I’m looking for my right-hand person to come help me run the @aial.ie - Job Title: Lab Coordinator, AI Accountability Lab (0.8 FTE) - Pay Scale: (€58,999 - €69,325 per annum pro-rata) - Closing Date: 11-Feb-2026 12:00 Apply here: my.corehr.com/pls/trrecrui... Main Responsibilities👇🏾

Getting my book from the library means that the library keeps it in stock and people will find it and read it and the book will live and I love that for my book

every time Cat does one of these

So, hey: Is there a return or exchange policy, here? Like, can we get that Federation-era Star Trek kind of interesting times, instead of the Bell Riots/Eugenics Wars/WWIII all-smashed-together-at-the-face kind? Would… would really like it if we could skip ahead a bit, you know? Yeah.

In the first Blade movie, Quinn does a lot of heavy lifting. I like how he's not particularly faithful to vampire lore, and nobody gives a shit. Immune to fire, silver, and other things vampires fear. Unexplained badass is a great trope. I hate how movies these days have to explain everything.

Once more dealing with a group who are discovering that building a research repository does not actually solve the "nobody values research" and "people are ignoring our research" problems. Amusingly something that doing some user research on the groups involved would have shown.

Health experts: Your synthetic text "AI" overviews are misleading, for example see this about liver function tests. Google: Okay, we'll block "AI" overviews on that query. The product is fundamentally flawed and cannot be "fixed" by patching query by query. A short 🧵>>

Monday. Coffee.

My actual serious opinion is that writing code is not some kind of forever additive beneficial activity for your mind. Nothing is

If you want some Quiet Stories on strategy, research, and delivery with a leadership focus then you should subscribe to our newsletter quietstars.com/newsletter/ :) (last issue: Your Chatbot Is Not Your KM System, Before You Cite That Study, AI Notetaker Risks & more > mailchi.mp/7dde6332c467...)

UK folks. Reminder that you can find and write to your MP using www.theyworkforyou.com - simple and straightforward.

January's #MonthlyAlbum

Cgi performance is actually pretty good these days too jacob.gold/posts/servin...

Retro done. Day done. Week done. Done. Time to make some chilli to go with the sweet potatoes baking in the oven. Have an excellent weekend y'all.

Nazi bars exist but you can choose not to go into them (This being the inversion of the takeover of a bar by Nazis story)

The first Balanced Team in the Ether of 2026 is in two weeks — our regular free online get together on effective cross-disciplinary work! Previously we've covered everything from describing research work to sustainability. Sound fun? Free tickets & info at www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/balanced-t...

I have never run a panel sourced, vendor survey project. I have always done careful and intentional recruitment from inside of communities. I defended this as a research leader when it was baffling to eg marketing and other functions. And meanwhile academics look down a lot of applied work. Well

Let's see if the second coffee will work.

"semi-adversarial workarounds for a handful of big platforms" feels like it describes most saas startups/companies, too

Coffee.

Had a super lovely wholesome chat with an accessibility focused service designer Eszter based in Budapest. She described the gov.uk design system as being 'like heaven' and prompted me to share inspiring things from UK gov like 'tell us once', applying 'universal barriers'. Thank you internet

Current status: Needing all the coffee.

Heeheehee, 😁🐸.

I feel Nicki Minaj is one of the best living lyricists right now. Banger after banger. She can seriously turn out a bop. But.... well.

the 1992 HIG remains a great resource. You can find PDFs of it online, and should. it comes to us from a time where design was about how it works. now we get decoration instead. A damning, lengthy indictment

Nighty night all. Sleep tight. www.youtube.com/watch?v=045H...

Since the AI bubble hasn't quite burst — a small batch of some more sceptical pieces on AI in the first issue of the year :-) mailchi.mp/7dde6332c467... Including work from @emilydileo.bsky.social, @cwodtke.bsky.social, @rachelcoldicutt.bsky.social, @lizthegrey.com, Lizzie Matusov, & more.

Listening to the audiobook of Jingo (by Terry Pratchett). With Vimes questioning his own biases, and Nobby gently ribbing Colon for his, this was very much the right book to draw everyone’s attention to this year. Jon Culshaw’s narration for this book is great, too. Happy Year of the Curious Squid 🩵

2025's pointless stats: * Weekly throughput: ▂▃▄▃█▃▆▃▄▂▅▅▅▅▅▂▃▃▄▄▃▂▃▁▁▂▂▁▂▂▂▄▃▄▄▂▃▂▃▂▄▃▂▂▃▂▄▃▃▄▄ * Successful experiments: 4/28 * Books read: 75 What pointless unactionable things do you keep track of? :-)

Age is not a flaw. No appearance-related feature is a moral failing. If someone is a moral failure, highlight their actual moral failures, not that they're chubby or aged or whatever. Don't hurt your friends' and family's feelings. Ok. That's the 2026 challenge: Be kinder and more inclusive.

Monday. Coffee.

PseudoPod 1010: A Rose For Emily “When Miss Emily Grierson died, our whole town went to her funeral” A Rose For Emily, by William Faulkner Narrator: Ben Phillips Host: Alasdair Stuart Audio: Chelsea Davis CW: racial slurs (see website for more) pseudopod.org/2026/01/02/p...

Current mood a combination of www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubY3... and www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7fB....

Congratulations on surviving 2025 everybody!

orcas have the chance to do the funniest thing

More coffee. And a mince pie.

Wading thru chapters of aristocratic sexual misbehaviour and court intrigue in early 20th century as that’s apparently how you understand the history of pre-WW1 UK strategic naval policy development and technological innovation.

As a facilitator, I always like to run a quick confidence straw poll on items once you've taken a first pass at urgency, value, and duration: johnpcutler.github.io/prioritizer/...

And, for those who are a little bit older, can I add that you should definitely take up every cancer test that you are offered?

Coffee.

RIP Queen 👑

Being offered some other work out of the blue. A good opportunity to use my "how I work" post, especially the section on the conditions I need to do my best work. It isn't just a blog post, it's a decision making framework. himalmandalia.medium.com/how-i-work-c...

some of the replies in this provide very good explanations for why genAI powered bots can't and shouldn't be used for therapy

Good enough wins because of what you are able to treat as externalities

logging on

Nighty night all. Sleep tight. www.youtube.com/watch?v=045H...

FWIW some thoughts I rescued from the hellsite after a recent chat reminded me of the advantages of getting better at user interviewing as a group… I might eventually get around to fleshing them out some more adrianhoward.com/posts/group-...

It's astonishing how a technology called artificial intelligence has revealed the actual stupidity of so many people. This tweet hasn't been bettered

Monday. Coffee.

Definitely DO NOT outsource the reading/summarization of the legal contract to which you will be bound to a pattern matching program that can AND DOES willfully create misinformation when its algorithm tells it the misinformation is the statistically mostly likely next set of words.