Open Thinkering

Weeknote 17/2026

• 6 min read • weeknote
Photo of a dry stone wall and fence receding into the distance with rolling hills in the background

It's been a busy week, and I've tried to relax a bit today – hence this weeknote going out so late on a Sunday evening.

I took the above photo today on a solo trip to one of my favourite places in the world: the northernmost part of the Pennine Way from Kirk Yethom. It's right on the England/Scotland border and usually deserted. It's such a great place for gathering one's thoughts.

Writing & Creating

Here, I published:

Turning polygonal badges into contours of practice
Expanding on my post about badges to show skills development with a tool that does just that.
Open ThinkeringDoug Belshaw
Choosing partnership over “certainty theatre”
In warfare, when you know more than your enemy, it’s called information asymmetry. The idea is that you want to have a tactical advantage over your adversary so that you can defeat them. I would hope that an agency-client relationship is fundamentally different to this.
Open ThinkeringDoug Belshaw
How a little “productive friction” protects human agency
Sometimes the highest good is not an uninterrupted flow from intention to completion. Sometimes the more human outcome – the one that promotes agency – is the one that introduces a pause that’s long enough to notice, judge, reconsider, and perhaps to choose differently.
Open ThinkeringDoug Belshaw

Over at Thought Shrapnel, I published:

THE FUTURE IS OFFLINE
Source: maique
Thought Shrapnel
Having a system built on context puts the power in the people’s hands
This post is by a journalist, talking about journalism. But it’s not a huge conceptual leap to think about this in terms of education. The people who are stuck in the AI = chatbot are getting it all wrong. Interacting with an AI is an amazing way of connecting together things you care about in an order that suits you and the way you learn. It’s not just about sitting kids in front of a computer, but about finding ways of exploring human knowledge in ways that go beyond the limited experience of the people who happen to be available for guidance.
Thought Shrapnel
Renewable energy: 98% of days in Britain are either windy, sunny, or both
I discovered this particular one via LinkedIn, but the original creators of this infographic, Ember Energy, has loads of them on their website – mainly focused on the EU. Source: LinkedIn
Thought Shrapnel
Grand ambitions vs reality
It’s not just walking, but solo travel of any sort that does this kind of thing to me. I’ve spent too long at home recently. Source: Are.na
Thought Shrapnel
The concentration of power in AI labs is now one of the defining political questions of the decade
This is an excellent post which talks lucidly about what it means for power to be decentralised in the world of AI. The author, Alex Chalmers, argues that decentralisation is not automatically good; it only works when embedded in a framework that can coordinate local actors, define boundaries, and step in when things go wrong. Chalmers draws on historical thinkers and different traditions, ultimately arguing that if we care about pluralism and autonomy, we should design bounded decentralisation with explicit constitutional guardrails.
Thought Shrapnel

Reading, Listening, and Watching

I didn't particularly enjoy Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh, so I gave up half way through the week, and started re-reading the excellent There Is No Antimemetics Division by qntm.

As I was so busy with work, I purposely didn't listen to any podcasts or watch anything, because I needed the headspace. (I did, obviously, watch football.)

Working

So much work this week:

  • Finishing up the Amnesty International UK community platform pilot by presenting our evaluation report to the senior leadership team.
  • Submitting a technical report and video walkthrough of a potential solution to INASP for their Rising Scholars website project.
  • Working on the final blog post and meeting with our accountant r.e. WAO closing next week
  • Meeting with participants before the workshop for the Digital Badges Proof of Concept.
  • Running the first session for the TechFreedom pilot cohort with Tom Watson.
  • Getting set up on the MIT system so that I can start work with Kerri Lemoie about some work I'm going to be doing for the DCC around Wallet Attached Storage and ZKPs.
  • Working on proposals with Abi Handley (Surfers Against Sewage) and Tom (CIVICUS) which took much longer than I thought.
  • Meeting up with Justin Spooner for a bit of a chat about AI and all the things.
  • Starting work on 10(!) new systems thinking tools which are a bit more advanced than the Sightlines tools. I think these ones might be paid-for as a whole suite.

Personal

Just trying to get to the gym and not be at my computer all the time. As I mentioned at the top of this post, I got out for a walk today, but I have been very much cooped up in my office.

Yesterday, I painted the door of my office – something I've been meaning to do for the (almost) full year since it's been built. It's looking pretty good.

Next week

It's going to be a busy and emotional one, work-wise. The last day of WAO is Thursday, and then Laura goes on sabbatical for an unspecified amount of time. I will very much miss working with her on a day-to-day basis. It's the end of an era.

I'm tired and I need to go to bed. So that's what I'm going to do. 🥱