All four images are App Store screenshots showing an app that has been replaced by dodgy gambling content)
Someone is waging a gambling scam at scale using AI slop Facebook ads (extremely UK specific, it’s kinda interesting) and compromised App Store developer accounts. Whatever happened to app review? How the fuck does this stuff get passed?
It’s a horrible bag for sale on Amazon, exactly the size and shape of a croissant
It’s a horrible bag for sale on Amazon, exactly the size and shape of a croissant. This image shows it being worn.
Found my new croissant bag
"Bromley road accident rate sees biggest fall in London". Well, if you compare 2005-9 to 2020-24. Not if you compare it to 2015-2019 (also an average of 99, so no change). And surely the numbers themselves are meaningless as opposed to, say, per population.
www.bromley.gov.uk/news/article...
It's an input from a website form. Title: Areas of Expertise. Options: Catholicism, Chemistry, Chloroform, Coasts, Cold War Era
I think I may have stumbled across the Greatest Form Input:
Arcadia at the Old Vic is fantastic, well worth it if you can go. Everything I remembered (I’m alarmed by how many lines I remembered from 1999ish) and more.
A huge banner in my local Toyota garage proclaims: ANZEN FIRST
Translation second!
Given the recent news about Heroku (deep, weary sigh) I've been looking at alternative PAAS options for PHP8+Postgres.
Some notes on porting to @upsun.com (formerly platform.sh) here:
tomroyal.com/2026/02/25/n...
Yeah, I'm in London so generally get to a few at the ICA, but it really bugs me - and I've also offered that feedback every year since Covid. People who live away from cities, people with access issues, people with kids or caring responsibilities.. so many people will be excluded by this every year.
The UK Japan Foundation's annual film programme is out, and this is my annual complaint that access could be widened so very much if they could offer online streaming in addition to the few UK cities where screenings are held:
www.jpf-film.org.uk
"Attract top candidates with: ... AI generated clarifying questions"
"Recruit top candidates by showing them that you're so fucking lazy you outsourced the interviewing process to an AI chatbot" fuck meeeee.
(Remind me of a job "interview" I once did - and failed - via touch-tone telephone. Press 9 for self loathing.)
In a world of shit, a nice thing: there’s a new Snail Mail record and she’s playing London in June.
(Related to that last story - I only this week came across the arseholes YouTubing themselves in Tower Hamlets, complaining about the "Tamil" graffiti, failing to read "E1" correctly on a street sign, then pondering where the English cuisine is on, uh, Brick Lane:
bsky.app/profile/anni...
This week's London Centric is a brilliant bit of work - the "asylum seeker" housing in Knightsbridge that's actually a let in Ealing.
bsky.app/profile/jim....
Pleased to say that I received a reply, and as of this week JD MP will no longer be posting over on the hellsite.
A welcome good decision, and one that I hope other MPs, councils and Government departments might follow.
bsky.app/profile/did:...
Oh, and has anyone collated all the MPs who are getting paid to post on X, per the register of members’ interests?
members.parliament.uk/member/5158/...
I don’t think we should ignore it, no. I think we should noisily and vigorously boycott it, and request that anyone who claims to stand opposed to the values on which it operates should do the same.
Wrote to my MP @janetdaby.bsky.social asking her to reconsider her continued usage of X, and I hope that - whether or not she posts updates here instead - she will give it some thought.
We dropped all X accounts at work in 2024 - haven't regretted it for half a second. It's a cesspit of bigotry.
Boring update: it's properly cold, for London at least. The condensate tray below is a solid slab of ice, but the pump's happily pumping and the house is warm. Clever thing.
bsky.app/profile/tomr...
It’s a TestFlight invitation from the very legit sounding “OpenAI Business Inc”
New target market for phishing attacks, is there?
Worshippers of the demonic language bird - my Duolingo Family plan is about to renew. If you’d like in on an annual sub for about £20 (it’s the Super version without the creepy AI calls), drop me a line?
Amazing. Thank you! I remembered you battling with it all for the BLUF store but didn’t know you’d written it all up :)
If anyone has a good IOSS solution for very small businesses I’d welcome a recommendation because I just spent a despiriting hour concluding that it would be vastly simpler to smuggle £50 of goods through the Eurotunnel* than put them in the post.
* fear not, I am too lazy to do this
So here's a hole to fall down - who's running the new Lewisham Model Market website? www.modelmarket.london
Maybe. But that’s what we had here, and the service area was then reduced significantly - I assumed at the time due to either lack of demand or complaints over parking.
(I'm left hoping that Enterprise Car Club - inexplicably and frustratingly chosen by Greenwich Council to cover that area instead of ZC - might now expand out to fill some of the void in SE London..)
A notice from Zipcar - they "propose to cease UK operations", staff are on a formal consultation process.
Welp, there (probably) goes another pretty useful way to avoid car ownership in the city. For the brief time that Zipcar actually covered my part of London, it was really useful.
Normally a big fan of Search Engine but this week’s E*ra Klein interview (“what to do in the face of brutality and chaos? Have you considered keeping quiet about it? I am very smart”) is almost enough to convince me to travel to the US just to pick a fight at Thanksgiving. Fuck me.
(They added another Rilo Kiley show in London, btw, if you missed the Roundhouse..)
Not today, AWS. Not today.
