Rod McLaren: Words that work

Ripple Energy is going bust, but the wind farms are still spinning March 27, 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 March 16, 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 March 10, 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 March 6, 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 February 20, 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 January 27, 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 January 16, 2025 16 January 2025 A messy spreadsheet: Metrics for UK retail investment/saving/digital wealth fintechs. I’ve been collecting revenue, user, profit, Working notes: carbon emissions of AI January 7, 2025 7 January 2025, updated 28 March 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 December 11, 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 November 12, 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 October 21, 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 October 8, 2024 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. Show them it’s here already September 4, 2024 My proposals and invoices now include carbon emissions data, because even the smallest public acts might encourage others to take action too. My Rams: The time of thoughtless design for thoughtless consumption is over June 3, 2024 3 June 2024 These screengrabs are from Gary Hustwit’s documentary Rams and its trailer video. If the video is paywalled, there are a couple of clips 9.79 tonnes CO2e per year May 17, 2024 17 May 2024, updated 25 October 2024. My company’s total carbon emissions are 9.79 tonnes CO2e per year, for the year 1 March 2023 - 29 February The leap from experience to trust April 18, 2024 18 April 2024 You used to be able to confidently predict that the future would look more or less like today: many things getting a bit better, some Switching bank account to reduce company carbon emissions April 9, 2024 8 April 2024 (last updated 17 May 2024) Tl;dr: Santander bank provided my business current account but they have high carbon emissions. I looked at Climate change is an engineering challenge March 27, 2024 27 March 2024 Generative Engineering reduces the time and cost of engineering individual parts or full systems by generating and testing thousands Dirty internet: carbon aware websites March 11, 2024 11 March 2024, updated 26 September 2024. Two ways websites become more aware of their emissions: Some websites that react to the current carbon How to play the LinkedIn blogging game January 31, 2024 31 January 2024 Writing this down because I can never remember. This seems to be how to publish on LinkedIn to get better engagement, comments,