇿🇼 @geostatlark.bsky.social · 29/12/2024

This new paper, with colleagues at World Bank, uses pilot survey data to assess options for augmenting standard "household surveys" with soil sampling to provide information on soil quality to go with dietary and socio-economic data. authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S00…

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Reposted by Murray Lark 🇿🇼

Jill Cairns @jillec.bsky.social · 19/12/2024

Maize #diversity in #Zimbabwe Investigating nutrient content of landraces and biofortified #maize hybrids across different agronomic practices with Dr Grace Kangara from @rothamsted.bsky.social and National Gene Bank of Zimbabwe 🇿🇼 (with statistical guidance from @geostatlark.bsky.social)

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Murray Lark 🇿🇼 @geostatlark.bsky.social · 01/12/2024

Tremellomycete fungus doing its stuff on a dead branch yesterday.

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Murray Lark 🇿🇼 @geostatlark.bsky.social · 15/11/2024

Feast of St Albert the Great 'My suspicion is that for Albert beatitude would have to include, even if only as the minutest part of it, the opportunity to say "So that's why flies lay their eggs on white walls!" ' Simon Tugwell OP in Albert and Thomas, Paulist Press 1988.

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Murray Lark 🇿🇼 @geostatlark.bsky.social · 14/11/2024

The CEPHaS project in Zambia, Zimbabwe and Malawi addressed research capacity in physical sciences for evaluating conservation agriculture options. Here is the first paper from the hydrogeology team on groundwater recharge, with some tentative conclusions on land use impacts. t.co/23lR7BsmHI

Block diagram illustrating recharge processes in basement aquifers in subhumid drylands of southern Africa, with a conceptual model for impacts of conservation agriculture.

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