Working for the tiny little UK arm of my company is a trip, because I get this long weekend but for all my American colleagues it’s just business as usual 🙃

What a writer thinks ISN’T political is always a huge tell.

Even something as straightforwardly man vs nature as To Build A Fire is about toxic masculinity—“Any man who was a man could travel alone.”

Really excited to fly out of ATL tomorrow 😶

But there is hope! The European Commission is currently undergoing a review of the laws that gave us cookie banners. We can get rid of them!

And we have the ability to not make the same mistakes in the future as we regulate AI, a place where _actual_ protections are more important than ever.

4/

“What was once heralded as a tool to advance individual autonomy and privacy has… become a daily annoyance that breeds cynicism with the very concept of consent itself. Cookie banners do not empower; they weary. They do not inform; they obscure. They do not prevent surveillance; they normalize it.”

love to use workday to quantify my work-days 🥲

First time on the Glasgow subway today—I never realised it was so petite! Nice, though.

Calling Cormac McCarthy’s authorial style a “mistake” that AI no longer makes is so funny

I love @aptshadow.bsky.social’s whole Tyrant Philosophers series, but the first entry, City of Last Chances, had been my favourite to now.

Having just finished Pretenders to the Throne of God (and possibly shed a tear at the last scene), I think he may have outdone himself.

Dan Freeman ᜶ Hello, Again Coming back to this site, five years and 1,250km down the road.

Back on the writing horse again, thanks to @edinburghjs.org's Personal Website Jam last month!

dfreeman.io/blog/hello-a...

With apologies to:
• @mcordes.bsky.social, who I’m sure will say “that’s not really math; it’s just arithmetic” when he gets home this evening
• all the people in this neck of the woods going “um, excuse you, you mean maths?”

Imagining a Cold War spy thriller set in Stornoway where the agent and their handler meet at either end of a bench and exchange the code phrased "The gurnet is plentiful today", "It is not so plentiful as the dogfish" before sliding across the brown envelope full of photos of the rocket range

A 9-by-14 grid of blue spirograph patterns, each consisting of two lines forming star- or flower-shaped loops with varying numbers of "petals". Many are visually very different from one another, while some have only subtle distinctions from other near-identical patterns in the grid, but each is technically unique.

Working on this website redesign has been a lot of "how much variety can I squeeze out of a little bit of math?" fun.

The cover of the hardback edition of Adrian Tchaikovsky's Pretenders to the Throne of God. It is a mixture of silver, blue and black with the central image showing soldiers using a cannon to target a city with a lighthouse. The 4 corners have images of a lizardman in a great coat, an almost skeletal soldier with a great axe over one shoulder, a soldier with an eye patch and a slathering lizard.

The covers for @aptshadow.bsky.social 's Tyrant Philosophers series are maybe the best in the business right now.

Joe Wilson is incredible at having these detailed, eye catching and very distinctive designs that whet your appetite for what is inside.

Literally my first thought was “sounds like something that eieio—oh.”

There Is No Antimemetics Division: The thrilling new sci-fi horror novel, 'mind-bendingly brilliant' Guardian There Is No Antimemetics Division: The thrilling new sci-fi horror novel, 'mind-bendingly brilliant' Guardian eBook : qntm: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store

THERE IS NO ANTIMEMETICS DIVISION ebook is discounted to £1.99 for one day only, get in there 🐆

Had the thought "oh I should totally get back into Frightened Rabbit now that I live in Scotland" the other day, which is how I learned Scott Hutchison passed 😔

A Website To End All Websites | Henry From Online How to win the war for the soul of the internet, and build the Web We Want.

you’re right! it feels mostly awful to Go Online™, these days. the internet in a sad state, for reason after reason after reason. but there is a way to fix it; to trade the voidful howling for a quiet & joyful song.

here’s how to win the war for the soul of the internet, and build the Web We Want.

Feels like we just got finished with 2024 and now I wake up this morning and there’s ANOTHER year? Ngl I could have used a breather

Jackieeee

All of @aptshadow.bsky.social’s work is fantastic of course, but this series is easily my favourite! I feel like it’s really slept on for some reason

Showy Homes by Blookerstein Short word puzzle with a twist

Absolutely floored when it finally clicked for me what this puzzle was doing. Really good. blookerstein.itch.io/showy-homes

Map of Scotland showing location of road gritter. Most names are puns.Bear Chills, sled Zeppelin, credence clear road survival, thistle gritter through

It's the season to appreciate the names of Scottish road gritters ❄️
#Scotland #Christmas

Hard to believe!

“in the late 1900s” 💀⚰️🍂

Announcing Unison 1.0 After years of engineering, design, and community collaboration, we're excited to release Unison 1.0. This version delivers a refined programming workflow and a mature toolchain. Join us as we celebrate this milestone and look ahead to the future of Unison.

🎉 Unison 1.0 has landed!

After years of engineering, design, and community collaboration, we’re excited to announce this milestone!

Spread the word!

Yes and yet several European countries are embracing a far-right worldview that would burn these policies to the ground, so let’s be not be smug or complacent here - particularly as Mamdani‘s pro-immigration stance is radical by European standards.

A Calvin and Hobbes strip where Calvin’s dad is going to read him a bedtime story. First panel: Calvin’s dad, scanning a bookshelf: “What story would you like tonight? We can read anything except—“ Calvin, from bed, excited: “The Voynich Manuscript!” Second panel: Calvin’s dad, deeply exasperated: “NO! No Voynich Manuscript tonight! We’ve tried to decipher that book a million times!” Calvin, yelling: “I want the Voynich Manuscript!” Third panel: Calvin’s dad, trying to reason with him: “Look, you *know* how the story goes! You’ve memorized the whole thing! It’s completely unreadable!” Calvin: “I want mysterious glyphs and sigils!” Fourth panel: Calvin, in bed and staring wide-eyed into the dark: “Wow, the story was different *that* time!” Hobbes, also in bed and staring: (a long string of incomprehensible characters).

Back on my “I bet I can figure out how to build a UI with that” nonsense again. This has been fun to work on!