Yelland on Today doubling down on his “it was a coup” view. Oof. The BBC is infuriating but essential, and we all know how hollow the ‘leftie BBC’ clamour rings when Reform has been so heavily platformed for so long.

This week’s “46% in error” figure is already ten times larger than last week’s. Based on our experience, it’s likely to be a wild underestimate of the final figure - there must be many, many cases which are still live. www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

Still up there amongst ‘most interesting systems I’ve used’. I must dust mine off and get it working again.

There is, one suspects, quite a lot carefully hinted at between the lines here.

Collected this with @nustem.bsky.social colleagues last night, at the @iop.org awards dinner. Woop Woop! Very proud to add my name to the list of recipients, several of whom I worked with back in my formative days or have known since. Inspirations all. Blog post & links: nustem.uk/blog/news/20...

My comfortable contentment that Windows has largely settled down in recent years and become vaguely stable has been utterly shattered by an Asus ROG Ally. Great device, love ‘portable Game Pass,’ but connecting/disconnecting monitors and input devices carries ~1 in 3 chance of total freak-out. Sigh.

The voting system is pretty good, the recommended candidate list looks reasonable, and giving the chair your proxy votes against the ‘Restore Trust’ (🤢)-backed insurance motion, which is frankly unhinged. Takes seconds. Please vote.

Ghost biscuits! Made with my kids, just now. Thanks @robives.bsky.social for the cookie cutter download. 👻👍

Bug of the year for me: this Word document, on my iPad, won’t let me type the last ‘e’ in ‘developed.’ Letter either side: fine. Any other word: fine. But ‘developed’? Nope. ‘Developd,’ every time. Happens with both the Magic and software keyboards. Whu-what?!

Thread: they withdrew an NSF grant application because the required anti-DEI clause was untenable. Excellent.

Very this.

Stories I really should write up at some point: that time I was moving a sofa with a guy who turned out to be a Nobel Laureate.

I should probably repost this, since it’s about… er… me. Yay me!

"We've redesigned the Office icons so they sit together more cohesively and look more approachable and playful. Except Teams, that's still way off doing its own thing and looking like an early-00s groupware settings panel." — Microsoft, apparently.

Interesting thread about what we’ve lost with the sidelining of old TV production techniques. From my perspective as a sometime factual ents guy, I put a lot of blame on Avid. Nonlinear offline editing made it possible to ‘fix it in post’. Huge advantage… but also huge excuse for avoiding decisions.

The physics a-level films Alom and I made are still - fifteen years later - widely used. That’s absurd. Anyone wondering why there aren’t more of them would be surprised at the story there. I still don’t know what happened myself, and I was in the room.

Backstreet blues.

This shelving unit isn’t how I’d intended to spend my Saturday, but it’s quite satisfying and will solve several problems I hadn’t quite realised I had. Tomorrow I hope to fit wall mounts for bicycles, off the right of this shot.

This epic endeavour deserves wider exposure.

Trying to set up something apparently a bit complex in Apple Home. So far I have Zigbee hardware, Docker on a Raspberry Pi, an MQTT broker, HomeBridge, and now I’m reading about the limitations of stateless switches and HomeBridge virtual devices. All of this for [checks notes] a light switch.

The stories of Tim Hunkin's exhibit builds are invariably sparse, charming, and filled with the quiet pain of nothing ever working properly until it does. All the hidden bits of making, laid bare. www.timhunkin.com/a269_making-...

Why are ICE officers so bad at their jobs? This paper gives the reason: they were ALWAYS mediocre, incompetent, or dishonorable cops. Signing on to the secret police, being willing to do the "ugly" jobs, gives them a career advancement path those qualities blocked under more moral systems.

Pleased as I am to see a retrospective of landmark ITV productions, I’m also disappointed there’s no mention of any children’s programmes. A key part of the network’s public service remit … overlooked. www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio...

This should be fun.

Inventions I would like to see no. 216: the snagless coat hanger. Bonus points for the smart version which reads an RFID dot sewn into the garment label, and (a) can tell you where that shirt is, (b) pings you when you take items which really don’t go together.

🎶 When your eel gets all wack On a Thames full of gak That’s a moray 🎶

@pimoroni.com are brilliant. That is all.

I use my Apple TV as a Thread border router. tvOS 26 appears to have knocked all my Thread devices offline. Users of home automation equipment will not be surprised.

Like most scicommers ‘of a certain age,’ I crossed paths - if not swords - with Kenward on a few occasions. He was a character, and he got stuff done. Both of which I find admirable. The sector owes him more than many today will know.

Awesome Lead Maker job going @scienceatlife.bsky.social in Newcastle. www.life.org.uk/join-the-tea... Hectic job leading activities with visitors, great team, the most wonderful boss in the world[*], huge quantities of cardboard. Big shoes to fill as my kids’ favourite person. [1] I’m her husband.

This is how I read it, too.

Foundation. Oh. Well. That was good, then.

This is my kind of social policy. Also: it might lead to the Airfix Renaissance.

Oooooh!

This sums up how I’ve felt about this story.

If one wrote this as a plot for, say, a TV espionage series, the script would be widely panned as implausibly ridiculous.

I really wish we’d found a sponsor and made DemoJam with @standupmaths.bsky.social a running thing. But still, this sounds like fun.

For over 25 years, science and discovery centres have been at the heart of inspiring millions of people to explore, question, and be part of UK science and technology. But they're seriously under threat… 1/3

I’d missed that Soren Iverson is on BlueSky. Follow for more gentle-but-cursed UI-based satire like this, daily.

“We’re committed to a lower environmental impact. Please visit our gift shop which is stuffed full of high-margin tat made from first-use plastic.” — Every visitor attraction.

I’d expected to find returning to a gas hob to be a relief, after a halogen monstrosity. But apart from individual dials rather than fiddly-daft touch not-even-buttons, actually… meh. Even the smallest ring doesn’t do a low enough simmer, and pan handles get hot from the spill up the side.

The feet! The little feet!

I will work on teaching Alom how ‘buy your own book and then give it away’ isn’t a get-rich-quick scheme, but in the meantime please do take advantage of his generosity. It is real and heartfelt and the book is too.

One thing we’ve learned this year how amazingly straightforward it is to abduct somebody in broad daylight in the US, without offering any form of identification. What happens if a group of masked guys tool around in Escalades abducting supposed ICE agents? Nothing? Cold civil war?

Every maker’s least favourite part of the process.

This is one of the most beautiful things I have witnessed, the craft here is impeccable.

These are spectacular.

Please enjoy this Klimt Eastwood

You could make a movie of today’s Guardian Blind Date.

If you live near the coast, or visit it, this is worth reading. It might just save a life – possibly yours. There have been a few recent incidents up here off Whitley Bay, not all of which ended like this.