Pundarik Ranchhod

Behaviour and Service Design, CX, Digital Strategy, Social Change, Startups, Ketosis and Mini Publics. Currently Experience Designer at VML.

[Rosie P 🦇 🦎 🕷️ 🦭 🐌 🍃🌳🚲💧 @RosieP4]

They really don't seem to be able to get anything right.
No solar on car parks (or most rooftops) but it's fine to trash 1000km of countryside and habitat for pylons to transmit power for miles instead of encouraging generation near demand.

https://t.co/WEEbPp3pPv

[Ramin Nasibov @RaminNasibov]

There are two kinds of thieves: the small-time ones the police catch, and the big-time ones they protect.

[Pundarik Ranchhod @pkiddo]

@MichLieben Claude Design

[Pundarik Ranchhod @pkiddo]

@marryevan999 Openclaw

[Nav Toor @heynavtoor]

Adobe tried to buy Figma for $20 billion in 2022.

The deal collapsed. So Figma went public on the NYSE in July 2025 instead. Ticker FIG. Public company. Quarterly earnings. Wall Street pressure.

You know what happens to design tools after they IPO.

In March 2025, Figma raised the Professional Full seat 33%. From $15 to $20 a month. Organization seats jumped to $55. Enterprise to $90.

Then they took Dev Mode, which was free during beta, and locked it behind a paid seat. Your developers now pay extra to inspect the designs your designers already paid to create.

In March 2026, Figma started charging for AI credits on top.

If Figma raises prices again, you pay.
If Figma gets acquired, you pray.
If Figma shuts down, your files die with it.

Your design system. On their servers. In a proprietary format only their app can read. To draw rectangles on a screen.

There is an open source design platform that runs on your hardware. Stores your files in plain SVG. Costs $0 forever for unlimited users.

It is called Penpot. 45,700+ stars on GitHub.

A full Figma-grade design platform built on open web standards. Vector editing. Components. Design tokens to W3C spec. Flex and Grid layouts. Real-time multiplayer. Interactive prototyping.

Here's what it does:

→ Real-time collaboration. Live cursors. Comments in line.
→ Components, variants, shared libraries.
→ Auto layout, Flex, CSS Grid. The tool outputs production CSS, not lookalike CSS.
→ Interactive prototypes with overlays, animations, and flows.
→ Inspect tab. Free. Built in. Every developer grabs production CSS, SVG, HTML without a separate seat.
→ Plugin ecosystem. Figma import to migrate your files.
→ Self-host on Docker in one command. Your designs never leave your network.

Here's the wildest part:

Figma stores your designs in a proprietary format only Figma can read.

Penpot files are SVG. The same format your browser has rendered for 25 years. Open them in any editor. Open them in 20 years. Nobody can lock you out.

The feature Figma charges your developers extra for, Penpot gives away. Without asking permission.

Figma Professional: $20/month per seat. A 10-person team: $2,400/year.
Figma Organization: $55/month per Full seat. A 50-person org: $33,000/year.

Penpot: $0. Unlimited users. Unlimited files. Unlimited teams. Self-hosted. Free forever.

45,700+ stars. 2,700+ forks. 250+ contributors. MPL-2.0 license. Backed by a community that believes design tools should be free.

Your designs. Your files. Your standards.

100% Open Source.

(Link in the comments)

[WithoutHistory @WithoutHistory]

African inventor makes biodegradable plastic using an invasive plant. In the process, he reduces malaria and provides green jobs for the community.

[Assal Rad @AssalRad]

The difference is by design.

[UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose @IIPP_UCL]

🚀 Building the R&I Agency of the Future

@IIPP_UCL Co-Deputy Director Rainer Kattel recently joined the Insider podcast, hosted by @MigueisR, to discuss how to rebuild public-sector capacity for modern innovation systems.

🎧 Listen to the episode here: https://t.co/R3SFvAWESz

[@itskevin @itskevin]

Can’t wait for WW3, WW3o, WW3.5 mini

[Paul Powlesland @paulpowlesland]

A new public fountain has appeared in central London, but look closer & you’ll see that it’s a actually a fountain of filth. The water is black, the human victims of the sewage crisis are vomitting streams of liquid, whilst surmounted by a smug water executive with a briefcase stuffed with cash.

The fountain commemorates one of the biggest environmental crimes in British history, where water companies stole tens of billions of pounds that was supposed to be spent on our sewage system, gave it to shareholders and executives and illegally poured billions of lites of sewage into our rivers, lakes and seas instead. The channel 4 docudrama about the sewage crisis, #dirtybusiness, starts at 9pm tonight. Watch it, get sad, get angry and then join the thousands of people around the country demanding an end to the sewage crisis.

[Jan Jekielek @JanJekielek]

I can keep watching this incredible video welcoming the Lunar New Year of the Horse from the National Palace Museum in Taipei again and again!

I made a list of these for your convenience if you're curious what each is, as I was!

1. Mao Gong Ding (Western Zhou dynasty, c. 9th century BCE)
2. Eastern Han Sichuan Winged Horse Portrait Stone Rubbing (Eastern Han dynasty, 25–220 CE)
3. Tang Sancai Glazed Female Polo Player Figurine (Tang dynasty, 618–907 CE)
4. One Hundred Steeds by Lang Shining (Qing dynasty, 1688–1766 CE)
5. Galloping Horse by Xu Beihong (1895–1953 CE)
6. Ayusi Holding a Spear Sweeping Bandits (by Lang Shining / Giuseppe Castiglione, Qing dynasty, 1755)
7. Pasturing Horses by Han Gan (Tang dynasty, 618–907 CE)
8. Bamboo Carving “Horseback to Marquis” (Qing dynasty, 1701–1800 CE)
9. Jade Heavenly Horse (Qing dynasty, likely Qianlong reign, 1736–1795 CE)
10. Five-Color (Wucai) Heavenly Horse Covered Jar (Ming dynasty, Jiajing reign, 1522–1566)

Happy Lunar New Year of the Horse!

[Akunjee 🖋 @mohammedakunjee]

The Mandelson-Epstein matter in précis

[Quinn🩸🩸🩸 @QuinnKarlsson]

@LewisJ815 🔥🔥🔥

[More Perfect Union @MorePerfectUS]

Trevor Noah: " It feels like New York has, like many cities in the world, fallen into the trap of fixing what needs to be fixed for the wealthy, and then sort of ignoring or pushing aside the problems that affect the poor."

Zohran: "I mean, think about when you fly.  We have made it such a difficult experience to go through TSA that there's now a financial incentive to sign up for a separate program that can move you through it quicker. We have monetized the dysfunction."

[William 💙 SaveOurNHS @William_iamiare]

@ZackPolanski Who buys this pile of 💩💩💩

[Phyl Scorfield 💙 @FIareNetworkFN]

@Daniel_Grigg @nicransome You can cut the flowers but you can’t stop the spring coming

[Dan @EinPhreak]

@ProjectLincoln Small reminder.

[James Zou @james_y_zou]

We found a troubling emergent behavior in LLM.

💬When LLMs compete for social media likes, they start making things up
🗳️When they compete for votes, they turn inflammatory/populist

When optimized for audiences, LLMs inadvertently become misaligned—we call this Moloch’s Bargain

[Evan Hill @evanhill]

Fascinating work here tracing how the IDF recycled 3D assets from a cyberpunk sci-fi art project, the Scottish Maritime Museum and elsewhere to populate its widely-seen models of supposed enemy locations in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran. One of the most infamous, the alleged underground Hamas command center at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, used to justify an unprecedented assault on the biggest medical center in Gaza, was actually an animation the IDF had used the previous year, saying at the time it was a tunnel beneath a UN school.