I was delighted to be invited to speak at FOSDEM. And I was not at all intimidated to be speaking on the cavernous Janson stage. The audience were lovely, asked interesting questions, and - most importantly - laughed in all the right places 😅. Regular readers will recognise this as being an updated version of the talk I gave at EMF 2024 - feel free to watch that one if you want to see if I've im…
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I'm just back from my first ever FOSDEM - a megaconference dedicated to Free and Open Source technology and culture. It was epic. I'm still ruminating on the experience, but here are my first impressions of what did and didn't work. The Good Bits Really, it is a dozen conferences squeezed into one. Over a thousand talks, on a seemingly infinite array of subjects, about a million people…
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I rather enjoyed HMRC (Her Majesty's Royal Coven) and The Shadow Cabinet by Juno Dawson. This is a sort-of prequel to the series. What if Anne Boleyn was a witch?!?! It's a fun enough book, but doesn't really go anywhere. Part of the problem is that the stories chapters flip back and forth in time. It is a tired literary trick and robs us of the gradual build-up of the characters. There's no…
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The UK is going through one of its periodic lamentations that "Things Are Changing And No One Asked Me". This time, it is over the loss of the humble British pub. It seems every year there's another story about how pubs are vanishing. Cue the wailing and gnashing of teeth as the Fabric Of Society™ is rent asunder. To which I say "Good riddance. Most pubs are shit and deserve to go." Let me e…
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This is not a ‘resistance’ book. It is not a guide to activism. It is not a reflection on ‘how democracies die’ or how authoritarianism is on the horizon. It is an exploration of how, without questioning the very context in which resistance takes place, it is futile. This book is more about its subtitle than its title. It doesn't really provide new stories or new ways of thinking about the worl…
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About ⅔rds of the way through reading Janice Hallett's debut novel, The Appeal, I purchased her next book - The Twyford Code. The schtick is similar to the first. We, the reader, are taken through an epistolary series of audio files - voice notes from a recently released convict. There's intrigue, murder, regret, and redemption. The story isn't as tangled as The Twyford Code - here's it is one m…
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Back when I was a product manager for a large mobile network operator, we faced a constant problem. How do you launch a new product to the public? Most people are reluctant to try new things. Even in the exciting world of proto-smartphones, convincing someone to download, install, configure, and use a new app was difficult. Sure, we could run expensive advertising campaigns. Send hopeful text…
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Romeo and Juliet is obviously about a young Pakistani girl whose overbearing father wants to marry her off to a cousin, despite her age and wishes. How could it be anything but? ‘Oh dear, please don’t ruin Romeo and Juliet by talking about race!’ said a member of the public when the Globe hosted an anti-racist webinar on the play. You may be thinking this too. But worry not, because the play can’…
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This is a fun bit of sci-fi. A bit tropey in places, but an excellent sense of world-building and a vicious cast of double-crossers. The protagonist is best described by one of the character's off-hand remarks about her being “The very best space fascist girl scout of them all.” Can you feel sympathy for someone who has been manipulated into being evil? What about if given every chance to cha…
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Funny from the preface up until the very last footnote. This is the updated version of the classic "What If" book - where Munroe goes into absurd details about ridiculous questions. Full of nerdy giggles and some utterly bizarre units. For example: The storage industry produces in the neighborhood of 650 million hard drives per year. If most of them are 3.5-inch drives, that’s 8 liters (2 g…
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After reading Karin Tidbeck's Amatka I knew I needed to read more by her. Jagannath is an exceptional collection of short stories. In turns beautifully silly and oddly romantic. What does it mean for a man to fall in love with an airship? If God walks the streets, how can He be summoned? Does the Devil rely on mechanised bureaucracy to connect to people via phone? Each story feels like a…
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My good friend Suw alerted me to this venerable book by repeatedly ranting "What is your theory of change???" online. If ever there was a moment to yell "WHAT IS YOUR THEORY OF CHANGE???" that moment is now and we should all be yelling it at Just Stop Oil.It seems to me their theory of change is to make enough people pissed of with them that... er, um... Step 2: ???Step 3: Profit!! Wait, that's…
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