I’m so angry about this.
Thousands of disabled people's lives, which are already hard, are being made harder for literally no environmental benefit, because people who claim to advocate for the environment prefer crass rules of thumb to proper analysis bbc.co.uk/news/uk-englan… I can’t believe that in 2020 someone from @ClientEarth is happy to say plastic straws are “some of the most pointless plastics out there”.

They have obviously never watched a person take 30 minutes to drink a cup of coffee through a straw because that’s the only way they can.

I don't know who needs to hear this but, acting on the opinions of a small number of individual scientists, on questions about which everyone acknowledges there is a huge amount of uncertainty is not the same as "following the science". Not saying this to disparage any of the scientists advising the gov, who are doing their best in a difficult situation. More the tendency in the media to conflate what scientists think about open questions with 'science', which is a consensus position on well studied questions.

I’m mainly doing this thread mainly as a marker to check back and see if I’m right, but here’s what I think is happening with all the theatrics around the Withdrawal Agreement at the moment.

It’s all about packaging. 📦 Packaging has a long lead time, and all the food producers have said that they need to order the packaging for the time after the transition period ends at the end of January, right now. businessinsider.com/brexit-food-co…

Random redditors from around the world have started dropping in and driving the little robot in this cardboard version of Wolfenstein 3D I've just finished and I feel like I'm definitely living in the future thecraftyrobot.net/blogs/projects… I'm not going to lie, it's also slightly socially awkward.

The folks who spent £400k on an ‘AI system’ to see what people are tweeting, whilst at the same time tabulating virus cases and locations by hand on paper, cosplaying NASA with ‘real time’ dashboards would definitely be funny if situation was less serious. thetimes.co.uk/article/domini… Even if you accept that we might benefit from ‘mission control’ at the heart of government I worry that Cummings doesn’t understand the difference between scientists and engineers, attributing the successes of the latter to the former.
Mission control was a room full of engineers

If anyone wants to have a go driving around in a Smartipresence bot (and have a chat with me) you can at this link until 6pm: thecraftyrobot.github.io/smartipresence… This will be back online at 5pm tomorrow and from 5pm to 6pm every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday in August.

With getting around and seeing people still so difficult I thought a cheap telepresence robot that works with your phone might be useful, so I've worked with some clever people to create one, and we're running a @kickstarter so we can manufacture it. kickstarter.com/projects/rossa… When you're in the robot you're only very small but as you can move around and look at whatever you want it's much better than being on a video call.

I realised there's probably a way to build a centralised app-based contact tracing system using core iOS and Android capabilities if you only need it to work in the high risk contexts. We don't have time to build it right now so I've written this instead: rossatkin.com/wp/?portfolio=… It seems indoor locations are the highest risk, and it's public places like pubs that the manual contact tracers will find it hardest deal with. The government know this so they've asked the pubs to keep records of phone numbers but that's unlikely to be reliable.

Getting flashbacks to all the development testing I’ve done on projects that use Bluetooth proximity. Days and days of walking around and fiddling with thresholds. I think the key thing here is that RSSI will always be a very approximate indication of proximity. 1/

https://twitter.com/LeoKelion/status/1270959770938286085

That doesn’t mean it’s not useful. It means the service design needs to work with that lack of precision (eg why notifications of changes in an area like we do with @SightLineSWS are much easier than the turn by turn navigation they were trying in early days of @WayfindrStd) 2/

Been watching people heroically 3D printing these in their kitchens and sending them to local hospitals for the last 6 weeks. For the last 4 I've been wondering why they were still needing to do it, why the government hadn't arranged for an injection moulding tool to be made.

https://twitter.com/mtdmfg/status/1255051089830981632

There's something really jarring about seeing good, generous people's time wasted like that. It's obvious to everyone who knows anything about manufacturing that if you need thousands of the same plastic thing every day you injection mould it.

It's easy to complain about Dominic Cummings going to the SAGE meetings but, seeing as only 2 out of 26 members of the cabinet have scientific backgrounds, maybe they needed him to 'translate' what the scientists were saying into language and concepts they understand? 1/2 Hopefully we'll eventually see the minutes from the meetings so know how advice was formed. I suspect the seemingly equal weight given to the opinions of behavioural scientists to those of epidemiologists and medical experts may do more to explain what happened than 'Classic Dom'

A lot of people are going to be worried about this, and they are right to be as part of the wider question of how government actions to suppress the virus will impact civil liberties. However this is also very exciting 1/ apple.com/newsroom/2020/… First of all, doing it all peer-to-peer using Bluetooth is the most effective way to get the information needed and also puts users most completely in control (so much better than trying to do it with cellular or geolocation data, both for actual efficacy and civil liberties) 2/

I've got Telepresence working on a Smartibot! It's a bit MVP but I think it works. Anyone want to help me test it and have a drive around our kitchen table? Ok, telepresence tutorial for Smartibot is done! That’s a few thousand more (potential) telepresence robots out there in the world now. A great way to do virus-free visits

https://twitter.com/craftyrobot/status/1246022042375409666?s=21

https://t.co/fjmknFNGkX

I've had a go making some content for parents in #lockdown with their kids doing #homeschool and wanting to do something fun and creative and also learn some science 🧪 Let me know if it's helpful and I'll do more @DrLucyRogers @EmmaMBearman @LMcUnderwood @Workshopshed You might like this. Any advice for improvement appreciated too!

This is an interesting discussion👇 If open source, collaborative design, 3D printing and distributed manufacturing are ever gong to change the world now is the moment. Lots of people have been playing buzzword bingo for years, let's see if it translates into useful engineering.

https://twitter.com/quigdes/status/1239594358720135175

More good stuff here on the gap between the thought leaders and even the enthusiasts of open source design and 3D printing, who work with it every day (and I think if Naomi is being optimistic here, and ventilators are more complex than 3D printers)

https://twitter.com/RealSexyCyborg/status/1240223079361474562?s=20

At the end of 2009 I had just shadowed a disabled person making a journey for the first time, with @SandiWassmer. 86 people later I’m still doing it (with 52 more planned for 2020) and still trying to get decision makers to listen to what disabled ppl say and build what they need That last bit remains difficult but it feels easier than it was 10 years ago. A big part of this is the amazing work of people like @BlondeHistorian, @HannahPopsy @BlindDad_Uk, @AlansTweets and others who take the time to document their experiences online and advocate for change

All I want for Christmas is for Facebook to do this too 👇 (ideally before the election)

https://twitter.com/jack/status/1189634360472829952

As well as the moral argument, continuing as it doesn't make sense financially for Facebook. Even if they had a total monopoly on election spending and major parties spent the maximum they’re allowed to it would still be <4% of FBs 2018 UK revenue. theguardian.com/politics/2019/…

Seems likely an election is imminent so everyone please remember there is no point in having a vote of any kind without first regulating political advertising on Facebook. This isn’t a wild eyed position, it’s the view of the parliamentary enquiry parliament.uk/business/commi… They concluded that UK electoral law is no longer “fit for purpose”.

Zukerberg wants us to think this is about freedom of speech and regulation would be complex and difficult. This is nonsense.

Absolutely amazed to be mentioned in the same breath as these legends 🤩 Super-cool that @L_D_F is interested in the kind of work I do and I'm so excited to see who this goes to next year and beyond!

https://twitter.com/iconeye/status/1169209301958823937

@L_D_F Also, if you pick up the @EveningStandard today you can read about why I like my kettle, the Middlesex Filter Beds and @wandwoolly in the 'Homes and Property' section. #Lifestyle 🙃 homesandproperty.co.uk/luxury/interio…

We ran the cardboard racing/fighting robots workshop yesterday in Cambridge with kids aged 8 to 12. I’d run the same workshop in Shenzhen in April and the contrasts between the Chinese and British kids were not what I had expected... Thread! 1/10 #STEAM Based on the stereotypes I’d expected that the kids in China would be really well behaved, obedient and academic but not very good at making things or thinking creatively. I’d expected the kids here in the UK to be harder to manage but better at the activity 2/10

There were some not very useful infographics of the EU election data going around yesterday and some dodgy takes based on them. I’ve tried to visualise the results here in a way that you can meaningfully compare them with voting in the 2016 referendum. 👇 #infographic #brexit @hugorifkind @rowlsmanthorpe @BethRigby @davidallengreen @afneil @stephenkb this might be of interest 👆