Rod McLaren: Words that work

Data vs opinions vs memes 27 June 2025 27 June 2025 “If we have data, let’s look at data. If all we have are opinions, let’s go with mine.” - Jim Barksdale and yet “When the data and the Recommended: Estimating digital carbon emissions workshop 17 June 2025 17 June 2025, updated 23 June 2025 I joined a really good workshop on Estimating digital carbon emissions by Chris Adams and Katrin Fritsch of the x.AI’s methane problem, OpenAI’s energy use, Nvidia’s embodied emissions 17 June 2025 17 June 2025 Last week’s AI emissions news: Very bad: xAI data centre methane emissions - regulatory loopholes let x.AI run methane-burning UK gov’s 2025 carbon emission conversion factors 10 June 2025 10 June 2025 The UK gov has published the 2025 carbon emission conversion factors. You can use numbers like these (or from sources like Climatiq) to Is it harder to make people mask than change their clocks twice a year? 29 May 2025 29 May 2025 Change at scale is hard. Here’s a reckon: if a desired change is strongly associated with people’s identity, or if it is embodied in the Do the AIs know their carbon emissions? No. 8 May 2025 8 May 2025, updated 11 June 2025 Can the big AIs tell you what their carbon emissions are? On the whole, not really because no-one discloses Carbon.txt 25 April 2025 25 April 2025, updated 11 Jun 2025 Carbon.txt is a service by the Green Web Foundation which lets you declare your organisation’s sustainability You serve as a human firewall. So be a hero. 4 April 2025 4 April 2025 Infinigate/KnowBe4’s corporate security training is quite poetic. 00:00:09 Because remember—as an employee, 00:00:11 you serve as a Ripple Energy is going bust, but the wind farms are still spinning 27 March 2025 27 March 2025 Ripple Energy is in administration, but the windfarm co-ops its platform helped set up are still running. How it works: A wind farm Transferring a SIPP from Vanguard to InvestEngine 16 March 2025 16 March 2025 In December 2024 Vanguard announced a change to their pricing model: from %-of-portfolio fee to a 4/month fee for portfolios under There’s a deadline coming up for state pension top ups: 5th April 2025 10 March 2025 10 March 2025 Anna and I wrote a Checksies about whether you should act urgently to beat a deadline for making manual topups to your state pension. Multiple suppliers, start at home: 2 useful energy experiments 6 March 2025 6 March 2025 Both of these energy experiments sound really useful. And I love that they’re grounded in experiment, rather than confidently assuming Content design style guides 20 February 2025 20 February 2025 Content style guides that are written for every audience (because government’s audience tends to be all of its citizens), or have Yes, wind farms sometimes make less energy during big storms 27 January 2025 27 January 2025 More wind means more energy, except when the wind farm equipment must be protected or the grid balanced. Generators manage turbines Some UK fintech metrics 16 January 2025 16 January 2025, updated 19 May 2025 A messy spreadsheet: Metrics for UK retail investment/saving/digital wealth fintechs. I’ve been collecting Working notes: carbon emissions of AI 7 January 2025 7 January 2025, updated 11 June 2025 AI is here to stay. And AI is famously compute-intensive, which means it’s energy-intensive, which means its Radical Co-op membership 11 December 2024 11 December 2024 James Darling’s A Proposal to Transform Co-op Membership for the Internet Age is great. My favourite bits - local, community 3 reasons to start with words 12 November 2024 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 Forms are temporary, class is permanent - Sport England 21 October 2024 21 October 2024, updated 26 November 2024 In autumn 2023 I worked in a team at FF Studio to design and build a tactical, invite-only fund for Sport A quick way freelancers can guestimate their carbon emissions 8 October 2024 8 October 2024, updated 10 June 2025 If you’re a freelancer in knowledge working and you often work from home, here’s a quick way to guestimate your