The New Agents’ story on deportation flights from Minneapolis is utterly chilling. overcast.fm/+AA9hL63fPFE

Feeling a bit glum of late, so this is timely. 😀

Oh! Very much enjoyed Sir Roland’s generosity, sense and humour when our paths crossed, and his enthusiasm for Tyndall. Saddened by this.

Apt retort to Sir Paul Nurse’s recent comment that “There’s many bad people around, but they have made scientific advances.”

Things I haven’t done for too long, no. 126 in a long series: - listened to Unsquare Dance, Dave Brubeck - cooked a fish stew - cleaned a bicycle

Trying to reverify academic status: "Please upload an image to help us understand why you're located so far from campus." OK, firstly: you've geolocated my university in entirely the wrong city. Secondly: what? You want a photo of my home office? I… what?

True story: none of my first-year CS students this year admitted to having heard of Douglas Adams. This, as much as any of the other shit around at the moment, gives me cause for concern for our future.

Unpacking boxes. FFS. #iykyk #makerfaireuk

Oh. Chances of this working? Verrrrrry close to zero. Besides, if I can even find my Jaz drive… it clicked. Sigh.

Fedex: "Delivery of your parcel is impacted by: our inability to distinguish 'Deeside' from 'Teeside.' Again."

Dead Ringers’ Nigel Farage at Hogwarts sketch is… direct. www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/... starts at 7:53.

Respect to whoever put All Along The Watchtower in the Peace on Earth festive playlist on Apple Music.

I really hope a fly-on-the-wall documentary team are shadowing Your Party. Could be the best comedy of the year.

Very interesting thread. I’d have to say that I don’t spot quite the same problems from my vantage point. Some challenges, absolutely, but not to this extent. Attendance patterns are… interesting, though in our case there are several issues to unpack.

We’re proud that a Bantshire student ambassador is on placement at the OBR today.

Discovered why I couldn’t find the stick blender. I’d put it away in the fridge. Obviously.

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!