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Imperial Nostalgia
Boris Johnson: ‘People around the world are going ‘wow – they’ve made this incredible decision to go global”. John Simpson: ‘This is certainly not my experience. From US to China to India to South Africa, people I’m hearing from think we’re opting for imperial nostalgia.’
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Fresh Hope
I belong to a community church – and last weekend we gathered up our families and spent a retreat in a woodland adventure centre outside London. There was fresh hope, so I took some. It tasted good.
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My First Ten Parkruns
Emojis can articulate anything. This is the cycle that got me hooked on running, thanks to my son and of course Parkrun (the weekly timed, volunteer-driven 5km run/jog/walk.) Taken from this edition of the Visual Thinkery newsletter.
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First Principles
Nothing’s ever fair, is it? If you’d like to wilfully lose 13 minutes of your busy life, you could watch this video on what makes a fair dice. What are the chances that you make it all the way to the end? Less than 1 in 6, I’d say…
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Demonising the binaries
When I was growing up, eggs were good for you. Then they weren’t. Then they were good again. Then just the egg white was good. Binaries are so often unhelpful – especially when they are just a shortcut for not having to use your own brain. This is also the case in environmental activism, as…
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Privacy in Sub-Saharan Africa
Business behaviour around use and exploitation of people’s data, is dictated by the local privacy law (or lack thereof). Julie Owono was speaking at Mozfest on research into sub-saharan subsidiaries of European telecoms companies. It’s no surprise really – capitalism is about capital, so everything is a possible resource waiting to be exploited.
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Data in Oppressive Regimes
At Mozfest, I participated in a discussion on the use (monitoring / controlling / blocking) of data in oppressive regimes. Hearing the issues first hand from those who live there was horrifying. I realised how much I was completely unaware of. One clear call was the need for financially supporting homegrown communication platforms, as opposed…
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Equity Unbound
It was great to be back at Mozfest this weekend. And whaddayaknow, I got the chance to catch the #unboundeq (equity unbound) team explain what their project is all about. I’d seen the hashtag floating around on Twitter – but when engaging with a think, it’s dialogue that gets me going – and listening. So I…
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Penguin Against Plastic
Penguin Against Plastic says: Give plastic the flipper!
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A very troublesome border
“…because division is what borders do best…” This illustration is from my newsletter. You should really subscribe. It’s full of pictures. You can also follow the Irish Border on twitter these days. As you can imagine, it has a lot to say. I made this image using the Visual Thinkery Remixer platform. A little browser app…
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Here may lie an Open Badge programme. Time for a pre-mortem…
Last week I was facilitating a Think-a-thon with a WeAreOpen client in Edinburgh alongside co-op member Grainne Hamilton. We were helping our client to think through the integration of an Open Badge programme into their current offering. The Pre Mortem is an extremely helpful way to air intuitive spider-sense discomforts amongst the team, without anyone…
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19 Alternative Anniversaries
We’re married 19 years – what is that? Nearly Sapphire? Stainless Steel? Blotting paper? This year, instead of writing me a card to mark our 19th wedding anniversary, my wife thought it would be a good idea to come up with a list of alternative anniversaries. So, over a shared plate of restaurant nachos, we…
Er… hello?
This is a blog of openly licensed thinkery. They are doodles, thoughts and ideas of Bryan Mathers – little curious tidbits which have emerged from juicy conversations. Also, this is a dumping ground for abandoned artwork. But one man’s dump is another’s treasure trove – amirite?
You can include artwork from this site under a Creative Commons CC-BY-ND licence.