Weeknote 16/2026

“So, if you are too tired to speak, sit next to me because I, too, am fluent in silence.”

– R. Arnold

I'm tired. I fell asleep watching one the football games of the season this afternoon. It'll be an early night tonight.

Writing & Creating

Here, I published:

Supporting AI Literacies for Young Adults Aged 14-19

WAO’s report for the BBC’s Responsible Innovation Centre is now live!

Open ThinkeringDoug Belshaw

Literate communities have always looked different to their critics

When you’ve closed 800 libraries and gutted the infrastructure through which people build reading communities, blaming screens is a conclusion in search of a cause.

Open ThinkeringDoug Belshaw

Introducing Commonplace

Organise links and uploads by topic, invite collaborators, and share collections with people on Mastodon, Bluesky, and RSS – without asking them to sign up anywhere new.

Open ThinkeringDoug Belshaw

Over at Thought Shrapnel, I published:

Note to self

Source: Are.na

Thought Shrapnel

Our communication currently often takes place via platforms over which we have no control

I’ve never used WhatsApp, and the only Meta account I’ve ever had was for Facebook when it first came out. Which makes me a bit of an outlier, I know. But it seems that other people are cottoning-on to the fact that US Big Tech companies do not have the best interests of European users at heart. I use and recommend Signal, but even that - if not ‘Big Tech’ - is US-based.

Thought Shrapnel

‘Folk software’ - not ‘vibe coding’

I’m thankful to Pete Cohen for sharing this article with me, which enables me to put aside the awful term ‘vibe coding’ once and for all. I’ve created a bunch of software over the past few months, which you can see here: dynamicskillset.com/tools. The bit of software I use the most, though, isn’t on that list. You can absolutely have a look at the source code but, really, I made Overflow just for me.

Thought Shrapnel

The Journey Home

I came across this via Are.na, and then wanted to find out more about the “beautiful, melancholy genius of Matthew Wong”. This image is part of a triptych that you can view on the Christie’s auction house website Source: Are.na

Thought Shrapnel

“We have two Microsoft Outlooks and neither one is working”

So disappointing. I mean, who chooses Microsoft for anything mission-critical? Source: That kafka Joke

Thought Shrapnel

The “U-shaped curve” of cognitive offloading to AI tools

Almost a year ago, I responded here on Thought Shrapnel to what I thought was a terrible paper which claimed to show, via brain scans, that using LLMs was bad for students’ cognitive development. As Philippa Hardman notes in this article, the academic literature has begun caught up with what people actually using these tools already know: The theoretical picture sharpened in 2025–26. Favero et al. (2025) warned that cognitive offloading undermines learning outcomes unless the mental effort that’s freed up gets redirected towards other meaningful tasks.

Thought Shrapnel

The AI Adoption Spiral

I love this from Liz Fosslien, as the outer part of it shows the journey that people go on with any new tool. The inner part, however, is more philosophical. And for some people it’s emancipatory and for others it gets really dark, quickly. Source: Liz Fosslien

Thought Shrapnel

Life advice

Some people are fond of sharing the saccharine quote by Mary Oliver: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” I, on the other hand, am more fond of much more down-to-earth reminders that we will soon be dust – or, as this piece of toast suggests compost. Source: Are.na

Thought Shrapnel

Why I adore the night

I have noticed that when all the lights are on, people tend to talk about what they are doing – their outer lives. Sitting round in candlelight or firelight, people start to talk about how they are feeling – their inner lives. They speak subjectively, they argue less, there are longer pauses. To sit alone without any electric light is curiously creative. I have my best ideas at dawn or at nightfall, but not if I switch on the lights – then I start thinking about projects, deadlines, demands, and the shadows and shapes of the house become objects, not suggestions, things that need to done, not a background to thought.

Thought Shrapnel

Reading, Listening, and Watching

I really enjoyed reading The Chrysalids by John Wyndham this week and have now moved onto Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh. I listened to a couple of episodes of No Such Thing as a Fish and didn't really watch anything other than football.

Working

Laura was away this week, after I'd been on holiday the week before, so I picked up her notes and ran with them. She'd done a lot but given how close we are to May 1st (when WAO closes) there was still plenty to do.

I did a bunch of things for INASP relating to their Rising Scholars website project. Having submitted the final evaluation report for the Amnesty International UK community platform pilot, we're presenting to their senior leadership team on Tuesday. Then we've just got to finish packaging up 18 months worth of assets in a way that isn't reliant on our Google Drive (which will be disappearing soon).

In terms of Dynamic Skillset, I updated my website again to (hopefully) make it even clearer what I do and how I can help people. I met with Nate who's got the back end set up for the Digital Badges Proof of Concept, and with Tom as we're running the first session of the TechFreedom pilot cohort next Wednesday.

On the business development front, I met with Kerri Lemoie about some work I'm going to be doing for her around Wallet Attached Storage and ZKPs. I also met with Abi Handley about a brief we're planning to bid on together, and had chats with Stefan Hager, Pete Cohen, Becky Scott, Nathan Nelson, and Mikey Conroy, about various things. I also attended a Mozilla Alumni Responsible AI call, which was interesting.

Personal

As I can't really run at the moment, I decided to go along to The Coliseum, which took over from the long-derelict cinema of the same name in Morpeth. It's a bouldering centre, and so I did the Level 1 introduction course. I really enjoyed it, and will be going back.

The previous owners of our house had lived in it since new and had employed a gardener. It's not a huge garden, but it's the biggest we've had, and it's got some lovely trees and plants in it. However we also inherited two huge eucalyptus trees which were already the height of the house when we moved in.

After a couple of years of living here, we finally got those taken out yesterday – along with two large conifers. It's made a massive different to the amount of light coming into the kitchen window, and it's one of those changes that makes you do a double-take every time you walk through the room.

My son, Ben, has moved back home during the week and will commute from here to Newcastle for his lectures and seminars for the rest of the university year. He's keeping his PlayStation and gaming PC in his flat and staying there over the weekend. It's pretty much the inverse of what you'd expect, but hopefully it will work out.

Team Belshaw now has accommodation to go with our flights to Barcelona at the end of July and start of August. We'll be staying up in the hills and then in a swanky-ish hotel in Barcelona itself. I'm looking forward to it, and am glad that it shouldn't be too hot where we'll be.

Next week

It's going to be a busy one, work-wise. Things to finish off and finalise, other things to start, plan, and orchestrate. I've just got to get through the next few weeks and out the other side with my sanity and energy levels intact, and I'll be fine.