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Notes, links, etc

A personal scrapbook for things I find interesting or feel like sharing. YMMV. My name's Denise. I'm the co-founder of b3ta and the ex-creative director of MOO and BERG and some other places. Currently at Farewill. I write weekly at www.walknotes.com

Gov departments on X/Twitter

A friend started a petition: “Withdraw all UK government departments & organisations from X (formerly Twitter)”

But the petition was rejected. Randomly I see my MP has asked the secretary of state how much the Department for Education spends on X and XAi. Apparently, another MP had already asked and the answer is:

“5 February 2026

During the period 1 July 2024 to 19 January 2026, the department and its executive agencies spent £27,118.12 on sector comms and awareness with X and its predecessor platform/brand Twitter.

xAI acquired X on 28 March 2025. £4,834.80 was spent before the acquisition by xAI. £22,283.32 was spent after the acquisition by xAI.”

Considering the platform is a hate-infested pile of nonsense, they should probably get off it. Maybe the next question they should ask is “what was the ROI?” though.

Obviously I was alerted to this via a They Work For You email alert, because TheyWorkForYou is great.

Ohh, this is very good

gilest.org: Talking of quizzes
gilest.org

“A day trip to London this week to run a commsy sort of workshop with a government team. I tried out an exercise I’ve been wanting to try out for years: I display a very text-heavy slide, typical of the sort we see in government all the time, and at the same time, I play a short audio clip.

The aim: to briefly replicate and recreate the typical “presenting” conditions we all encounter all the time, where someone is showing lots of words on screen, while saying lots of different words with their mouth.

As soon as the audio clip was finished (it was only 47 seconds long), I moved on to the next slide - where I had a surprise quiz, of 3 questions about details that had been visible on the previous slide.

No-one in the group could answer any of the questions.”

I tell people this all the time, but demonstrating it is a very sensible way to get the point across.

Are you looking for High Sheriff buttons?

“A little introduction
Who We Are?”

Enjoyed the headings on the website for Taylors, the oldest button shop in London. Also, High Sheriff buttons are made for the High Sheriff so if you’re looking… are you the..? You are? Gosh.

oof.

“This isn’t about intelligence. It’s about status. Effort becomes the product. AI fakes the effort, does it faster, cue the pearl-clutching. Not because it threatens the work, but because it shows how little was there to begin with. AI didn’t make your notes, decks or copy shallow. They already were. The threat isn’t that AI does the boring work. The threat is you no longer have that excuse.”

Via the Contagious newsletter