this is good on the hollowness of using AI for art even if it produces results that we respond to. www.epochliterary.com/blog/on-ai-i...

Author: my short story "The never ending World Cup" was a warning. Infantino: www.theguardian.com/football/202...

Gribben says: “Private equity investment is inherently long term. Private equity firms hold investments for over six years on average.” Long term should at the very least be longer than the lifespan of the animals your business cares for and six years is not. www.theguardian.com/business/ng-...

The title of this comes unbidden to mind at least once a week and today via @mattmuir.bsky.social’s excellent WebCurios. It used not to apply to me as I was a one pair at a time person but these days I regrettably acquire shoes at a gently accelerating rate. www.youtube.com/watch?v=qp4G...

I went on holiday, I wrote some chaotic notes on what I did, there are some links exo.org.uk/blah/japan-i...

“in order to survive, a 200-kilo shark has to consume the calorific equivalent of one and a half chocolate digestives a day” The most remarkable idea here is half a chocolate digestive as a viable unit of measurement. They are indivisible, you cannot consume a half www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

I am on a monorail

What are the properties of social media that makes it less harmful at 17? Just ban algorithmic feeds.

After extensive testing I have concluded that the Muji maple baumkuchen is the best Muji baumkuchen

The level of free stuff in Japanese hotels is remarkable. So far over various hotels we’ve had rice, evening noodles, sake, beer, pastries, tea, coffee and biscoff. All of them have also had umbrellas you can borrow. This applies as much to fairly standard hotels as fancy ones.

A junction in a tunnel is a novel and not entirely welcome bit of road design, especially when you can’t read the road signs.

Single use plastic, big in Japan

why yes Tim, I am on holiday

One of the interesting things about Japan is how many things you can pay for with travel cards. Our restaurant this evening took Suica cards for payments. Some places seem to take them and not contactless credit cards and that’s certainly the case with most vending machines

Of course the spicy radish comes topped with tiny fish

In a random park in Tokyo and partner can connect to eduroam which is one of the unspoken benefits of being an academic

We can barely manage a fast train line and the Japanese are building star gates

It turns out 4am is when most of the shops at Edinburgh airport open. I would prefer not to have learned this.

This is good on the work we think AI is acceptable for notesfromasmallpress.substack.com/p/a-problem-...

The future really does continue to disappoint

While trying to remove cat hair from the duvet cover while that cat chases the lint roller around is entertaining it is not terribly effective

I realise it’s much more civilised for everyone doing the counting but personally I much prefer the model of waking up and absorbing the results in one go over a slow ratcheting of anxiety over the day

I think about the sort of things described here a lot on bike rides. Because I ride through the same places all the time you really notice how many pubs, and shops and cafes, are closing especially in smaller places. www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...

We are looking for a @societyworks.org developer (deadline end of May) and a @mysociety.org user support officer (deadline tomorrow) to join us: www.mysociety.org/about/careers/ I think it’s a good, fun place to work, with good dev processes, but I would say that :) Happy to answer any questions

If I look at your website on one device and then shortly after see an ad for your stuff on insta on another device you understand I don’t experience that as positive reinforcement?

er, are you ok insta?

As ever the replies to this are incredible for the well actualising. No insights commemorated here other than it remains not a place of honour.

This is truly delightful

Alex talks about this a lot but it is, when you stop and think, slightly mad that our elected representatives are allowed to accept gifts with few meaningful limits or restrictions. What exactly is the problem that having a "you can accept presents from anyone" policy is solving?

“The electronic spreadsheet is to double entry what an oil painting is to a sketch” from this great piece on the history of spreadsheets is relevant to A.I. and highlights the problem. With a sketch it’s clear details are missing so you treat it accordingly. davidoks.blog/p/how-the-sp...

Number must go up is, overall, a cursed idea

This is an absolute delight about a subject close to my heart. Absolutely rammed with your new favourite sentences. www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202...

Exercise, it turns out, is tiring

Tired: Oxford comma advocacy and debates Wired: insisting that everybody uses New Yorker style diereis on words like coöperation or preẽmpt

I am not a horse, but I would like cake

@jukes.ie isn't this your job? www.theguardian.com/artanddesign...

Absolutely ordering some of these as a conversation starter for the next party www.newscientist.com/article/2520...

We should have more trains

A.I Isn’t People www.todayintabs.com/p/a-i-isn-t-...

I would simply ban algorithmic feeds and reccomendations

lots of confidence all the way down

Books I have enjoyed this year, an ongoing thread for my own amusement. Will be sci-fi/fantasy forward. Good bit of magical realism in inquisition era Spain. More magical than real tbf, doesn’t quote stick the landing for me and her YA origins are visible in the cracks. Enjoyable and immersive

This is good on how moltbook looking like a social network is causing some wild takes about What It Means. The where we are going bit of this feels very grim meathook future to me rather than exciting though thejaymo.net/2026/02/02/4...

Trip to the big city and for the first time I have seen a starlink advert, someone using a folding phone and a tube escalator entirely lined in ads for a crypto platform featuring premiership footballers. Truly we live in times

So often I read things saying using AI will be more efficient but all they mean is it will be quicker

The only consistent thing in web development is that browsers are inconsistent

The value of a library is its ability to expand the knowledge you currently have, not in the distillation of the knowledge in it. The reductive view much of the tech industry takes to learning and knowledge is just depressing www.theverge.com/tech/862531/...

A lovely man who was one of the most continually surprising people I’ve met. We had a work thing at a venue with a DDR arcade machine. Mark walked over to it, stepped on and, as far as I was concerned, out of nowhere turned out to be very good at it. Absolutely delightful.

As a product manager I heard that you like containers karmada.io

It is January 2026 and you are tired of people writing about AI so why not read one more thing by me to really tip you over the edge – exo.org.uk/blah/on-bicy... – in which a metaphor is examined and noticing is discussed