A little 36-hour Bluesky exclusive back-to-school offer on the substack.... 25% off for your first year. (Please feel free to share the link with friends not on here. Can also be used to buy gift subs for kids starting politics A-level / degrees....) samf.substack.com/specialoffer

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The moon behind the clouds looks amazing here at the moment. This photo doesn't actually capture it well - it's much less bright in reality - but feels cool in itself.

Reading all the posts about Tim Curry, and I just keep thinking that my dad will be sad - because they used to play Monopoly together as kids. (Apparently Tim *always* won, but it's possible that's apocryphal.)

Make a band bigger*: They ARE Giants. (In this case only potentially bigger, admittedly.)

Colin McMillen@mcmillen.dev · 2w ago

make a band bigger: Men II Giants

There's one aspect I don't understand about the AI data centre location conundrum (leaving aside whether they should be built at all). There's a lot of talk of "we really need to build them near population centres" but I don't see why. In my experience LLMs really aren't low-latency.

Oh no not another one. But at least this one is entirely justified.

Blogged: Scratch a simple data model, find a complex one - codeblog.jonskeet.uk/2026/08/14/s...

My favourite grasshopper fact: Grasshoppers first appeared on the planet 250 million years ago. Grass did not appear on the planet until 40 million years ago Imagine it: 210 million years, hopping around on any random surface you can find, waiting for the grass that will make you truly yourself.

Currently in the interval at Heathers in London (Marble Arch, so not *really* the West End, but close enough). I think this production is rather better than the last one I saw - Kurt and Ram in particular are really proficient in physical comedy. Generally excellent cast - a great afternoon out.

So, I now own election.uk (new) as well as election2029.uk (existing). I need to decide which I should make the canonical domain... I'm guessing election.uk is the right move, especially as I have basically no real users at the moment. Weirdly I sort of feel bad for the old domain though.

Peers are writing about effective ways to use multiple AI agents in parallel. I'm writing about how the most obvious data model for the Bible gets seriously confused by Greek Esther and Sirach. I'm not quite sure what that says about me, but it feels like a pretty stark juxtaposition.

Can confirm: this is indeed Fabulous.

Scott Hanselman 🌮@scott.hanselman.com · last mo.

Couple weeks ago I had my buddy @ericlippert.com on the podcast to talk about his book Fantastic Adventures in Data Structures and Algorithms, and now the book is out! Manning Publications Co. hubs.la/Q03Q9Q9y0 It's on sale right now in early access

The more I reflect on the Kemi Badenoch interview, the more I think that "LOTO is utterly contemptuous of local government" is a bigger story than the specific judgement of candidate suitability. (Don't get me wrong, the latter is important too.) Particularly relevant in context of more devolution.

I have insomnia yet again, at the start of our seaside holiday. It's significantly less frustrating than normal, but I'm very tempted to go down to the beach to see the sea in the moonlight. Would unfortunately disturb other members of the household.

I dislike the way that reality TV show end-of-episode "the person leaving us today is..." huge pause has made it as far as elections. Just tell us the results already! (Seriously though, much gratitude to everyone who is conscientiously making sure the count is right in Greater Manchester tonight.)

Humbug. Between Stack Overflow being read-only for some of yesterday, and decompressing after an interview, I lost my streak of logging in every day. I think it had been about 16 years... Ah well.

Men: please don't do this. So much ick.

Michael Speirs@natuphillies.bsky.social · last mo.

I'm sorry but your piece smacks of ingratitude. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer your translation has sold ONE MILLION copies, most I contend, due to the pr run-up and release of the Nolan film. You are entitled to your opinion but why bite the hand that fed you? Maybe silence would be wiser?

@timharford.ft.com It feels like this would be a great subject for an episode of Cautionary Tales. (Apologies if you've already covered it - I did try to check, but I may have missed it.)

Chris Sams@jerijerod14.bsky.social · 2mo ago

With news that they are removing the masts of the Richard Montgomery off Sheerness it raises the questions; What is the Richard Montgomery? Why is she so dangerous? What will the do with the masts afterwards? jerijerod14.substack.com/p/ss-richard... #navalhistory #history #Kent

Hadestown tonight, for the first time in over 5 months. This is likely to be the only time I see this cast before it changes again in September - shocking!

Somewhat surprised that UK politics BlueSky hasn't already exploded with laughter at the new Reform funding news. Maybe it's just my dodgy connection which isn't showing it to me.

Learning the part of Pisthetaerus for "The Birds" by Aristophanes, in Greek, at university. I don't know Greek, and it's a big part.

Gail Simone@gailsimone.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Okay, my QUESTION OF THE DAY is… What is your weirdest actual accomplishment? Not the biggest necessarily…but the weirdest?

So do we think Rayner, Phillipson, Nandy etc are playing Twister in the basement of No 10 to figure out who's getting which of the remaining posts?

Incredible statement from the Church in Wales on the ignominious Code of Practice: "The Church in Wales will not use equality law exemptions to exclude trans people from our worship, our sacraments, our pastoral care, or our common life." www.churchinwales.org.uk/en/news-and-...

Statement of the Bench of Bishops of the Church in Wales on the publication of the EHRC Draft Code of Practice - Church in Wales

churchinwales.org.uk

I've just scored 81 on Flea Juggle in Silksong. If that isn't a good way of spending time between jobs, I don't know what is.

Last chance to sign up to our substack at 25% off for a year. Just a few hours left... samf.substack.com/p/summer-sal...

Summer Sale - *25% off for a year*

We only do one or two special offers a year, but as we’ve recently gone past 90,000 subscribers we thought we’d celebrate with one.

samf.substack.com

Blogged: Forking an open source project - codeblog.jonskeet.uk/2026/07/11/f... If you have experience on forking an OSS project and would be able to weigh in with thoughts about my plans, I'd be very grateful...

Forking an open source project

Introduction and motivation Some of the projects I work on – notably V-Drum Explorer and At Your Service – use MIDI to interact with hardware devices. I use a couple of packages for thi…

codeblog.jonskeet.uk

This is very much the post we need, along the lines of "Yes, it's all exciting and fun to talk about Count Binface. Now take a breath, and think about what can realistically happen." Fantastic from Sam as ever.

Sam Freedman@samfr.bsky.social · 2mo ago

New post: "Farage's Folly" Yesterday's gambit was a desperate move from a man in trouble. I look at the likelihood of him quitting or being thrown out after a standards investigation. And what that would mean for Reform and British politics. (£/free trial) open.substack.com/pub/samf/p/f...

So, there is a precedent for vetoing an MP's resignation Viscount Chelsea (Henry Cadogan) applied for the Chiltern Hundreds in 1842 The Chancellor (Goulburn) refused because, get this, Cadogan wanted to resign to obstruct an investigation for bribery h/t @fascinatorfun.bsky.social and @gazhay.com

All this is almost worth it for making Nick Robinson say ‘and we’ll hear from Count Binface in a few minutes time.’ #R4Today

I am seriously concerned for the health of Jon Harvey, if he has to campaign during a heatwave with a bin on his head. Fortunately the sea breezes seem to make Clacton significantly cooler than my home at the moment, but even so.