You’ve likely read about the Pope’s Magnifica Humanitas from all corners this week, but this is my favourite write-up on its importance so far. From Diplo: www.diplomacy.edu/blog/why-the...

"The flagship piece of secondary legislation under the EU’s flagship AI law made human rights (the thing the EU spent the entire ‘Brussels Effect’-era selling itself on) into a tickbox companies could choose to ignore. Go simplification!" euobserver.com/217590/simpl...

This Sunday, I'll be speaking (very early) at a free virtual e-Summit on science communication, alongside a bevy of wonderful people. www.theecowell.com/science-in-s...

Data Manager Seeker of Truth/Organizer of Chaos/Finder of Errors/Occasional Hair-Puller/Frequent Screen-Curser/Resolver of Data Disasters/Destroyer of "Data Final_Final For Real.csv" Naming Conventions

Required listening.

Realities of expecting a delivery from Elta Courier in Greece.

I’m talking to some undergrads next week and trying to compile a list of the best ways to tap into the data world. #datasky what’s the most updated Bsky starter packs and lists these days? I lost sight once I got my feed to a good spot

Love this!

New Open Source Tool Supports Transparency and Compliance Across Italian Public Administration interoperable-europe.ec.europa.eu/collection/o...

In the very week I decide to try Proton Mail... 🙄 Are there ANY decent companies out there? www.404media.co/proton-mail-...

Irish Authors Longlisted for 2026 Women’s Prize for Fiction Kit de Waal and Wendy Erskine have been longlisted for the 2026 Women’s Prize for Fiction. Kit de Waal's The Best of Everything is a tender and unforgettable story of found family and the long way back from heartbreak. The Benefactors by…

It's the 3-year anniversary of The Python Coding Stack in a month's time… …should I bake a cake? Sure, there are publications with tens or hundreds of thousands of readers. But I'm pleased that nearly 7,000 people like my quirky writing and unconventional perspectives

In the Open Visualization Academy: NEW COURSE: The Craft of Building Stories with Data, by @chartwaali.bsky.social: openvisualizationacademy.org/courses/the-... Newsletter: Open Source Fuels the Future of Visualization (P.4 4) by Melissa Strong: openvisualizationacademy.beehiiv.com/p/how-open-s...

STOP SENDING STATISTICIANS DATA this is footage of a REAL statistician looking at REAL data they have played us for absolute fools

More good news 🙄🙄 "This so-called “affiliate” system allows streamers to earn money for new player registrations, and also potentially a slice of the revenues gambling operators receive from players." www.investigate-europe.eu/posts/social...

An event worth attending for #OSS and adjacent folk. These Geneva Dialogue masterclasses aim to establish a shared analytical baseline on how OSS functions, how responsibility is shared across the chain, and how current approaches struggle to scale. @ dig.watch/event/securi...

Observable have a nice primer on #dataliteracy. If you’re stuck in the weeds needing help, this might be a good place to start. Not affiliated, just a nerd 🤓 observablehq.com/learn/what-i...

“you have the least information at the beginning of a project, which is exactly when design docs ask you to make the most decisions[…] Capture intent, hard-to-reverse decisions, and shared context. Leave out the implementation details you'll get wrong anyway” www.lucasfcosta.com/blog/design-...

“Ireland’s tech-driven growth model has long depended on being both host and referee to US multinationals. The DSA is now testing whether that balancing act is sustainable.” techpolicy.press/why-ireland-...

Thought-provoking piece by @lewisgoodall.com. He argues that the US under Trump is no longer from the UK perspective a - military ally (Greenland) - strategic ally (Russia/Ukraine) - political ally (NSS calling for empowering far-right in Europe) - economic ally (tariffs)

On updated #gdpr #personaldata definitions, the author believes the change will “make it more difficult for organizations to achieve a good compliance posture, and more likely that they need expert help as part of their compliance programs.” Got to agree here. desfontain.es/blog/digital...

🇨🇦PM Carney: "...Stop invoking rules-based international order as though it still functions as advertised. Call it what it is: a system of intensifying great power rivalry where the most powerful pursue their interests using economic integration as coercion." (🧵2/6)

Most edited page English-language page? Well of course it’s the list of WWE personnel, with more than 59,000 revisions. www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/...

Broke the V60 jug but it’s ok, this is better. This one’s for 70s/80s Irish pub culture fans 🥃

A professional update. www.linkedin.com/posts/kimgil...

If you have time to doom scroll, you have time to read books!

This is a gripping microhistory thread, worth the read (Don't believe Mrs. Grieve!)

Waaah can never unsee! It’s hard to justify Tahoe icons tonsky.me/blog/tahoe-i...

Happy 2026! 🎆 My resolution: put @dslc.io on a sustainable footing. I’m soft-launching our Patreon to cover costs (Zoom, hosting, etc). If you love #TidyTuesday, our Slack help, or our book clubs, you can be an early supporter before the official launch Monday! patreon.com/DSLC #RStats #DataBS

Well indeed! “[…] this emphasis on understandable privacy communication reshapes how teams think about consent and control.” #policycomms #technicalcomms www.kdnuggets.com/emerging-tre...

It’s been a cat drama kind of year. Rescued, bottle fed & forever-homed a beautiful calico, kept my tuxedo in happy sun times, and outsmarted a cheeky feral balcony kitty.

~9% of readers end up finishing long form technical post & I'm emphasising the author's disclaimer, but it's worth noting for developer advocacy comms: "these insights are, as with anything n=1, fragile and should be held weakly with anticipation of more (diverse) data." lucalp.dev/do-long-tech...

You made me happy today, Gemini. You made me happy.

Happy logical Halloween

If you use #LinkedIn, you may want to access your settings here and opt out of having your data used to train their AI. This opt-in by default is ILLEGAL in the EU, but, you know, potatoes This is the direct link to opt out www.linkedin.com/mypreference...

Jesus. This graph is actually shocking! WTF is wrong with people. usafacts.org/answers/how-...

We’re looking for a developer-journalist to join @propublica.org’s News Applications team. You would write code, analyze data, build interactives — all in the service of public interest journalism. Check it out: job-boards.greenhouse.io/propublica/j...

tdan.com/data-is-risk... Good piece on the damage current hiring practices are doing to the ‘learning ladder’.

Cat + Sun square = Science

There are a lot more people than one might think who refuse this tech but are shamed by users. Once the space for their opinions and voices opens up, the scene will change. These stats, 18k views, are not a coincidence for example on this preprint. People want to not, yup. zenodo.org/records/1706...

no shit

Happy Blood Moon, everybody; be careful out there

The blood moon looking like a fireball from my terrace this evening. Amazing.

Where's the Shovelware? Why AI Coding Claims Don't Add Up open.substack.com/pub/mikelove...

Love this piece by @puntofisso.bsky.social , especially his learnings around intersectionality and bias in the data. nightingaledvs.com/bus-station-...

Figs plucked from the tree this morning. Enjoyed with some overnight oats for breakfast ☀️

We're about halfway through the submission period so the clock's actually ticking? (yeah I know everyone puts in their talk like 36 hours before deadline) but if you have time this week, do it! #dataBS

A whip-smart take on vibe coding. “A chaos monkey disguised as a teammate. No tests. No profiling. No understanding of side effects or performance impact. Just blind clicking and tapping and typing. The programming equivalent of punching your TV to make the static stop.” deplet.ing/the-copilot-...

“It’s very common to see data as objective, but it’s important to remember that it isn’t any more objective than we are.” thisisimportant.net/threads/data... #DataBias #OpenData

AI Hype: The phenomenon where experts without expertise hype up imminent arrival of expertise without experts. #AIAphorisms