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Rod McLaren

@rodm.bsky.social
172 followers 247 following 53 posts

Writing words for climate and digital, for orgs like Sport England, FF, ustwo, Public Digital, [redacted] and you. Ex Co-op, Mobbu, ECK.L, F365. Was @rod in the other place.

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Rod McLaren @rodm.bsky.social · 01/02/2026
Murmuration! @sarahtgold.bsky.social
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Rod McLaren @rodm.bsky.social · 08/12/2025
Most pieces should be 3, or 2, or 1 thing only? www.holdfastprojects.com/3-2-1 (and not 6 things like that illustration)
holdfastprojects.com
Most pieces should be 3, 2 or 1 things - Rod McLaren: Words that work
Present 3 things. Or decide between 2 options. Or show 1 thing. And whichever you choose, the piece should have only 1 aim. OK, sometimes a piece
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Rod McLaren @rodm.bsky.social · 28/11/2025
Guderian bosses Evri's hardest route, Patton remains loyal to Amazon
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Rod McLaren @rodm.bsky.social · 08/11/2025
closed 689 browser tabs, is that bad
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Rod McLaren @rodm.bsky.social · 05/09/2025
Is your system accountable to Newton, Darwin or Octavia Butler? www.holdfastprojects.com/accountable-...
holdfastprojects.com
Is your system accountable to Newton, Darwin or Octavia Butler? - Rod McLaren: Words that work
1 September 2025 Woodrow Wilson, 1908: “government is not a machine, but a living thing. It falls, not under the theory of the universe, but under
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Rod McLaren @rodm.bsky.social · 25/07/2025
Great list of working in the open examples by @gilestur.bsky.social . Challenge for product and comms teams: in an quanty era of metrics, how do we *prove* the value to orgs of working in the open?
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Rod McLaren @rodm.bsky.social · 17/06/2025
Recommended: Estimating digital carbon emissions workshop www.holdfastprojects.com/greenweb - by @mrchrisadams.bsky.social‬ and Katrin Fritsch of Green Web Foundation - helpful on measuring emissions of digital services, and energising!
holdfastprojects.com
Recommended: Estimating digital carbon emissions workshop - Rod McLaren: Words that work
17 June 2025 I joined a really good workshop on Estimating digital carbon emissions by Chris Adams and Katrin Fritsch of the Green Web Foundation
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Rod McLaren @rodm.bsky.social · 12/05/2025
Animals! Thoughtful discussion! This will be good
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Rod McLaren @rodm.bsky.social · 12/05/2025
the AIs don't know what their carbon emissions are www.holdfastprojects.com/chat-carbon-... , so does the first AI co to publish its emissions get a reputational boost?
holdfastprojects.com
Do the AIs know their carbon emissions? No. - Rod McLaren: Words that work
8 May 2025 Can the big AIs tell you what their carbon emissions are? On the whole, not really because no-one discloses emissions, so while some AIs
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Reposted by Rod McLaren
Rachel Coldicutt @rachelcoldicutt.bsky.social · 26/04/2025
If you're a UK-based technologist who's had enough of extractive platform capitalism and wants to act in solidarity to build something better, please fill in this survey and share with others www.careful.industries/blog/2025-4-...
careful.industries
Survey: Society for Hopeful Technologists — Careful Industries
Are you a UK-based technologist interested in joining a body that acts in solidarity against the excesses of extractive platform capitalism? Complete this survey to help shape the Society for Hopef...
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Rod McLaren @rodm.bsky.social · 25/04/2025
find yourself a confident team like this and let it rip (I still chuckle too!)
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Rod McLaren @rodm.bsky.social · 25/04/2025
You can put a carbon.txt file on your website so your org's sustainability disclosures are discoverable, says carbontxt.org. Er I think mine works www.holdfastprojects.com/carbon-text
carbontxt.org
carbon.txt makes sustainability data easier to discover and use on the web. Carbon.txt is a single, discoverable location on any web domain for public, machine-readable, sustainability data relating to that company.
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Reposted by Rod McLaren
Sarah Drummond @rufflemuffin.bsky.social · 23/04/2025
This work from FF studio 👏 Any org who provides grants/gives away money, take a look Applicable EVERYWHERE Supportive for users, good for orgs www.ff.studio/projects/gra... Big up Debs Durojaiye @abscond.org who worked on it Supported by @annagoss.co @eliotf.bsky.social @rodm.bsky.social
ff.studio
FF Studio - Why public sector grantmaking needs better tools
FF Studio - Don’t take grants for granted: why public sector funding needs better tools
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Anna Goss @annagoss.co · 22/04/2025
we've written up some work exploring what grants might look like if power between grantseeker:grantmaker got slightly reshuffled, and if the technology UK gov used to give out £46bn of grants was an enabler rather than a constraint. grab a brew, enjoy www.ff.studio/projects/gra...
ff.studio
FF Studio - Why public sector grantmaking needs better tools
FF Studio - Don’t take grants for granted: why public sector funding needs better tools
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Rod McLaren @rodm.bsky.social · 04/04/2025
last working day to top up ISAs and SIPPs this tax year, and several bonuses available for top ups and transfers
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Rod McLaren @rodm.bsky.social · 01/04/2025
Enforcing standards, better coordination and some market shaping can break vendor lock-in and improve local gov case management (social care, fostering etc) - a hard problem but necessary
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Rod McLaren @rodm.bsky.social · 25/03/2025
Change is hard. But possible.
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Reposted by Rod McLaren
priscilla page @priscillapage.bsky.social · 11/03/2025
decided to share my essay on The Fugitive since St. Patrick's Day aka Dr. Richard Kimble Day is nigh www.patreon.com/posts/fugiti...
closeup on Harrison Ford in The Fugitive, standing on a sidewalk, the city behind him is out of focus. he's wearing an outfit that's giving Redford in Three Days of the Condor - tweed jacket with popped collar, a chambray shirt, and a black skinny knit tie (with tiny red stripes that are impossible to make out here)
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Rod McLaren @rodm.bsky.social · 10/03/2025
There's a deadline coming up for state pension top ups: 5th April 2025 buttondown.com/checksies/ar... - @annagoss.co and i wrote about the deadlines to fill national insurance gaps that are older than 6 years. Could be useful for freelancers.
buttondown.com
✅ You've got a month to check your state pension
✅ Checksies Money things to read, money things to do. 7 March 2025 Hi, long time. This is Checksies. You signed up for it ages ago to get occasional money...
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Rod McLaren @rodm.bsky.social · 28/01/2025
Yes, wind farms sometimes make less energy during big storms www.holdfastprojects.com/feather_curt... (and even so we should still decarbonise our energy)
holdfastprojects.com
Yes, wind farms sometimes make less energy during big storms - Rod McLaren: Words that work
27 January 2025 More wind means more energy, except when the wind farm equipment must be protected or the grid balanced. Generators manage turbines
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Rod McLaren @rodm.bsky.social · 23/01/2025
Weird, that $500bn stargate ai infra project www.theverge.com/2025/1/21/24... is being built in a town that lent its name to a collective fallacy en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abilene...
theverge.com
OpenAI and Softbank are starting a $500 billion AI data center company
Nvidia, Microsoft, and Arm are among the technology partners.
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Rod McLaren @rodm.bsky.social · 24/12/2024
"all simian strolls in parker jackets" - good line
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Rod McLaren @rodm.bsky.social · 11/12/2024
great piece by @abscond.org on making Co-op membership matter more. In the same 2017ish era my take was: detach membership from Co-op-customer transactions and federate it www.holdfastprojects.com/radical-co-o...
holdfastprojects.com
Radical Co-op membership - Rod McLaren: Words that work
11 December 2024 James Darling’s A Proposal to Transform Co-op Membership for the Internet Age is great. My favourite bits - local, community
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Rod McLaren @rodm.bsky.social · 29/11/2024
Nick Sprinz's latest newsletter is about designing optimistic infrastructure mailchi.mp/ustwo/optimi... - featuring brilliant ideas from @debcha.bsky.social @sarahtgold.bsky.social tgold.bsky.social @soniaturcotte.bsky.social @rangetherapy.bsky.social @amymcnichol.bsky.social
mailchi.mp
Optimistic infrastructure
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Rod McLaren @rodm.bsky.social · 26/11/2024
Great writeup of a fund for Sport England by great designer-researcher @soniaturcotte.bsky.social - it was a privilege to work with such a good team and I learned a lot
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Rod McLaren @rodm.bsky.social · 12/11/2024
3 reasons to start by rewriting the words www.holdfastprojects.com/start-with-w... , feat @tomski.com @benunsworth.bsky.social @escmum.bsky.social
holdfastprojects.com
Start with words - Rod McLaren: Words that work
Organisations know they want to change, but they often assume that the only way to change is to do a big technology project. They call in some big
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Amy McNichol @amymcnichol.bsky.social · 12/11/2024
You can now pre-order the I Thought About That A Lot book! ithoughtaboutthatalot.com/shop It includes 23 essays that we’ve published on ithoughtaboutthatalot.com between 2020 and 2023. As well as 3 that will be part of this year's advent calendar.
ithoughtaboutthatalot.com
Shop – I thought about that a lot
A new anonymous essay published every day in December in the countdown to Christmas.
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Rod McLaren @rodm.bsky.social · 10/11/2024
Introduce yourself with some jobs you have done apart from what you do now. Pheasant plucker Dresser royal opera house London’s worst ship broker
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Rod McLaren @rodm.bsky.social · 08/10/2024
A quick way freelancers can guestimate their carbon emissions - www.holdfastprojects.com/freelancer-e...
holdfastprojects.com
A quick way freelancers can guestimate their carbon emissions - Rod McLaren: Words that work
Multiply the number of hours you typically work in a day by 0.33378. Eg if you work 8 hours a day, the number is 8 x 0.33378 = 2.67024 kgCO2e/day.
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Rod McLaren @rodm.bsky.social · 26/09/2024
good website, good fire, the best people
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Rod McLaren @rodm.bsky.social · 26/09/2024
love the honesty. would be interesting to explore team shapes inside organisational shapes (the next larger context)
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Rod McLaren @rodm.bsky.social · 13/07/2023
in the future, your boss is an generative ai version of yourself, 25% more energetic and leadery than your tired meat and bones
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