Highlights
Nearly half a bicycle
The atomic theory in Kilburn — This place (on Kilburn High Road) has been morphing steadily from dry cleaner’s to bike shop over the last few years. I remember being surprised one morning to see a few kids’ bikes lined up for sale outside but I’d say the shop is now approaching 50% bike shop. […]
Where is my patriotism?
Come, love of country, fill my heart… — I do love Britain. I guess I love England more. London most of all. I hope that in my life I’ve honoured the place I live and not disgraced it or undermined it (I support England and GB in sporting events – I fly a little flag […]
Some bullet-points about regulation
In case you’d got the wrong idea about how the ’regulatory state‘ is supposed to work — UPDATED 23 May 2025. I could update this thing daily. Regulation is always a news story in the UK (Search any news service for ‘regulation‘ right now and you’ll get a long list of current news stories about […]
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Podcasting—the platform battle
UPDATE 2026. When I updated this post in 2022 I concluded I’d got it completely wrong about who would wind up dominating podcasting. Now I’m not so sure. UPDATE 2022.…
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Podcasting—welcome to the symphonic era
This is not about the 90% of podcasts that are still three people at a table talking about something. Nor is it about all those podcasts that are basically a…
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11 essentials for the modern podcast
This is one of a short series of posts about the evolution of podcasting. The first one’s about the new wave of ambitious, highly-produced storytelling formats – I’m calling it…
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Who is Trump?
A little Benito Mussolini, some John Gotti and some George Wallace. Plenty of Charles Lindbergh too, of course. But mainly he’s Rufus T. Firefly.
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Seven things I learnt from the British Library’s Magna Carta show
The British Library has a terrific, totally absorbing show about Magna Carta – which is the cornerstone of world democracy or a sort of baronial shopping list weirdly granted in…
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In praise of friction
Install Privacy Badger. It’s a plug-in from the EFF that blocks the nasty stuff that web site owners silently insert into your browser – tracking code, cookies and code from…
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The electro-mechanical sublime
I visited the quite amazing Museum of Pinball in Paris last weekend. It was a revelation. The pinball machine (‘Flipper’ in France) represents some kind of high point in pre-digital…
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Uber’s bubble
So it turns out that Uber isn’t just a neoliberal bulldozer, dismantling restrictive practices, labour codes, tax regimes and all that – according to this article at ValleyWag, it’s also…
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Hashtags are dead
The use of hashtags by brands and organisations is dead, is what I mean. We now know how trivially easy they are to weaponise. They’re big, slow-moving targets for propagandists…
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What’s wrong with atheists?
I’m an atheist. Just getting that out of the way. Because this is about a problem that I have with atheists. Not all atheists. Just the strident ones, the humourless…
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Tim Berners-Lee’s most important decision
Of the dozens of design decisions that TBL made during 1989, all of which continue to shape the way we build and use the web twenty-five years later, the most…
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School governors. Representative or professional. Choose one.
Last week I spent a few hours floor-walking at a Fair Field parents’ evening, drumming up interest in our parent governor vacancies (I’m chair of govs and a parent myself).…