Yay! I'm hiring two Senior Accessibility Specialists to join my team on GOV.UK One Login. You'll be working with great people, solving complex problems for tens of millions of users. Salary of £70,834 - £74,317 (London) / £63,240 - £66,610 (National). Please share!

"NHS England is hurriedly withdrawing all the software it has written from public view because of the perceived risk of hacking [from AI]" https://www.newscientist.com/article/2524962-nhs-england-rushes-to-hide-software-over-ai-hacking-fears An open letter to keep it open https://keepthingsopen.com

Everything is so stupid

Our next event! 🚨 6PM, WED 29th April 🚨 At the MoJ or online. Lisa Trickey and Rebekah Wilson, LGA : LG2040: The State of Things to Come ​Jonathan Slater (ex DfE Perm Sec), Visiting Professor at King’s College London and QMUL luma.com/7nu2j853 Please share! Thanks 🙏

If you happen to be in London Monday evening I will be talking about institutionalising the digital state at NewSpeak House nationalconversations.org/events/4/

Does the world feel a bit upside down right now? Come and spend a year with us in London experimenting with political technology! Applications to join the Newspeak House fellowship programme for 2026-27 are now open: newspeak.house/study-with-us

Every feed I run is currently on @graze.social. Graze provides me with phenomenal infrastructure, free of charge; you can also use it, today, to remix my feeds so they're customised for your news reading needs. If every 📰 News feed user chipped in $1 /mo., it would fund the whole feed ecosystem.

The horse op-ed is an instant classic. I can't tell you how much joy this piece gives me. It should be taught in every introductory writing class in no small part because the horse arguments are so compelling. "I have noticed that human children get to eat cake. But I am bigger than the children."

Our friends at Newspeak House – where we've been hosting this year's CADA speaker series – have opened applications for their Fellowship Programme 🎉 Want to spend a year building and experimenting with political technology? Find out more/apply 👇 newspeak.house/study-with-us

Applications are now open: newspeak.house/study-with-us

The next Journalism Technology London is happening 21 April! luma.com/qjj9c8d7?tk=... We're actively looking for speakers, if you have something relevant to the journalism technology space you'd like to do a talk on, please DM me!

As part of National Conversations I am coming down to London to talk at NewSpeak House on Institutionalising the Digital State on Monday 20th April. nationalconversations.org/events/4/

our course at newspeak house is pretty cool! check it out

Does the world feel a bit upside down right now? Come and spend a year with us in London experimenting with political technology! Applications to join the Newspeak House fellowship programme for 2026-27 are now open: newspeak.house/study-with-us

This one should be interesting, 20th April 2026 at Newspeak House:

Me and @steipete.me have figured our dates and are running at the usual event space for the next Agents Anonymous in London, happening on the 23rd of March luma.com/6cnzck71

“Amazon’s Choice”

I spend a lot of my time thinking about how to improve democracy in the UK, and it turns out there's some low hanging fruit! Proud to finally have this report out, many thanks to @demos-uk.bsky.social for their help.

PSA Outer Wilds is 50% off on Steam till Thursday! This is the biggest discount it's ever gotten; usually sales max at 40%. store.steampowered.com/app/753640/O...

Well, hello world! State of the Future is a new think tank (from @gavinfreeguard.com) for public servants and others who believe data, digital, openness and innovation can deliver better policy, better services and better outcomes for people. sotf.org.uk (Quiet news day to soft launch, eh?)

Significant job this one. A chance to shape tech to work for the public interest. Director General for Emerging Technology and Artificial Intelligence at the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology. (£174k) www.civilservicejobs.service.gov.uk/csr/jobs.cgi...

These goats have just finished reading Web Curios. Look how happy they are - this could be you, with one click! webcurios.co.uk/webcurios-20...

We thought in the future that we’d have all our meals in pill form. In fact we have our meals in bar or smoothie form, which is pretty close.

Unity is stronger than division. That’s why we’ve formed Together Alliance with 50+ organisations and thousands of individuals — all pushing back against the far right. #Together we show where this country really stands. Join us: togetheralliance.org.uk

Freemium is the privatisation of universal basic services.

We have been running the Data and AI Public Engagement Community of Practice since July 2024, to allow people to share their work and learn from others on engaging the public around data and AI, work through common challenges, and bring together practitioners from different sectors. (1/2)

London friends!! 🦞🇬🇧 I’m hosting an AI Agents Hack Night at @nwspk in East London on Feb 17. Bring your laptop, your friends, and your agent swarm ;) 👉 luma.com/46cy08st #AIAgents #AIHackNight #LondonTech #BuildInPublic #OpenClaw

My liveskeeted notes from #ATProto London are up at kevinmarks.com/atprotolondon

Thank you also to my co-host @davenash.com; @edsaperia.bsky.social and newspeak.house for letting us use their incredible space; and our drinks sponsor this month, Neil Evans Creative (NeilEvans.agency)! 💚💚 We'll be back in April! See you then!

I'm at @aendra.com's atproto meetup tomorrow at Newspeak House, hopefully showing off bibliome.club... anybody else around? #atproto #london

If you're in London, last spots available for this event at Newspeak House with Noortje Marres Alex Taylor @tmsqrll.bsky.social Dominique Barron @halcyene.bsky.social Annie Radcliffe Yasmine Boudiaf and Mukul Patel, on AI infra in public spaces luma.com/p4fmir78 (cc @edsaperia.bsky.social)

How do we define ‘good’ when it comes to AI and local communities? Join us Thursday, 27 Jan at Newspeak House, London for "AI in the Street" - a collaborative research project that explores the messy reality of AI encountered in the street. ⏰ 4-6pm + drinks/refreshments 🔗 luma.com/p4fmir78Opens

Awesome Claude Code Anonymous meetup. Multiple short talks on how people are using AI (not just Claude Code) to build things from the likes of @steipete.me, @orta.io, @nearestnabors.com and others. Many thanks to Orta, Peter and @edsaperia.bsky.social of Newspeak House for making it happen!

PSA for those heading from London to Birmingham for @ukgovcamp.com - all trains from Euston currently cancelled, head to St Pancras and change at Leicester... #govcamp

New to Bluesky and living in London, UK? Our next meetup is on 28 January in Shoreditch, we have some exceptional speakers lined up and it's a fantastic way to learn more about the technology powering this platform! We'll probably also have some open discussion about... *gestures indeterminately*

The @ symbol is a lowercase pentagram, which is why it can only be used to summon humans.

The third Quake Brutalism Jam - launched last night. Largest community project of its kind. The biggest surprise: It's available both as a mod or as a FULLY STANDALONE FREE GAME. 77 one-shot Quake adventures using a whole new set of weapons, enemies and a whole lot of concrete. qbj3.slipseer.com

Aiming to make it to this later

My favourite venue space in London newspeak.house is having a 10 year anniversary Xmas party this weekend. I'm planning on heading over: luma.com/NewspeakHous...

@increpare.bsky.social I thought you might like to know: phabricator.wikimedia.org/T404457

We've designed some new tools @jointogether.online to make it even easier to join a union. jointogether.online/post/2025-11...

We @connectedbydata.org are planning a conference next year (early March, in Manchester) about people, power and participation in (public sector) data and AI. If you were coming, who would you really like to hear from as a keynote speaker to kick off the day?

This week on the blog: Peasants! We are at last putting together and wrapping up our discussion of life for pre-industrial peasants - a category which includes a majority of all humans who have ever lived. How we can model how they lived, worked, loved and died. acoup.blog/2025/10/17/c...

☠️Mod Jam #02 - ToxiCity☣️ When: 1 Nov 2025 (Sat) from 10:00 Where: Newspeak House, London E2 Hosts: @thenomi.bsky.social & Victor Fleurot We're modding DOOM again. Can Doomguy address contemporary toxicity while operating radioactive waste facilities? More info & RSVP via Luma: luma.com/10skojgf

Reminder to book a space! Across the world, pro-democracy projects are finding citizens can no longer directly visit their websites. Join us for this free lunchtime session to learn how they're getting around these limitations. www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/beyond-web...

A new edition of our newsletter just went out! fresh app for you Read it online: eepurl.com/jndnv2 Subscribe here to get it directly in your inbox: guide.us19.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=...