Weeknote 12/2025

“It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion, it is easy in solitude to live after our own, but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.” (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Don’t ask me how I know, but my Polestar 2 (single motor) maxes out at 100mph. It’s still accelerating quite quickly up to that point, meaning it could definitely go faster, but it’s software-limited. By way of analogy, I’ve no idea how the beta blockers prescribed to me on Thursday work from a pharmacological point of view, but it feels similar. My heart rate feels like it’s somehow ‘capped’. I can’t tell you how amazing it is to be able to walk places and go to the gym without my heart rate racing and getting chest pains. Truly we live in medically amazing times. I’m so happy.

In other fantastic news, the builders have finished my home office, so I’ve been painting it this weekend. There’s just the window sill and radiator to install, and I’m having a carpet fitted tomorrow. The colour you see in the photos is a serendipitous choice. I went to B&Q with my daughter looking for the same colour as I had in my old home office (Dulux Willow Tree, a lovely soft ‘mental health’ green) and stumbled across a completely different colour (Valspar Puppy Love, which I would have called ‘Chocolate Cake Batter’). It was in the returns section, half price and unopened; my daughter suggested it would work well, and she was correct!

Then, to complete a hat-trick of good news, both the Amnesty International UK and BBC Responsible Innovation Centre projects kick off next week! With the former, WAO is helping them set up an online community space for activists; with the latter, we’re doing research and coming up with a framework around AI Literacy to inform the BBC and other public media bodies. That should keep up reasonably busy for the next few months, but we’ve still got capacity for more work!

Let’s do work-related stuff as bullet points, as I need to get another coat of paint on my office walls this afternoon. So, this week I’ve been:

• Writing here on what ‘openness’ means in relation to generative AI
• Publishing two of seven blog posts on the WAO blog I wrote about an upcoming NDLN report on digital and micro credentialing
• Recording an episode for Helen Beetham’s imperfect offerings podcast
• Vibe coding a career discovery tool which uses the Perplexity and Lightcast APIs to figure out what jobs might be a good fit for you — and how threatened they are by automation
• Leading the second ‘F*ck Around and Find Out’ session showing people how to use various AI tools, and giving them a (supported) place to tinker
• Meeting seven people for virtual coffees after I got in touch with most of my contacts on Monday looking to reconnect with them
• Commenting on a bunch of things over at Thought Shrapnel

Next week I’m hoping to actually do some cardio. I dare not go on the scales to weigh myself, but I reckon I’ve put on half a stone (~3kg) over the last couple of months. The reason? Eating the same amount as usual, but not running 3-4 times per week. Hopefully that will come back off as easily as it went on 😅