Merje Shaw

The Sovereign Individual - Wikipedia

Peter Thiel is reportedly influenced in no small way by theories from a certain book. It certainly seems that he is in the midst of events that seem to track it nicely en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sov...

Oh hello there! Guess who’s back? felixrieseberg.github.io/clippy/

Dumb tech is growing as a trend - I wish I had hardware skills, it’s going to be massive in 5ish years

Thank you! I also found an option to reduce motion which helps with not getting sick whilst using a phone. Still, at least I definitely won’t use it whilst in motion.

There’s been a few of those recently. From what I gather, the premise is that the US economy is largely held up by AI companies. Given that the US is currently busy shooting itself in the foot repeatedly, I fear there’s a meltdown coming anyway…

Argh, help! My iPhone updated overnight and now everything looks weird. Is there a way to turn off this “glass” monstrosity? (Or is this a sign to stop using my phone?!)

I’d love to read what you write on 4 so I can swipe some great articulation

It is a strange feature of the AuDHD brain that lets you fully inhabit an interest and then just… pivot. I still retain a lot of very niche knowledge about various topics which I no longer have that much interest in but used to be My Whole Life

That was a weird spell check correction, courtesy of my Apple phone. Apologies

Yes! Whilst enthromorphising language no doubt helps with acceptance and engagement, in the longer term this causes more harm than benefit - the more you *think* a system can do, the sharper the disappointment when you eventually realise the limitations. Transparency is key

I also just shifted everything across to Deezer. No need to help them build monopolies when it can be avoided

And finally Mimi, who is impossible to photograph because she likes being glued to either my hand or my legs

Harry, who still hasn’t entirely forgiven me for picking her up four days ago but is starting to come around and demand scritches

This is Atticus Catticus who is terrified of me because I have clipped her nails several times over the last year. That said, she isn’t generally a fan of humans, whether they feed her or not

Here’s another one of him :)

This handsome gentleman is Milo

This sweet girl is Maya - she is so so lovely

It just occurred to me that I currently have keys to four different homes. It also occurred to me that maybe I should start charging for cat sitting.

Silly silly border agents, you confiscate the panettone and destroy the evidence, not shout about it!

Just found out “urgent referrals” in the NHS mean you have to be seen within 28 days. I have a very different definition of “urgent”

GOV.UK has entered the Chat: our vision for GOV.UK Chat Learn about our plans for GOV.UK Chat, the AI-powered chat system we’ve built as an easier, quicker way to interact with government.

"GOV.UK has entered the Chat: our vision for GOV.UK Chat"

(including experiments with agentic AI)

insidegovuk.blog.gov.uk/2025/12/16/g...

It’s another example of how not to do it. And also completely depressing 🤣

Chernobyl promo poster, using an awkward, lumpy typeface.

Fonts are in the news, so I'm going to take the opportunity to port over an old thread: what was typography like in the Soviet Union?

Spoiler: they did not just have 1 font everyone had to use. As a matter of fact, there were 39.

One of them, you can see here, used to great effect for "Chernobyl."

How are they actually going to police this? Strip searches for anyone who doesn’t look like some female archetype ideal? This is really not cool.

Showing Jenga as same width as post it notes and moo.com stickers

Love Jenga for workshops

Cheap and flexible for 3d maps and activities

Granola though 👌🏻👌🏻

Halifax completely missing the point of these “Wrapped” summaries and reminding their users they’re one of millions and the bank knows very little about them.

Yeah… don’t do this.

I expect it will be a busy place - when you do go, please report back?

Hahahahhahaha… I would very much like to see how he defines “British ancestry” because he almost definitely doesn’t understand the history of these fair isles

So what are we using now?