This by the excellent @jburnmurdoch.ft.com confirms my view that political trends are being driven by the halting of the upward economic conveyor belt - striking charts: www.ft.com/content/30a4... Welcome to the age of zero-sum politics

New @carefultrouble.bsky.social paper out today with a whole bevy of academic partners, on the impacts of AI in urban environments. As the plan for AI Growth Zones starts to roll out, we find innovation policy is disconnected from the real impacts of AI on people and places

The Careful Consequence Checker, a free, self-directed tool for understanding the impacts of building, buying or adopting an AI-powered product or service www.careful.industries/consequences Thank you @rachelcoldicutt.bsky.social

NEW on our website @rasmuskleis.bsky.social chaired a commission tasked by the Danish gov to design a system of direct media subsidies. In this piece he explains how they conceived their proposal and what other countries could learn from it reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/news/taxes-n...

I agree with @arusbridger.bsky.social about BBC governance. Although v hesitant about another rearrangement, the single corporate-style board is massively flawed, not least because there needs to be some distance for the governors/board members from editorial decisions

Good quote from Peter Bazalgette in this: "We could have had a strategy for public service media and its survival five or ten years ago" Thing is, quite a lot of us were writing that strategy *20* years ago, but no one noticed.

This is not the gift of a government. This is the gift of the sun. And it has some really interesting implications… #actuallyexistingsolarpunk

Did not expect one of the best paragraphs I’d read about baseball would come from an Irish newspaper www.irishexaminer.com/sport-column...

Excited to see the first issue of @equatormag.bsky.social now here www.equator.org

It’s nice that MLB are growing the game in the UK by [checks notes] extending World Series games till we all wake up.

For over 50 years, the Booker Prizes have recognised the best fiction for adults. Now, we're delighted to announce the Children’s Booker Prize, supported by AKO Foundation. Find out more: thebookerprizes.com/children

I wrote about what it was like to go online for the first time 30 years ago. How hard and complicated it seemed, and then how amazing this entirely new world was. Including some extracts from my 1995 diary. www.gyford.com/phil/writing...

As reported by BBC News today, being prepared to respond to a cyber-attack is now a critical business priority. We worked with the Local Government Association and a range of partners to develop the ‘Cyber Incident Grab Bag’ for local authorities. public.digital/pd-insights/...

Today my @nytimes.com colleagues and I are launching a new series called Lost Science. We interview US scientists who can no longer discover something new about our world, thanks to this year‘s cuts. Here is my first interview with a scientist who studied bees and fires. Gift link: nyti.ms/3IWXbiE

Rather than unlocking UK community power, successive govts' digital policies have been focussed on Silicon Valley-style success. By me for @powertochange.org.uk, on why digital social policy is a necessary building block for a stronger society www.powertochange.org.uk/evidence-and...

Running a second Ofcom Q&A event for folks that run small, low-risk websites who have questions about Online Safety Act compliance. Send your Qs (using the booking form) by 15 Oct. buttondown.com/indie-and-co... (also not sure if everyone on the mailing list received the email, so please share!)

the influencer model has a version of this: audience capture stuff. but i think some of the smaller indie pubs that have had success (Mountain Gazette is a great example) and plenty of newsletters too are much more taste driven. people seem eager to pay for access to somebody's curiosity/taste

Giving ppl what they want based on what they click on is the opposite of curation, it is the opposite of taste. While ppl obviously will consume it, i think there's like a fatigue that sets in from the audience side. a subconscious realization of like, why am i paying for the thing i'm programming?

My theory is that the arrival of traffic measuring metrics supercharged distrust in media. Yeah, there's clickbait, but I think the real issue is that audiences actually get really tired of being given the thing they signal that they want. Even when its not a race to the bottom, it hurts trust

I still refer to this text year after year. It’s never not been true.

The second book in my wife’s new children’s book series is out today! It’s absolutely brilliant and beautifully illustrated* Perfect for kids for Halloween! www.waterstones.com/book/colin-s... *I might be a tiny bit biased, but it is!

Let no one say I'm above retweeting praise research.mysociety.org/html/ai-fram...

New report: How can AI work for the public good? @dianecoyle1859.bsky.social et al. explored this question in a series of workshops with people from across disciplines looking at: ⚖️ Administrative justice 📍 Place 🩺 Public health 💸 Market failure Findings: www.bennettschool.cam.ac.uk/publications...

@herring1967.bsky.social have you seen this? www.nytimes.com/2025/08/14/u...

Increase a band: Radioheadshoulderskneesandtoes

UK content publishing pals -- you should get across to NYC for the Protocols For Publishers summit, sharing what AI + various protocols (like MCP, ATProto etc) might mean for changing audience behaviour... and what to do about it pfp.unternet.co

New @sycamore-collective.org blog post on Sovereign AI. What is it, do we need it, and how can we ensure it is democratically governed? sycamore-collective.org/how-can-the-...

Happy Age Verification Day! I'm quoted in this vg Wired piece on why it's all sort of a hot mess. www.wired.com/story/the-ag...

What a tune, what lyrics, couldn't stop myself. @mrjimbob.bsky.social - A song by me youtu.be/zCafaTPwN6M

On the pitch, you need that hunger…

Tip for helping: Replace doom scrolling with doom subscribing

The father of US Public Media, Newton Minow, died this week. A couple of years ago I wrote about his ‘Vast Wasteland’ speech in 1961, and why we need another Newt Minow now: https://howtomeasureghosts.substack.com/p/a-dictatorship-of-numbers

Wrote a short history of the Follow, including a clip of Zuck explaining the Social Graph at F8 in 2007. This was a few months after Jobs’ iPhone keynote. Jobs’ talk is now history, but Zuck’s has been erased from the web. https://www.attentionmatters.uk/p/followers-so-what-do-these-numbers