Tom Royal

@tomroyal.com

139 Followers 148 Following

Stupidity tries. Code, cats, cycling, existential dread, parenting in South London. Making America Kittens Again, again (sigh). Mostly at tomroyal.com

It’s a map of a suburban london street. One point of interest says “site of Roman bathhouse”
The O2 ticket booking page: "unsuitable for fear of heights" warning
A post from Facebook, 9 years ago today, in which I advocated firing Steve Hilton into space.
A scam ad on Twitter, posted by the Alcatel Mobile US account. The text is from what appears to be a legit ad campaign ("The technology people use every day" etc), but then the link is to a scam site.
"Just came back from my local poll station in Petts Wood Baptist Church - pencils for voting??!!! Really??!! Never seen such set up in my life! Pencils can be erased!"
All four images are App Store screenshots showing an app that has been replaced by dodgy gambling content)
It’s a horrible bag for sale on Amazon, exactly the size and shape of a croissant
It's an input from a website form. Title: Areas of Expertise. Options: Catholicism, Chemistry, Chloroform, Coasts, Cold War Era
A huge banner in my local Toyota garage proclaims: ANZEN FIRST
"Attract top candidates with: ... AI generated clarifying questions"
It’s a TestFlight invitation from the very legit sounding “OpenAI Business Inc”
A notice from Zipcar - they "propose to cease UK operations", staff are on a formal consultation process.
Monopoly: HM Queen Elizabeth II edition
It’s a button on the bbc news website titled “change my nation”
Duolingo helpfully suggesting that I should speak in hiragana rather than kanji. Ffs..
A (fake) email, purporting to be from the UK government: "Emergency Alert – Confirmation The UK government conducted a test of the Emergency Alerts service on Sunday, 7 September 2025. This system warns the public if there is a life-threatening emergency nearby."
A notification from Amazon: we thought you would like new Backstreet Boys official T-shirts and hoodies
A lake, Erken, with a rocky outcrop in the foreground and trees to the left.
It is, inexplicably, a KFC promotional image of a bucket of chicken and a number of plush toys in the form of "cats dressed as or maybe wearing fried chicken:
Heroku status: "No incidents in the last week".
Text from an email: "Happiness Engineer"
A screenshot of BBC News. Tucker Carlson's face is replaced by a snoozing kitten.
A fake manga book called AKIR
A warning label: “Not suitable for children under 36 months due to small parts”
A direct debit mandate, account name given as "Parent Teacher Ass"
An App Store review. "Downloads but doesn’t operate (the settings switch for Safari doesn’t work). And no, we should not have to troubleshoot by adding clicks to this developer’s webpage."
An elderly grey cat, sitting next to a kitchen sink in the sun. Someone - an enabler, it me - has laid down a hoodie for him to nap on
A very boring photo of a fence, but the concrete post is green-screen-green
An obvious Facebook scam post
A heat pump. It is beige and really quite ugly in a boring sort of way.
I am writing to you on behalf of Shropshire Council as I have a roundabout sponsorship site currently available on the A488 Hanwood Road in Shrewsbury, which could be ideal for promoting 1854 Media. This site will promote your chosen messages to over 148,000 Shropshire residents and commuters every month, and will exclusively promote 1854 Media 24/7/365 to your potential customers in your local area. Your four sponsorship signs can feature any messages of your choice.
A pair of Kenzo-branded wellies.
The river Thames looking awful (just fine)
A security prompt, asking me to enter my full email address. The partial address is shown as "t***m@tomroyal.com"
The number of cats required is therefore: 2250kWh / 129.65kWh = 17.35 cats It is probably best to round up to an average of 18 whole cats to avoid complaints. This equates to 1 cat per 8.33m².
A page from "Book of the Road" by Dan Meadows - a B+W portrait of two boys, printed across a spread of pages. Taken in Brighton, 1974.
A Santander hire bike parked with a 2kg can of tomato puree stuck in the rack
5 tablespoons cold, unsalted butter, preferably European style
A Facebook advert offering a coffee machine for a bargain price.
Wikipedia: List of US state dinosaurs
A sign. “Octavius apologises for any inconvenience caused”.
The data from an image file - which happens in this case to contain the letters tRumP
It’s a minivan, the back of which is covered in deranged anti ULEZ slogans. Actually “slogans” suggests a level of coherence entirely absent.
"Louie French MP objects to building energy facilities on green belt". There's a picture of a lovely green field.
A Daikin Madoka thermostat, showing that the house is at 19.5 and heating.
The controller unit of a Daikin domestic heat pump. There’s a picture of the house with temperatures for water, heat etc
A huge, triple convector radiator
The installed water tank. Lots and lots of copper pipe.
A Daikin 180 litre hot water tank, roughly half commissioned.
Some old Winnie the Pooh wallpaper discovered behind a radiator
Large and very shiny copper pipes running up the side of a rather ugly house.
A Daikin heat pump, not yet installed and with the PCB exposed
A gas boiler in my attic
A random Twitter account, seeming original of the Hegseth / reporter fanfic.
The wikipedia entry for Geelong, Victoria. Every image has been replaced by a kitten..
BBC News articles - "What we know about Musk's cost-cutting mission" - but the images have been replaced with lovely kittens.
It's the Chrome Store listings page for my "Elon be Gone" extension, now with a little "Featured" badge
A Washington Post article page, with the lead image replaced by a kitten.