Last time I had my recycling collected, Joe Biden was still president

I made an app that tracks the value of savings, pensions and home equity. No clever open banking, just a weekly reminder to update the values yourself. Made it for me, but released it for everyone! apps.apple.com/gb/app/worth...

don't love that www.heroku.com/blog/an-upd...

no (saved you a click) nesbitt.io/2026/01/30/...

At the speed of AI assisted development, capturing intent via instrumentation is *vital*. Validating that intent in production is *non negotiable*. Fast feedback loops, rich instrumentation, clear intent. This is the way. The ONLY way.

1. Interesting to see Reform abandon its flirtation with nativism / birth rate boosterism in favour of the policy of the last Tory government 2. “Starve a kid for a cheaper pint” is quite the policy. Be interested to see how that performed in focus groups (especially all male versus mixed).

Ok, let’s do this🙄 We’ll start with an explainer covering: 🕒What is a 15-minute city 🏫What on Earth is going on with Oxford 👽Where the conspiracy theories have come from And then we’ll look at the Telegraph article 🧵 1/25

Reading this while I laboriously handknit a pair of socks, and nodding along. Most of the socks in the world are churned out by machine, wear out, and get thrown away. Yes, my socks are way more expensive, in terms of time and materials.

If you take a breath of Birmingham's air today, give a thought to Waseem Zaffar, an all too rare example of a local politician willing to tackle the problem of car dominance. Our city is greatly diminished by Councillor Zaffar’s shocking passing.

Half of all rail journeys that Great British Railways will ultimately be responsible for will be on services run by publicly owned operators from Sunday, as London Northwestern Railway and West Midlands Railway services join the fast-growing family of operators "owned by the public for the public."

You can vibe code your way to a working prototype. You cannot vibe code or one-shot your way to a competitive product that works at scale. The hard part isn't writing code; it's the architectural supervision.

Stop listening to 23-year-olds running unprofitable businesses on VC cash about anything other than how to run unprofitable businesses on VC cash.

Always the minimalist.

Worth remembering when looking at the horrific scenes in the US right now that both Reform and the Tories have pledged to bring in ICE-style organisations to the UK if they win power

Time to ban the adults from social media.

Regarding a social media ban for kids being bad because “community is important” for folks. Facebook and X isn’t community. Community used to exist online in other formats, and it still can. It just won’t be designed to addict you, or show you harmful things.

We invoked Article 5 after 9/11 and NATO didn’t hesitate to run to our aid. 457 British soldiers died coming to our aid. 159 Canadians died coming to our aid. 90 French soldiers died coming to our aid. 62 German soldiers died coming to our aid. 53 Italian soldiers died coming to our aid.

Reform actively leafleting in Selly Oak, scary times. On promises such as “make Birmingham the safest city for women”.

Dear British folk. The US Republicans actively voted for this. This is why it is not acceptable to appease the imbecilic populism of the Tory party or the active positions of Reform. If you let the vile messages sit unchallenged, they become normalised in parties that can be elected.

"I don't know they'd be there for us... blood sweat and tears..." A reminder that Article 5 has been invoked once, after 9/11. NATO responded and the Danes had the highest rate of losses of any nation involved in that conflict. They were there, Donald. Nobody had bone spurs that day.

It's so exhausting to to be constantly told by American leaders that the defining policy of the 80 odd years during which the US became the most wealthy and powerful country in the history of the world was a grossly unfair failure for them.

The end of the world because Trump didn’t get the Nobel Peace Prize would be pretty crazy, huh? The US congress’ inability to do anything should terrify us all.

Seventy seven BILLION.

I would like to think the Mad King proclaiming “I will continue to illegally raise taxes on the American people until the NATO alliance collapses” would be the type of statement to cause Congress to act, but I’m not sure there’s any red line the GOP Congress has anymore.

a decade is a long time in politics

Not even sorry.

I don’t know what’s going to happen re: LLMs and their part in software engineering but I do know that I really love writing code. The thrill of hunting down an ugly bug, and finally squashing it all while building knowledge of some complex legacy system. If thats going away, I shall miss it.

Seeing Brighton Pier up for sale is kinda sad. Decreasing visitor numbers might have something to do with the fact that entrance is no longer free and I can play the same arcade games as when I was 8 years old. They’ve taken a naff (in a good way) thing and made it objectively crap.

Birmingham revellers turn out for non-existent fireworks – for second new year in a row

I dunno Nick; why don't you ask the FBI, who used to track down and threaten teenagers with federal prison time for torrenting Metallica or copying a VHS tape?

Service stations that allow Tesla-only EV chargers to be built in your car parks - you’re the worst.

TIL that ACHOO syndrome exists, and that I have it. And whoever came up with the name is a genius. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photic_...

“Tool generated code” kinda rude to talk about your colleagues that way

Unpopular opinion: Babyccinos are dumb. Stop wasting your barista's time and milk.

Finally, www.ruby-lang.org/en/ has a new design.

It's a full hour, but who doesn't want to watch a choir sing in, like, 10 languages. I'd travel pretty far, and pay a lot, to see this in person. www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVwI...

One word: Asbestos. www.bbc.com/news/article...

I’ll take that.

There's a joke about the origins of many Jewish holidays: "They tried to kill us, they failed, let's eat." But some of us *were* killed in those days, and some were killed today. This is a holiday about hope, persistence, and light shining when it shouldn't be possible. May all the killing end.

AI tools are power tools. Potentially useful in the right hands. A more powerful drill isn’t better if you can’t use a cheap one.

It’s just amusing that with these AI tools and agents we seem to be getting back to this truth: A team of strong software engineers who care about the quality + maintainability of the codebase >> A team of devs using powerful AI coding agents rather mindlessly

We’re not even *close* to running out of good ideas. The issue is smart people’s ideas being systematically persecuted, under-resourced, and blocked from opportunity by fascists. Do not believe propaganda in the “Future Perfect” section of Vox that’s underwritten by Effective Altruism extremists.

On a platform owned by a billionaire that’s called for civil war in the UK, no less.

I am fully committed to this theory

Having too much money removes natural resistance from people's lives, literally causing their brains to atrophy

*youth pastor voice* Let me tell you kids about another carpenter who wasn’t very popular with the authorities

The idea that Farage thinks his antisemitic comments were “not in malice” is entirely unsurprising. This shit was so normalised in my experience at school by kids just like Farage. “Just a joke” was always the response.

When did Heroku's sign-up flow become so painful? It's whole thing was supposed to be 0-production in no time. Now I can't do anything without giving my life story and a credit card.