Weeknote 12/2026

“It is a society of laborers which is about to be liberated from the fetters of labor, and this society does no longer know of those other higher and more meaningful activities for the sake of which this freedom would deserve to be won [….] What we are confronted with is the prospect of a society of laborers without labor, that is, without the only activity left to them. Surely, nothing could be worse.”

— Hannah Arendt (The Human Condition)

Last month, I stumbled across the above quotation via L.M. Sacasas and have been thinking about it since. The problem definitely is that we don't know what to do with our time any more.

What is it that we are trying to achieve? What does a flourishing life look like in the second half of the 2020s? 🤔

Writing

Here, I published:

Sightlines: small, practical systems thinking tools for mission-driven organisations

The work of mission-driven organisations is complex, but complexity can be hard to talk about.

Open ThinkeringDoug Belshaw

Badge Studio is back!

A simple, client-side way to generate badges for use in Open Badges and recognition projects.

Open ThinkeringDoug Belshaw

My 7-step approach for authentic AI-assisted blogging

Posts I publish here are mine. I’m holding myself accountable for them, and you too should hold me to that, even if AI was involved in the process.

Open ThinkeringDoug Belshaw

Over at Thought Shrapnel, I published:

Claude Cowork vs Claude Code

Yes, Claude Cowork is great, but the secret sauce is actually Claude Code which you can access via the Claude app. Even better is doing so from the command line interface (CLI). The advantage of the CLI is that you’re fully in control of your project. The difficulty, of course, is that unless you grew up having to load computer games via DOS, and unless you’ve got a mental model of how product development works, it’s going to feel very odd.

Thought Shrapnel

Recursive logical fallacies

I did not enjoy studying Formal Logic as a Philosophy undergraduate. But it stood me in good stead. I’m pretty sure there are plenty of people who wouldn’t even understand what’s wrong with the above reasoning, and in fact it explains a lot of what is wrong with the world… 🙄 Source: X via Are.na

Thought Shrapnel

Disgust is a complicated emotion

This is definitely not for everyone, but ContraPoints (Natalie Wynn) is awesome and always makes compelling videos. This one weighs in at a little over an hour and a half, so I’m still watching it. Ever since studying Philosophy of Art & Literature as an undergraduate, in which we looked at why people watch horror films, I’ve understood that disgust is actually a complicated emotion. As ContraPoints explains through the Saw series of films, so-called film critics have things all wrong.

Thought Shrapnel

Brexit is a problem whose name we now dare speak

It’s almost a decade since one of the greatest economic harms a country has ever self-inflicted. Yes, I’m talking about Brexit. Finally, we’re getting to the stage when our current government, which is not the one that instigated the referendum, can say that “Brexit did deep damage”. Let’s hope we get back into bed with our European neighbours ASAP. The decline in Britain over the last 10 years is tangible.

Thought Shrapnel

A useful reminder

Source: Are.na

Thought Shrapnel

Why it’s all kicking off (again)

I’m not saying that you need to be an expert on the history of every country of the world, but when there’s a major crisis going on, understanding why it’s all kicking off is at least worth understanding. Source: Ted Rall

Thought Shrapnel

Maybe the loose end isn’t a failure of facilitation

Tom was talking to me about his thinking about this post when we met up earlier this week to discuss next steps for TechFreedom, our joint project. Essentially, the problem is that things like workshops, events, projects, and even programmes of work have an internal logic to them. This logic dictates whether or not they are designated ‘successful’. Whereas, the world is a messy and complicated place, and simply giving people opportunities to connect and think things through can have much more profound consequences.

Thought Shrapnel

Institute of Pragmatic Solutions

Everything that’s wrong with the world, captured neatly in one cartoon. Source: Tom Gauld

Thought Shrapnel

Creating the conditions to make things possible

This post by Dave Snowden, originator of the Cynefin framework, relates to post I shared by Tom Watson about ‘loose ends’. I have been writing recently, and will write more, about the difference between containers and landscapes: how interventions can be real within their boundaries and yet leave everything structurally unchanged outside them. The coaching session that produces genuine insight. The workshop that shifts something in the room. And two weeks later, nothing.

Thought Shrapnel

LLMs are “in the game, even if they’re not strictly playing it.”

The widely-referenced “stochastic parrots” paper from five years ago is no out of date. In it, Emily Bender, Timnit Gebru, et al. argue that LLMs remix patterns in text without genuine understanding. This has knock‑on effects for how we (should) use and trust them. It’s a familiar argument, using the same approach as John Searle’s famous Chinese Room argument about ‘black box’ symbol‑shuffling without understanding. I don’t know Pete Wolfendale, but I have just discovered that he is an independent philosopher based in Newcastle‑upon‑Tyne, so I should probably look him up.

Thought Shrapnel

Reading, Listening, and Watching

I'm still re-reading The Castle by Franz Kafka and Antifragile by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. I went to watch Sinners with my son, Ben, on Monday which was absolutely excellent.

I watched ContraPoints' latest in ~20 minute chunks while tinkering around with various things via the command line. Very insightful.

Last week, I mentioned how much I'm enjoying listening to my music collection via Plex rather than Spotify. After seeing that it's now possible to do 'cover flow' in CSS I decided to build a macOS app to use on my Mac Studio so that I could browse and play the albums on my home server.

I'm really pleased with it! The code is on GitHub.

Working

Laura and I started sprinting on the INASP project after we had the kick-off meeting on Monday. We've done a lot of work on it this week and made plenty of progress. Relatedly, I had a chat with Ivan from Bonfire on Friday.

In the other WAO project I'm working on, the Amnesty International UK community platform pilot came to an end on Friday. So with the time remaining our job is to evaluate that and suggest next steps.

I met with Nate for the Digital Badges Proof of Concept project through Dynamic Skillset. He sent me the first deliverable (technical architecture) over the weekend, which I'll be reviewing tomorrow. We're working as openly as possible, so you can see the kanban board to see what's involved.

This week, I've used Claude Code to create the 'Overflow' app I mentioned above, as well as:

• Contours – A topographic skills-profile visualiser. This was inspired by this post about polygonal badges.
• Plex Music Library Cleanup – Command line tool to find and fix duplicate albums and tracks-as-albums in a Plex music library.
• Plex Grounded Playlist Generator – Self-hosted web tool that generates large, situation-aware Plex music playlists using a configurable LLM, grounded entirely in your actual library.
• Sightlines – Three interactive systems-thinking tools for mission-driven organisations: boundary drawing, stakeholder mapping, and connection graphing.
• Stream – Velocity-based RSS reader. Articles arrive, linger, and fade. (I'll be publishing a post about this tomorrow)

I've also updated TaskDial based on user feedback. Let me know if you want an invite code – I'm using it every day, and it's a gamechanger.

Other than that, I met up with Tom in Newcastle on Tuesday. We've had our first sign-ups for the pilot TechFreedom cohort, and will be promoting it publicly with a payment this coming week. I had chat with Nate and Ivan, as I already mentioned, and also Jess Klein and Simone Ravaioli. I heard back from Ghost that while my application was one of only a few they followed-up with out of hundreds, they're not taking me through to the second round of interviews.

Personal

Getting sick of running so slowly, based on guidance given to me by the consultant who diagnosed my overtraining syndrome, I ran slightly faster on Thursday. I was absolutely battered afterwards: completely knackered and had to take my inhaler about 10 times during the rest of the day. A good reminder that I really do need to take things easy.

My daughter, Grace, recovered from her shin splints to play for Boro Rangers against Halifax Town yesterday. It was a good game and she played well, but they lost 1-0. Talking of football, I'm writing this while watching Arsenal vs Manchester City in the Carabao Cup final. I was delighted that my team, Sunderland, beat their local rivals Newcastle United earlier ⚽

Other than that, I've slept a little erratically, and with the warmer weather, been out cleaning our cars and cutting the grass. Hannah, my wife, keeps trying to give me all of the tasks, because it's Spring and apparently that's when things are done...

Next week

I've got several of conversations lined up for tomorrow, and then a few more on Tuesday and Wednesday. Then I've got some in-person noodling with Tom on Thursday, then some co-working with Jess on Friday.

I usually take three weeks off work in April, or try to anyway. This year, the plan was to take two weeks but now it's looking like I'll only be taking one. The reason? WAO is closing, and there's plenty to get done before that happens on May 1st.