Matt Locke

There was a 57yrold in the women’s competition! Still time for us!

And an umpiring qualification! Huge congrats!

I think it was my budget that paid for it…

I remember the box you built!

Christ, that would be a grim podcast.

I wrote a review of Stephen King’s Pet Sematary in secondary school English class, using the deliberately misspelled title throughout the essay. When I got it back my teacher had corrected it every single time, and marked me down. I’m still furious about it.

Protect and Survive image: A skeleton reading a 'Protect and Survive' leaflet (officially produced guidelines to surviving an atomic attack).

www.iwm.org.uk/collections/...

Doh, I got the maths wrong on that.

An adaptation of an existing joke:

Why did the ZX81 band have 12,345 members?

It was the only way they could get a gig.

Yes- in the article I specifically say Rob was the first to use the word ‘like’ on a button, and in particular, to use it as a signal for user generated content on a community site. There were other sites that had up/down votes earlier.

You were definitely one of the first!

Back in the heyday of Channel 4 Education, Alice commissioned an online game/story about a group of kids who operated the early telegraph networks, and would chat and flirt between messages. I think Rhiannon Pratchett wrote it?

Yes.

Welcome to the age of zero-sum politics A stalled economic conveyor belt is behind the rise of anti-system, anti-growth parties on both the right and left

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

“One ring-road to rule them all”

GoodGym - Do Good, Get Fit We are a community of people who get fit by doing good. We run, walk, and cycle to help community organisations and isolated older people with practical tasks.

Goodgym has been running in the UK quite a few years now!

www.goodgym.org

Isn’t that the ending of Animal Farm?

Well done to all of you!

This is awesome news! Congrats!

Digital Products - Monetize Your Content - beehiiv Creators and brands can now maximize their earning potential with guides, templates, courses, coaching, and more. The best part? beehiiv takes zero commission

Beehiiv have just announced a digital product feature. We moved all our newsletters to Beehiiv from Substack a few years ago, and it’s been good!

www.beehiiv.com/features/dig...

AI in the Street: lessons from everyday encounters with AI - with images from AI observatories in Coventry, Logan, Edinburgh and Cambridge

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 Theatre Europe Edition On nuclear war games, escalation, and making the call.

I wrote something about this recently for a friends newsletter:

whyisthisinteresting.substack.com/p/the-theatr...

Consequences — Careful Industries A free tool to help you rapidly assess potential risks and issues with AI-powered products, tools and services.

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

Can we do it using the “Hot Ones” YouTube format?

From taxes to news: How Denmark is rethinking public funding for private publishers The Nordic country is creating a model to decide which outlets should receive subsidies, how and on what basis. Rasmus Nielsen explains how it could work.

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’ve been shortlisted for a Chalamet”

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

How bizarre!

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