Michael Williamson
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zwobble.bsky.social
Michael Williamson
@zwobble.bsky.social
150 followers 490 following 120 posts
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zwobble.bsky.social
If it were to happen, one bonus of Starmer leaving Downing Street before the next election is that it preserves an excellent pub quiz question: who was the last prime minister to both become and stop being prime minister as a consequence of a general election?
November 15, 2025 at 11:24 AM
Reposted by Michael Williamson
dsquareddigest.bsky.social
it feels almost indecent to say this since the primary reason for removing children from poverty is simply removing children from poverty. but it is really well established fact that child poverty is extremely expensive in the long term and this policy costs money.
ianmoody.bsky.social Ian Moody @ianmoody.bsky.social · Apr 22
Ministers privately ruling out scrapping two-child benefits cap.
​Sources says government is ‘not going to find a way’ to ditch cap despite predictions that child poverty levels will soar.
www.theguardian.com/society/2025...
Ministers privately ruling out scrapping two-child benefits cap
Sources says government is ‘not going to find a way’ to ditch cap despite predictions that child poverty levels will soar
www.theguardian.com
April 22, 2025 at 8:32 AM
Reposted by Michael Williamson
gabyhinsliff.bsky.social
Hands down my fabourite thing I’ve read this week. I laughed, I cried a bit (I lost my own dad recently), I will be quoting this next time someone says something pompous about what it means to be British. Enjoy your eccentric parents while you still have them substack.com/@tomcox/note...
Tom Cox on Substack
Some Notes About My Dad That I Have Made In My Notebooks: My dad has come to an arrangement with the public pool in Nottinghamshire where he swims: after everyone else has got out of the pool, he is ...
substack.com
April 11, 2025 at 12:14 PM
Reposted by Michael Williamson
stephenkb.bsky.social
Really important and moving account of state failure in this weekend's @financialtimes.com that is free to read for all here:
My brother, the NHS and the inquest into a needless death
My brother spent the last hours of his life trying in vain to get basic help from the NHS. Why?
www.ft.com
February 22, 2025 at 11:27 AM
Reposted by Michael Williamson
uselessfodder.bsky.social
Just incredible things from the VLC folks
January 11, 2025 at 3:41 PM
Reposted by Michael Williamson
jomichell.bsky.social
This is the important part.
As we are obliged to mention every time we're obliged to write about the UK economy, Britain is straitjacketed by a particular silly set of fiscal rules that have the practical effect of reifying global market moves into your local hospital getting turned into an elaborate portacabin maze.
January 9, 2025 at 8:19 PM
zwobble.bsky.social
It's possible that I may have played too much Sekiro.
January 9, 2025 at 8:34 PM
zwobble.bsky.social
One of my open source projects converts Word documents into HTML, since Microsoft's own conversion tends to be unusable for many use cases.

Today, I discovered one of the users of the project is: Microsoft! github.com/microsoft/ma...
markitdown/src/markitdown/_markitdown.py at main · microsoft/markitdown
Python tool for converting files and office documents to Markdown. - microsoft/markitdown
github.com
January 5, 2025 at 6:34 PM
zwobble.bsky.social
I have spent 5 days implementing a TOML parser, and I think my conclusion might be that I don't actually want to use TOML as a configuration file format after all.

There's more complexity around when different constructs can define tables than I realised, and structure is hard to see at a glance.
December 28, 2024 at 9:18 PM
Reposted by Michael Williamson
wulfboyraff.bsky.social
This is a powerful and affecting thread, and I advise caution on reading it given it talks about very sensitive subjects.

I find it upsetting both because of the subject matter, and because in a way it allows a glimpse of what our parliament might be if it wasn't a fucking circus instead.
iandunt.bsky.social Ian Dunt @iandunt.bsky.social · Nov 29
I'm going to do some coverage on here of the assisted dying debate. If you're not interested please mute this thread now. It'll probably go on a while.
November 29, 2024 at 3:20 PM
Reposted by Michael Williamson
nocontexttrek1.bsky.social
Riker and Spock, on ship, are standing in uniform. Picard looks kind of p-o'd, Riker less so. Closed caption reads, "Kamala is the key to peace between our two worlds."
July 21, 2024 at 6:10 PM
zwobble.bsky.social
The irony of removing the hereditary peers from the House of Lords is that they're the only ones put there by a vote, it's just that the electorate is rather small i.e. the hereditary peers.
July 14, 2024 at 9:52 AM
zwobble.bsky.social
Celebrating the manifestation of democracy the only way I know how.
A photo of a meal, a succulent Chinese meal.
July 6, 2024 at 12:24 PM
zwobble.bsky.social
"Probably true"

This election is turning into performance art, it's the only plausible explanation.
A Reform UK candidate has claimed the country would be "far better" if it had "taken Hitler up on his offer of neutrality" instead of fighting the Nazis in World War Two. A Reform UK spokesman said: "Through offence archaeology the BBC has found that Mr Gribbin has made a series of comments about a number of subjects. "They were written with an eye to inconvenient perspectives and truths. That doesn't make them endorsements, just arguing points in long distance debates. "His historical perspective of what the UK could have done in the 30s was shared by the vast majority of the British establishment including the BBC of its day, and is probably true.
June 10, 2024 at 2:37 PM
Reposted by Michael Williamson
jaunty.art
Here is my dad’s Porter joke that has all the makings of a joke but isn’t actually. He used to adore bombastically telling it to people to see how they’d react.
Porter joke So it's the week before Christmas and a man arrives at the train station loaded with gift parcels that he's bought for his friends and family. Given the season, the train station is particularly busy. Now, our friend is wealthy and generous and he's purchased many gifts during the day. And he's trying to navigate the station with gifts hanging from the ribbons off each of his fingers as he gets jostled by others at the train station. Our man needs help! He shouts "Porter!" above the din of the station in the hope that a train station porter can assist him with his load. "Porter!" he cries again as he tries to rearrange the gifts into a stack that reaches above his head so he stops getting buffeted around the platform and can board his train. The clock is ticking down on his train's departure so he yells "PORTER!" just as he sees the top parcel start to teeter and fall to his feet. "PORTER! PORTER!" as the other parcels descend and start to get kicked by hurrying commuters. Just as he's standing stricken surrounded by his fallen load with his train leaving the station, the Porter arrives and asks if he can assist. "WHERE THE HELL HAVE YOU BEEN?! I'VE BEEN SHOUTING ON YOU." our man cries. "Apologies Sir, I did hear you but I was tying my shoelaces." comes the reply. And our exasperated traveller retorts "That's the trouble with you porters! YOU'RE ALWAYS TYING YOUR SHOELACES!"
May 13, 2024 at 10:36 AM
Reposted by Michael Williamson
aremay.bsky.social
meanwhile, on ds9
March 14, 2024 at 10:24 AM
zwobble.bsky.social
It seems I'm actually going to run this, and therefore need to come up with 32 more backgrounds for disgraced Klingons. I have some ideas, but more are always welcome!
zwobble.bsky.social Michael Williamson @zwobble.bsky.social · Mar 1
I think I'm spending my day off well.
March 13, 2024 at 1:48 PM
Reposted by Michael Williamson
zwobble.bsky.social
I think I'm spending my day off well.
March 1, 2024 at 1:37 PM
zwobble.bsky.social
I think I'm spending my day off well.
March 1, 2024 at 1:37 PM
zwobble.bsky.social
Films! Films! Films! A thread of trips to the cinema for my 2024 film extravaganza.
February 15, 2024 at 5:36 PM
Reposted by Michael Williamson
dandouglas.bsky.social
demolishing the Captain Tom spa pool complex, in Duke Nukem 3D youtu.be/E-Pffu4wwvk?...
February 5, 2024 at 3:11 PM
Reposted by Michael Williamson
ellyzoe.bsky.social
This is loathsome. LeCun isn’t any old tech bro either; he’s a Turing award winner in a very high position at Meta (which is making one of the AI models that competes with openAI but which is ALSO trained on pirated books).
January 8, 2024 at 6:00 PM
Reposted by Michael Williamson
zwobble.bsky.social
I wish we got the version of Picard where he solved fun little mysteries in the village with his dog. variety.com/2020/tv/feat...
You know, personally speaking, my own tastes and inclination, I always said when we were in the earliest versions of the room for this show, if we could have just done a whole show about Picard and the dog on the vineyard in France, with no starships, no phasers, the only Romulans would be those two Romulans who work for him on the vineyard, and no politics — just, like, there’s a funfair down in the village and they all go, and maybe Picard solves a very low stakes mystery in the village, like, someone has stolen the antique bell out of the bell tower, or something like that? I would have loved to write that show. Um. I don’t think the world’s quite ready for a “Star Trek” show like that, and there’s probably maybe not that big of an audience for a “Star Trek” show like that.
December 15, 2023 at 9:22 AM
Reposted by Michael Williamson
zwobble.bsky.social
My favourite @aptshadow.bsky.social book I read this year was Dogs of War. It made me almost made me cry (on a public train!) at things I did not ever expect to cry at.

I don't think any other piece of fiction has caused just two words to be so emotionally loaded.
November 23, 2023 at 1:25 PM