{"source":"https://substrate.dougbelshaw.com","title":"Substrate","updated":"2026-11-13T23:47:37.000Z","items":[{"title":"Weekstarter 46/2026","url":"https://substrate.dougbelshaw.com/weekstarter-462026","date":"2026-11-10T18:29:51.000Z","category":"notes","excerpt":"Situation report: typing this on my laptop in a hotel room in Bristol, listening to the new Kings of Leon album and drinking a pretty fantastic ginger turmeric kombucha. I've just been to a panel session at the Brazen Tech Festival after driving down from my home in Northumberlan…","image":"https://substrate.dougbelshaw.com/api/uploads/13f06783-9910-436e-b299-4c41f9211c0d.jpg","imageAlt":"Autumn leaves"},{"title":"News Canary: 8 November 2026","url":"https://substrate.dougbelshaw.com/news-canary-8-november-2026","date":"2026-11-08T06:38:43.000Z","category":"notes","excerpt":"Every Sunday, my Little Robot Friend sends me a report which I call 'News Canary'. It assembles a weekly set of roughly ten \"global change signal\" stories from the last seven days, with at least one item from each continent. It mixes hard developments (laws, policies, conflicts,…","image":"https://substrate.dougbelshaw.com/api/uploads/286848bd-4730-4f66-b343-95b5278fb45d.png","imageAlt":"A stylised 'news canary' created with Midjourney"},{"title":"On deskilling, mis-skilling, and never-skilling","url":"https://substrate.dougbelshaw.com/on-deskilling-mis-skilling-and-never-skilling","date":"2026-11-07T14:12:12.000Z","category":"notes","excerpt":"I remember the book Future Shock (1970) being on the bookshelves in our house growing up, part of my dad's Master's level studies into educational management. In it, Alvin Toffler argued that education should teach people how to \"learn, unlearn and relearn\". A few years later, Ha…","image":"https://substrate.dougbelshaw.com/api/uploads/02b0b558-fbc7-4ecb-bcff-6518e278e6e8.jpg","imageAlt":"Asemic sand writing"},{"title":"AI Capone: The rise and fall of a robot racketeer","url":"https://substrate.dougbelshaw.com/ai-capone-the-rise-and-fall-of-a-robot-racketeer","date":"2026-11-07T10:09:41.000Z","category":"ideas","excerpt":"Last night, I was thinking about how some fonts render an uppercase 'I' and a lowercase 'l' similarly. That's really annoying when dealing with passwords, but it also means that 'Al Capone' and 'AI Capone' look the same... Cue the starting point for a nine-page noir comic, with A…","image":"https://substrate.dougbelshaw.com/api/uploads/2fe2e4a9-2871-4a33-87ed-6ef59e7aa4a3.jpg","imageAlt":"The rise and fall of a robot racketeer, in a city where advanced chips are banned and nobody can tell a lowercase l from a capital I."},{"title":"The AI money loop","url":"https://substrate.dougbelshaw.com/ai-money-loop","date":"2026-11-06T17:53:11.000Z","category":"ideas","excerpt":"I'd been meaning to write about this (hence the date of the original note), but Jensen Huang resigning as Nvidia's chief executive today, effective immediately, means now's the best time to hit publish. The BBC is running a live page, and Nvidia's own announcement is just three s…","image":"https://substrate.dougbelshaw.com/api/uploads/50637da7-f7db-4d96-b609-39f3cad8ac7e.png","imageAlt":"Systems map with Nvidia in the centre"}]}