Matt Locke

If you like getting awesome stuff in the post, my (award winning!) illustrator wife has just started Character Club, which will send you two A5 prints and stories through your letter box every month. Just £12 a month, or £10 if you use the code EARLY BIRD www.posthou.se/characterclub

“In 2000 there were no food banks in the UK. There are now over 2,800. Over the same period the number of billionaires in the UK went from around 30 to around 150.” Composer @matthewherbert.bsky.social has a new album out today entitled theukhasmorefoodbanksthanbranchesofmcdonalds.com

In 2008, Six to Start made We Tell Stories for Penguin Books: six experimental online stories by six authors in six weeks. It won Best of Show at SXSW Interactive and ended up in MoMA. With the 20th anniversary approaching, I wrote about how we built it...

my very talent illustrator wife Holly Swain has a new monthly physical subscription service. For just £12, you can get two A5 art prints sent to you as a lovely actual physical thing into your letterbox. It will be delightful! www.posthou.se/characterclub

Walked into an Edinburgh pub last week. Next to the mirror in the men's room was this sign. In light of our national discussion around rape culture, we need to remind all men that they have the power to stop this. Be that guy. Hats off to that-guy.co.uk

Occupy Wall Street started 15 years ago today. I was in NYC that November, and went to check it out and take some pictures: www.flickr.com/photos/matlo...

Youth clubs, trade unions, pubs: here's how Burnham can fix Britain's social recession | Gordon Brown

seb made a useful eclipse-view-tester sebbacon.github.io/eclipse-find...

@moongolfer.com @lloydshepherd.com have you seen this? readingmaps.com

Wrote two lines of Javascript to make news websites actually look like what they *feel* like to me

I like the granularity of this calculator by @dantaylorwatt.com of your personal AI environmental footprint. I find the moral panic about AI on ecological grounds a bit tiresome so it's good to have some apparently well-sourced data to work with: www.dantaylorwatt.com/ai/ai-enviro...

binface vs farage vs lawrence fox is like el classico for “different ways your mate’s dad could end up taking the divorce”

I love British politics sometimes.

🧵 New working paper out today: "Measuring the Regional Economic Cost of Brexit: Evidence as of 2026" with @jacobedenhofer.bsky.social @trfetzer.com & Shizhuo Wang Here's what the data say about who paid the price in these 10 years from the referendum 1/…

And we are live! Follow the global launch of the Digital News Report 2026 in the link below Speakers include lead author Jim Egan, our director Mitali Mukherjee and media managers Emily Kent Smith, Kamal Ahmed and Simon Robinson #DNR26 reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/digital-news...

Today's announcement of social media bans reminded me of the excellent work Fiona Romeo and Hannah Richardson did for my BBC team on scenarios for childrens' online safety in 2004. I revisited the scenarios in 2015, and looking again today, there's a lot they got right: test.org.uk/2015/01/15/b...

Americans would rather crowdfund an airline than try socialism: letsbuyspiritair.com

Theatre Europe: whyisthisinteresting.substack.com/p/the-theatr...

Every time I read AI leaders predicting a world in which everyone loses their jobs but them, I think about Carolyn Marvin’s excellent phrase “Cognitive Imperialism” in her book ‘When Old Technologies Were New’:

If you honestly believe the only reason problems haven’t been solved is because you weren’t in charge, you need a therapist, not a job in Downing Street. Thoughts on civil service reform. howtorunacountry.substack.com/p/going-for-...

Fascinating indication of the rise in political frustration. Use of the phrase "for too long" in Hansard in my lifetime.

Nice write-up of our women and the future of AI panel at the Royal Society last week www.newscientist.com/article/2519...

Remember soft power? It went out of fashion. Too “soft” for the right. Too “power“ for the left. But just as critical as ever. A despatch from Serbia, where I’m part of a project to build cooperation on science and tech. open.substack.com/pub/howtorun...

@hollygramazio.bsky.social I got The Husbands for my birthday (it’d been on my list for a while) and absolutely loved it! Read it in a few days, and can’t wait for the TV show!

The one time I saw Habermas speak was at the 2006 ICA conference in Dresden. I remember a few things from his talk, but one detail that really stands out is how he warned us all that “we must not let the public sphere become just another market.” And that’s basically exactly what happened.

I have some reflections on the constitutional-democratic chaos that Britain is encountering, in the age of 5+ party politics. It's hard to see how we get from this to the kind of 'bold' and 'radical' government that (consensus has it) everyone is calling for right now www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

This is where we are with the findings on our foresight review www.lrfoundation.org.uk/news/an-end-... if you're working on sociotechnical assurance or safety by design am v keen to hear of best practice ...

Making enshittification a consumer protection concern: Bravo Norway!

Why we all need a little more friction in our lives - in a slippery age. howtorunacountry.substack.com/p/in-praise-...

So I made an app. It didn't go well. tomloosemorework.wordpress.com/2026/02/23/l...

There is something about the word “middle” that triggers discomfort in political and commercial life. We are hunting for unicorns or cherishing our neighbourhood coffee cart. But the middle isn't middling: the middle is the best bit. My latest piece. howtorunacountry.substack.com/p/this-is-mid

This by the excellent @jburnmurdoch.ft.com confirms my view that political trends are being driven by the halting of the upward economic conveyor belt - striking charts: www.ft.com/content/30a4... Welcome to the age of zero-sum politics

New @carefultrouble.bsky.social paper out today with a whole bevy of academic partners, on the impacts of AI in urban environments. As the plan for AI Growth Zones starts to roll out, we find innovation policy is disconnected from the real impacts of AI on people and places

The Careful Consequence Checker, a free, self-directed tool for understanding the impacts of building, buying or adopting an AI-powered product or service www.careful.industries/consequences Thank you @rachelcoldicutt.bsky.social

NEW on our website @rasmuskleis.bsky.social chaired a commission tasked by the Danish gov to design a system of direct media subsidies. In this piece he explains how they conceived their proposal and what other countries could learn from it reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/news/taxes-n...

I agree with @arusbridger.bsky.social about BBC governance. Although v hesitant about another rearrangement, the single corporate-style board is massively flawed, not least because there needs to be some distance for the governors/board members from editorial decisions

Good quote from Peter Bazalgette in this: "We could have had a strategy for public service media and its survival five or ten years ago" Thing is, quite a lot of us were writing that strategy *20* years ago, but no one noticed.

This is not the gift of a government. This is the gift of the sun. And it has some really interesting implications… #actuallyexistingsolarpunk

Did not expect one of the best paragraphs I’d read about baseball would come from an Irish newspaper www.irishexaminer.com/sport-column...

Excited to see the first issue of @equatormag.bsky.social now here www.equator.org

It’s nice that MLB are growing the game in the UK by [checks notes] extending World Series games till we all wake up.

For over 50 years, the Booker Prizes have recognised the best fiction for adults. Now, we're delighted to announce the Children’s Booker Prize, supported by AKO Foundation. Find out more: thebookerprizes.com/children

I wrote about what it was like to go online for the first time 30 years ago. How hard and complicated it seemed, and then how amazing this entirely new world was. Including some extracts from my 1995 diary. www.gyford.com/phil/writing...

As reported by BBC News today, being prepared to respond to a cyber-attack is now a critical business priority. We worked with the Local Government Association and a range of partners to develop the ‘Cyber Incident Grab Bag’ for local authorities. public.digital/pd-insights/...

Today my @nytimes.com colleagues and I are launching a new series called Lost Science. We interview US scientists who can no longer discover something new about our world, thanks to this year‘s cuts. Here is my first interview with a scientist who studied bees and fires. Gift link: nyti.ms/3IWXbiE

Rather than unlocking UK community power, successive govts' digital policies have been focussed on Silicon Valley-style success. By me for @powertochange.org.uk, on why digital social policy is a necessary building block for a stronger society www.powertochange.org.uk/evidence-and...

Running a second Ofcom Q&A event for folks that run small, low-risk websites who have questions about Online Safety Act compliance. Send your Qs (using the booking form) by 15 Oct. buttondown.com/indie-and-co... (also not sure if everyone on the mailing list received the email, so please share!)