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

@rodm.bsky.social assuming you have not already seen it this is probably of interest to you. I did not know there was an alternate ending www.ianbetteridge.com/of-ants-saul...

A smouldering thunderclap of a man brooded into the room, taut and sinewy as a stag. Jesamine could barely take her eyes off his stalking progress to ask “Who is that?”. “That is the warband leader, Storm Goretti”.

I was hoping 2026 would be the year we ran out of everything and it would stop happening but alas, still so much

If this is not available in the gift shop then someone should fix that immediately www.livescience.com/archaeology/...

what I did on my 2025 - exo.org.uk/blah/2025-ye... (which once again did not involve adding opengraph tags for better previews)

I, like I imagine a lot of people, have a party playlist that I add stuff I think is party suitable to, for quite a loose definition of suitable, which gets put on shuffle and it is a really delightful way to be reminded of bangers.

I’d not really considered this but of course the machine is always recording what you do. Everything tending towards surveillance capitalism is among the most depressing trends of modern living www.robinsloan.com/lab/claude-i...

In which I did some easy things and then Alex did some clever things and we got some answers.

The text generator generates text. If you ask it for persuasive text, it generates text that is more persuasive. The text generator cannot lie, or tell the truth—it just generates text. Every time we say “the bot lied” we are misleading ourselves.

It is, apparently, giving Tuesday so here in decreasing order of self serving are some suggestions. Firstly @mysociety.org, the people that pay me. While that's surely reason enough, we also make websites, data and reports that make it easier to be civic minded in the uk - www.mysociety.org/donate/

Ask Alex and Julia things about our democracy sites, or about how democracy works in the UK. They love answering questions and have opinions.

This is lovely. I gave a talk about maintenance from a civic tech point of view some years ago that might be of interest: dracos.co.uk/said/tictec-... (and I do make sure maintenance is included in the org strategy goals, I think it’s vital)

A short series of messages where I (badly) cosplay @jukes.ie follows

This is something I absolutely believe in and try follow with my shopping choices. Shops where they recognise you are a delight. www.are.na/editorial/pe...

Second work post in a row but as a summary of how a vote in parliament went the previews from TheyWorkForYou votes really are delightful - votes.theyworkforyou.com/decisions/di...

In not personal news, some things I have been mostly working on recently

Do I want to know how they add him?