Simon Brunning, He/him

Oh, and automatically deleting any ticket more than, oh, 3 months old is great.

People think they hate Jira, but really they hate bureaucracy, and Jira is where product teams most often run into bureaucracy.

Not me, though. I *really* hate Jira.

Seem to recall there’s a word which perfectly describes this… Starts with an R and rhymes with “racism”.

A New DORA Performance Level – Catastrophically Bad DORA (the DevOps Research Association) has 4 broad levels for dev team performance: Elite, High, Medium, and Low. A Low-Performing team deploys less than once a month, has lead times for changes &g…

According to data collected by DORA (DevOps Research & Assessment), some teams are "Elite" - shipping many times a day, while others are "Low-performing" - shipping < once a month

But some teams aren't shipping *at all*. I propose a new level just for them

codemanship.wordpress.com/2026/03/04/a...

Just more evidence that the UKs “first past the post” voting system does not reflect the diversity of our politics. Time for a change

Came across the phrase "cognitive DDOS" to describe our present culture.

Understood instantly what it meant.

YOU: The first Gorillaz album was released 25 years ago.

ME: I disagree.

The novel’s merit, then—or its offence, depending where you stood—was not that it was authentic, but that it was credible. The bad dream turned out to be one that a lot of people in the world were sharing, since it asked the same old question that we are asking ourselves fifty years later: How far can we go in the rightful defence of our Western values without abandoning them along the way? My fictional chief of the British Service—I called him Control—had no doubt of the answer: “I mean, you can’t be less ruthless than the opposition simply because your government’s policy is benevolent, can you now?” Today, the same man, with better teeth and hair and a much smarter suit, can be heard explaining away the catastrophic illegal war in Iraq, or justifying medieval torture techniques as the preferred means of interrogation in the twenty-first century, or defending the inalienable right of closet psychopaths to bear semi-automatic weapons, and the use of unmanned drones as a risk-free method of assassinating one’s perceived enemies and anybody who has the bad luck to be standing near them. Or, as a loyal servant of his corporation, assuring us that smoking is harmless to the health of the Third World, and great banks are there to serve the public. What have I learned over the last fifty years? Come to think of it, not much. Just that the morals of the secret world are very like our own.

The forward from the anniversary edition is really brutal stuff- but it's hard to fault le Carré for his bitterness.

Looking forward to listening to this.

The King In Yellow is the seminal text to understand contemporary America.

These people are poison. They will unleash racist thugs on the streets of this country and call it security. They will subjugate us to the US and call it patriotism. They must be stopped. There is no more important task in politics.

Political people love to debate who the worst modern PM in modern times was but it's unquestionably Cameron.

10 years ago this week he gambled the prosperity and fragile unity of the UK on a referendum on an issue that most people didn't even understand to placate back benchers and fucked us all.

Frog FURIOUS that Scorpion promised not to sting.

LTNs cut road casualties in half, campaigners say

Either you're happy for people to be killed and injured to save you a couple of minutes on your journey, or you're not. The evidence that LTNs and 20mph zones save lives is overwhelming.

Idea for a reality show: BRITPOP DEMON HUNTERS where Jarvis Cocker tracks down members of Sleeper with a stake.

If Viz went feral

normal way to talk about booming industry

Dropped this morning: programme.europython.eu/europython-2...

Early Dilbert could be incredibly on point at times, and it's important to acknowledge that rather than pretend it was always terrible.

Scott Adams getting high on his own hype, emerging from his hate chrysalis, then doubling down on it, was very odd. He poisoned his own legacy well before death.

The utterly shameless & widely covered "report" out today, claiming net zero will "cost" £9tn is based on:

* Assuming free fossil-fuel energy, free petrol cars, free gas boilers, free gas power plants etc

AND

* Including climate damages in the "cost" of net zero

I kid you not, it is that stupid

The UK National Health Service has very clear information on all major medical conditions.

It is browsable by all

Never EVER rely on an LLM for health advice

www.nhs.uk/conditions/

Yes, Maintainability Still Matters in “AI”-assisted Coding A couple of people have asked, in relation to my 2-day Software Design Principles training course, whether maintainability matters anymore. Perhaps they’ve read some of the wrong-headed posts…

Folks have asked, in relation to my Software Design Principles training, whether maintainability matters anymore.

Perhaps they've read some of the wrong-headed takes about why LLM-generated code doesn't need to be understandable or maintainable by humans.

codemanship.wordpress.com/2026/01/12/y...

Continuous Integration. Still.

"So much death. What can men do against such reckless hate?"
Aragorn placed a hand on king Theoden's shoulder and smiled.
"With Nord VPN, and it's military grade encryption, we can stand against any foe."
"Of course! We should use Code: HELMSDEEP at checkout for 50% off a twelve month subscription!

I didn't get this one - but the escalation die is outrageous.

Elon Musk to address the issue of sexualised deep-fakes by monetising it Elon Musk’s social media platform has decided to address the issue of its AI tool happily creating sexualised deep fakes of people and children, by monetising the feature.

NEWS! Elon Musk to address the issue of sexualised deep-fakes by monetising it newsthump.com/2026/01/09/e...

"The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”

Counterpoint: It’s deeply irresponsible for any administration to tacitly encourage the people it serves to be active on an unregulated, surveilled platform, run by an erratic, capricious individual . Find better ways to reach people

The AI-Ready Software Developer #20 – It’s The Bottlenecks, Stupid! For many years now, cycling has been consistently the fastest way to get around central London. Faster than taking the tube. Faster than taking the train. Faster than taking the bus. Faster than ta…

While dev teams celebrate the speed of "AI" coding assistants, business stakeholders are increasingly asking why they're not getting to their destination any faster.

Allow me to explain.

codemanship.wordpress.com/2026/01/03/t...