- EU reset deal puts Britain back on the world stage, says Keir Starmer | Brexit | The Guardian
As a pal put it – in the last couple of months Labour have: coped as well as could be asked with Trump's tariff madness, secured a trade deal with India, and now, made genuine progress on rectifying (some of) the damage of Brexit.
This does absolutely nothing to offset the damage of the transphobic shit going on, the anti-migrant rhetoric, and all the other things they're doing that I loathe, and I still don't know if I can vote for them at the next election, but I just wanted to take a moment to feel something that isn't total despair about my governement.
- An Instagram Reel of 'Chad the Bird' talking about Star Wars fonts
A sweary bird puppet talks about the typography of Star Wars. Either that sounds like fun to you, or you may be dead inside.
- I'm a nanny on £150k – parents don't treat me like a human being
Interesting/terrifying (tiny, carefully chosen for sensationalism) glimpse into the world of the ultra-weathly. There's a line from a Gibson's Count Zero that it reminds me of "And, for an instant, she stared directly into those soft blue eyes and knew, with an instinctive mammalian certainty, that the exceedingly rich were no longer even remotely human."
I just cannot fathom raising one's kids like that. I can understand having a nanny to take the pressure off, and to enable the work-oriented lifestyle that made the family rich. But surely the point is then to also have the kids raised *right*?
Tag: politics
Bookmarks for May 2, 2025
- They are just like the Tories – Joxley Writes
Like the writer of this piece, I don't believe our current Labour government is "just like the Tories" (although in some areas…) but this piece does a really good job of nailing why they *feel* like they are.
Bookmarks for April 13, 2025
- Dismay as cross-border library caught in US-Canada feud: ‘We just want to stay open’ | Canada | The Guardian
An incredibly depressing sign of the times – a building that is physically split by the US/Canada border is being closed off to Canadians – or at least made much harder to access. Something that should be handled with goodwill and common sense for the benefit of the people who live there is a casualty of politics and bureaucracy.
Bookmarks for April 12, 2025
- Internet 3.0 and the Beginning of (Tech) History – Stratechery by Ben Thompson
This is a solid bit of writing from a few years back that explains a lot about the stages of growth of the internet and how we've arrived at the current moment. I think that four years later, his conclusion that we're headed back to a more open and decentralised internet is optimistic – but thinking about Bluesky, and the idea that independent writing plaforms (or, as we used to call them, blogs) are having a resurgence in response to everything, maybe not totaly unfounded.
- LLMs can't stop making up software dependencies and sabotaging everything • The Register
Fascinating new exploit wrinkle, and a very strong argument for not using LLMs to generate entire applications – it'll literally decide to try and pull in dependencies that don't exist, and if the app runner doesn't notice, then a bad actor can simply occupy that space with whatever they're like, and completely co-opt the AI-generated app.
Bookmarks for June 17, 2019
- Quick note: Friday wins and a case study in ritual design | Kellan Elliott-McCrea
"Culture is what you celebrate. Rituals are the tools you use to shape culture." Smart work, needs serious thinking about.
- The New Wilderness (Idle Words)
Required reading.
Bookmarks for June 26, 2017
- Notes From An Emergency
Serious, thoughtful critique outlinging the current regulatory capture of the US government by the tech industry, and how it affects Europe, and what we might do.
Bookmarks for December 4, 2013
- Anatomy of a failed rendition | booktwo.org
Interesting study of the data trails left by the Home Office's failed attempt to deport Ifa Muaza.
Bookmarks for October 25, 2013
- Russell Brand on revolution: “We no longer have the luxury of tradition”
I'm not a big fan of Russell Brand, but I liked this piece, which is exceedingly quotable, but for my money, the key lines are: "The price of privilege is poverty. David Cameron said in his conference speech that profit is “not a dirty word”. Profit is the most profane word we have."
Bookmarks for June 14, 2013
- Using Metadata to find Paul Revere – Kieran Healy
In the terribly unlikely even that anyone reading this isn't worried about PRISM, metadata gathering, or the general sense that there's an enormous surveillance state out there that is not your friend, I encourage you to read this.
- Map Stack by Stamen
This was closed when I went to look at it, so this is a note to remember to look at it properly, because I love their maps -= particularly their toner map in hard B&W. Also, interested in the idea of a web app with opening hours. I quite like it.
Bookmarks for July 2, 2012
- Parliamentary train – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I'd never heard of these before today. Noted and filed, to be used later.
- Unusual Words Rendered in Bold Graphics | Brain Pickings
I have learned words, and seen pretty pictures.
- PHP solves problems. Oh, and you can program with it too!
I am a PHP coder. It is, in truth, the only programming language I'm any good at. Well, OK, maybe javascript, too. I got into it because I wanted to get things done, and PHP maybe it very, very easy for me to do that. I'm not the sort of person who learns new languages for fun, so PHP is where I've stayed. But the reason I've stayed is because I've never found anything I wanted to get done that I couldn't do in PHP. Which suggests to me that the hate it gets from "proper" programmers is basically, so much bullshit. So I liked this article.
- "Obamacare" explained very well. via reddit.com
Just in case anyone reading this is confused about what the healthcare reforms in the US mean. Basically, if you read this, and are still opposed to them, then I can only assume that you are someone who would like more people to die. In which case, perhaps you could help the rest of us out by setting an example.