“Without a forward arc, one cannot outsource meaning to progress. Responsibility becomes local and immediate. You are accountable not to a future payoff, but to the person in front of you, the standard you refuse to abandon even when it no longer benefits you“ open.substack.com/pub/thecutti...

Timely reading, recommended...

Screen time is starting to look like an inferior good. As income rises, people substitute away from scrolling.

"There was a brief silence while Louis XVIII, in handwriting that he made as tiny as possible, wrote a new note in the margin of his Horace; then, when the note was written, he looked up with the satisfied air of a man who thinks he has made a discovery when he has commented on someone else’s idea"

The Earth Rover Program is doing some fascinating science. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

MBS as Cesare Borgia is a great analogy (from Giuliano da Empoli)

Often there isn’t a “different paradigm”; it’s just someone very confident about their new way to be wrong.

When i was young, I thought "this time it's different" might meant that this time it's different. Now I'm old, I know it means "this is nearly the top".

It is fascinating that people screenshot and quote posts they find abhorrent, thinking they are doing anything other than amplifying those views.

<stops dead> <gawps> I mean it feels like a thing I should basically know on reflection but still....

When Tony Blair came to power in 1997, the UK economy was bigger than China and India combined.

Provocations for yield and rage for profit that generates real anger in its audience 👇

It is frankly too late in the day to be learning about something called ‘TNT Sports’ #ashes

Switching coal off was one of the most impressive cross-party policy achievements of the last decade. No drama, genuine leadership, and no-one talks about it. Change is possible when we work out what to do and get on with it.

One of the most interesting thought experiments I’ve read recently, arguing a positive future needs doers as well as narrators, and (that China especially) needs a "machinery of care" alongside the production of abundance. Curious what others make of it. thecuttingfloor.substack.com/p/the-republ...

One of the most interesting thought experiments I’ve read recently, arguing a positive future needs doers as well as narrators, and (that China especially) needs a "machinery of care" alongside the production of abundance. Curious what others make of it. thecuttingfloor.substack.com/p/the-republ...

It will probably be the warmest November on record, until next November.

You cannot lead if you make your opponent’s grievances your priority. You won’t satisfy them, you lose your own people, and you can’t fix it.

The Attention Economy is exhausting, and no-one enjoys it.

I think this question is deliberate

Excellent from Martha Lane Fox: "We cling to a model that makes public life feel like a punishing, precarious calling that only a few can endure." martha6j5h2.substack.com/p/this-is-pu...

The global whaling industry experienced a boom c. 1840-1950 as technology allowed whalers to hunt the Southern Ocean around Antarctica. Under standard models, we would have expected krill populations to have *exploded*. Instead, they DROPPED exponentially. Let's talk about the KRILL PARADOX.

Another species no longer on the global Endangered list: Humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae). A few decades after a Star Trek movie where the central conflict was the total extinction of the humpback, their numbers are rising fast enough to put them at "Least Concern" on the IUCN Red List.

I have written some stuff about BBC/Public Service broadcasting which I'll start putting out soon. I don't think there's enough public policy debate - when I was doing broadcasting/Charter Review in the regulator and Government there was an industry around it. Now everyone has moved on to "tech".

It’s November 9. If you don’t want KPop Demon Hunters to dominate your Spotify Wrapped, there’s still time but you need to take action now.

Really surprised how little coverage this got

It's not new news to say that UK isn’t good at turning great research into big companies. But this sets out how a fragile university sector, shallow capital markets, tough visa rules for talent and a lack of policy direction just makes everything harder. publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld5901/ld...

Excellent to see @juliaunwin.bsky.social named as the government’s preferred candidate for Charity Commission chair — thoughtful, experienced, and exactly what the sector needs. www.gov.uk/government/n...

Excellent to see @juliaunwin.bsky.social named as the government’s preferred candidate for Charity Commission chair — thoughtful, experienced, and exactly what the sector needs. www.gov.uk/government/n...

Between Tate, Windsor and Wakefield it’s not been a great few years for the brand.

Casio are taking pre-orders for their new AI-powered emotional support guinea pig www.casio.com/uk/moflin/

In the 1970s, the French government ran this ad: “we don’t have petrol, but we have ideas” Today, French electricity generation is 72% nuclear, 21% renewables and 7% fossil fuels. They are the largest net exporter of electricity in the world. m.youtube.com/watch?v=Pk0z...

"Resilience won’t come from fixing yesterday’s problems. It will come from perceiving tomorrow’s patterns." A lot of “innovation” work forgets you can’t build for the future if you ignore the present. A smart call to stop designing the future like it’s 2010. medium.com/@paulagilb/w...

If you work in sport or partner with sporting organisations, do join me for our next webinar with the wonderful Frances Milner from the Leeds United Foundation.

This paragraph is pure William Gibson (@greatdismal.bsky.social) "That portal relied on SS7 connectivity through an Indonesian telecom carrier and via Liechtenstein’s national operator, with which it had a long-standing relationship dating back to its days in the SMS marketing business."

This paragraph is pure William Gibson (@greatdismal.bsky.social) "That portal relied on SS7 connectivity through an Indonesian telecom carrier and via Liechtenstein’s national operator, with which it had a long-standing relationship dating back to its days in the SMS marketing business."

There are parallels with the "industry playbook" of citing insufficient evidence to support public health interventions

future generations will look at short form video the way we look at tobacco podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/d...

👀 “we are no longer confident in our understanding of the US policy environment for foreign funders of US NGOs” ciff.org/news/update-...

There is mounting evidence that the world is more like the 1890s than the 1990s

One hell of a typo in the Green Party policy platform. Almost certainly should have been hierarchical, but heretical captures the mood.

It’s impossible to be cringe on LinkedIn. The cringe is cooked in. It’s probably how most people personally experience a post-shame culture.

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