This is the best description of the platonic ideal of Star Trek I’ve ever seen:

space friends competently solving space problems

That’s it. That’s the whole show.

Busy wee fella.

Lancing College playing fields, early morning.

A peaceful morning scene features a sunlit, dew-covered field with a distant pavilion and a goal post, bordered by a fence and trees.

Tonight is Talisman Adventures night.

Two standee figures of fantasy characters, one in armor with a sword and the other in a robe holding a staff, are placed on a board game setting.

Blimey. The WordPress debacle has made it onto the BBC News website.

Good ideas versus mediocre teams.

Seen this in action, more than once.

What happens after X?

The ex-Twitter is in decline, but what replaces it might not look the same…

(Plus why video won’t kill the text internet, and an OnlyFans link more people will click than will care to admit it…)

So, I have an ActivityPub-enabled Ghost site (part of the private beta). You can follow it at @index@www.coffeeandcomplexity.com.

Many Pugs died to bring us this information.

Started reading: Groundbreakers by Chantal Lyons 📚

Been eyeing this one up for ages. Just dived in and am loving it already. 🐗

Sunday morning swimming pool whiteboard wisdom.

A motivational quote by A.A. Milne is written on a whiteboard, accompanied by a simple drawing of a person swimming. It reads; “You're braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter then you think.”

Started reading: Sleepless by Annabel Abbs 📚

I saw her talk about the book on Wednesday, at an event organised by the Steyning Bookshop. I’m really intrigued by the subject, especially as I’ve battled with insomnia myself this year.

The author Annabel Abbs stands at a podium in Steyning Methodist Church, with a laptop, speaking in a room with wooden paneling and a floral arrangement in the background.

Very proud of my eldest daughter. It’s a seemingly small thing that really matters: she’s choosing well in her friendships.

The Ghost ActivityPub team being even more spicy than normal in their latest update, talking about choosing their first beta testers:

How did we select the 3? First we asked everyone to promise to give us 8% of their revenue, or else. Then, when that predictably failed we ultimately just selected 3 of the private beta applications with the smallest audience sizes.

🔥 🌶️ 🔥

It was a beautifully misty autumnal commute this morning.

A person with a backpack walks along a foggy train platform, with tracks running parallel and a digital signboard in the distance.A misty train station platform is depicted with overhead lights glowing and a few people waiting alongside the tracks surrounded by trees.

Finishing the (working) week with a round-up of news from the scrum where AI and journalism meet.

Technology is great. People are idiots.

This is great reporting from 404 Media - but I do feel they buried the lead. The Blind stuff is more jaw-dropping than the second buyout offer.

Things are not good inside Automattic.

Dashed dreams of better EV batteries are a core disappointment.

I love Discworld and I like TTRPGs. But I’m not convinced that the combination that’s being Kickstarted is something I’m interested in. What makes Discworld special is Pratchett’s words.

And we ain’t getting any more of them.

This looks worth a watch:

Not gonna lie, it sometimes righteously pisses me off that journalism was going in exactly the right direction with community/audience work 15 years ago — and then we got distracted by Facebook and Google.

Is it too late to change course?