A living collection of notes, ideas, and reflections from Doug Belshaw.
What follows are my reflections of my second coaching session with Annalise Lewis of Manifesto. I've written up the first one about archetypes on my blog, as well as my reflections on the Myths We Live By workshop which introduced me to her work.
…The thing that's shifted in my lifetime is shame as a public mechanism for affecting change. I still think that it has a massive effect (especially on men) in the personal realm, but because of news cycles, algorithmic feeds, and the pace of modern life, we live in a world of what this article calls "attention spam".
…There's a lot of talk about dumbphones at the moment, at least in my circles. But, of course, everyone still wants access to WhatsApp, Signal, etc. So there's a whole niche of expensive 'dumb' phones which are supposed to help you reclaim your life.
…Just a quick note to say that each tag on Substrate now has an RSS feed. For example #philosophy has this feed. So you don't have to see my donkey memes if you don't want to.
Every Sunday, my Little Robot Friend sends me a report which I call 'News Canary'. It assembles a weekly set of roughly ten "global change signal" stories from the last seven days, with at least one item from each continent It mixes hard developments (laws, policies, conflicts, technical releases) with soft signals (cultural shifts, viral posts) that may influence how systems evolve.
…I returned from Lisbon last night to the test print of my first zine having been delivered while we’re away.
This morning I’ve had a good look at it and, although I’ve got a few tweaks to make for the final print, it’s turned out really nicely!
…I don't know how well it works in practice, how Rwandans feel about it, or if the connection with a colonial past is problematic, but I do like the idea behind this:
Umuganda is a national holiday in Rwanda taking place on the last Saturday of every month for mandatory nationwide community service from 08:00 to 11:00. Participation in Umuganda is required by law; failure to participate can result in a fine.
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Delighted at this, especially the bit I've highlighted in bold:
OpenAI, the US company behind ChatGPT, has lost its legal challenge against the refusal to register the trademark "OPENAI" at the European Union's General Court.
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On the one hand, it's good that the UK government has updated its Essential Digital Skills Standards. On the other hand, they're about a decade out of date (in the same way that the previous ones were even more out of date).
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