Talking about being expert and being serious (tho with levity) at Edinburgh #LeanAgileScotland conference Using one piece of #AI imagery. I asked for Slopageddon. I do not believe this is inevitable
Alastair Somerville
@acuity.design
Clarity and kindness as foundations for work. Information perception in physical & digital places. Facilitation and workshop design for codesign and civic assemblies. Public prototyping on BlueSky. He/him
Listening to Naomi Klein on fighting End Times Fascism and it’s about #Hereness and Neighborism. Hereness is rooted in action in the here and now (not blood and soil) and this is portable to new places.
Taken daughter to her first vote. Local council election here.
Active listening & facilitating zine for discussion tonight and then in workshop next week. This is #facilitation and #moderation at its most minimum. #Prototyping
Kilts? As in there's nothing underneath them? I'm not sure that the sovereign bond statement I'd make.
Scottish Council on Global Affairs scga.scot@scga.scot · 3h ago🆕In 2026-2027, the Scottish government will issue its first bonds in centuries. Nicknamed ‘kilts’ to contrast with UK ‘gilts’, the current plan is to raise £300 million a year over five years. scga.scot/2026/10/13/t... @bencormier.bsky.social @unistrathclyde.bsky.social
Q: Do you know of any #public or #community owned conference venues in #Manchester that can host 250 people and have at least 8 breakout rooms, please? Dates needed are either Saturday 16 or 23 January 2027. @ukgovcamp.com 2027 ( #ukgc27 ).
Podcasting/Substack just seem to be newspapers flattened out. The basic categories remain the same but at much higher cost
Listening to End Times Fascism which seems a reasonable analysis of triad of Doomers (religious, techbros & white suprematist) who share a love of social breakdown as proof of approaching finality Doom is an easy narrative trap. They offer clarity and closure. Diagram from Hope workshop I did
Boarded up Police station (for years now) and Lloyds bank (for months) in village. Having some sense of how we use physical space would help. It’s not just missing services, it’s missing people. The police officers and bank staff. People who provided a sense of neighbourhood.
“Inspired by Italian coffee recipes” in the sense of an Italian shouting what the hell are you doing?
Guns or Butter is such a magnet for dichotomous thinking Also guns always win
Caroline Lucas@carolinelucas.bsky.social · yesterdayThis would be economically illiterate & environmentally disastrous - and makes us less secure: undermining efforts to reduce energy bills by reducing dependence on gas, increasing vulnerability to global dictators, driving climate emissions & knee capping a market that’s just beginning to take off
Looking at these climate crisis prepping and dooming diagrams again Getting people to identify where they feel about action or inaction
Unusual request today: please consider registering as a bone marrow donor. I had exactly the same blood cancer as in this article, acute myeloid leukaemia. Was very lucky that my brother was a match but many people must rely on the kindness of strangers. More here: www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Mother with cancer urges people to join stem cell register
Nikola Dolphin-Rowland was diagnosed with cancer 28 years to the day she learned her son had leukaemia.
bbc.co.uk
Avoiding the institutionalisation of food poverty www.theguardian.com/society/2026... Food banks are necessary reaction to austerity but they shouldn’t be a permanent layer
A two-tier food system for people living in poverty | Letter
Letters: Jane Middleton says the question we should be asking is not how can we use up surplus food, but how we can ensure that no one has to rely on charity to eat
theguardian.com
Watching WW2 war movie that was disrupted by actual war. Filming in 1968 in Czechoslovakia and Russians invaded to crush Prague Spring.
Writing workshop on active listening and facilitation. Getting people to do less is an issue. Talk less. Be less present in conversations. These are all ways of creating gaps and gaps matter. It’s in the gaps that people find their voices and creativity.
Shield or Hug comes up in Haidt work on political mindsets. That the locus of care can be in a defensive sense of protecting and in an open sense of providing assistance.
😈Miss Hell Batkeeper😈@mishellbaker.bsky.social · 2d agoMy friend @flowerhorne.com made a really good point about how individualism relates to the obsession with the Second Amendment. To the conservative mind, protection is something you have to do for yourself, so you need a gun. It never occurs to them to trust in community or society to protect.
UK government’s emergency preparation list is short on detail about food and drink It’s part of longer form that asks you to write down lots of detail about names/suppliers/insurance It’s oddly less useful than Protect and Survive (tho surviving a nuclear bomb was always a fiction)
Finally got a LibDem leaflet for local election. No Doctors, No Development is a slightly bizarre manifesto promise
Skeleton zine of content structure for Stroud civic assembly training for community facilitators. #PaperPrototyping
Interviewer: can you explain this gap in your resume? Member of The Thompson Twins: Into The Gap was our highest selling album of the 1980's. It included such hit songs as Doctor! Doctor!, You Take Me Up, and Hold Me Now
haunted moss@mosscloud.bsky.social · 2d agoInterviewer: can you explain this gap in your resume? UX Strategist: When wielded expertly, a gap analysis reveals the difference between current and desired states. Done at strategic or operational levels, one can identify the difference (the “gap”) and areas to target for intended outcomes.
Reading of first sabotage of an aircraft (bomb in luggage on Boeing flying to California in 1930’s) but there’s no solution to the mystery. No one admitted to it or tracked down by FBI.
Tho Christians did love a lot of human sacrifice during the Reformation (with Witch Hunts as a sidequest)
The Winter Soldier™@wintersoldiershere.bsky.social · 2d agoKinda odd. Christians didn't like it much when their boy had a public execution 2000 years ago.
#NeverSkilling came up at conference - using #AI so no skill is ever learnt or acquired
Shannon Vallor@shannonvallor.bsky.social · 3d agoWe are soon going to have to come to grips with the fact that this shit is asbestos for the mind
Human mattering, like human rights, is slightly circular argument as it is about valuing all humans for being human. People need to know they matter.
Looking at some permaculture in climate crisis slides again.
