Weeknote 05/2025
“The basically tautological character of the spectacle flows from the simple fact that its means are simultaneously its ends. It is the sun which never set over the empire of modern passivity. It covers the entire surface of the world and bathes endlessly in its own glory.”
(Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle)
I’m typing this out on my phone while watching Arsenal vs Man City on TV with my family. No football match for my son, Ben, today, and my daughter’s team lost 8-3 to the boys team who are top of the league. That sounds bad until you realise they were losing 6-0 at half time, and had to play with 10 in the second half due to injuries!
Her team won 5-0 yesterday in the girls league, but Ben’s basketball game didn’t go ahead as the other team just didn’t show up. They go the win and just played 4v4 amongst the squad.
I spent nine hours, split between Wednesday and today, sorting out the garage in preparation for building starting on my home office. That doesn’t begin until a week on Monday, but I’m away from Friday lunchtime to late on Saturday next week, so I wanted to be prepared.
There hasn’t been loads of work to do this week, but I’ve kept relatively busy writing, having a few meeting with various people, and doing some business development. We heard that we were successful in winning the community strategy project with Amnesty International UK, so that will be starting at the end of the month or the start of next. I’ve also agreed to facilitate an Awards Network Scotland event at the start of March which will focus heavily on Open Badges and Verifiable Credentials.
On Monday night, Ben and I went to an event at the Lit. & Phil. in Newcastle as part of an “Inspired by” lecture series in conjunction with Northumbria University. This one was on arctic regions and the lecturer, who was excellent, used a couple of talks from 150 years ago as the starting point. I learned a lot!
Then, on Thursday, I went to the cinema by myself to watch Conclave which I really enjoyed. That’s two films this month I’ve seen alone, and I think I might make it more of a habit. I don’t think I would have got to see either film had I not decided to go solo.
Last night, after Hannah‘s sister kindly gave us a gift voucher for Christmas, we went to a tiny new local restaurant that specialises in pizzas. I accidentally ordered one with meat, but they were gracious enough to make me another one so that I didn’t have to pick off the animal parts. I think we’ll go back as the food and service were top-notch.
I wrote a post here about categorising ethical concerns around generative AI, and published a bunch of posts over at Thought Shrapnel. I’ve also started writing (privately) on 750words.com again after receiving an email reminding me that I’m an OG user with lifetime free access. I upgraded my account to v2 and have enjoyed documenting my days in two or three chunks.
Next week, I still haven’t got loads on so I need to keep on with the bizdev, before heading to the Mozilla alumni event at the end of the week.
Image: looking down from the loft hatch after taking boxes of stuff from the garage up there.