Cats are essentially covered in cat spit. I can generally ignore this fact until I plant my hand on a freshly licked, somewhat soggy, part of a cat.

The review burden with AI writing exists only when quality standards exist. If you don't have standards, slop is free to roam.

Just as Pixel started feeling better, Em had to have a tooth removed. She's not pleased about it, and nobody is happy that other cats smell of the vet. I have a very hissy house right now.

I love the activity feed on Sifa. I've written things to pull together bits of my online life numerous times over the years, but by way of all these things being atproto apps it's all just there in my PDS. sifa.id/p/rachelandr...

I made an animation which shows the effects of air pollution on pedestrians waiting to cross the road, along with what can be done to reduce its harmful effects: stepback.gregdev.com Thank you to @ianwalker.bsky.social for the inspiration for doing so during a conversation a couple of weeks' back!

I moved here exactly a year ago and the garden was scrubby lawn and filthy gravel embedded in clay, no planting at all. Today I've hauled in the last huge bags of gravel and bark, it's getting there.

"If he wants to spend the summer arguing with a bin, I wont stop him." <stop stop he's dead gif>

I'm not sure anything is going to boost sales of PHP Web Development with Macromedia Dreamweaver MX at this point. I think if I were growth marketing this site, I'd filter out 22 year old tech books.

LLM's are helpful because they're trained on years of high quality educational material and forums where people helped each other. People aren't visiting forums or paying for educational content anymore because of LLM's. The well isn't going to magically fill itself in perpetuity.

Why haven't these dudes gone to mars yet?

In 2001 I escaped the post dotcom boom chaos by starting my own business. Turned out there was plenty of work for a person good at fixing things from companies who had laid off their technical staff. I'm thinking about that period a lot right now. www.cnbc.com/2026/07/01/e...

There's a lot of excitement for CSS Gap Decorations right now, which is great. However, the feature is only available in Chromium-based browsers (Chrome or Edge 149+) for now. Want it in other browsers? Have a specific use case for it? Leave a 👍 AND a comment with your use case here ⬇️

My "Poetic CSS" course goes live on Wednesday, with an Early Bird discount for the month of July! Here's another "side quest" on using shorthand properties: youtu.be/LNZQmOk3hKk Sign up for email updates (and a drawing for a handmade @OddBird mug): courses.oddbird.net/poetic-css/#... #css

Pixel is in the vet hospital as he's been refusing food all weekend, which is very unlike him. Send good cat thoughts in his direction.

I was away for the worst days of heat where I live, which means that my very well insulated house was all sealed up. Was like opening the oven door. Now trying to make it less of a sauna before bedtime.

Psychological safety isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s infrastructure. And right now, it’s being demolished at scale. When the companies reduce headcount and remaining employees have to absorb the work, while living with higher fear and lower trust. Article by Liz Dugan (12min)

Too hot to really run so had a tourist jog round the museum island. Berlin has the best sightlines.

I saw a great introduction to CSS Grid Lanes, aka Masonry Layouts, by @patrickbrosset.com at CSS Day 2026. I liked the versatility of its use cases, but I was also concerned that it's inaccessible by default. matuzo.at/blog/2026/gr...

Good morning Berlin! Here for I/O Connect.

If you like writing long threads on Bluesky, wait until you discover "blog posts." Start blogging with @pckt.blog, @leaflet.pub or @offprint.app today and get 25% off your first year, on us.

“AI does not fix a broken process; it accelerates whatever process you already have. If accessibility is already in the workflow, AI can help scale inclusion. If it’s not, AI will scale the same barriers teams are already shipping.” @aaron-gustafson.com www.aaron-gustafson.com/notebook/can...

Solstice sunrise run. Such a beautiful day.

The last commercial salt-glazed pottery is down the road from me. And I'm getting quite a collection of their pots. They also have this quite terrifying exit from their car park up the hill, through all the pots.

We wrote a @standard.site explainer — what it is & why it's useful 📝✨ ~shared standards for longform publishing? ~a way to see what friends read & write? ~the atmosphere's hottest collab? yes yes & yes! Seeing lots of q's after Bluesky's new standard.site link card integration. Here's a TL;DR!

After about 26 hours in Bristol I'm on an easyJet full of Geordies heading back to the North. I should have taken a trip round the harbour in a boat to complete the set of modes of transport.

French caption writers determinedly swerving the challenge of explaining to their readers why the likely next British prime minister is standing between a person dressed as a fox and another with a bin on his head. Cowards!

On a train from Newcastle to Bristol to Pixel Pioneers. The train stops everywhere in England en route, and given the noise it's making I'm probably going to find myself abandoned in Sheffield. I like the idea of trains, but I have a terrible track record with actually getting anywhere on one.

The weird thing about this, is that these skills are often highly valued of contractors. Despite the fact it's often harder to do the work as an external person, you can be more effective due to not having these other things you have to do to prove yourself.

We need an "I'm going to disappear, let's see what would happen" simulator or BI dashboard for that.

The problem with being a person who is good at something like content operations, is that if I do my job well, everything runs smoothly and my work is invisible. I'm not particularly career-minded, and just like things to be good, but I wish for this type of impact was more valued.

The more I talk to folks trying to implement AI in small and medium size businesses the more apparent it is that what they really need to do is figure out their internal IT stuff & create streamlined systems for the humans already doing the work. Can't even begin to bring in AI until this is done.

I really struggle with icons. I assume due to my aphantasia, in my brain all blue icons lead to the same app. Please do keep the text!

Those of you who grew up in the 1970s and 80s, in the UK, did your mother used to make an abomination that was like an opaque jelly in a mould? Sort of rubbery angel delight. I have no idea why I just thought about this most cursed of desserts.

The Standard Reader browser extension is out for Chrome. Save articles and follow publications on the standard.site network — from whatever tab you're already in. ...and all our other features! chromewebstore.google.com/detail/stand...

I've been using the preview MDN MCP server for a few months, it's incredibly useful as a writer. I use it to ensure first mentions of features are accurately linked to MDN docs, and to add the compat data you see on web.dev articles. developer.mozilla.org/en-US/blog/i...

I stress-purchased a fancy new coffee machine last week. Because buying a new way to consume caffeine is _definitely_ going to help. One of these www.moccamaster.eu/kbg-select-u... which does make very nice coffee, and looks snazzy on the counter.

I feel much the same as Jason about atproto. It's got me wanting to build stuff again. Also, definitely watch the atproto webdev challenge episode, it's so much fun!

Spending the afternoon sorting out my blog template with a sleepy Max next to me. Every so often he realises I stopped stroking his head, and pulls my hand away from the keyboard. #caturday

Where’s the holistic AI productivity data? For most of my career I ran a very small company. When you run a tiny company your resources (both time and money) are limited, and you want to use... https://rachelandrew.co.uk/archives/2026/06/11/wheres-the-holistic-ai-productivity-data/

Where’s the holistic AI productivity data? For most of my career I ran a very small company. When you run a tiny company your resources (both time and money) are limited, and you want to use... https://rachelandrew.co.uk/archives/2026/06/11/wheres-the-holistic-ai-productivity-data/

Lovely morning for a run in Amsterdam. An improvement on yesterday when I got so wet I looked like I'd been in a canal.

Someone just got on the plane, showed their boarding pass to the FA, and said "to Amsterdam please". Like this is the number 42 bus, and we're going to stop all over Europe first.

I did make it to the nursery where I met this guy, whose hobby is starting fights with dogs

Back of envelope ✉️ calculations: distance to Pointe de Corsen, France (where AE appears to be headed) is ~625 nautical miles. Assuming ~60 knots, that would be another ~10 hours 'til landfall. In turn, that would be ~17:00 local time in France, in case there are any photographers in the area. | 🛩️ 🎈

I have another day off work to move rocks about. Today, laying stepping stones through the lawn.

There are currently some people flying a hydrogen gas hot air balloon from America to Europe, which is behaviour that I encourage. You can track them here my.yb.tl/pertwood They seem to be mostly posting updates to Facebook www.facebook.com/profile.php?...

My garden is full of burrowing bees. They are sweet and docile. It's raining a lot today and they seem to have decided that a good plan is to burrow under my flyscreen netting (there to keep wasps out) into my office, which is nice and dry. This is not a plan I approve of.

You can automate the work. You can't automate the responsibility for the work. Someone still has to put their name on it.

Joining the atmosphere I don't post to or visit the social network formerly known as Twitter, but as a very early Twitter user, I can't quite bring myself to delete all my old... https://rachelandrew.co.uk/archives/2026/05/31/joining-the-atmosphere/

The weather is on the turn, but it was beautiful for my run this morning. Getting some planting done now before the rain comes.