ICYMI last week our work was featured in the BBC: www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Don't say we never treat you 👀 Rodgers & Hammerstein’s musical Oklahoma, with #HughJackman, and Terence Rattigan's tale of paternity and corruption, Man and Boy, land on #NationalTheatreAtHome this May. More info here 👇 https://www.ntathome.com/browse 📸 Simon Farrell, Manuel Harlan

A flavour of what Share can do: - ingest data in a variety of source formats - data transformation and reformatting using databricks - share data securely with all local authorities in England and Scotland, and soon Wales

I’m back on the MHCLG blog today, talking about how we in-sourced our system for Homes for Ukraine and what we learned along the way 💙💛 mhclgdigital.blog.gov.uk/2026/04/09/f...

Josie and the Pussycats is totally jerkin'! And once again, here's my essay about how fun (and, unexpectedly, to me, anyway, smart) this movie turned out to be: whatever.scalzi.com/2023/12/12/t...

If U R looking for a new UR role, then U won't be disappointed... www.civilservicejobs.service.gov.uk/csr/jobs.cgi...

Selected my sessions already - what a line up ❤️

Really enjoyed this by @evanhd.bsky.social - especially the line about this being the first time since the Stone Age we’ve moved away from burning stuff to keep ourselves warm. And he’s right about the central problem in Britain: electricity is just too expensive relative to gas (unlike in France)

One day you’re just a guy, and the next you’re King Sammy I, emperor of the robot vacuums

Open data innovation still a thing. Gov releases EPC data in machine readable format and Zoopla has a shiny new ‘search by floor area’. get-energy-performance-data.communities.gov.uk

I know this was yesterdays middle age topic and today’s is heat pump - But people are selling second hand car seats for way more than I’d expect given that everything you read says don’t buy a second hand car seat!

Day 1 of 4 of heat pump installation. So many people were here today to start work. Good time of year to do it. Not too cold. Have electric heaters in two rooms for the evening. Hot water on immersion until heat pump… not that great. But won’t be long.

Long shot Bluesky friends - does anyone have the newborn insert from www.maxi-cosi.co.uk/car-seats/ca... ? The ones on Vinted and eBay don’t look right and I binned mine in a moment of what now feels like madness

The wonderful thing about Tyggers Is Tyggers are burning bright Their tops are made out of rubber In the forest of the night What bouncy, trouncy, flouncy, pouncy, Immortal hand or eye Did frame the most wonderful thing about Tyggers, Their fearful symmetry!

Canary Worf.

If your venn diagram niche is public benches service design accessibility then I have a short blog post for you What's with all of the missing park benches? – Rich Blake share.google/CkdeSUmPbX7T...

4 year old: “why are some families two dads” me: “sometimes two boys fall in love and decide to start a family” 4: “and how many cars do they have” me: “what” 4: “does a family with two dads have just one car like us or do they have two cars”

🚨 Exciting jobs klaxon! 🚨 We’re hiring 2x Heads of Delivery, one will be working with me in HFU 🇺🇦😁 26-27 is going to be a really exciting year for us as we mature our system and explore growth opportunities, and I need someone great by my side! www.civilservicejobs.service.gov.uk/csr/index.cg...

It’s part of France’s open source collaboration software suite that other governments can adopt and run.

Italian voice actor Carlo Bononi was the voice of all of the characters on Pingu. A trained clown by trade, he used a theater technique called grammelot, which consists of "speaking" in a mix of babbled gibberish noises. He improvised all the voices live and unscripted.

I've just discovered this is part of a whole season of BBC Ibsen adaptations and they're all on iPlayer.

You won’t want to miss this, @mattwoodhill.bsky.social has been doing the hard yards on market-shaping in planning.

Best TikTok thing going is the two dudes trying food from every country without leaving NYC. If you haven’t seen them yet, it’s incredible. My favorite so far is last week’s. Legit got me emotional.

Wrote about my first 7 months transforming the technology underpinning the national breast screening programme: lizlutgendorff.substack.com/p/lessons-le...

looked at my work emails

A message for you all to carry through the year

Watching THE GREEN KNIGHT again

This is an almost shockingly wise essay. I'm glad I've finally read it.

i've been weirdly invested in this dog's sweater alteration IG roodabeguh

Feeling this so hard this past several weeks

I'd missed this piece from @edent.tel on image manipulation. He quotes some excellent references! shkspr.mobi/blog/2025/04...

Finally found the perfect tree topper!

Always happy to talk about this, it's something everyone recognises as a problem but very few design for at the start. Lisa Moretti did an ace overview of our work mojdigital.blog.gov.uk/2022/05/06/d... (some links won't work due to MoJ losing Google) and Services Week 2022 youtu.be/5JmM9ZOkMW8?...

“Where are all the good guys?” “You could be looking at them.” “What a very depressing thought.”

Despite frequent remonstrations from digital archivists, Persephone never accepted that she could not photocopy a whole book in one go.

We're also looking for some perm Senior Delivery Managers in an exciting range of locations www.civilservicejobs.service.gov.uk/csr/jobs.cgi...

Can anyone recommend someone looking for contract work in January who can do a mix of Product and Delivery? Going to CC @jukes.ie as it's for the team you just left! But open to good people from anywhere

Omg. I thought "oh that's nice, you can read it." But no, not just that, you can WATCH the stuff. You can click on the programmes and watch them. Flaming hell

When it was announced that Shane Black was doing Iron Man 3, some people were like "haha is he going to set it at Christmas then" and then it came out and he had done exactly that.

During my time at MHCLG I did a series of opinionated* sessions on agile/digital ways of working I think of as the [IMHO] series. This is the 1st of 4 posts based on those presentations. [IMHO] The Art of Effective Agile digitalbydefault.com/2025/12/15/i... *i.e. there is much to disagree with!

Dick Van Dyke is 100 years old tomorrow. I hope he's making the most of his finally night of Lego building.

I fucking love memes you can understand through the language barrier, holy shit

Website Task Flowchart xkcd.com/3175/

Alongside *cough* several different kinds of advent calendar, we also have an advent candle this year. But are really behind on burning it already and struggling to catch up 😅 it hasn’t even got to day 1 of candle yet - burn faster!

I hope someone draws this wonderful story about Tom Stoppard's Arcadia and the power of the arts to help us see things differently, to the attention of our Education Secretary. Do read it, it will lift your spirits.

I love this so much b/c the original guy strikes the pose & okay yeah, he does indeed look hot & sharp-dressed (ZZ Top told us who's crazy 'bout that) but then melts w/ unabashed delight at a moment of connection & just lights up with this surprised happy smile & gets EVEN HOTTER b/c it's real joy.

libro.fm/audiobooks/9... With Stoppard's death it's worth mentioning that you can get the BBC radio versions of pretty much his entire body of work for a single audiobook credit (also available on Audible, but Libro.fm is far better)

Astonished ‘ troll’ the ancient Yuletide carol seems to be correct

No.447 is a bit of a DM special --> newsletter.digitalbydefault.jobs/internet-of-...