I think this thread is somehow a salve to a recent post by @bobmelling.bsky.social and I am committing the crime of tagging a person and not bothering to make the joke.

The Committee on Standards are recruiting for two new Lay Members to sit on the Committee - Committees - UK Parliament As part of a system designed to champion openness, accountability, and public trust, the Committee’s lay members hold full voting rights and make a vital contribution to strengthening ethical standards in Parliament.

I think one of the most important things we can do at the moment is insist on high standards from representatives - the Standards Committee contains both MPs and members of the public: if you know someone who would be good at this, encourage them to apply committees.parliament.uk/committee/29...

So, I'm looking for someone (or a group) to do a 'Guest Residency' of ElectionMapsUK to cover the 2026 Local Elections while I'm away! If you, or a group of you would like to apply to do this, it would be much appreciated if you could fill out the form below.

forms.gle/ewF1HypMUz5M...

Please enjoy the two minute crucible that is this turtle trying to get on to a log that other turtles are on.

At this point in the calendar, one can only assume our dear reader is thinking, what's happened to @anyaso.bsky.social and Arthur? I hope they're not poorly. They haven't published one of their MASSIVE WALLS OF TEXT in weeks. Fret not, dear reader, WE'RE BACK!
ukparliament.github.io/ontologies/m...

Britain’s Story: The Next Chapter - the BBC Royal Charter Review, Green Paper and public consultation The government is consulting the public to aid decision-making on the terms for the BBC Charter’s renewal and any changes needed to help the BBC to continue to serve the public.

Just completed the DCMC BBC charter review survey. It's not exactly quick work but it is a labour of love and I would encourage others to give it a go before the closing date on Tuesday. www.gov.uk/government/c...

Are you sitting comfortably? Are you comfortable with how you’re sitting?

The other Michael Smethurst! Who knew. www.thetimes.com/travel/desti...

Why every scientist needs a librarian Librarians can be key research partners who help to scour the literature, manage data and make science open.

... hired a librarian for his research group to help organize citations and support literature searches. The collaboration was hugely helpful. So helpful, in fact, that his colleagues started asking to ‘borrow’ the information specialist for their own projects.
www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Like an egg. Not like a tool.

The Official Parliamentary Egg Timer Tool!

Semantic ablation: Why AI writing is boring and dangerous opinion: The subtractive bias we're ignoring

Semantic ablation is the algorithmic erosion of high-entropy information. Technically, it is not a "bug" but a structural byproduct of greedy decoding and RLHF (reinforcement learning from human feedback).

PARKLIFE

You may not have got “expert” but you did get opening bantz from the AI. It didn’t review Michael’s question…

The skeleton & House of Lords Reform….

Another week closer to the end of "Q4". More notes on progress and lack thereof from @anyaso.bsky.social and I
ukparliament.github.io/ontologies/m...

You forgot the air quotes around “designed”

Leadership health metrics Team health metrics focus on team performance, but leadership’s impact on teams is often overlooked. What if a leadership team’s effectiveness was measured too?

We have DORA metrics for measuring team performance, but what if teams can’t execute on strategy because leadership is poor? What would it look like to measure leadership health?

A thought exercise in what accountable leadership might look like. visitmy.website/2026/02/11/l...

SANDIE SHAW certainly warrants a high Top Ten position with her latest in a long line of Chris Andrews compositions, Tomorrow. I am amzed that Sandie can manage to get so many completely different kinds of song from the same composer, WORTHING TOP TEN 1 (2) Michelle, Overlanders (Pye) 2 (5) Spanish Flea, Herb Alpert (Pye International) 3 () These Boots Are Made For Walking, Nancy Sinatra (Reprise) 1+ (7 Love's Just A Broken Heart, Cilla Black (Parlophone» 3 (D 1 Four «.ts Hang On Seasons (Philips) 6 (1) Keep ()rrlrml‘trilnning. Spencer Davis Group (Fontana) S 7 () Tili The End Of The Day, Kinks kP_ve) BRSO 8 (4) Tears, Ken Dodd (Colum- bia) 9 (9 A Must To Avoid, H man's Hermits (Cotu bia) You Were On My Mind, Crispian St. Peters

TOP TEN IN LEICESTER 1 (3) On My Mind Crispian Peters (Decca) 2 - Kind The Mind- (Fontana) The 4 These Walking Nancy Sinatra 5 (S) Just Broken Heart Cilia Black Spanish T ana - To Herman’s (Columbia) (7) Let’s Hang On— T () — (Columbia) (-) Sandie Shaw (Pye)

Pop' Scene MID SOMERSET TOP TEN (From information kindly supplied by local retailers). 1 Michelle—The Overlanderc. 2 Keep On Running—The Spencer Davis Group. 3 Spanish Flea—Herb Alpert. 4 A Must To Avoid—Herman's ' Hermits. 5 Daytripper—The Beatles. 6 You Were On My Mind— Crispian St. Peters. 7 Love's Just A Broken Heart— Cilia Black. 8 Till The End Of The Day—The Kinks. 9 These Boots Were Made For Walking—Nancy Sinatra. 10 Let's Hang On—The Four Seasons.

PONTYPRIDD’S TOP TEN— Tuesday February 1 Published in conjunction with Mr Fred Fey (Fountain Record Shop) (2) MICHELLE The Overlanders (3) (1) KEEP RUNNING The Spencer Davies Group (7) (8) LOVE’S JUST A BROKEN HEART Cilia Black (2i (-) THESE BOOTS WERE MADE FOR WALKING Nancy Sinatra (1) (9) YOU WERE ON MIND Crispian St Peter (3 SPANISH FLEA Herb Alpert (4) (5) MUST TO AVOID Herman’s Hermits (4) (4) LET’S ON The Four Seasons (5 (6) SHIP IS The Walker Brothers (7) 10 (-) MIRROR MIRROR Pinkerton's Assorted Colours (1) Last s positions are in brackets the left Figures right indicate that each record has been in the charts

A thing I did not discover until today but somehow makes perfect sense: in the 60s local papers would report their own local record charts, by the same method as the national ones: ring up the shops (sometimes, shop) and ask what's selling well.

Without naming your job, tell me something you say over and over again at work.

“Ah, amazing, now we know. So … have you updated the documentation?”

This is another reason why I think the information retrieval push, even pre-LLM, to shift from 10 Blue Links to retrieving contents, answering questions, etc. may be a mistake. We lose important things when we unmoor information from authorial & organizational grounding (and cites aren’t enough).

Heh. You are not wrong and I was too lazy to take a screenshot of the photo. My apologies.

Anya on Instagram 13 likes, 1 comments - wisht on April 12, 2019

www.instagram.com/p/BwLIFcLggW...

Quite clearly we’ve all got other things to read and worry about right now. Nevertheless, first weeknotes for 2026 from @anyaso.bsky.social and I

ukparliament.github.io/ontologies/m...

AI layoffs are looking more and more like corporate fiction that's masking a darker reality, Oxford Economics suggests | Fortune "Firms don't appear to be replacing workers with AI on a significant scale," the firm said. It suspects some are trying to "dress up layoffs" as good news.

well well well

The US capture of Nicolás Maduro This briefing looks at the January 2026 US military operation to capture Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, statements by President Trump and US officials, the UK and international response, and questi...

I’ve published a short briefing on the US’s capture of Nicolás Maduro

I’m sure it will need updating soon…

commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-bri...

In which @anyaso.bsky.social straps on her Joanna Lumley wig and Young @robert-brook.com and I don our Little and Large costumes for one of those scripted unscripted year in review type shows
ukparliament.github.io/ontologies/m...

Yeah, yeah, facilitated workshops (to the the tune of Industrial Estate). More weeknotes from @anyaso.bsky.social and I:
ukparliament.github.io/ontologies/m...

Small acts of maintenance Maintenance is work, but it’s also care.

Sunday thoughts on small acts of maintenance.

medium.com/@niacampbell...

I’m not one to argue with scientific Americans, but I’m not convinced today’s outage shows the internet to be empheneral. If I had a boat in this race, I’d probably make a point about single points of failure being endemic to a version of capital with little competition