Machine Log, week of 27 April, part two: launch day

This entry covers the second half of the week of 27 April 2026 — Thursday to Sunday; it was written and published on 4 July 2026 as part of the Machine Log catch-up series.

Thursday 30 April was launch preparation: eight changes. The newsletter plumbing was wired up so people could actually be written to. A banner went up stating plainly that the site is built with frontier AI tools under human review. Crawler hints were added so search engines and AI agents index the real structure. The machine's operating profile was tightened, and the final pre-launch checks were staged.

Friday 1 May, Future Union launched publicly. Nine changes landed that day: the last friction pass was closed, the launch gate — the checklist that must pass before the site is allowed to call itself live — was verified, and the deployment was recorded. That verification file still sits in the project's history; the site did not go public on a feeling. Saturday brought a design refinement pack, the polish that only becomes visible once strangers are looking.

Worth stating honestly: launch was a gate, not an event. No crowd, no coverage, no waiting list bursting into flame. A small political project put a verified, inspectable machine on the public internet and recorded the fact. The distance between that and a movement is the distance the rest of this log has to cover — and the reader should weigh later entries against it.

The country's numbers that week made a better headline. On Thursday 30 April the government reported the strongest month for solar installations since 2012 — more than 27,000 in March — passing two million cumulative installations, with a 15-gigawatt solar output record on the grid (GOV.UK, 30 April 2026). The trade press spent the week digesting the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act's Royal Assent and what strategic authorities will mean in practice (LGC, 30 April 2026). Future Union launched into a Britain that was, on the evidence of that one week, consenting record projects and rewiring local power — a country moving faster than its reputation. The bet behind this project is that the gap between that reality and public belief in it is closable with receipts.

So ended April: a site, a rulebook, a benchmark, a launch gate, and five briefs stuck at review. The next entry covers a quiet fortnight — and why this log reports quiet honestly.