Someone is waging a gambling scam at scale using AI slop Facebook ads (extremely UK specific, it’s kinda interesting) and compromised App Store developer accounts. Whatever happened to app review? How the fuck does this stuff get passed?

Found my new croissant bag

"Bromley road accident rate sees biggest fall in London". Well, if you compare 2005-9 to 2020-24. Not if you compare it to 2015-2019 (also an average of 99, so no change). And surely the numbers themselves are meaningless as opposed to, say, per population. www.bromley.gov.uk/news/article...

I think I may have stumbled across the Greatest Form Input:

Arcadia at the Old Vic is fantastic, well worth it if you can go. Everything I remembered (I’m alarmed by how many lines I remembered from 1999ish) and more.

Translation second!

Given the recent news about Heroku (deep, weary sigh) I've been looking at alternative PAAS options for PHP8+Postgres. Some notes on porting to @upsun.com (formerly platform.sh) here: tomroyal.com/2026/02/25/n...

The UK Japan Foundation's annual film programme is out, and this is my annual complaint that access could be widened so very much if they could offer online streaming in addition to the few UK cities where screenings are held: www.jpf-film.org.uk

"Recruit top candidates by showing them that you're so fucking lazy you outsourced the interviewing process to an AI chatbot" fuck meeeee. (Remind me of a job "interview" I once did - and failed - via touch-tone telephone. Press 9 for self loathing.)

In a world of shit, a nice thing: there’s a new Snail Mail record and she’s playing London in June.

(Related to that last story - I only this week came across the arseholes YouTubing themselves in Tower Hamlets, complaining about the "Tamil" graffiti, failing to read "E1" correctly on a street sign, then pondering where the English cuisine is on, uh, Brick Lane: bsky.app/profile/anni...

This week's London Centric is a brilliant bit of work - the "asylum seeker" housing in Knightsbridge that's actually a let in Ealing. bsky.app/profile/jim....

Pleased to say that I received a reply, and as of this week JD MP will no longer be posting over on the hellsite. A welcome good decision, and one that I hope other MPs, councils and Government departments might follow. bsky.app/profile/did:...

Oh, and has anyone collated all the MPs who are getting paid to post on X, per the register of members’ interests? members.parliament.uk/member/5158/...

Wrote to my MP @janetdaby.bsky.social asking her to reconsider her continued usage of X, and I hope that - whether or not she posts updates here instead - she will give it some thought. We dropped all X accounts at work in 2024 - haven't regretted it for half a second. It's a cesspit of bigotry.

Boring update: it's properly cold, for London at least. The condensate tray below is a solid slab of ice, but the pump's happily pumping and the house is warm. Clever thing. bsky.app/profile/tomr...

New target market for phishing attacks, is there?

Worshippers of the demonic language bird - my Duolingo Family plan is about to renew. If you’d like in on an annual sub for about £20 (it’s the Super version without the creepy AI calls), drop me a line?

If anyone has a good IOSS solution for very small businesses I’d welcome a recommendation because I just spent a despiriting hour concluding that it would be vastly simpler to smuggle £50 of goods through the Eurotunnel* than put them in the post. * fear not, I am too lazy to do this

So here's a hole to fall down - who's running the new Lewisham Model Market website? www.modelmarket.london

Welp, there (probably) goes another pretty useful way to avoid car ownership in the city. For the brief time that Zipcar actually covered my part of London, it was really useful.

Normally a big fan of Search Engine but this week’s E*ra Klein interview (“what to do in the face of brutality and chaos? Have you considered keeping quiet about it? I am very smart”) is almost enough to convince me to travel to the US just to pick a fight at Thanksgiving. Fuck me.

(They added another Rilo Kiley show in London, btw, if you missed the Roundhouse..)

Not today, AWS. Not today.

Tedious PSA - if you’re invited to book a Covid booster via the NHS app, maybe check in before you attend the appointment. I was just turned away despite having a booking in the app - pharmacists have been given a very restrictive list of eligibility criteria.

Anyone watching the news from Hiut with interest, Companies House has updated.

Presumably she already owns all the squares, and you can never win?

The UK is not a real place and yet here I am in it

Welp, finally blundered across a vibe-coded web app in the wild. All the interior pages clearly defined in a single Javascript file, all wide open to the world. The only silver lining is there's no way for people to enter payment details (presumably because they couldn't get that bit working..)

*taps furiously*

Looks like Stripe is having an uncharacteristic wobble this morning?

A friend just reminded me of the Nabaztag, and I'm happy to see people are still hacking them (last year, at least!): bsky.app/profile/joel...

Got an (unsolicited) free trial of the Duolingo AI thing and.. no, it’s still dogshit (it also suggested I use 高い instead of 高い, which is.. er..)

Ugh, fake Emergency Alert related emails (on a pretty good fake of the Gov UK branding) now going around. We've seen several from "Companies House" lately, too.

In related news, I see it's now possible to cancel an NYT subscription online. bsky.app/profile/ezra...

Enjoying the early 2000s internet vibe of the "register to maybe buy Radiohead tickets" ARG.

Well who wouldn’t I guess

Back from our annual pilgrimage to the woods. Again very much recommending the countryside in Sweden as somewhere to get away from the city, look at the stars, maybe swim in the lakes a bit and chill out. Not too far, not too expensive (cough Norway cough) not ridiculously hot.

Let’s see who wro.. oh. bsky.app/profile/kate...

‼️ Creative Cloud users - watch out! ‼️ If you're an All Apps Subscriber with annual renewal, look out for Adobe hiking your plan up to a new CC Pro tier. Increases your cost by almost £150 (£644 vs £496) for some AI shite, even if you never used a single credit before.

Is it September yet?

.. and whilst I'm recommending things related to hotels on lakes in Japan, here's another one. Watching that show really made me want to go back to Tazawako, which is - probably? - still a bit off the tourist trail, and just a gorgeous place: maps.app.goo.gl/YEh8QZcfpgqS...

I know I have a few followers interested in Japanese culture stuff, so an unsolicited recommendation: I've been very much enjoying this Netflix drama set in the Fuji Five Lakes area - it's a sort of gentle ensemble piece with a slight Twin Peaks-y vibe: www.netflix.com/gb/title/819...

Just emailed* a client the attached image of a "cats dressed as a bucket of KFC" instead of a report on AWS usage, and then realised that it very clearly belongs here instead: * 30 second undo feature - life saver.

(No, have literally never heard of this salt thing either..)

The author of this one really, REALLY buried the lede. I nearly threw my phone. bsky.app/profile/glas...

Heroku either going full Pravda or maybe they lost the status database in yesterday's shitclasm, who knows?

Lovely day for a multi-hour period of Heroku downtime (looks like Salesforce's entire MFA system has shat the bed)

No

Make America Kittens Again v3.0.0 finally (re)introduces custom block- and allow-listing. Currently out on Chrome. Should be doable on FF, I just need to check the local storage permissions. Probably won't be possible on Safari for a while due to *argh*. #MAKA