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Weeknotes: weather forecast, gadgetbahn, accountability
Check out the Met Office's review of 2020's weather:...the UK’s third warmest, sixth wettest and eighth sunniest year in the UK national series, which extend back to 1884 for temperature, 1862 for...
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Weeknotes: populism of equal cheating, warranties, language
Thanks Adrian McEwen for the link to this clear depressing summary of UK government failures over 12months by Michael Head.https://twitter.com/JolyonMaugham/status/1355533287482138626I remember the...
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Weeknotes: geo-engineering, consequences, funding, a poem
A dire warning reported in the Guardian:The climate emergency is already hitting “worst case scenario” levels that if left unchecked will lead to the collapse of ecosystems, with dire consequences for...
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Fortnightnotes: heating, levelling, generations
From a new report on UK experiences of food through the pandemic:https://twitter.com/FoodEthicsNews/status/1372536574269923330 If you are in the UK, you can see how polluted it is at your address -...
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Fortnightnotes: software freedom, retrofitting, objects
Now Play This 2021 happened! It was lovely, from the not-flying pre-festival experience of an economy class seat flight sim, to a neighbourhood walk with musical accompaniment to close the festival....
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Notes: fresh air, suppliers, local communities, stories
Great contributions from Cofarm board colleague Sue Pritchard, and Maintain friend David Edgerton, on the Briefing Room on global supply chains. There was an interesting highlight for me in Talking...
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Summer-notes: food, climate
The National Food Strategy came out. It seemed like a lot of data folks were upset by the hexagons showing land use (mostly beef and lamb pastures), but there's some other nice visualisations and info...
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Summer-notes: institutions, trust
A fun find (from 2017) - the King's Fund video description of how 'the NHS' works in England. I remember in 2015-16 piecing together much of this at Doteveryone. Still astoundingly complex, and so...
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Summer-notes: physical stuff
The internet and metaverses and things may be exciting, but you still need stuff, and it has to move around. https://twitter.com/EytanBuchman/status/1430574930161242114(The thread around that tweet...
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Summer-notes: maps and data and pandemic bits
OpenStreetMap is considering moving out of the UK. Yes, it's an international project. But the actual legal bit which processes money and holds assets etc is in the UK. Database rights changes with...
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Notes: shortages, skills, startups, short-termism
Turns out there's shortages of random items in the US as well as the UK. Matt Stoller writes about why, identifying 5 factors - monopolies manipulating price and supply, a lack of interoperability so...
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Notes: energy, local government, open, social enterprises
The other COP was last month:https://twitter.com/UNBiodiversity/status/1448189233026437120I enjoyed the Talking Politics episode with Jason Bordoff, on the energy transition. The scale of the big...
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last-month Notes: voting, health and tech, ruggedising
David Runciman in the Guardian argues for lowering the voting age - to six: There is now a set of vicious circles at work. Once politicians representing older voters start winning elections time and...
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Monthnotes: carbon removal, COP26 IP, corporate culture
DW has a great article about the sustainability of wind power - covering all the aspects from recycling turbines, to bird fatalities, to mitigations such as "a ring of tiny air bubbles used during...
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Weeknotes: learning, smart paperwork, cash
The highway in BC which was comprehensively destroyed in the dreadful floods in mid November actually re-opened in December, thanks to astonishing engineering work. Meanwhile, Colorado's latest fires...
View ArticleRandom notes: the Well's state of the world, 2021 and 2022
The thing about the Well's state of the world review in January each year is there's often a lot of good bits, and so sorting out a modest number of key things I want to remember is tricky. At the time...
View ArticleRandom notes: crypto / web3 in the 2022 Well state of the world
(part 2 of this) On to crypto in various forms. Highlights mine. permalink #60 of 340: Brian Slesinsky (bslesins) Thu 6 Jan 22 10:04 Beyond the environment costs, though, I wonder about the cultural...
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Notes: a lot of bits and pieces, plus thinnovation
The 2022 edition of the Corporate Climate Responsibility Monitor came out from the New Climate Institute. It sheds light on the differences between well-publicised pledges of 'net zero' from 25 very...
View ArticleOpen transitions
I've spent most of the last two years as CTO at the OPEN. This continued my trend of working with organisations related to 'open,' but confusingly was nothing to do with open at all. OPEN is the Online...
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Older notes: translucence and webs and governance
Clearing out old tabs... Another amazingly thoughtful and insightful article from Rachel Coldicutt:Conley’s framing seems revelatory because care work is often characterised as a bundle of physical...
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Notes: projects, tech, soil, water
It's always satisfying when projects you have been involved with demonstrate great results:https://twitter.com/ResearchEssex/status/1504867213840420870Cofarm is in our third growing season, and...
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A climate unconference report
The wise Alex Deschamps-Sonsino organised a climate unconference to coincide with COP28. It was a lovely thought-provoking event with a lot of rich conversations, of which more below.What with this,...
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Notes: trust and cultural angles on AI; internet stuff; climate response
Thanks Luis Villa for this write up of the current Vizio case (GPL enforcement). The head of the National Audit Office, Gareth Davies, gave a thoughtful speech to Parliament on why good governance...
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Notes: grey goo, permanence or otherwise, perspectives on Ross Anderson
The metaphors we use change how we think about things. Benjamin Santos Genta writes for Aeon about this, and in particular how many of our metaphors relate to war. Might an argument be better as a...
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Need an empathetic engineering leader to develop something new or complex?...
I’m looking for work. My experience doesn't neatly fit standard job titles or sectors, and I've got an eclectic set of criteria for what I want to do, so maybe you can help me find a job which brings...
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