Did a little weeknotes on my weekend in Berlin, feeling like a different person in different places, and not being comfortable with solitude - lurkmoophy.com/blog/weeknot...

We're hiring another design advocate - apply.workable.com/zeroheight/j... If you're looking for a role where you get to write about design systems, talk about design systems, tinker with design systems stuff, and team up with other companies to do some cool shit around AI and design systems... 👀

A big thanks to @zeroheight.com for sponsoring this weeks issue of Design Systems News with their 2026 Design Systems Report. read it here: report.zeroheight.com?utm_campaign... sign up to Design System News - news.design.systems 🙏🖤

CONVERGE IS HAPPENING AGAIN! Can't remember if I've already posted about it, but get your tickets to the Best* Design Systems Conference. converge.zeroheight.com *As confirmed by me, and I am completely unbiased.

In Berlin for the weekend next week... Who do I know in Berlin who wants a coffee or a drink? Also, Berlin recs please!

Did the guardian forget to put the title of the article on this page? 😅🤔 kind of love the mid-read graphic break…

On the plus side, @futureteens.bsky.social have a new album out and it's great, so at least there's that open.spotify.com/album/2ghxbt...

But even then, it makes me think whether there needs to be a real push over the next 2 years for tactical voting again. Even though Labour have genuinely been terrible, would you prefer another Labour government than Reform in power?

It's pretty demoralising to think that one of the best chances we have is Reform winning more councils, completely fucking it up from a governance point of view, and showing they're not ready for national leadership. But it even feels like people might not care about that.

But for the next GE (I mean, there's still potentially 2-3 years, and a lot can happen), I'm genuinely worried that the centre and left are too divided and split to cause anything other than Reform winning loads of seats, even if they only do it with low percentages.

Can this country please get its shit together? It still baffles me that FPTP has maintained in this country, because it's seriously fucking everything right now.

Heard the best euphemism yesterday: “my grandad would spend all his time polishing his purple Peugeot”

TIL that the word ‘hussy’ originated from the word ‘housewife’. It went from housewife to meaning a ‘pert girl’ to an immoral or immodest woman. Yet another great example of misogyny screwing language.

Trying to build a scraper to get a curated list of gigs that are happening in the UK based on an artist list, venues and promoters and GOD IT'S HARD. Bandsintown and Songkick don't provide public APIs anymore so it feels like the only option is to set up some extremely fragile and awful scrapers 🫠

I forgot my headphones at the gym. Pray for me.

You know what? Apples are great.

Sharing this album with anyone I get the chance to. Neighbourhood Kids were one of my big finds of last year. Old-school hip-hop from indigenous voices in the US. It slaps so hard. open.spotify.com/album/65H4m6...

God I hate tailwind

And while we're there, some more candidates for Bruts tees...

Did some old school photoshop editing to create these two monstrosities for potential Brutalligators tees coming up. How terrible/great was 80s-early 00s poster design...

I've got a "fun" little css problem. I have a line of text, and I want to have these pixel hashes after the text, but fill the container. The problem is I want it to fill it at all browser widths. I attempted this with flex and used the repeating svg as a background, but no dice. Anyone know how?

This. This is exactly what's going to happen. So be careful if you're using this shit for essential stuff that you run because it's going to get mega expensive in the next couple of years.

TIL that one of the founders of Grind coffee used to be in Bodyrockers, who made this absolute ridiculous slice of 00s Australian electro open.spotify.com/track/0reKGV...

📢 Speaking at @pixelpioneers.co Bristol on 19 June are: @rachelandrew.bsky.social @morganepeng.bsky.social @christinevallaure.bsky.social Kardo Ayoub @heydonworks.com Nick Lewis Candi Williams @lurkmoophy.bsky.social @debugbear.com's Matt Zeunert 🎟️ Tickets: pixelpioneers.co/events/brist...

For musical fans highly recommend Kimberly Akimbo, which is getting its UK debut at Hampstead Theatre in August. Super heartwarming, sad and funny musical. Don’t miss it www.hampsteadtheatre.com/whats-on/202...

Here's my latest article for @zeroheight.com, inspired by @kvlly.com, diving deep into the hidden costs of a design system team saying "yes".

Added to the "discourse" about how design systems are more than components, and Claude Design ain't helping convince people otherwise... zeroheight.com/blog/ai-is-c...

Love that our second top listener on lastfm is 'a sad gay'

Saw Avenue Q last night and it's still great. They haven't updated much (just some references). I thought it would feel too on the nose and problematic in 2026, but surprisingly still sits on that edge pretty well.

@soysaucechin.bsky.social and I are back on our DS WTF bullshit tomorrow and talking about DESIGN SYSTEM MANDATES. Do you actually need one? Is it important? And if you do, how do you go about getting one? Tomorrow at 4pm BST / 8am PT / 11am ET. Let's go. webinars.zeroheight.com/register/zer...

hawking a line of branded Mountain Goats smart glasses. no matter where you look things look a little bleaker and also the wearer cannot remove the glasses once worn. I’m disrupting this sector

Spent yesterday rebuilding nothingsoundsgood.club from a Shopify theme to Astro + the Shopify API. I love Shopify as a payment system, but hate it as a CMS. I'm hoping that the move means I will now actually want to update the website more... Lesson: Don't build on shit you hate.

The anger and despair caused by someone else using the last of the milk, forcing you to have a black coffee. The world is so unfair.

Back from Australia. What did I miss?

New review for my writing: "It’s like watching someone almost say something interesting, over and over again, while actively preventing themselves from ever quite getting there."

I'm excited to announce that @lurkmoophy.bsky.social of @zeroheight.com will present a lightning talk at @pixelpioneers.co in Bristol on 19 June! ⚡ They will discuss why #designsystems, as we know them, need to die. 👉 Read the talk description & get your tickets: pixelpioneers.co/events/brist...

Look mum, I'm speaking at @pixelpioneers.co in June! Looking forward to going back out to one of my fave conferences to talk about why design systems need to die (as we know them) pixelpioneers.co/events/brist...

mid

Do you know what I wish I had known a lot earlier? How often muscle pain is caused by stress and anxiety... I suffered for years with chronic neck, shoulder, and lower back pain on and off. I went to physios, got PTs, went to the doctors, and none of it helped.

Just yolo-ed my inbox and archived 4000 emails, including 2000+ unread. ama.

The design system report is here! I spent the last 2.5 months pulling this behemoth together, so now's your chance to read 80 pages of insight into where we're at as an industry...

March version of the Indiefjord 2026 poster by @lurkmoophy.bsky.social – isn't it pretty?

This is what love looks like, right?

lol, yeah Amazon I fucking hope they are considering it's a free medium...

⏳ The Design Systems Report 2026 launches in 7 days. Join @lurkmoophy.bsky.social on 18 March, 5pm GMT for a live webinar breaking down this year's findings — from the design systems resource crisis to AI, adoption, and documentation. Register here: hubs.li/Q0468Zlv0

So excited to bring the Soots and Muttering out to the fjords!

Indiefjord news: @soootsprite.bsky.social (EN) is playing! According to @lurkmoophy.bsky.social they are one of those bands that should be a million times bigger than they are. Dreamy shoegaze that folks who like Agent Blå or @alvvaysband.bsky.social will love.

Now that shape() is available in all major browsers, let me remind you that you can use my online generator to create any polygon with ... rounded corners! css-generators.com/polygon-shape/ Adjust the setting, then copy the code.

LIttle improvement - added the latest book to my masthead, scraping from Goodreads (because Storygraph was going me a 403) - lurkmoophy.com/illustration/

Is this a record? 57 days into the year and we’ve had our first piece of good news for 2026?