Category Archives: Inform, educate and entertain.

A general blog post category.

Fundamentals in Focus – Doing Things Deliberately – 2026/02/25

24 Tue Feb 2026

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Martyn Rhisiart Jones

Madrid, Wednesday 25th February 2026

Sir Afilonius Rex: Welcome to this week’s Fundamentals in Focus, brought to you by the BBC, RTVE, NRD, CNN, S4C, FT Weekend and RTE.

This week’s panel consists of Annie Tusk, senior correspondent at The Guardian, Jilly Penn, columnist of the Financial Times, Martyn Jones of Goodstrat, the highly respected Alice Sauzgatillo of Spain’s RTVE, the veteran great, King Larry, and Juliette Brioche of Le Canard Enchainé.

The questions for today are:

  1. What do we mean by doing things deliberately?
  2. What should we mean by doing data deliberately?
  3. How can we ensure that rigid adherence to what we consider to be deliberate data capitalism is its downfall?
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THE SUNDAY RANT – The Great Data Grift, LockedIn Lunatics and the Death of Sense – Summary

24 Tue Feb 2026

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The Good Strat Board

Tuesday 24th February 2026

Right, so imagine this: it’s a Sunday in 2026, and somewhere in the digital equivalent of a greasy spoon café with flickering neon and a faint smell of burnt metadata, a group of data professionals has gathered round a table that’s less “round table discussion” and more “round table of the apocalypse”. They’ve had three coffees each, none of them decaf, and they’re absolutely livid about LinkedIn. Not the platform itself, you understand – though God knows it deserves it – but the absolute carnival of self-congratulatory lunacy that passes for “thought leadership” in the data world.

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The Enduring Bond Between Wales and Zionism – and Its Bitter Unravelling

24 Tue Feb 2026

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The Enduring Bond Between Wales and Zionism – and Its Bitter Unravelling

Sir Afilonius Rex in Tel Aviv. Monday 24th February 2026.

In the misty valleys of Wales, where chapel bells once echoed with the thunder of Old Testament prophets, a profound affinity for Judaism and Zionism took root. This connection, woven from scripture, sympathy, and the shared fire of small nations, has long pulsed through Welsh history. It speaks in lyrical cadences, alliterative and incantatory, evoking green hills and golden psalms By that rolled like the sea in miners’ lungs. Here, the Bible burned brighter than coal seams; children learned of Jerusalem before their own rivers, with Jordan flowing through hymns and Zion a living heartbeat.

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THE SUNDAY RANT – The Great Data Grift, LockedIn Lunatics and the Death of Sense – 2026/02/22

22 Sun Feb 2026

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THE SUNDAYS RANTS – The Great Data Grift, LockedIn Lunatics and the Death of Sense – 20260222

THE EXECUTIVE OVERVIEW

In this no-holds-barred Sunday roast, our battle-weary host and a panel of sharp-tongued data veterans, Smart Alex, George Melly, Yours Stewly, Mark Marx, and the indomitable Sir Afi, lay waste to the performative circus of LockedIn thought leadership. From endless 14-slide carousels promising “self-healing dashboards” and “100% trust” via GenAI, to £997 masterclasses in buzzword alchemy, over-caffeinated gurus flooding feeds with five daily posts about AI-powered stewardship, governance zombies, and rainbow-vomiting BI masterpieces, these self-appointed prophets are dissected with ruthless wit and medieval flair. Expect rants on hallucinating AI stewards, rancid data lakes masquerading as oil, cultural transformation workshops that change nothing but bank balances, and a clarion call to mute the emoji hordes, demand real DAX proofs, and reclaim feeds for quiet virtue over vapourware. A cathartic, coffee-fuelled takedown of the grift keeping data professionals scrolling in despair, because sometimes the only way to restore sense is to rant it back into existence.

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X Is Dying In Europe: Here’s Why – Revisited – 2026/02/16

16 Mon Feb 2026

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http://www.goodstrat.com/books

X Is Dying In Europe: Here’s Why

I asked X about its massive losses in Europe.

“@grok, can you explain the massive drop in interactions in Europe with X?”

This is what Grok had to say and updated for today.

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The Promised Banality of Evil – Revisited

16 Mon Feb 2026

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Sir Afilonius Rex

Tel Aviv, 16th February 2026

The relations between Wales, Judaism, and Zionism weave a tale as old as the hills. It is as tangled as the roots beneath them. These are threads of scripture, sympathy, small nations’ stubborn fire, and biblical thunder from the valleys. This comes to us in the voices of the past; lyrical, rhythmic, overflowing with vivid, swirling imagery. Alliteration and a bardic, almost incantatory prose describe the green and golden hills of Wales. The chapels rang with the thunder of prophets. The psalms rolled like the sea in the lungs of the miners. There, the Old Testament burned brighter than the coal seams! On those Nonconformist mornings, the children learned about Jerusalem. They learned their names even before their own rivers. Jordan flowed through the hymns. Zion was no distant dream but a living pulse in the blood.

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Grok, What Do You Make of Martyn Rhisiart Jones’ Take on Big Data?

15 Sun Feb 2026

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Sir Afilonius Rex,

London, 15th February 2026

Me: What do you make of Martyn Jones of goodstrat.com’s views on big data, are they correct, close or not true?

[Grok thought for a while]

Grok: Martyn Jones (of goodstrat.com) is one of the sharpest, most entertaining data contrarians out there. He’s been calling “Big Data” mostly bullshit since around 2014–2015, long before it became fashionable to say so. His Core Views (in his own blunt style): The whole 2010s Big Data circus (Hadoop, the 3Vs turned into 12 Vs including Vagueness, Vendibility, Vulgarity, etc.) was 80–90% vendor hype, consultant grift, and marketing snake oil.
Most companies didn’t (and still don’t) have Google/Facebook-scale problems. Chasing petabytes of unstructured social media noise often distracted companies. They were diverted from cleaning and using the high-value operational data they already had.

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Consider This: In Praise of Shadow-Apps – 2026/02/16

15 Sun Feb 2026

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Here We Go Again!

Martyn Rhisiart Jones

Oza-Cesuras, Sunday 15th February 2026

In the quiet underbelly of corporate life, sanctioned software often lags behind real needs. Shadow apps, which are unsanctioned tools employees adopt on their own, continue to flourish. Nowhere is their value more pronounced than in data analytics. Teams quietly sidestep lengthy procurement and rigid platforms. They harness spreadsheets, personal BI instances, open-source scripts, and cloud sandboxes. Far from mere rebellion, these shadow practices reveal institutional shortcomings while delivering tangible gains. Here are seven compelling advantages, viewed through a lens that values both ingenuity and measured reflection.

We asked seven highly engaged professionals for their top advantages of allowing Shadow Apps to thrive. We then requested comments from industry leaders. And here is what they told us.

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Building the Data Logistics Hub: Pieces and Parts – 2026/02/15 – Part 3

14 Sat Feb 2026

Posted by in data mesh, data science, Data Supply Framework, Data Warehouse, Data Warehousing, Inform, educate and entertain., information, Information Supply Framework, Knowledge, knowledge management, Martyn Jones, Masterclass

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OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

This is the brave new world of data!

Martyn Rhisiart Jones

Bandoxa, 15th February 2026

Building the Data Logistics Hub: Pieces and Parts – 2026/02/15 – Part 3

Guide

This episode provides a comprehensive framework for the third installment in the series on the Data Logistics Hub (DLH). Martyn Jones conceptualised it as a technology-agnostic, centralised platform. Its purpose is efficiently moving, governing, and distributing data across organisations. This part expands on Part 1 (Challenges and Opportunities) and Part 2 (The Strategy). It focuses on the tangible “pieces and parts” of the DLH architecture. It outlines mandatory and optional elements. The episode also explores potential technologies. It examines key processes such as data pulling or pushing, translation from source to target, mapping, and data catalogues.

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Building the Data Logistics Hub: The Strategy – 2026/02/14 – Part 2

14 Sat Feb 2026

Posted by in data mesh, data science, Data Supply Framework, Data Warehouse, Data Warehousing, Inform, educate and entertain., information, Information Supply Framework, Knowledge, knowledge management, Martyn Jones, Masterclass

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OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

This is the brave new world of data!

Martyn Rhisiart Jones

Bandoxa, 14th February 2026


Building the Data Logistics Hub: The Strategy – 2026/02/14 – Part 2Before I begin, remember this: “All data roads lead to the Data Logistics Hub.” They also lead from it. It is the Rome of the age of data, information, knowledge, and wisdom. Be prepared!

Okay, we will now examine the Data Logistics Hub in terms of strategy, execution plans, and roadmaps.

A high-level blueprint for a successful Data Logistics Hub outlines several requirements. These include principles, guiding objectives, an imagined “better world” and organisational alignment. Key trade-offs must also be considered, such as centralised versus federated and batch versus streaming, among others.

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