another boost for this. do sign up

Such an interesting study. >> People who consumed lots of media in the week after the Boston Marathon bombings experienced higher acute stress than people with **direct exposure** to the bombings pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24324161/

The Years of Lead en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Years_o...

american exceptionalism is just french exceptionalism in english

After an intellectually engaging panel about the challenges of radically reforming the country, four of us got into an automated lift, were delivered to the basement and wandered around lost until we finally emerged into the gift shop of the Paddington Experience. The metaphor was a bit on the nose.

Thoroughly recommend signing up for this, our two speakers have absolutely fascinating experience when it come to making futures, innovation and foresight work in practice.

hackney has natural tube strike immunity

Lovely story about one of my favourite places www.ft.com/content/32d5...

"By 2035. China will fully enter a new stage of intelligent economy and intelligent society." www.geopolitechs.org/p/china-rele...

I DID NOT need this quote from @jamescrabtree.bsky.social's newsletter. (or maybe I did, I'm not sure. In any case, it's an excellent newsletter)

How thin-skinned are Reform that this is the newspaper they ban?

"Everything is becoming science fiction. From the margins of an almost invisible literature has sprung the intact reality of the 20th century. " JG Ballard, 1971

"Paying the Taliban to take back people fleeing the Taliban" amazingly, is not a career-ending idea. It should be.

Boredom is a skill m.youtube.com/watch?v=orQK...

MIT study: "Despite $30–40 billion in enterprise investment into GenAI ... 95% of organizations are getting zero return. ..these tools primarily enhance individual productivity, not P&L performance.... ...enterprise-grade systems are being quietly rejected." web.archive.org/web/20250818...

What a paragraph.

This oak tree is 1,000 years old

"Thanks to the ongoing distorting effects of social media on the populace I find myself sympathetic to basically any argument that boils down to an exhortation to “please act normally.” maxread.substack.com/p/ai-as-norm...

the Thomas Sankara / @firetail.bsky.social crossover you didn't know you needed.... firetailshop.myshopify.com

The only people under 30 using Bluesky are social media interns running accounts for think tanks.

Even Bluesky (users under 30 = zero) wants me to verify my age. You can verify my age - and frankly far too many other demographic indicators - by the fact I HAVE AN ACCOUNT ON BLUESKY

The new Superman movie is charming and fun and hopeful in all the ways I want Superman to be. It has has stayed with me, which superhero films never do.

refusing to be trained by the algorithm is an intentional act

The government's "Chronic Risks" report is a very good summary of the threats facing the UK. In practice, it's not clear how foresight work like this informs policy. And it's striking how many risks are mitigated by deploying lots of solar, as quickly as possible. www.gov.uk/government/p...

this was no job for a penguin

With this and Captain Tom, it's getting hard to trust people who go on really long walks.

Did you buy Robert Miles’ Children on 12-inch but now wake up to Radio 3? Here is some new music for you. open.spotify.com/track/1xbmkY...

Retail banks in the ’90s worked out being "customer-centred" meant moving beyond branches. Strongly suspect real NHS reform depends on Trusts no longer being culturally and organisationally the most important/powerful parts of the system. Being "patient-centred" means *not* being Trust-centred.

Appropriately, a book on antimemes - ideas that don’t want to be shared - arrives three months after ordering it. #antimimetics by @nayafia.bsky.social

Bluesky is drifting, orbiting below escape velocity. It needs a second act if it is going to be something more than Mastodon, or Threads. Or Ello, or Clubhouse. I miss Path.

www.ft.com/content/40df... Gates: “We’re going to kind of send both messages. That we’re not a substitute — but this is the best buy in global health.

Choices made in fundraising shape business models, and business models shape organisations. With insight from Shakespeare, Marlowe and David. www.firetail.co.uk/news/howinco...

"All of these stories have the same intellectual validity as writing ‘I’m alive!’ on a piece of paper, photocopying it, and then saying “Look! In our analysis, the photocopier says it’s alive!”" @thebenedictevans.bsky.social www.axios.com/2025/06/20/a...

Great game. Congrats to both teams #EngvInd 🏏 A fantastic Test match, interrupted only by the recurring thought "so this is why my kid's peanut butter is so expensive"

Gall's law: "A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over with a working simple system."

Use Signal signal.org

A low-key end to one of the most idiosyncratic acts of philanthropy in history. www.ft.com/content/ed1a...

Lots of good ideas in this @nicolascolin.bsky.social essay: "The evidence suggests we're shifting from a time when strong execution could mask weak strategy to one where defensibility and strategic clarity are prerequisites for survival." substack.com/home/post/p-...

In one of our futures reports, we suggested “social security for dogs” as a wildcard, to explore shifting norms around animal welfare. It was seen as an outlandish edge case. The world changes in unexpected ways. The margins become mainstream, sooner than we expect. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

History will judge Brazil 2014, or maybe even South Africa 2010, as the last World Cup

Just shows that you can achieve anything with youth, commitment, hard work and two billion dollars

People who think a superior intelligence could never be controlled by an inferior intelligence have not spent enough time considering how academia works

Maybe belief in institutional solutions has become a weakness, a comfortable illusion. Maybe narratives and relationships are all there is.

Maybe belief in institutional solutions has become a weakness, a comfortable illusion. Maybe narratives and relationships are all there is.

Notice that the CEO of ARIA has chosen to explain its mission to an influential audience with a long-form article on a private Substack.

It is worse than a crime, it is a mistake. on.ft.com/4ml0hft

Every week, every small business owner I know gets a letter from some wildly unserious person proposing to buy their company. There must be some TikTok grifter selling these jumble-sale Rockefellers a profitable but unethical online course.

"Let's hear it, ladies and gentlemen. Hands across the ocean"

this webinar next thursday will be good, and a good insight for any charity CEO/leader curious about how to set up and run an innovation fund

Government tests for spending - value, legality, feasibility, standards - assume risks are linear and predictable and economic. It’s spreadsheet logic in a world where the biggest risks are political, and in the tail.