What has the Index of Multiple Deprivation ever done for us? A genuine question I have. tomcw.xyz/what-has-the...

I'm really rooting for this 👉 TechFreedom, a short course for social purpose orgs who want to understand their tech risks and DO SOMETHING about it. Importantly you leave with a plan for reducing your dependency on US Big Tech 🙌🙌🙌 techfreedom.eu via @dougbelshaw.com @tomcw.xyz #digitalsovereignty

Hitting my weeknote midlife crisis age…Opening sign ups to TechFreedom, building a browser extension (and MCP) for my memory, falling behind on a project, finishing the week on a high note, and lots of interesting things, including a blog about seeing an otter in saltaire. tomcw.xyz/weeknote/wee...

Have you heard me banging on about tech sovereignty, adaptability, big tech and resiliency? About how your tech is an organisational cultural choice? If not, how? If you have...well, would you like some more? tomcw.xyz/why-we-creat...

#TechFreedom is a small‑cohort programme I am running with @tomcw.xyz to help co‑ops, charities, unions, and public‑interest orgs map their tech stack and cut risky dependencies on Big Tech. Details and pilot cohort info: blog.dougbelshaw.com/techfreedom-... #TechFreedom #Coops #DigitalSovereignty

Some dude called Brad has clearly been putting phone number into websites over a number of years. First it was cars Then it was gambling Now it's the money advice service. I'm slightly annoyed but also a bit worried for brad here

Half term, fossil hunting and February wild swimming

The disconnect between 'openclaw/agent driven organisations yeah!' and the needing permission for a paper clip/command and control/nom reality of most organisations is funny and scary.

As a parent, do you ever think "I wonder what I would be doing with all that free time I used to have?" Just saw one of my friends was having a go driving a bobsleigh and now I know.

This is pretty wild read — “Trust is Being Manufactured Faster than It’s Earned” socket.dev/blog/ai-agen...

A couple of years ago, LNER introduced one click and automatic 'delay repay'. It was good, it would automatically let you know you were entitled to compensation. Obviously this was too good, as they've now reverted to burying this process behind many many clicks.

Breadnotes. I mean weeknotes tomcw.xyz/weeknote/wee... Tech Freedom, saying no, starting a couple of new bits of work, learning about Ice Breaker One and Free Ice Cream, resilience in practice, redesigning my website.

Chiseled Jaw Guy, Knee Guy, Old Guy, Midnight guy, and The Path Finder are the first five in. #BM100

Love this show. Minch rules.

Best spectator sport of the year has just started. Keith and the random names of people lost in the brash for the first couple of loops.

We've had the ability to automate things for years. The ability to understand how jobs actually work, not automate things that shouldn't be, and not automate things badly still seems beyond us, and AI isn't fixing that I'm afraid.

Sourdough Saturday

That @tomcw.xyz and I have created #TechFreedom for organisations that want to understand where their data really lives, how reliant they are on single platforms, and how much their tools watch them. Post: blog.dougbelshaw.com/techfreedom/ Site: techfreedom.eu #TechFreedom #DigitalSovereignty

Currently at 7 hrs travelling by train. By my calculations I could have gone from Durham to Paris and had time for a beer by now. Unfortunately I've managed to make it 186 miles and am still not home. C'est la vie

Spent two days facilitating, showed several matrix (of course). But if we are being real, this might be the real 2x2 matrix

What's the first rule of fight club? 🙋🏼 Buy a domain name? No...but now you mention it End film

Oh man mahadk.com/posts/ai-ski...

Holy shit, I've ran out of coffee in the house. Send help.

The insanity of UK public bodies threatening other UK public bodies with the apparent intention of limiting the reuse of UK address data. Meanwhile the rest of the world has long recognised that postal address data is critical digital public infrastructure in the 21st century.

Spent hours, maybe days on content for a training session which I delivered today. Asked everywhere to share the one big thing they were taking from the session, and about half the room mentioned something... "Oh, you mean that thing I threw in on the spur of the moment...cool cool cool"

📂 As @tomcw.xyz and I bring @dataforaction.bsky.social to a close, we thought we'd try and find a place to archive the project work we've done over the past three years, as well as curate some of the different tools we've made along the way. 🔗 So, here it is: dataforaction.notion.site

Lunchtime re-share hopeful.technology 💕

I wonder. Have we forgotten what a revolution looks like?

No notes

You know what is my favourite type of form field? It is the checkbox that says "don't select this" but can't be removed because it'll probably break the form on a local gov site

Everything ends eventually, but that doesn't mean everything needs to be lost. As we close down Data For Action I wanted to reflect on some of the things we did and what I learned. tomcw.xyz/the-end-of-d...

Early new year's walk. Oof it were windy and cold

Have you ever wondered if you can just use pizza dough to make focaccia? Well wonder no longer! You can, although the quality is questionable. You cannot however make pizza from focaccia dough. Brought to by Tom's lack of caffeine this morning

Copenhagen Decided to give all up and become a Run Influencer of bluesky

In Copenhagen and you know there just like one toilet and everyone uses them and it's all chill and people are happy and maybe we could just learn from that.

Last night in Tromso and finally got the northern lights show 🤘

December dip done. Never quite expected when I started this challenge that my last dip of the year would be in the arctic circle on solstice day!

Orcas. Wow.

Oh hello again Microsoft. "So I can share this thing with people outside my organisation right?" "Oh yes, of course, super simple, anyone can access it!" Ha, just joking

It's another #weeknote tomcw.xyz/weeknote/wee...

Decided to actually map where I've been cold/open water dipping this year (and therefore give me an excuse to some some updates on Map My Patch!) www.mapmypatch.co.uk/survey/29OGT...

November dip ✅ Touch chilly but bloody look at it. Loch Venachar

Start the day as you mean to go on. Umm, cold, with wet feet, avoiding Christmas songs? 💯

Modes of Problem solving docs.google.com/presentation...

tomcw.xyz/weeknote/wee... Modes of problem solving, the great unsettling, a bit of crap situation, rants about microsoft, some interesting things.

Ah, memories of font. Must go back next year.

Pitched 😊