David Heath

Polls just closed in the Brazilian presidential run off. Things are looking messy. Bolsonaro-affiliated mayors sabotaged public transport in at least ten states. São Paulo reportedly has 29% of buses out of service. The Brazilian ⁠Supreme Court has just ordered ⁠voting hours ⁠extended by ​2 hours.

For #BlackHistoryMonth, we're highlighting the achievements of the Black scientists, mathematicians and engineers who have made their impact on the modern world. Read our thread below.

Do you want to learn about international institutions that are leading the way in #DemocraticDigitalisation? 📍 Join us in Barcelona on 27 October! 🌐 Open Technologies Policy Summit: Digital sovereignty strategies and open technologies 🔗 Register here: otw.decidim.barcelon...

Collaborative coding in an ensemble or mob has been a cornerstone of my work, and when you add agentic AI it needs different interaction patterns. My latest video and blog explain some of the things I've found to work. youtu.be/ydAin2IWaQo & coding-is-like-cooking.info/2026/10/agen...

Killing Anna is now available to watch for free in the UK on More4: "Taut, hard-hitting documentary. When Bashar al-Assad's murderous henchmen start to appear on Facebook, a Syrian academic spots a catfishing opportunity to get them to confess to their crimes." www.channel4.com/programmes/k...

The NHS Federated Data Platform: advice on public and professional trust www.gov.uk/government/p... Letter to UK Government from the outgoing National Data Guardian, Dr Nicola Byrne – with rather a strong whiff of I-told-you-so #NHSdata #patientdata #publicprocurement #techpolicy #Palantir

Andy Burnham confirms what previous PM's - May, Johnson, Truss, Sunak and Starmer - failed to, that Russia interfered in the Brexit referendum.

I spelled out "superpower suicide" in this essay from May 2026. Empires have risen and failed before, but to my knowledge no state has ever chosen to kill its own power, and succeeded with such rapidity. snyder.substack.com/p/on-superpo...

never the wrong time for this classic

Today, 8 years ago, my friend, Saudi Journalist and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi was murdered.

I'm not sure if y'all saw a CNN report on how the US had almost started WW3 with China based on fabricated information generated by a chatbot, claiming that a Chinese vessel was carrying components of nuclear weapons. That was an "existential threat" to humanity www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Around 40% of the world's dirty money, proceeds of corruption and crime, is laundered through the UK, its Crown Dependencies and Overseas Territories. Successive govts promise new laws and enforcement but they make little impact. Why do govts continue to fail? Watch the Minister's reply.

Climate change isn’t just about heatwaves and emissions targets. When climate and nature loss affect food, migration, economies and geopolitical stability, they become national security issues too. That conversation is long overdue. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

🎉 Acorn is officially open. You can now create a space for your community on the open social web - no wait required. acorn.blacksky.community

Ireland/Dublin @loudowne.bsky.social is doing a mini book launch event with @ncad-ireland.bsky.social design labs on the 7th October in the evening. Tickets in the post below!

More than 500 children are now in shelters, their parents missing or declared dead since the August 26 floods.

I’m not scared, I’m angry. My sites still work, as I have spent a lot of time dealing with the issue (especially last week when scrapers started to overload the server). I wouldn’t even care about them scraping (for my specific things) if they had any indication of community, care or consideration

Wow

The US Web Design System is load-bearing infrastructure for thousands of government websites. It makes it easy for small teams with no resources (i.e. most .gov teams) to make usable, accessible websites that work for everyone. Today, it's as close as it's ever been to being replaced with AI slop.

The hospitality industry are back lobbying for a VAT cut They don't mention the cost: £12bn They don't mention who gets the £: ❌ The smallest most vulnerable businesses? Get nothing ❌ Consumers? Prices won't fall ✅ McDonald's gets £400m. Big chains are big winners 🧵:

As I've mentioned ad nauseum, I've spent my summer writing up the foresight review on safe adoption of AI in engineering that I've been working on for the past year (will be published in December). At the heart of it are some observations about AI safety culture (which is the hottest of hot messes)

Apparently the commander of the International Space Station brought her dancing pants to space with her

Breaking News! Code: y-Axis Alert! On September 11th, the preliminary Nino 3.4 sea-surface temperature measured 2.98°C above the 1991-2020 mean, which was 4.03 standard deviations above the mean. No previous year has broken 3SD. The Climate 8-ball is feeling oblong.

OWASP OASIS is now an official OWASP project. A community of application security specialists validating AI-generated fixes for open source vulnerabilities, so maintainers get patches they can actually trust and use.www.owasp-oasis.org/.... Free to join: owasp-oasis.org #AppSec #OpenSource

At our September meetup, we will hear what #digitalSovereignty entails, why it’s desirable and how we get there. We will hear from @sovereign.tech’s @powen.net, @digitalservice.bund.de’s Anke O​bendiek & @deloittedigi.bsky.social’s Lisa Steigertahl. Join us on Wed, 9 Sept at @tsbberlin.bsky.social

Solo working, not just screen time, has driven the surge in time young adults spend alone More in our latest research ➡️ buff.ly/v7pfxOa

Remember that if you got the Moderna Covid vaccine, you have Dolly Parton to thank, she gave the largest individual contribution toward their research to make it possible.

Mountain glaciers are losing mass increasingly fast world-wide over the past 75 years in response to #globalwarming. This and permafrost thawing can destabilize mountain sides and cause glacial collapse and flash floods. Graph: World Glacier Monitoring Service wgms.ch/global-glaci...

I’m delighted to be hosting a press conference organised by MIND and Rethink later today which introduces a pioneering new way of organising mental health care proven to reduce hospital admissions & improve quality of life for patients. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

It’s really important that independent organisations can hold Government to account. I’m on the Board of @nao.org.uk which does this and we are looking for two new Board members. Could you help spread the word so we can get the best possible field of candidates roles.saxbam.com/advert-detai...

The machinery of government now having its cogs re-engaged, yet another automated account from everyone's favourite Library. Should you be partial to computers. kulcha, meeja or sports, @ddcms-answers.bsky.social may well be for you. Why not be the first to follow?

Is this just business as usual in politics? No. Approval rates of federal disaster aid requests were about the same regardless of the state and did not vary much with the party of the President. This graph powerfully conveys the scale of the partisan discrimination now.

🔥 Subscriptions are 30% off ahead of a new climate-focused edition of Byline Times If you subscribe in the next few days: crisis that is no longer on the horizon. It’s happening here. It’s happening now. #SUMMERSALE

It started with the UK's Government Digital Service, public-spirited hackers (many ex- of the BBC, where they'd been tempest-tossed by endless internal power-struggles over the internet in public service media) who retooled many of the UK government's most important administrative front-ends. 12/

Hardly a day goes by without my getting email from someone looking for ways to do good with tech. From computer science students thinking about post-grad careers to seasoned coders with decades of experience, there's an army of hackers looking for a way to turn their expertise into public goods. 1/

Elinor Ostrom the first woman to win a Nobel in #economics was born today 7th August 1933, she worked on commons ownership, deep democracy and tackling #climatechange. We should respect her rules for radicals! www.plutobooks.com/product/elin...

Hellenistic mosaic glass bowl, cobalt blue with yellow/green spirals, fire-polished, with diameter of 5in (13 cm), dating from 2nd/3rd century BC. Convincing 3-D effect of spirals when seen in detail (at R). For details of the ancient technique used, see www.bonhams.com/auctions/113...

A rich curation of agile history. Huge effort to bring this together with care and helpful commentary.

Aaron Swartz deserves more justice and reconsideration than almost anybody in this century

Leaders of flag-raising group Raise the Colours Oxfordshire placed trackers on highway workers’ cars to find out their home addresses, the High Court has heard. RTC then attempted to intimidate the highway staff into no longer removing flags by repeating their addresses to them.

“The Civil Service substitutes process for leadership, reorganisations tor transformation, assurance rituals for taking personal accountability and being bold, business cases for doing something, micromanagement for trust and empowerment. That needs to change but how will it?”

In a total coincidence I've just read this great article from @peterdt847.bsky.social about the early GDS era . www.civilservicereformuk.com/single-post/... I really enjoyed it and agreed with the majority but it has a few bits that caused me to give it a bit of a side-eye