An uplifting week... mmitii.mattballantine.com/2025/11/14/w... #weeknotes @weeknotes-bot.bsky.social

Well the first version of RandomTheBook.com is now with our proofreader... Given our deadline is still 3 weeks away, I think this amounts to "ahead of schedule". Well done to @sonofsuntzu.bsky.social and me!

An odd week, but at least there was cake. hweeknotesitii.mattballantine.com/2025/11/07/weeknote-755-still-waiting/ #weeknotes @weeknotes-bot.bsky.social

Which one is more English?

This is not normally what's involved in being detained at His Majesty's pleasure. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

A week in which, for one reason or another, there's been lots of waiting. #weeknotes mmitii.mattballantine.com/2025/10/31/w... @weeknotes-bot.bsky.social

Tell you what. That Andy Windsor bloke seems to be losing an awful lot of stuff given he maintains he didn't do anything wrong...

The format of the book about Randomness that @sonofsuntzu.bsky.social and I are writing forces readers to do some work. It's slightly depressing how many people are mildly horrified by that idea. That somehow books should be frictionless insight devices. Randomthebook.com

It’s #weeknotes time again… mmitii.mattballantine.com/2025/10/24/w... @weeknotes-bot.bsky.social

#Weeknotes time mmitii.mattballantine.com/2025/10/17/w... @weeknotes-bot.bsky.social

I think sometimes it needs reiterating that the Neural Networks used by computers are metaphorical Neural Networks, and not actual biological ones.

Are LLMs the first real moment of technonovelty for the digitally native generation? mmitii.mattballantine.com/2025/10/17/t...

Still looking for someone, haven't found a single person so far (that I can contact). I have a 46-episode script that I need translated. This would be a paid job!

"we're speaking to procurement"

"You've got backups, right?"

Ah, those poster children for AI and data Netflix...

@sonofsuntzu.bsky.social and I are at the stage where we are looking for beta testers for randomthebook.com Sign up here and you'll get to peruse 5 stories from the book about serendipity, chance, fate and other random things. docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

#weeknotes time... mmitii.mattballantine.com/2025/10/10/w... @weeknotes-bot.bsky.social

If only Farage understood that the metaphor of the bad apple is that it ruins the whole barrel...

The world's shittest ventriloquism act.

750 weeks with #weeknotes attached. That's a distressingly large number of weeks. mmitii.mattballantine.com/2025/10/03/w... @weeknotes-bot.bsky.social

Which, thinking about it, is the same strategy my teenagers use.

I mean he's utterly uninspirational, but he's hardly that dreadful narcissist Johnson or the car crash that was Truss. But brought to you by the people who gave you Boaty McBoatface I suppose...

If you see this, post a bridge...

If you see this, post a bridge.

And there we have it. Another #weeknotes... @weeknotes-bot.bsky.social mmitii.mattballantine.com/2025/09/26/w...

If you see this, post a bridge

One of Trump and Khan is in the pocket of extreme religious fundamentalists, and it's not Sadiq.

Has the world ended yet?

It’ll be quite embarrassing when Farage deports his Frinton-on-Sea landlady…

I tried to make an LLM a little less self-assured using an old management consulting model… mmitii.mattballantine.com/2025/09/22/s...

A drive today down the A12 and back to visit family in Suffolk. One bridge in Essex over the motorway was adorned with five flags. The union jack, the St George cross, the Saltire, a Welsh dragon... ...and an Irish tricolour. 1/2

I have no memory of this song at all. #totp

Weeknotes time! mmitii.mattballantine.com/2025/09/19/w... @weeknotes-bot.bsky.social

So let me get this right. We are going to let a rogue fascist state build (checks notes) *nuclear reactors* in the UK?

At some point I do think it would be a good idea if we better understood why a certain sort of man feels compelled to go out every so often to kick shit out of other men.

Every so often an album seeps deep into my bones. Anushka's Ancestry is one of them. I am listening to it endlessly. Big thanks to @gillespeterson.bsky.social for having them on his site recently! open.spotify.com/album/68P5ce...

Farage has had one major piece of policy implemented, and it's been, by almost all objective measures, a total car crash. It doesn't seem to have had any impact on his popularity.

Why do we tax dead people? Wouldn't it make more sense just to treat inheritance as another source of income to the living people who receive it?

The Nation pulls NO punches, from @espiers.bsky.social "There's no requirement to take part in this whitewashing campaign. Refusing to join in doesn’t make anyone a bad person. It’s a choice to write an obituary that begins “Joseph Goebbels was a gifted marketer and loving father to six children.”

The 747th episode of my #weeknotes… mmitii.mattballantine.com/2025/09/12/w... @weeknotes-bot.bsky.social

I simply don't want to give feedback on every bloody interaction I have...

What is it with ad UI design at the moment? This wonky button from Microsoft's Copilot ad...

TIL If you ask Photoshop to GenAI a picture of a coin, almost always it will generate a picture of a bitcoin. Interesting questions about training data...

This is going to seem very random but I miss how the old bird app would have worked brilliantly for this: I’m looking for someone who can help me find information about how, and in what - if any - capacity, the Salvation Army might have been involved in adoption processes in London in the 1910s.

My shortest ever week note mmitii.mattballantine.com/2025/09/05/w... @weeknotes-bot.bsky.social

Is that a patriotic flag on his lapel? Hell no! It's a tawdry advert for the tawdry TV channel that pays him 100s of 1000s of pounds!

I thought leaving the EU was supposed to free us from this straight banana nonsense?