James Bell

tiny ruby #{conf} A tiny Ruby conference in Helsinki, Finland

If you're in Europe and have FOMO because you can't attend the amazing @sfruby.bsky.social, there's another conference happening over here in Helsinki 🇫🇮at the same time 😊 helsinkiruby.fi/tinyruby/ from @helsinkiruby.fi - the line-up is great and Mochi will be attending 🐶🐾❤️It's going to be very nice!

LRUG | London Ruby User Group The London Ruby User Group (LRUG) meets on the 2nd Monday of the month for talking and socialising (about Ruby).

I'll be at today's London Ruby User Group meet-up, speaking about Event Sourcing, eventual consistency and durable messaging patterns. Show up if interested! lrug.org

The BBC’s depressing lack of inherent institutional strength 10th November 2025 The BBC needs to be a robust, independent institution * The British (or Bullied) Broadcasting Corporation is suffering another kicking. Of course, the BBC is not perfect, and nor…

“There will be those who will clap and cheer at the senior BBC resignations … but such elation is misconceived. For the BBC to be this weak as an institution when faced with outside (and politically motivated) criticism is not a sign of a healthy mixed polity.”

By @davidallengreen.bsky.social

As a psychologist, it's a really, really, really interesting and maddening set of problems here. Software development really exposes for me how we think about people's minds, even though it's an industry that likes to pretend it isn't thinking about people's minds at all.

But it really is.

Durable messaging and related patterns in Ruby, for fun and profit, Thu, Nov 13, 2025, 6:00 PM | Meetup Hallowe'en is almost upon us - get ready for [the Samhuinn celebrations](https://beltane.org/about-samhuinn/) maybe carve yourself a neep as tradition suggests. And then? W

Are you ready for the Scottish Ruby User Group this week? We're to be joined by the fabulous @ismaelcelis.com to talk durable messaging, event sourcing and more! Also: you can just hang out with other Rubyists. Sign up and we'll see you on Thursday! www.meetup.com/scotrug/even...

the "zohran mamdani for new york" sign but rewritten to be a funny ruby joke

where my rubyists (old people) at??

The image that launched a thousand rugby memes

When we were shit, I was furious and now we’re balling, I feel ill. and this is my hobby

DNA scientist James Watson has a remarkably long history of sexist, racist public comments “People say it would be terrible if we made all girls pretty,” he said in 2003. “I think it would be great.”

Hey folks, as news of Watson's demise spreads, please don't set aside his weighty legacy of misogyny and racism. He was truly among the worst of us. www.vox.com/2019/1/15/18...

“0% woke shit”

a black man with a physical disability leads an environmental terrorist cell trying to save the planet from mega-billionaires and you play as a cross dressing twink femdomed by two different women ending and the final boss against the gayest angel of all time

Ruby Central Board Member - Ruby Central About Ruby Central. Ruby Central is a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting and advancing the Ruby programming language and community. We steward foundational open source infrastructure su...

Ruby Central has opened board applications for next year: rubycentral.teamtailor.com/jobs/6723164...

I’ll be rolling off the board to have another baby and stuff, so I’d really love if you’d apply and/or share this with anyone who’s interested in being involved.

Reminder that if you're still not sick of me, you can go get more of me (but mostly other people) on my podcast, Dead Code. https://deadcode.website

Things you didn't know you needed in your life

❯ ruby -v
ruby 4.0.0dev (2025-11-07T11:42:29Z master 1f32464a2d) +YJIT +MN +PRISM [arm64-darwin24]

Dear Library by Jackie Kay ‘Dear Library’ by Jackie Kay was specially commissioned by Scottish Book Trust as part of the Artworks For Libraries project.

'Dear Library, you have served me well all my life. You are magnificence, munificence. You are a book festival every day'

Dear Library by Jackie Kay - Scottish Book Trust & National Library of Scotland

Ruby 4.0 is officially official! #RubyWorld

At this year's @lingcomm.bsky.social conference, we learned that the UK has been celebrating National Linguistics Day on November 26th, and everyone immediately went, hey, can't we make that World Linguistics Day?

Well, now it's only 20 days away, so time to get your celebration plans in order!

Sandwich Guy, Thrower of Hoagie–Or Hero? The trial ended in an acquittal. But the proceedings felt like a strange sort of performance art—highly amusing and highly menacing at the same time.

Here's my piece for @lawfaremedia.org on my experience covering the Sandwich Guy trial. Warning: longer than 280 characters!
www.lawfaremedia.org/article/sand...

YouTube video by John Lewis Where Love Lives | John Lewis & Partners | Christmas Ad 2025

The John Lewis Christmas ad this year is beautiful. It’s so rare to see men and fathers celebrated like this, or to acknowledge the reality of men struggling with their emotions. I can’t watch it without crying my eyes out. Thanks @JohnLewisRetail www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1bR...

Another successful BelfastRuby in the books! Thank you @altabyte.bsky.social, @petr.codes for your wonderful talks! And a huge shoutout to Stora for hosting and sponsoring!! 🙌

A companion article to the Perl article is now up:

Ruby and its Neighbors: Smalltalk.

Come for the OO stuff, stay for probably one two many asides about programming in the 90s..

noelrappin.com/blog/2025/11...

Also, you can subscribe at buttondown.com/noelrap to get this via email..

The poster for the film, with the tagline, 'Only monsters play God'. The title stretches across the middle, and the image is of a single figure whose giant form is covered by layers of ragged fabric and fur, leaving only a rough idea of what the monster looks like. He's standing in an Arctic wasteland, the air is filled with snow and there's a nineteenth century ship trapped in the ice in the background.

Some thoughts on #Frankenstein, the film and the book. I read the novel when I was in my early to mid twenties, I think, so there was a lot I didn't remember about the original story. There was no better man than Guillermo del Toro to make this film, so I was excited to see what he'd do with it. 1/

Belfast Ruby: Petr Hlavicka & Rob Graham at Stora · Luma And we're back with another edition of Belfast Ruby! We are very pleased to announce that this meetup's sponsor is Belfast's very own Stora! You can learn more…

ARE YOU READY FOR BELFAST RUBY TODAY!? LET'S GOOOOO luma.com/r42ger8m

Common Crawl is how all of Big AI laundered the lack of consent in scraping up content across the web.

NHS Sussex are forcibly detransitioning trans people. These patients need full restoration of their healthcare, and everyone involved in doing this needs to be sacked.

I literally have a slide with a screenshot from Teen Vogue that I've used for talks about climate change and infrastructure all over the world, and I get to give them props for their social and political coverage. Losing it is a loss for all of us, not just young people.

In addition to its politics coverage generally, Teen Vogue was one of the few mainstream outlets that had incredible coverage of disability issues written by actual disabled writers.

Not sure what’s left on that front now. Maybe just @19thnews.org and @motherjones.com?

Teen Vogue took young people seriously. It's impossible to overstate how important, how rare, and how profoundly needed that is.

Political Experiments Many years ago, in another lifetime, I was presenting our team's work to a rather senior politician. Here's how I remember it: "We want to provide value for money," I said, "so we propose that running five small pilots of [thing I still can't talk about]. We know there are multiple technologies which could work. But we don't know which one will work best." "How will running something five times …

New blog post: Political Experiments

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2025/11/political-experiments/

Many years ago, in another lifetime, I was presenting our team's work to a rather senior politician. Here's how I remember it: "We want to provide value for money," I said, "so we propose that running …

The #RadicalBookFair is as much about community as it is about books - a space for connection, for learning, for taking action.

So Sunday we host stalls from grassroots groups, local initiatives, bookish collaborators & activist campaigns, come meet the people making change on your doorstep!