Alastair Somerville

Alastair Somerville

@acuity.design

Clarity and kindness as foundations for work. Information perception in physical & digital places. Facilitation and workshop design for codesign and civic assemblies. Public prototyping on BlueSky. He/him

3.7K followers1.3K following16.7K posts

Alastair Somerville
@acuity.design

Too much AI offered with less capacity than Teletubbies say Eh Oh youtu.be/k4e6TOLi_as?...

youtu.beTeletubbies say "Eh-oh!" 🎵 Music Video 🎵YouTube video by Teletubbies - WildBrain
Karl Flinders@karlfl.bsky.social

"Comprehensively Failed": Capita's AI Pension Promise Exposed as Empty 🚨 the "most AI-enabled pensions service" promised to government simply never existed. www.computerweekly.com/news/3666527...

computerweekly.comCapita ‘comprehensively failed’ on Civil Service pension artificial intelligence promise | Computer WeeklyMinister says she will ‘hold Capita’s feet to the fire’ as MPs wade in with distressing stories from affected constituents.
Alastair Somerville
@acuity.design

However prepared you are at an individual level, you still need community and systems to hold more capability than you can. The government could help if it offered ways of connecting neighbours together rather than individual consumerising risk and response. #Prepping #GetReady

Alastair Somerville
@acuity.design

Prototype cards for people's assembly on conduct and comfort - the pre-event invitation contains more. These are reminders for placing on tables.

Alastair Somerville
@acuity.design

From 1984, how #Claude artificially reflects and simplifies the complexity of real life. Claude Glass rather than #ClaudeAI but the physical resemblance of 18th century technology to 21st century laptop is interesting.

Alastair Somerville
@acuity.design

“Arendt described totalitarianism as, among other things, a vision for the absolute closure of the future, against all alternatives” This is why Doomism works well for authoritarians/believers/techbros. The end/apocalypse/singularity they choose is anti-diversity and pure in its finality

Alastair Somerville
@acuity.design

As with Trump, that failing upwards to avoid consequences and responsibility. His failure to win Presidency leads to prison not political opposition.

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Alastair Somerville
@acuity.design

Talking about the value of experts on Friday and how demanding they explain complexity simply is not the point. Trust experts to work with ideas and issues that are incomprehensibly hard for most people.

Alastair Somerville
@acuity.design

This is the Value Capture problem of The Score. Experts who lose their expertise because only their simple explanations and easily quantified work is requested or rewarded. Yet it is the impossibility of easy that is the point of their deep skills.

Alastair Somerville
@acuity.design

“Oppenheimer doing a fundraising TikTok while the Trinity bomb explodes behind him” vibes (Also it’s BS emotional manipulation with all this whiplash from good to evil)

Alastair Somerville reposted

Hugo Spiers
@hugospiers.bsky.social

A vector navigation and inference architecture can construct universal cognitive maps for abstract reasoning www.cell.com/current-biol...

cell.comA vector navigation and inference architecture can construct universal cognitive maps for abstract reasoningBicanski proposes an algorithm and neural mechanisms for the iterative construction of abstract cognitive maps via non-local inference. Map positions are triangulated and memorized by a set of extant ...
Alastair Somerville
@acuity.design

God I hated having to convert nail sizes and shipment weights into Imperial for US business.

Dr Craig Dalȝell@thecommongreen.scot

There's a very simple reason that this won't happen. A party founded on "cutting costs" and "common sense politics" has just told the entire logistics sector that it wants to needlessly increase their shipping costs. www.thenational.scot/news/2666878...

thenational.scotReform UK plan to 'bring back imperial measurements'REFORM UK have set out dozens of measures they claim would help create jobs, including support for the Rosebank oil field and other North Sea projects along with policies including a return to the wid...
Alastair Somerville
@acuity.design

Last attempt at pedestrianisation collapsed when residents complained that the new space would just be both empty and full of yoof. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre... New community spaces need structures of communal purpose

theguardian.comWe’ve made Oxford Street traffic-free – and that’s just the start. Soon there’ll be green spaces for arts and music too | Sadiq KhanWe’ll revive the in-person shopping experience with a transformation of the area, inspired by the John Lewis and Selfridges founders who first set up there, says London mayor Sadiq Khan
Alastair Somerville
@acuity.design

'There is no such keeper liability on statutory land, so if the keeper declines to confirm who was driving, the parking operator is powerless. Operators don’t, of course, want you to know this' On stopping quickly in airport red zones: airports are statutory land www.theguardian.com/money/2026/o...

theguardian.comStung with a parking fine for an 18-second airport stop to tackle a waspNo matter what the cause, airports are ruthless in issuing PCNs if a car stops in a red zone. But there is a get-out clause

Alastair Somerville reposted

Pavel
@spavel.bsky.social

In their quest for velocity, managers identified a critical bottleneck: themselves. Now they are automating away the very work of leadership - determining what is most valuable to work on, and aligning everyone around those goals. The result: worse outcomes, delivered faster than ever before.

productpicnic.com"Accelerating" alignment is anti-designCurating our workloads is also part of "design taste". Settling for low-hanging fruit is bad design.
Alastair Somerville
@acuity.design

Community event discussion and how much the poster should say about how the group feels about issues and answers. More defined and explicit, the more people are dis-invited. That’s fine but know you are doing it.

Alastair Somerville
@acuity.design

This came up in #Prepping book Self-care and preparation takes pressure off communities and institutions during a crisis. They can concentrate on care for other people and maybe you can offer ask to offer help too. Resilience is in self care and mutual aid

Create the Ripple@createtheripple.bsky.social

“You are not kind to yourself when you neglect your needs for the needs of others.” Nedra Glover Tawwab Filling our own cup means recognising that our wellbeing matters. A little more self-kindness and permission to put our own needs first. 🧡 #SelfCare #Kindness Art by mentalhealthwithemma

Alastair Somerville
@acuity.design

Issue with project that is trying to invite more people in but the complexity is emergent and the complication is deep so every explanation just pushes people away. The need for experts to be trusted hold these things because they are hard and inexplicable.

Alastair Somerville
@acuity.design

In the theory of #facilitation equivalent of this theory of change slide Have a theory, tell people there is one but you don’t need to explain it to them in grinding detail. The explanation becomes the exclusion as more words and jargon widen gaps between people.

Alastair Somerville
@acuity.design

The UK #BeReady campaign will probably hit the problems we’ve had in Stroud with building a resilience group. There’s many stresses between people and systems designed for years of crisis and austerity and people wanting systems that anticipate crisis and collapse. How to bridge that? #prepping

Alastair Somerville reposted

George Monbiot
@georgemonbiot.bsky.social

Sure, we should, if we can (many cannot). But as I keep pointing out, the government itself is making no provision at all. No stockpiles, no back-up, no alternative sources. It's individuating the response to a collective problem, and that never ends well. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

theguardian.comEvery Briton should stockpile water and food supplies, government advisesBe Ready campaign aims to prepare UK for impact of climate crisis, technological dependency and threats by hostile state
Alastair Somerville
@acuity.design

Reading Red Prepper now - individual prepping reduces strain on systems during moments of failure. However, it’s not the wider or longer term solution.

Alastair Somerville
@acuity.design

Spent a while discussing/content designing metaphors and language for local people’s assembly on connection and neighbourism. Invitations going out today. It’s a start of a process of meeting and learning how to build resilience.

Alastair Somerville
@acuity.design

In Sainsbury’s with one app saying it’s unusable and retired so must use new app while new app says it’s not ready and to come back later