Notices by Talia Hussain (talia@mstdn.social)

good lord.

The UK government is going all in on the circular economy, and has "identified the five priority sectors which its initial policy recommendations will cover: textiles, transport, construction, agri-food, chemicals and plastics"

yes that is six sectors.

god I hate circular economy. these people can't even count.

Greetings and #Introduction post.

I'm a design research PhD* at Loughborough University in London

Edit: I finished, so I'm now a Dr with a load of publications I need to get out :)

My main areas of interest and posting are: climate & activism; fashion, sustainability & retail futures; occasionally tech and cats

🇨🇦 in 🇬🇧. 🚴🏽♂️ 🧶🐈⬛🌍💚

I suppose there is some comfort in realising that 1.57 million people are having the same problems as we are in my currently zero-income household.

I'm not looking forward to Reform's ongoing rise as Labour completely fails to improve people's lives and livelihoods.

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2025/feb/10/britons-hunting-for-a-job-uk-jobseekers-pay

After almost three years, my very timid and skittish shelter #cat has finally snuggled up next to me on the sofa.

Now I'm trapped and can't move.

I think I was wrong about Rachel Reeves, she is much much worse than I thought she could be

@lowqualityfacts I'm afraid this is exactly what is proposed by the "circular economy" idea that governments have all bought into

@glynmoody Life imitates Ted Chiang

tracked changes is absolutely the worst. Why do people torment themselves and the rest of us with this nightmare?

@pluralistic If this is your pitch for a new Dr Who episode, I believe it could be improved somewhat

Some time ago I worked on a pilot research project about AI, which started with a bunch of user interviews learning about how they used technology and what they might want from an autonomous AI agent

The project went nowhere because the users didn't want an autonomous AI agent making decisions for them

The engineers kept asking for "the data" so they could use AI to "model a solution"

Which rather missed the point of what the data uncovered

Watching Erin Kissane's talk at xoxo and the US really is just 50 failed states in a trench coat

Unbelievable disfunction that Americans live with, failing to demand anything better, lacking even the skills to see or describe the problems they're experiencing much less solve them

Kissane's "solution" to institutional failure in the US is better online platforms, so people can come together to cope with institutional failure. Just, wow.

@alfiekohn same 😃

Interesting paper- AI is not boosting your creativity

“We found that support from an AI image generator during ideation leads to higher fixation on an initial example. Participants who used AI produced fewer ideas, with less variety and lower originality compared to a baseline.”

https://dl.acm.org/doi/full/10.1145/3613904.3642919

@pettter So, if you're trying to describe a forum for the exchange of goods or services, that's subject to informal norms and formal regulations... what would you call that if not a 'market'?

@pettter What word could you use?

@pettter Yes, v clear - you've internalised a neoliberal understanding of the market. It's understandable, because we aren't presented with other options in our current culture of politics or economics. But we really need those missing alternative understandings and as long as you accept the neoliberal framing, you're having a discussion on limited terms

@pettter I'd encourage you to think more about what 'the market' is and might be. Markets have been a feature of human social organisation for millennia, they aren't a neoliberal construct. Think of the Greek concept of the Agora, and how it encompasses different ideas including civic participation. Any form of human society will always have a forum for exchange, which is what a market is. The question is what market and what outcomes do we want

@pettter I actually think the structure of the market itself is the problem - ie. how we make the market, the basic practices of retailers that bring goods to market. The market itself needs to be fixed, re-regulated at a fundamental level.

But yes, a total disaster area and no indication of serious interventions on the horizon