Just finished another recommendation from @mrbsemporium.bsky.social. Cleverly constructed, rich characters and a big ending

There are good reasons to spell out acronyms

Amazon is famously frugal as a Leadership Principle but today I discovered two things we didn’t get at the MOJ. Not only do you get a towel in the shower, there’s also a nozzle on the hairdryer

Enjoying this new feature from Gmail. It’d be churlish to wonder how long it’s been since the previous update

The (coincidental) intersection of reading Prophet Song, visiting Derry and seeing the exhibition @nationalportraitgallery of people affected by the Troubles made for a moving 24 hours

I’ve reached that stage of not being at work where I’m trying to engineer banter with a scammer

Spotify has correctly judged I’d bring Mendelssohn’s Octet on a desert island open.spotify.com/site/playlis...

Moving experience to visit Notre Dame cathedral. If St Paul’s had been destroyed in 2019, would the bat survey have been completed? Or would the construction tender been awarded yet?

Thanks to @mrbsemporium.bsky.social I got to read this stunning book this week. Memorable experience

Am sharing what I read on holiday in case it helps anyone prioritise their reading. In order of usefulness and beauty, they were: 1. Intermezzo by Sally Rooney 2. A history of the world in 47 borders by John Elledge 3. Supremacy by Palmy Olson 4. Expectation by Anna Hope

Got to see this last night. It’s spectacular but found I needed to check myself when it didn’t look as dramatic as the classic Insta shots

I had a moment earlier this week where I thought: my younger self would’ve been delighted to be doing this. That I was on my own. half cut in a Soho pub reading a book whilst waiting for my daughter to finish a dance class, meant it was important not to get lost in the details of the moment!

I assume you’d have got long odds in August on Bashar Al-Assad and Dan Ashworth going on the same weekend

This is an extraordinary translation (I assume) of a tense, tragic thriller. Thanks for sponsoring @mrbsemporium.bsky.social

Night in black tie with the best ever leaving gift

In five paragraphs about confusing accountability in local government there’s not one mention of voters or democracy

Do academics have a concept of bureaucratic debt? Similar to tech debt it would describe how a new rule might be well designed and well intentioned but when bolted on to a sprawling rules base slows the operating system and occasionally leads to crashes

#uksnow 2/10 - EN5

vimeo.com/886475620 I really enjoyed this talk by @karakane-kk.bsky.social & @martinjordan.com. Made me reflect on the role of the digital centre

Iconic branding from Hackney. And fair play to my former colleagues! I can only imagine the challenge posed by someone _actually_ trying to gift a goat

Which sport is killing itself more quickly: England cricket or rugby?

Had a play with Suno AI today to test its music generating capabilities. Save yourself the £8 for the week

My colleague @anthull.bsky.social and I have written a thing in a about Agile and dependencies to get your advice on what we can do differently mcain.co.uk/dependencies...

Entry #728 in the directory of school IT system problems: we have amended our policy to no longer conform with NCSC security guidelines. Genius, ‘Wise’Pay

How might we build the capacity and resilience of institutions and civil society to respond to cyber attacks and so change the incentives around ransomware?

My best attempt at making sense of what has been happening at the British Library and more importantly how to learn from it ciaranmartin.substack.com/p/on-the-mat...

Looking forward for attending my first #ukgovcamp in a very long time tomorrow. Reckon last time I went, I wasn’t yet working in the public sector

ChatGPT summarises the causes for major IT projects failing, according to the NAO as follows. A fair summary? “Inadequate planning, poor project management, scope changes, unrealistic expectations, insufficient user involvement … inadequate testing, unclear requirements, lack of senior mgmt support

To register a charity with @charitycommission, it needs a UK bank account. To set up a NatWest bank account I need a registered charity number. Any ideas on how to break this Gordian knot?