Kate Morley

The sun is shining, the wind is blowing a gale, and just 2.4% of British electricity is coming from fossil fuels. See the live data at https://grid.iamkate.com.

Listen, it’s very simple: In Britain we use the metric system, except for beer and milk, which come in pints. But not plant milk — that comes in litres.

Oh, and distances are in miles. But only if they’re too far to walk — if you can walk it it’s in metres. If you’re driving then your fuel efficiency is in miles-per-gallon, but petrol is sold in litres.

Oh, and your height is in feet and inches. If you don’t care much about your weight it’s in stone (but not pounds — no-one can remember how many pounds are in a stone and it’s hard to read the little tick marks on analogue scales). If you do care about your weight then your digital scales tell you it in kilograms.

Oh, and if there’s a heatwave then tabloids will forecast a “100°F scorcher”. But if it’s cold then it’s an “arctic blast” with “widespread temperatures below 0°C”.

I hope this clears things up.

From our Sugar & Sloth calendar, as if anyone on the fediverse needs a reminder:

I often see people posting Nikita Gill poems here, so let me share a little story.

Her poem ‘For Her’ is one of my favourites, and I told her that it can always bring me to tears, and I realise she didn’t have women like me in mind when she wrote it (as I’m trans), but I hope she didn’t mind me seeing myself in it and sharing the experience.

Her reply: “I wrote this for all women, so this poem is absolutely for you!” 🥹

I love this tree because it’s a reminder that you can still live a full life after a disaster:

I designed the 12-bit rainbow palette for use on https://grid.iamkate.com. It consists of twelve colours chosen with consideration for how we perceive luminance, chroma, and hue. The palette uses a 12-bit colour depth, so each colour requires only four characters when specified as a hexadecimal colour code in a CSS or SVG file. For more details, see https://iamkate.com/data/12-bit-rainbow/

The first UK opinion poll conducted following the Green Party’s win in the Gorton And Denton by-election is quite something:

Reform: 23% (-1)
Green: 21% (+4)
Labour: 16% (-2)
Conservative: 16% (-2)
Lib Dem: 14% (=)

“The Greens are now the most popular party in all age categories under 50. Some 49% of 18-24 year olds would back the Greens, as well as 27% of 25 to 49-year-olds.”

Source: YouGov poll for Sky News: https://news.sky.com/story/greens-overtake-labour-in-sensational-poll-13514420

My confidence has risen during my transition mostly in line with how passing I’ve felt, but takes a hit when I’m worried a stranger has clocked me (which can be triggered as easily as someone looking at me for slightly too long). I know this is something I need to work on, so today I embraced visibility and marched with a trans flag at Pride for the first time.

Later on, while I was queuing at one of the food stalls, a middle-aged woman came up to me and said “You look really cute”.

While I was walking home, a group of guys walking the other way serenaded me with “Mysterious Girl”. I wasn’t sure how to interpret that.

Shop assistant: Is there something in particular you’re looking for today?

Me: I’m delivering the keynote at my company’s conference, so I’m looking for something luxurious but also understated.

The dress I ended up buying after eventually deciding that yes, I am now confident and dramatic enough to wear it:

I’m a bit squinty in this photo (I’m standing in a glazed stairwell), but I hope the gender euphoria still comes across.

Our MP visited the office yesterday, and afterwards we treated the staff to drinks and tapas at a bar by the harbour, before some of us hit the local venues until midnight.

I’ve had my eye on this dress since I saw Munroe Bergdorf wearing it, but I didn’t think I could justify the price for something that might only look good on a literal model. However, last weekend it was added to their end-of-season sale and I knew I’d regret it if I didn't buy it. I’m so glad I did — I looked in the mirror after trying it on and just went ”Oh my god”. It’s a perfect fit and I felt so good wearing it. I got so many compliments during the evening, from both men and women.

At school and university I was far too shy and anxious to ever go out socialising in the evenings, and often felt I was missing out, but later in my 20s I realised that, as an introvert, I probably wouldn’t have enjoyed it anyway. Over the course of my transition, however, I’ve realised that many traits I thought were fundamental parts of my personality were actually manifestations of gender dysphoria, and I’m getting much more comfortable with social occasions and busy, loud environments.

This was my first time staying out late after a company evening out. Over the course of five hours we went to a fancy yacht-themed bar, danced to an 80s and 90s cover band at a different bar, and then finished by seeing a Welsh punk band at a pub. Hanging out with the two other women in the group I just felt like ‘one of the girls’. At the end of the night one of them called her husband to pick us and save our poor feet (note to self: wear more comfortable shoes next time). And I didn’t get a single odd look in the ladies’ bathroom.

Early-transition me never dared dream she could one day feel so at ease with herself.

Despite the devastating Supreme Court ruling and the looming prospect of a bathroom ban in the UK, overall 2025 was a good year for me, both personally and professionally:

By the start of the year, three months after the operation, I was getting more mobile again. Not having any surgery this year meant I could actually take time off for enjoyable things. As well as a two-week break in Berwick and Skye, me and Clare visited London ten times (including several trips to Kew Gardens and maybe twenty Dishoom breakfasts).

I saw Chris Bush’s incredible play Otherland (twice). Its powerful depiction of the almost spiritual side of being trans gave me the final push I needed to accept that going stealth is not the goal, and I started talking openly about my experiences. Despite the Supreme Court ruling a few weeks later, I have no regrets. Attending the subsequent trans rights protest outside parliament was an emotional experience: I’d never seen so many other trans people (and allies) before.

I made some time for hobbies. We went to a queer poetry workshop at @vagina_museum@masto.ai. I learnt to identify native trees by their twigs and leaves. I read about twenty books. I listened to music, and found two new artists I really love — RØRY and SkyDxddy — who we saw in concert in November. I finally found an open world game that I could enjoy without getting stressed out (Assassin’s Creed Odyssey), and played a few cosy games too.

I’m exercising regularly, and doing yoga every evening. I’ve lost 7kg over the year and, in combination with the operation, that means I’m finally happy with my body shape. I’ve found clothes that suit me, from long skirts to bootcut trousers to a couple of designer dresses that give me a real feeling of gender euphoria.

We finished the management buyout, which means that after eighteen years working there I’m now a 30% owner of my company. In December I finished the two-year project to rewrite our content management with an emphasis on performance, and I announced it in the keynote at our conference, no longer feeling too nervous about public speaking. (We’re launching “the world’s fastest websites” on 5th January.)

Finally, I quit LinkedIn and Instagram. It’s Fediverse-only for me now.

I’m finally playing the Assassin’s Creed Odyssey DLC, and good god it’s gorgeous: Elysium (the ancient Greek afterlife) really does look like paradise

I’m shortly going to start on a project to migrate a legacy platform from MyISAM to InnoDB — just over 100,000 tables across 4,000 databases, all on a single server. Does anyone have any advice on things to watch out for?

(I’m aware of the basics like keeping primary keys small in InnoDB. At this stage we’re not yet looking to take advantage of InnoDB features such as transactions and foreign keys, but we do need to maintain performance.)

#SilentSunday

In Other Waters (Windows, macOS, Switch) is a strange and beautiful game: part biological survey, part mystery novel, and unlike anything else I’ve played.

You take on the role of an AI that awakens in a dive suit with no memory of its origins. The suit has been discovered by Ellery Vas, a xenobiologist answering a distress call sent from the ocean planet of Gliese 677Cc by Minae Nomura. Minae, her former colleague and former lover, disappeared years previously with technology she stole from Baikal, the interplanetary mining corporation that has led humanity’s expansion away from a dying Earth.

Piloting the dive suit, you see the environment through a radar-like view, guided by Ellery’s evocative descriptions of everything she sees (and accompanied by a soothing ambient soundtrack). This is not another dead world, but one of rich and complex ecosystems. How could Minae have kept secret the first known alien life? As you help Ellery catalogue the biology of the vast ocean, your search for Minae uncovers other, long-buried secrets, dark as the abyssal plain.

This year I set myself a target of reading a book a week, and at the halfway point I’m right on schedule with 26 books in 26 weeks. 16 were non-fiction, 14 were by women, 6 were translated, and 4 were over 1,000 years old (The Pillow Book by Sei Shōnagon is in all four categories). The complete list:

1. The Odyssey by Homer, translated by Richmond Lattimore
2. Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones
3. Holloway by Robert Macfarlane, Stanley Donwood, and Dan Richards
4. Now Go by Karl Thomas Smith
5. How Infrastructure Works by Deb Chachra
6. Ness by Robert Macfarlane and Stanley Donwood
7. Nausicaä Of The Valley Of The Wind by Hayao Miyazaki
8. H Is For Hawk by Helen Macdonald
9. Rose/House by Arkady Martine
10. Tarka The Otter by Henry Williamson
11. The Iliad by Homer, translated by Martin Hammond
12. Ring Of Bright Water by Gavin Maxwell
13. The Lass And The Quine by Ashley Douglas
14. Hekate by Nikita Gill
15. Enemy Feminisms by Sophie Lewis
16. A Simpler Life by The School Of Life
17. Underground Maps Unravelled by Maxwell J Roberts
18. The Little Book Of Humanism by Andrew Copson and Alice Roberts
19. Men Explain Things To Me by Rebecca Solnit
20. Essays In Idleness and Hōjōki by Kenkō and Chōmei, translated by Meredith McKinney
21. Death In Ten Minutes by Fern Riddell
22. The Epic Of Gilgamesh, translated by Andrew George
23. I Hope We Choose Love by Kai Cheng Thom
24. The Pillow Book by Sei Shōnagon, translated by Meredith McKinney
25. The Book Of Birds by Jackie Morris and Robert Macfarlane
26. Whose Story Is This? By Rebecca Solnit

We went down to the sea early this morning: @clareburgess@hachyderm.io had a swim while I sat on the promenade steps reading about pebbles, and afterwards we had vegan hot chocolate and a cinnamon roll from the shipping container café on the promenade

It was my birthday a little while back, and in the run-up @clareburgess@hachyderm.io was a little frustrated that every time she asked what I wanted I said all I needed was her.

I woke up on the morning to find an e-mail she’d scheduled for delivery at midnight. It contained this beautiful drabble (100-word story) about the time I was paddling around Loch Portree and came back to shore to find her cooking for us on her wood-fired stove 🥹

Does anyone here use a hosted, UK/EU/Switzerland-based alternative to Dropbox in a business setting? We tried out Proton Drive, but its sharing and permissions model is too basic for us — every folder has a single owner who is the only person who can share anything within it. We need to be able to do things like saying “this folder can be read by anyone in the design department and written to by design managers, and anyone with read access can also create links to share files within it”. We’re not interested in a self-hosted solution.