2025-04-25 22:52:30
We Butter The Bread With Butter is the most extreme metal thing I've heard since "I do my crosswords in pen". Shouty German-language techno-metal, I have no idea what they're singing about1 but "20km/h" is a dance-floor filler.
I've mentioned She's in Parties before but I hadn't heard 2024's Puppet Show then. Shoegaze but in a pop way instead of a goth way. "The Times" is lovely.
Introspective northern rap with gospel touches for the epicness from Self Esteem. "I Do And I Don't Care" is effulgent, "Mother" is unsettling, "69" is filthy. As her new album suggests, she's A Complicated Woman and I am here for it.
Emmelie de Forest's Into the Moon is fourteen tracks of weird, laid-back, gossamer pop that feels #DarkFrenchcore if that's even a thing?! Listen to "The Island" and see what I mean.
1: I do, it's about e-scooters
2025-04-24 03:23:02
David over on Forking Mad loves blogging challenges so much he made his own! Ten pointless facts about yourself — here are mine!
Do you floss your teeth?
Not as often as I should
Tea, coffee, or water?
Tea
Footwear preference?
Doc Martens
Favourite dessert?
Sticky Toffee Pudding
The first thing you do when you wake up?
Put the kettle on
Age you'd like to stick at?
I don't see any reason to stick at one age; every era is different, challenging, exciting, amazing — onwards! I wish I still had teenage knees though.
How many hats do you own?
Countless beanies, trilbys, and caps - I'm a hat guy
Describe the last photo you took?
A thick-trunked mature deciduous tree, its bark ragged off in a roughly square chunk by a recent automobile collision, stands still upright amidst trampled ground plants beside a straggly hedge next to a main road.
Worst TV show?
Much as I love Reality TV™, I loathe "I'm a celebrity…" with a passion. From Antandec's smug faces to animal torture, it's sub-Running Man bread and circuses for a dying world.
As a child, what was your aspiration for adulthood?
Rock star
As always, share links to your own or just get in touch by email, hit me up on the Socials™ (David suggested using the hashtag #Pointless10), or elsewhere online.
2025-04-23 13:18:23
I'm from Manchester1 where we have more rock stars per capita than anywhere else, allegedly.
It seems Sheffield is gunning for our crown though. From ABC to The Human League, Reverend and The Makers to While She Sleeps. Moloko, Longpigs, Heaven 17, Joe Cocker, and Def Leppard. The list of musicians from the city over on Wikipedia houses many bands and singers I like.
Come through, Steel City!
One of my all-time favourite bands. Jarvis Cocker and co manage to create catchy sing-along indie with lyrics that elevate the everyday to extraordinary. "Acrylic Afternoons" captures the "kitchen sink drama" of their lyrics rather well.
On a pink quilted eiderdown
I want to pull your knickers down
Net curtains blow slightly in the breeze
Lemonade light filtering through the trees
It's so soft and it's warm
Just another cup of tea please (one lump thanks)
I have to admit I wasn't a fan when BMTH first came around but I heard "heavy metal" and that whole tongue-in-cheek "I do what I want" attitude sold it to me. More punk than most punk.
Everyone went mad for Arctic Monkeys but Little Man Tate did it better. Just saying. "Man I Hate Your Band" is "Fake Tales of San Francisco" but better.
Even with math rock legends Rolo Tomassi just down the road, 65daysofstatic manage to stand out and stand apart. "install a beak in the heart that clucks times in arabic" from 2004's "The Fall of Math" is incredible but also check out their soundtrack for "No Man's Sky" where they scored a video game's "infinite universe".
Another of my favourite bands of all time, the combination of intellectual lyrics and sleazy indie rock n roll is *chef's kiss*. Knowing, art school, Scott Walker fans who probably read Camus writing about quirky relationships and the human experience. I urge you to listen to "Giddy Stratospheres" and thank me later.
1: Kind of
2025-04-23 02:05:54
In her latest "weaknotes™", Alice kind of sort of maybe challenged us to answer some questions in what is probably the loosest definition of "challenge" ever.
Would you ever live in Chicago?
No
Aren’t people who turn off Read status on WhatsApp fundamentally a bit sinister?
Yes
Do you fold or scrunch your toilet paper?
Scrunch
If you had to be in a committed 18-month live-in relationship with one of the following former Liverpool football managers, which one would you choose:
Kenny Dalglish
Have you ever slapped anyone?
Yes
Coke or Pepsi?
Coke
Babies or toddlers?
Toddlers
Who was the best Spice Girl?
Geri
Are there too many podcasts?
Yes
Costa, Nero, Starbucks, Pret — what’s your ranking?
How many people do you trust enough to lend £200 to?
30
How many people in your family would turn down a peerage?
Most, I hope
Which is the most basic Monopoly piece?
The hat
When was the last time you blocked a toilet?
2016
In the spirit of blogging challenges, I am supposed to tag other people but, in the spirit of social awkwardness, I'm not doing that.
If you want to join in, send me a link to your own post by email, hit me up on the Socials™, or elsewhere online.
2025-04-22 17:43:38
Grammar checkers will scan a given piece of text, analyse it for grammatical errors, and then provide reccomendations to improve the text.
Increasingly, these are using "AI" (large-language models) to achieve this. Which is an issue.
Large-language models are usually trained on vast amounts of data from the wider web. Content on the wider web is written by humans that, as the prevalence of grammar checkers suggests, suck at writing gramatically correct text!
So, your grammar checker has been trained on poor grammar. LLMs don't know anything, they rely on mathematically calculated "best guesses" which they then proffer as hard fact. Your users don't know it's bad grammar so they accept the revisions. Now your grammar checker is even more convinced its "best guess" is "good grammar".
This creates a self-perpetuating spiral into nonsense where the end result is more garbage in, garbage out and dumber humans.
See also, accessibility in AI-generated code.
2025-04-20 19:52:37
Forced into a supermarket at the height of the Easter shopping frenzy because of a let down by the delivery we booked well in advance, I can only bow my head in respect at the woman in Tesco who was queuing with a single wine glass. Mad props, love.
Back in work this week and doing something I haven't done in years; reviewing email designs.
I can't quite believe that I'm giving the same advice now as I was ten years ago 👀
I decided to write up guidance documentation for the design teams to counter the most basic of rookie mistakes and create a solid bedrock.
Hopefully, in future, these simple things won't be an issue and we can concentrate on making them amazing instead of good.
Thursday Brew Crew™ met up at Pollen Bakery in Kampus, Manchester. We've been there before but it's a handy local for when we can't be bothered venturing further afield.
Chai Latte; no quibbles about a takeaway cup indoors, oat milk is extra, the tea itself is slightly sweeter than I generally care for but worth it for the company.
Pollen sell a "Croissant Butter" that is described like "Biscoff spread but with croissant". It sounds phenomenal, I just don't know where I'd spread it — on a croissant?!
Digging in the veg bed and found a "high impact conduit" a few inches down. Following the rough line of the cable from the house out into the garden and discovered an outside socket behind a bush. It's in the area of the garden we were considering putting an Arbour so it could be useful having power there for lighting or something.
Quentin knew he wasn’t happy. Why not? He had painstakingly assembled all the ingredients of happiness. He had performed all the necessary rituals
Lev Grossman, "The Magicians"