Making the most of the tube strike

Diabetes monitoring is an example of need. Seems to work fine in many schools without a law.

I love the key message of Mark’s book built on many years of working both with the best researchers and all of us trying to live as well we can and support others to do so too.

I'm working on a foresight review on the safe adoption of AI in complex and engineered systems. Just back from a very intense and brilliant week in Kenya, working with all kinds of experts, and I've never felt more strongly that human knowledge(s) & capabilities are *amazing*

It says seasonal English produce which seems reasonable given what can be grown and what therefore what is traditional in spring

From Disaster to Framework: How the Loss of Titanic Reshaped Maritime Safety On the 100th anniversary of the sinking of RMS Titanic, Louise Sanger, Head of Research, Interpretation and Engagement at Lloyd's Register Foundation's Heritage Centre, considers why the sinking matte...

Change often happens only after a disaster - risk salience is suddenly super high, never again is on people’s minds often rightly. Positive events can also be a catalyst to collective action eg as Spirit 2012 showed.

This looks at the impact of the Titanic

www.lrfoundation.org.uk/news/from-di...

Join me & a great panel for the latest World Risk Poll findings in June.

This time we’ve asked a lot about experience of climate and weather including new questions on droughts and wildfires as we all adapt to a changing climate.

What’s new? A fully redesigned experience, clearer routes from the homepage, and a powerful search covering 1.3 million+ collection records.

Explore here: heritage.lrfoundation.org.uk

Our new Heritage Centre website is live. After a year of behind-the-scenes work, it’s now easier to explore our collection and stories—and to get to the material that matters, quickly.

Embrace the mundane: small talk is more fun and important than we think Even chit-chat on ‘boring’ topics such as onions and maths can be pleasurable and good for our mental health, scientists find

Small moments of positive social connection build trust & relationships and they also lift our mood. We need more of these than we think because we notice them less than negative interactions
Embrace the mundane: small talk is more fun and important than we think

www.thetimes.com/article/5233...

100 this. And sadly wellbeing policy also did this in the levelling up mission 8 metrics focusing on deficit

There was a massively accelerated generational shift away from early couples that was already started in 60s & 70s and became the norm rather than the minority. whatworkswellbeing.org/resources/tr...

Some thinking on it here. Family was always part of wellbeing policy but exceptionally hard to operationalise. Goal = Wanted and loved children in families & communities of all types that can support each other. whatworkswellbeing.org/blog/explori...

I don’t think so. It’s what well-being policy was aiming to do in all areas. But on this it’s also partly the medicalisation of the solution to unwanted pregnancy so it can be health policy and what is/isn’t the role of the state vs what was the church and is now private.

What’s odd is that there is a legit point that a lot of effort was (successfully) spent getting young pregnancy down but far less effort on helping families happen better overall. Avoiding what we don’t want but not building what we do.

Still slightly astonished that this heart-mind connection including the effect of music (CreativeHealth) is on the front cover. This is quite the journey for a field in twenty years I’ve worked in it. Next the gut-heart-mind interaction. interested in its application? follow @ncch.bsky.social

And it was all Yellow 🤩

It ends up being about three jobs if you’re a minister -
1) constituency/public facing - this has got both bigger and far less status
2) party/parliament
3) department/government

Here are some ways the world has gotten better.

Sir Brian Langstaff has closed the infected blood inquiry today. His letter to ministers includes a really fascinating appendix commentary on his view on public inquiries going forward: www.infectedbloodinquiry.org.uk/sites/defaul...

This is a similar reason to why archives matter for collective memory, how a nation learns, sometimes why just a diagnosis matters on its own and why the adversarial nature of the court system (whilst generally good) doesn’t always get at the need.

Children ‘incentivised’ to get ADHD and autism diagnoses, say experts A report into overdiagnosis and the increase in demand for mental health services has suggested that common childhood behaviours are being medicalised

Re Children ‘incentivised’ to get ADHD and autism diagnoses, say experts

www.thetimes.com/article/9a1d...

The big rise in mental illness was from 2018 when policy switched from focus on mental well-being in 2010 to mental illness.

This ➡️

we have
-not been clear about what awareness of mental health is for
-encouraged people to recognise distress & seek help.
-been less clear about how to stay well

Are Britons really getting cheerier? Our feedback suggests so Negative responses in Britain have fallen dramatically over the past decade, say HappyOrNot, a supplier of ‘smiley face’ button terminals

Domain satisfaction eg how satisfied are you with X or Y was also part of the wellbeing measures introduced in 2011.

The life satisfaction - happiness - gets the 👀 but service feedback 😃 😔 worked too

Are Britons really getting cheerier? Our feedback suggests so

www.thetimes.com/article/5eb4...

Line chart of representative lithium-ion battery cell prices in US dollars per kilowatt-hour from 1991 to 2024, where prices fall steeply, declining about 99% from roughly $9,200 per kilowatt-hour in 1991 to about $78 per kilowatt-hour in 2024. The data source is Rupert Way (2026) based on Ziegler and Trancik (2021), BloombergNEF, and Avicenne Energy. The chart is licensed CC BY to Our World in Data.

✍️ New article: Battery costs have declined by 99% in the last three decades, making electrified transport a reality—

Over 20 million electric cars were sold globally in 2025 — some for as little as $10,000. Even just two decades ago, that would have been impossible.

The reason it's possible now?

5th risk plus… institutional social capital

The organisation innovation and professional knowledge capital clustering happens alongside the technical innovation growing and sustaining it and is often forgotten.

This is a great very helpful way to look at it. The social capital literature would essentially say it’s social norms as scale and hopefully organising goodness.

How to measure a good life – tips for moving beyond GDP Including human and environmental capital paints a different picture of national economies than does GDP alone.

GDP has 2 major gaps
1 when a human produces a service, but no economic transaction occurs. Eg Cooking a family meal as no payment is made.

2 when no human is involved in production Eg, natural water purification & pollination are missing from national accounts

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

We probably managed to smooth its impact a bit esp from 2011-2018 too