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Pat Yale

@patyale.bsky.social
942 followers 430 following 486 posts

İstanbul via London, Cambridge, Bristol & Göreme. Author: Following Miss Bell: Travels Around Turkey in the Footsteps of Gertrude Bell & assorted guidebooks. Cat lover. Painted trafo fan.

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Reposted by Pat Yale
Lewis Goodall @lewisgoodall.com · 28/02/2025
On today’s News Agents I said that the crunch point for Starmer to choose between Zelensky and Trump would come, despite the bonhomie yesterday. The choice came within 24 hours. podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/t...
podcasts.apple.com
Will the Starmer-Trump bromance last?
Podcast Episode · The News Agents · 28/02/2025 · 28m
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Musa Okwonga @okwonga.bsky.social · 28/02/2025
I will never forget the photo of Zelenskyy’s face after he saw Russia’s war crimes in Bucha in 2022. He seemed to age years in an afternoon. Watching him constantly cross the world asking for aid that should have been thrown at him is one of the deepest shames of our age.
Zelenskyy’s face after he saw Russia’s war crimes in Bucha in 2022. The agony in his face…he looks overwhelmed with disbelief at the sheer cruelty.
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Pat Yale @patyale.bsky.social · 20/02/2025
Assume most academic history depts will be dusting off the long out-of-favour "Great Men" approach to the topic and relabelling it "Bad Men" or some such. What is happening now is surely epochal enough to inspire a rethink.
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Financial Times @financialtimes.com · 12/02/2025
FT Editorial Board | Elon Musk’s dismantlement of federal agencies, freezing funding and pushing staff to resign goes far beyond a mere restructuring. It aims to shift the constitutional separation and balance of powers. www.ft.com/content/f766...
WASHINGTON, DC - FEBRUARY 11: Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk joins U.S. President Donald Trump during an executive order signing in the Oval Office at the White House on February 11, 2025 in Washington, DC. Trump is to sign an executive order implementing the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE) "workforce optimization initiative," which, according to Trump, will encourage agencies to limit hiring and reduce the size of the federal government. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
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Lewis Goodall @lewisgoodall.com · 11/02/2025
On LBC this morning, I spoke about why we should be far more worried the power Elon Musk is accruing, especially in light of his Open AI moves. The normalisation of his actions and activity by quite a bit of the US and even UK media is a big part of the problem. www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGnt...
youtube.com
Elon Musk's main aim is 'world domination' | Lewis Goodall on LBC
YouTube video by LBC
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Pat Yale @patyale.bsky.social · 11/02/2025
In a piece of personal news, I'm thrilled to have signed a contract with @hurstpublishers.bsky.social to write a book about the #Bosphorus, the magnificent strait that divides European İstanbul from its Asian side. Coming up, a month of ferry rides & interesting encounters. Very exciting.
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Pat Yale @patyale.bsky.social · 11/02/2025
UK govt seems intent on letting AI owners steal work of creatives of all kinds without pay or acknowledgement. AI is not non-profit so owners shld pay to use work of others. Can't go into shop & empty shelves cos shopkeeper didn't opt out. What's the difference? www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
theguardian.com
UK copyright law consultation ‘fixed’ in favour of AI firms, peer says
Exclusive: Beeban Kidron says plans will lead to ‘wholesale’ transfer of wealth from creative industries to tech sector
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Andreas Umland @umland.eurosky.social · 18/01/2025
Thirty years ago, the United States persuaded Ukraine that it does not need nuclear weapons and gave Ukraine "security assurances." Today, the United States is persuading Ukraine that it needs to give up territories, forget about NATO membership, and lower the conscription age.
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Pat Yale @patyale.bsky.social · 03/01/2025
Forget the blasted Commonwealth Games. Surely the money that will cost would be better spent on turning Glasgow back into a vibrant city for the ppl who live there all the time. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...
theguardian.com
‘Left to rot’: Glasgow’s crumbling heritage comes into focus for 850th anniversary
Pressure grows to do something about city centre’s decaying buildings and empty shops in ‘year of urgency’
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ShadowsOfConstantinople @theeasternromans.bsky.social · 01/01/2025
An Anatolian Greek New Years tradition! Aetakia, Double Eagle cookies. The oldest family member, holding an eagle, would say: “As beautifully and proudly as the eagle flies, so beautifully and proudly may our family fly." Then family members kissed his hand and took a cookie!
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Nedal Al-Amari @nedalalamari.bsky.social · 31/12/2024
Massive celebrations sweep across Syria as the nation ushers in 2025, marking the start of a new era free from the former Assad regime. This footage captures the jubilant atmosphere in Damascus.
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Pat Yale @patyale.bsky.social · 31/12/2024
Imperative that every effort is made to persuade Israel to release Dr Hussam Abu Safiya so that he can receive urgent and appropriate treatment for his injuries. www.theguardian.com/global-devel...
theguardian.com
Gaza hospital director being held at notorious Israeli prison, say family
Hussam Abu Safiya feared injured as Kamal Adwan hospital in northern Gaza shut down after 11 weeks under siege
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Pat Yale @patyale.bsky.social · 29/12/2024
Sadly, have to confess to having returned to the other place. Once again able to read tips on places in Türkiye I'm yet to visit, find out which is the latest illegal cafe to be torn down, even that Ankara appears - finally - to have a public transport map. Don't want to be associated w/anything to
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Pat Yale @patyale.bsky.social · 29/12/2024
Destroying the "environment" for the sake of protecting the "environment"! Only those who've never seen solar farms could possibly think them anything other than hideous. Put them on roofs where they belong, not on ground where they cover even grass. www.theguardian.com/environment/...
theguardian.com
Solar farms v people power: the locals fighting for their county
Plans to install huge solar farms in the beautiful Norfolk countryside have outraged residents
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Dr Tess Machling @tessmachling.bsky.social · 28/12/2024
"A request made through ChatGPT, an AI-based virtual assistant, consumes 10 times the electricity of a Google Search" This isn't a game. This is accelerated destruction via huge usage of power, water, resources etc. Stop using it - especially for messing about!! www.unep.org/news-and-sto...
unep.org
AI has an environmental problem. Here’s what the world can do about that.
The sprawling data centres that house AI servers churn out toxic electronic waste and are voracious consumers of electricity, which in most places is still produced from fossil fuels.
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Pat Yale @patyale.bsky.social · 28/12/2024
Extraordinary watching country that once used to claim moral high ground abandon all pretence at morality to the extent that it openly attacks hospitals in contravention of international law. Hard now even to remember what started all this. Can never be forgiven. www.theguardian.com/global-devel...
theguardian.com
Last major health facility in north Gaza ‘out of service’ after Israeli attack
Gaza officials say staff at Kamal Adwan hospital, including its director, have been detained as WHO reports Israeli forces burned and destroyed key departments
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The Byzantine Legacy @thebyzantinelegacy.bsky.social · 27/12/2024
Hagia Sophia was inaugurated by Justinian on December 27, 537
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Julia Carrie Wong @joolia.bsky.social · 27/12/2024
It took less than a year for Israel to normalize waging war on hospitals, their staff, and their patients. Our government supplies the weapons,and accuses anyone who dare object of antisemitism. “The occupation army is burning all the operating departments in the hospital while we are still there”
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Pat Yale @patyale.bsky.social · 27/12/2024
On a finger-chillingly cold winter's evening in #İstanbul the mournful sound of the boza-seller calling his wares in Çukurcuma is all the more poignant. How on earth does he make his living?
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Pat Yale @patyale.bsky.social · 27/12/2024
Just popped my head into the other place to check on Ernesto's Cat Sanctuary which is unlikely to move to bluesky. Immediately read great post by Josh Cahill, who is also not on here, about fate of group of female Afghan air crew. Just don't know what to do. Bluesky is good in some ways but way too
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Pat Yale @patyale.bsky.social · 27/12/2024
One of most poignant clips I ever saw was of two elderly men, one Turkish, the other Australian, who had fought at #Gallipoli. Neither knew anything about the other's country against which they had been fighting. Same now, surely, for these Koreans sent to fight www.theguardian.com/world/2024/d...
theguardian.com
‘I thought it was fake news’: secrecy around North Koreans fighting in Kursk
As reports of battlefield casualties emerge, Russian locals say presence of soldiers sent by Pyongyang is barely noticed
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Melissa Martin @doubleemmartin.bsky.social · 26/12/2024
This much is certain about the Azerbaijan Airlines flight: the pilots were absolute heroes. To keep a fatally wounded airplane aloft for 72 minutes, and get it down in a way anyone survived, took staggering focus and skill. They fought so hard, and didn’t live to know they had saved 29 people.
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Nick Ashdown @nickashdown.bsky.social · 26/12/2024
After several years of few good books by journalists about Turkey, two new vivid, insightful ones came out. The first inter-splices contemporary dynamics of Istanbul with the history of its fall to the Ottomans. The second illustrates the republic's last century with a series of historical vignettes
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Nesi Altaras @nesialtaras.bsky.social · 26/12/2024
I didnt publish much this year bc ive been buried under phd course work. The things i'll remember from this year are my essay on yogurt and the english translation of a a Ladino story. 1 - Yogurt in Sephardi Life, w reminiscing about Buyukada. jewishstudies.washington.edu/sephardic-st...
jewishstudies.washington.edu
Muestras Konsejas: Yogurt in Sephardi Life - UW Stroum Center for Jewish Studies
Runner up, student category. Nesi Altaras recounts summers spent on the island of Buyukada, close to Istanbul, and the "traditional but extremely practical" feeling of being Sephardic in Turkey.
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Carl Bovis @carlbovisnature.bsky.social · 26/12/2024
Frosty Goldfinch! 😍 Taken from my bathroom window earlier this year. 😁 Hope you're all having a lovely Boxing Day! 🎄 #birds 🪶🐦
Goldfinch perched on the tip of a frost covered vertical branch
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Larry the Cat @number10cat.bsky.social · 26/12/2024
Today we celebrate Boxing Day in the UK, so named because cats spend the day exploring empty boxes discarded from Christmas Day* *This may not be true
media.tenor.com
a cat is laying in a box that says 4gifs.com on it
ALT: a cat is laying in a box that says 4gifs.com on it
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Elena Adaal @elenaadaal.bsky.social · 25/12/2024
Very nice and positive story on this Christmas day:
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Bremain in Spain @bremaininspain.com · 25/12/2024
Switzerland have also enhanced their agreements to closer alignment. There’s a lesson in these relationships for the UK too. Do we really want constant tweaks & negotiations? Joining the EU is the only way forward so the UK can fully cooperate, influence & have a real say in the future of Europe.
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Larry the Cat @number10cat.bsky.social · 25/12/2024
Merry Christmas. Cartoon by the wonderful Liz Climo
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Reuters @reuters.com · 25/12/2024
Russia's southern Krasnodar region declares an emergency as oil is still washing up on the coastline 10 days after two aging tankers ran into trouble. The tankers were hit by a storm on Dec. 15 when one split in half and the other ran aground reut.rs/4gKArOR
reut.rs
Russian region declares emergency situation as Black Sea oil spill fallout widens
Authorities in Russia's southern Krasnodar region on Wednesday declared a region-wide emergency, saying that oil was still washing up on the coastline 10 days after two ageing tankers ran into trouble.
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Pat Yale @patyale.bsky.social · 26/12/2024
Attached info on latest requirements for getting a Turkish residency permit will be distressing for some. Amount of monthly income required has risen again. Reflects soaring cost of living in Türkiye but fear not everyone will be able to comply.
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Arife Kose @arifekose.bsky.social · 26/12/2024
That's great - thought provoking as always. I find the debate around the fascism analogy important. It didn't work in the US for the reasons Bonnie Honig tells here but I think it works increasingly less and less in Europe which has the experience of fascism. Because I think we don't use this+
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Pat Yale @patyale.bsky.social · 26/12/2024
While the rest of us have been enjoying ourselves over Xmas, the horrors in Gaza just keep on coming. A 3-week-old baby frozen to death! What was her "guilt"? Israel will never come back from pariah status now. www.theguardian.com/world/2024/d...
theguardian.com
Baby girl freezes to death in Gaza while Israel and Hamas argue over ceasefire
Three-week-old Sila is the third baby to die from the cold in Gaza’s tent camps in recent days, according to doctors
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Pat Yale @patyale.bsky.social · 26/12/2024
Had never noticed that Wales didn't have its own national art gallery. What an obvious omission. Hopefully this exhibition in Aberystwyth will spur the creation of one. On until 6 September. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024...
theguardian.com
Exhibition debunks ‘no Welsh art’ myth amid calls for permanent national gallery
More than 250 works from amateur and celebrated Welsh artists are on display at the National Library of Wales until September 2025
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Pat Yale @patyale.bsky.social · 26/12/2024
With talk in air about "managed" end to war in Ukraine, worth remembering that "three decades ago,...Ukraine was briefly the third-largest nuclear power in the world." Was persuaded by West to surrender its nuclear weapons. Without that, war probably wldn't have happened www.npr.org/2022/02/21/1...
npr.org
Why Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons — and what that means in an invasion by Russia
Three decades ago, the newly independent country of Ukraine was briefly the third-largest nuclear power in the world. A lot has changed since then.
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Michael Clemens @mclem.org · 25/12/2024
Due to this idiotic statement, by a person who has proven his inability to distinguish truth from online propaganda, I just donated to Wikipedia. Please do the same.
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Mehdi Hasan @mehdirhasan.bsky.social · 22/12/2024
Over in the other place, the billionaire owner is threatening to fund ‘moderate’ (rightwing) candidates in heavily Democratic districts too. This is what oligarchy looks like. It’s the biggest threat to democracy today. Not ‘cancel culture.’ Not trans kids. Not college protesters. Oligarchy.
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Pat Yale @patyale.bsky.social · 25/12/2024
New Wallace & Gromit fantastic. Funny and clever at same time.
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Larry the Cat @number10cat.bsky.social · 25/12/2024
Wishing a happy Christmas to all my friends around the world. Please reply with your pictures of cats (and lesser pets) joining in the festivities
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Pat Yale @patyale.bsky.social · 25/12/2024
Happy Christmas to all those celebrating from an Istanbul so sunny it hardly even feels like winter!
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Mai El-Sadany @maitelsadany.bsky.social · 24/12/2024
🧵 "Christ is still under the rubble." When Palestinian minister Munther Isaac set up a similar nativity scene in Bethlehem outside the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church last year and again this year, he touched the lives and moved the hearts of so many around the world. (1)
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Pat Yale @patyale.bsky.social · 24/12/2024
Walking to Christmas Eve service this evening past long line of police vehicles assembled presumably to ensure that nothing untoward happens over next few weeks I was smiling to think how, growing up in Ealing, I cld never have imagined myself in such a scenario.
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Hardeep Matharu @hardeepmatharu.bsky.social · 24/12/2024
"We end the year with liberal democracies under threat from the continuing march of oligarchs in our media left unchecked & institutions bamboozled into tolerating intolerance. If the 'centrists' cannot hold, what hope is there for the rest of us?" @peterjukes.bsky.social's Byline Times editorial:
bylinetimes.com
The Centrists Cannot Hold: Client Journalism and Our ‘Concierge Media’ Are Threatening Liberal Democracy When It Is Most Under Attack
Obeying in advance by US and British media means they cannot combat the march of the hard right Broligarchs
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Pat Yale @patyale.bsky.social · 24/12/2024
Nice piece about role of Mary (Meryemana) in Islam as well as Christianity. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
theguardian.com
I grew up Muslim in a Catholic community – and Mary represented common ground | Zeyneb Sayılgan
Despite some theological differences, both denominations look to her as an inspiration for cultivating compassion and hope, says scholar Zeyneb Sayılgan
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Robert Boessenecker, Dr. of Whaleontology ™️ @coastalpaleo.bsky.social · 24/12/2024
I got blocked for this comment. Scientists and journalists: AI "art" takes away commissions from living, breathing artists. There is as much of a moral/ethical problem with AI as there is an environmental one. Remember: the only people excited about AI are excited for their bottom line.
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Pat Yale @patyale.bsky.social · 24/12/2024
Just rec'd my £10 Xmas bonus from UK Department of Work & Pensions. Hmm, what can I spend it on? If govt had cancelled this "benefit" rather than the winter-fuel payment hardly anyone wld even have noticed. Hasn't been upgraded since 1979!
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Pat Yale @patyale.bsky.social · 24/12/2024
"New media such as Instagram, TikTok, and X condemn users to information bubbles. But newspapers, radio, and books allow people to encounter the heterogeneity of their culture."
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Pat Yale @patyale.bsky.social · 23/12/2024
Cheery festive sight greeting pax emerging from #Samandıra Metro today.
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Pat Yale @patyale.bsky.social · 23/12/2024
Been over today to #Samandıra, #istanbul, to see remains of late C6th Damatrys Palace, Byzantine structure that used to sit in outskirts of city so that emperors approaching & leaving city wld have somewhere to rest. Currently being excavated/restored. Within 10 mins’ walk of Samandıra Metro stop.
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