Dyfrig Williams

Yr unig peth da yw naid acen Cymru'r yw'r un gwaethaf... Mae'r bar yn isel!

Word of Mouth - Accent Bias - BBC Sounds Michael Rosen asks Devyani Sharma about the latest research into accent bias in the UK.

Really interesting podcast on accent bias, although somewhet depressing findings around how accent affects perceptions of employability www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

Poster featuring spiral lines forming two circles at the bottom. Spaces between some of the lines are colored blue, which makes it look like a person riding a bicycle. At the top it says, "Berlin Praha Warszawa".

Polish poster for the International Peace Race
1967
Artist: Leszek Holdanowicz

Complaints Rise Because Our Organisations Are Designed To Generate Complaints The purpose of a system is what it does

"There is a delegating of critical decision-making authority away from humans and into immutable rulebooks, policies, bureaucratic protocols, or automated algorithms" paulitaylor.com/2025/10/31/c... < Very good post on failure demand in the public sector from @paulitaylor.bsky.social #localgov

Ep. 194 - England and Belgium review Play Ep. 194 - England and Belgium review by Podcast Pêl-droed on desktop and mobile. Play over 320 million tracks for free on SoundCloud.

Joio yw'r gair anghywir, ond mae'r @podcastpeldroed.bsky.social diweddaraf yn crynhoi teimladau fi i'r dim ar ôl y gemau diwethaf.

The latest Podcast Pêl Droed crystallises why I was so disappointed after the latest games. Now I can move on m.soundcloud.com/podcast_peld...

The Welsh Rugby Union Consultation and Survey 2025 Survey and Report by Gwlad Rugby You can read the Executive Summary of this report here. Introduction On 20 August 2025 the Welsh Rugby Union (“WRU”) published a “consultation to help shape the fut…

The Welsh Rugby Union Consultation and Survey 2025:

Gwlad Rugby publishes its own independent survey relating to the WRU's proposals for the future of our game. Please take the time to read and share. It's important that the WRU is held to account on this.

gwladrugby.wordpress.com/2025/09/29/t...

Thanks for sharing Penny - love this! That part on the industrialised approach resonates - excellent work Bryony!

"Our current approach brings together 'two people in crisis: the personal crisis of the support seeker and the ongoing professional crisis of the hard-pressed public service worker'” < A powerful and brilliant post HT @supervisionmatters.bsky.social

Digital Transformation and Our Failure To Learn From Past Mistakes The cyclical nature of public sector failure is a testament not to a lack of intelligence or goodwill, but to a deeply ingrained resistance to genuine learning. It’s a system designed for sta…

"Interactions can be complex, multi-faceted, and emotionally charged. In these scenarios, a digital-first approach becomes a barrier rather than a convenience" paulitaylor.com/2025/09/05/d... < Helpfully challenging post from @paulitaylor.bsky.social on why one size doesn't fit all

had some stuff to get off my chest about strategies ~ gilest.org/notes/strate...

I need you to understand what this country feels like right now for those of us who look different. I'm sitting here, trying to plan for Saturday, make sure I don't even need to go to the corner shop for milk, like it's Christmas Day or lockdown. Why? Because I live near where Yaxley-Lennon will 1/

The Last Days Of Social Media | NOEMA Social media promised connection, but it has delivered exhaustion.

"The last days of social media might be the first days of something more human: a web that remembers why we came online in the first place — not to scroll but to connect" www.noemamag.com/the-last-day... < Thoughtful post on the perceived end days of social media as we know it #SocialMedia

## Migrants and Mobiles https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2015/09/migrants-and-mobiles/ There's a pernicious myth - often spread by tabloids - that the poor and hungry don't deserve the meagre possessions which make life worth living. You see this in headlines like "Benefit Scum Have Flat Screen TV!" It ignores the fact that a) they may have bought the TV when they had disposable income, b) that a TV can provide nearly limitless free entertainment, and c) Flat Screen TVs are _really fucking cheap!_ As the refugee crisis in Europe grows, there are those who wish to exploit human misery and suffering for their own ends. They are usually backed up by the hoard of useful idiots who will spew hatred for their fellow man at the drop of a hat. One particularly spiteful meme is that displaced persons are obviously not poor because they all have "expensive smartphones." These are _not_ expensive phones! The original photo by Peter Nicholls/Reuters is titled "Afghans used a generator-powered charging station this month at a camp in Calais, France." and appears in an excellent New York Times article about how mobile phones are an essential lifeline. I work in the mobile industry. Let's take a look at all those phones, and see just how expensive they are. This is the Nokia 100. It's literally designed to be the cheapest phone on the planet. You can pick one up for £16 brand new. These appear to be Samsung E1200. They are free. No joke, pop into a UK phone store and you can get one free if you buy a £20 top up. I'm pretty sure this is the Asha 220. Designed for the developing market, Amazon will ship you one next day for around £30. It's rare to see an Android phone with the back button on the right. No physical home button means it isn't a Samsung. No branding, so unlikely to be Sony. I _think_ it's a Micromax or similar no-brand Chinese handset. Generally these handsets are under £100 - but it's hard to say. The back of this looks like the Samsung S4 Mini. That was £230 when launched, now available for around £145. No idea about the phone underneath it. Physical button and smallish form factor, I'm going to say Samsung S3 Mini. £180 when first released, under £90 now. Based on the orange colour and top charging port, I thought this might be the ZTE Firefox phone, but a closer look at the buttons at the bottom makes me think it's an Android. Back button is on the right, which either makes it very old, or a no-brand phone. Based on the top charger and bight colour, my guess is that this is the NIU Niutek 3.5D2. A dual-SIM phone you can buy for around $40 in the US. Based on the front facing camera, the white phone is probably the Galaxy Trend. Originally £140 - now yours for ninety quid. The black phone could be anything. Generic pink powerbank. You can buy these for £4. Not a typo. Under a fiver. * * * Mobile phones are ridiculously cheap. Even the top end phones listed above can be found for under £75 in any second-hand phone shop. With a phone, you can call or text home to let people know you're safe. You can buy a cheap SIM card in any country and be contactable by your lawyer and by aid agencies, register to look for work, find housing, meet up with friends, email loved ones, update Facebook, and generally take part in modern society. Download an app and you're halfway to learning a new language. Find free WiFi and communicate around the world for nothing. If I was down to the clothes I wore and the phone in my pocket, I'd sell my shirt before cutting myself off from modern communications! The next time someone tries to tell you that a refugee can't be _that_ destitute because they have a smartphone - gently remind them how cheap modern technology is and how essential phones are to modern life. Then tell them to shut the hell up. * * * If you can, please set up a monthly donation to Oxfam, or a charity of your choice, in order to help people survive. #phones #refugees

"Why do all these migrants have expensive mobile phones?!?!?"
A blog post from a decade ago which is, tragically, still relevant today.
https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2015/09/migrants-and-mobiles/

Y Dwylo Uwchben - Live Session - YouTube

Rili cŵl bod Breichiau Hir yn gwneud sesiynau o'r LP diweddaraf, sy'n werth gwrando arno.

Very cool that Breichiau Hir ar sharing session recordings from their latest LP (which is well worth a listen).

www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...

#NowPlaying #Cymraeg

Reality vs. The Weedless Garden : Conferences That Work We crave simple answers, but reality is complex. Embrace nuance: resilient systems are messy, tolerant, and designed for choice—not brittle certainty.

"Complex systems nourish us because they can bend, adapt, and survive. In that resilience lies the only “simplicity” worth cultivating: a simple commitment to accommodate reality as it is"< Brill post from @segar.com www.conferencesthatwork.com/index.php/li...

This, from the Quakers, is a pretty good example of how to resist pressure from bigot lobbying groups. Effectively “we legally can allow trans people to use the loo, we morally should, and we tried it and nothing bad happened”

I bet!

I've learnt a tonne in work about shifting from the medical model of disability where an issue lies with an individual to the social model, where it's only an issue because society isn't set up to deal with it. Things feel regressive at the moment, but things have changed so much during my life time

Depressingly true isn't it :(

Excellent work on your part! :)

Nature is Not Going to Cure You: On Raynor Winn’s Fabricated Memoir Like many writers, I have been following the unfolding revelations about Raynor Winn and The Salt Path with great interest, and a degree of self-interest. I am a memoirist and nature writer, and I …

"People do not want the messy, uncomfortable truth that disabled people know—that disability is part of the natural world, not an anomaly to be corrected" lithub.com/nature-is-no... < Really good challenge to conventional narratives from the publishing industry by @pollyrowena.bsky.social

Staging of Nye on the theatre stage, with a hospital bed at the centre of the stage

Wnes i weld Nye yng Nghanolfan y Mileniwm heno. Rili taro gartref bod angen achub gwasanaethau cyhoeddus mwy na byth o'r blaen.

Went to see Nye at the Wales Millennium Centre tonight. Really strikes home how we need public services more than ever before.

I Knew the Hollywood Version of My Parents’ Country. Returning There With Them Was Entirely Different. My dad was a soldier, a traitor, and a refugee. What would we find when we returned to the country he fled?

"When my dad spoke of the country, it was to contrast his upbringing with the way my brother and I lived our lives" < This is a lovely piece on the nuances of culture and identity over time slate.com/life/2025/08...

We Will Never Be Here Again - a Book by Svein Tuft Adventures in cycling from the wilderness to the Tour de France with former professional cyclist Svein Tuft

Just finished We Will Never Be Here Again, Svein Tuft's autobiography. A fascinating exploration of both cycling as a competitive sport and the bike as a tool for adventure. Thoroughly recommended www.kickstarter.com/projects/ric...

There's like a 1000 articles published over the last few years highlighting how crime prediction and detection not only don't work they're just machines for injustice.

themarkup.org/prediction-b...

There's been some actual shockers in the past so I always try not to give them too much credit. For a socialist paper they're not great on solidarity

Take away our language and we will forget who we are: Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o and the language of conquest The long read: The late Kenyan novelist and activist believed erasing language was the most lasting weapon of oppression. Here, Aminatta Forna recalls the man and introduces his essay on decolonisatio...

"Education should never lead to linguistic and cultural self-isolation. I want to connect to the world, but that doesn’t mean I have to negate my starting base" < Fascinating Guardian Long Read on language and colonialism www.theguardian.com/books/2025/a...

Dewi Bryn Jones - Wicipedia

ERTHYGL NEWYDD

Llongyfarchiadau MAWR i Dewi Bryn ar ennill Medal Gwyddoniaeth a Thechnoleg Eisteddfod Gen. 2025.

Drwy ei lafur, ychwanegwyd tua 20,000 o luniau Comin Wici ar wefan 'Geiriadur Rhywogaethau Cymdeithas' Edward Llwyd, a'i ailenwi: 'Y Bywiadur'.
cy.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dewi_Br...

Crazy thought. If the government wants these homes to exist... the government should build them?

We're now going to have 15 or so years until the trans panic dies and things revert to sense while we have to put up papers like the Guardian more and more often pretending that they didn't cause this.