On Monday, a few of my colleagues were listing their gripes with the Microsoft suite we have to use, and especially SharePoint and Teams. I jokingly told them not to worry, we’ll have to migrate away from it soon, because you can’t use software from a hostile foreign power. For context, Miro is banned in UK government departments because of its (now mostly historical) links to Russia.

A few hours later, the United States voted with Russia, Belarus, Israel, and North Korea against a resolution that condemned Russian aggression in Ukraine. It passed anyway, but reified what had previously merely been speculation: the US régime is explicitly on Putin’s side, something later reinforced by reports that they have stood down digital operations against Russia.

And then, on Friday, there was that press conference with Zelenskyy, Trump, and Vance. That was the moment at which I really felt that that was it: the world I grew up in is over.

The Great Satan was never your friend if you lived in the Middle East or South-East Asia or anywhere south of the Rio Grande, but now it’s clearly the enemy of Europe as well.

Disentangling ourselves from America is going to be difficult, but necessary. At least the rate at which Musk is dismantling their state capacity means that maybe they’ll be less likely to be an effective adversary.

Personally, I have never been short of reasons not to use Microsoft’s horrible software myself, but maybe geopolitics can do what universal opprobrium can’t, and remove Microsoft Teams from all our lives.

I had a Telegram account for all of a week. I signed up to join a group chat with some old friends. After a few days, I wondered why it had gone so quiet. I opened up the app to find that I was signed out, so I went to sign in, only to be told, “Phone number is banned”.

I’ve no idea what I did “wrong”. I’d not used it apart from that chat group, and no one else in there knows why. There’s no obvious means of recourse beyond emailing into the void, which has yielded no reply.

Proprietary platforms always suck. You’re a supplicant at the whims of a faceless company. (And that’s why I keep blogging, on my own domain, and you should too.)

Up until a few days ago, the people still working at 18F (a US government digital service inspired by the UK’s GDS) were just following orders from the régime as they expunged all references to diversity, equity, and inclusion from their documentation.

Well, now they’ve all been laid off, and the penultimate pull request stands as a lasting memorial: it deleted the words “welcoming” and “inclusive” from their code of conduct, took out the direction to “[t]reat other people’s identities and cultures with respect”, and removed pregnancy, sexual orientation, and gender identity from the list of prohibited bases for harassment.

All of it for nought. Do it or get sacked? Maybe. Or do it and get sacked and leave a lasting record of your part as a collaborator.

There’s a lesson here about principles.

I’ve had to stop listening to podcasts at 1.5 × speed. Several people recently told me that they couldn’t understand me because I was speaking too fast, but it wasn’t until I slowed down a podcast to normal speed to check something that I realised how much it was warping my perception of normal speaking speed.

I hope I can relearn how to speak normally and stop gabbling.

I accidentally bought a ukulele-banjo aka uke-banjo aka banjolele. It was just sitting there in Deptford Market, in excellent condition (apart from enough fret sprout to draw blood, but that’s an easy fix) and only cost me £45.

A ukulele-banjo in its case

Ready for some window cleaning

Feel free to compare me to anti-apartheid hero George Formby if you must.

Aside from the frets, the resonator (the wooden dish that sits behind the drum to project the sound forward) is distorted from over-tightening, and the plywood has delaminated a bit, but as it’s not a structural part it’s something I can repair at my leisure.

Links of the week: