iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Max Edward Perry @0404am.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

This is nicely put. For all my intellectual concern, you are absolutely right that this feels like a pressing premise to reestablish.

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Max Edward Perry @0404am.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

I think I’m in the minority as I’m not reading it that way. I think he is a bio-essentialist (i.e. he thinks we’re a mongrel people). He just thinks that Englishness is a greater moral force, even than biology. I mean, maybe he’s just a classic colonialist?

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Max Edward Perry @0404am.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Yeah, and having looked again at the comments on X under the video… yikes. You are right in that sense! I do think it’s worth noting though that he is specifically against cosmopolitanism. To become English, one needs to *deny* any non-Englishness, to become (in his words) “more civilised”.

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Max Edward Perry @0404am.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

I know what you mean & you are right that the absence of concern from the governing Labour Party is a problem. But, he retains plenty of space for bio-essentialism, he just says that Englishness is a virtue *beyond* biological essence. There’s a kind of cultural essentialism that might be *worse*?

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Max Edward Perry @0404am.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

I understand that it’s good to argue against bio-essentialist accounts of “the English”. But… I mean… *that* video is still very, very, very bad (and plenty essentialist). It is not a counter to the far right, it is participating in the construction of an intellectual base from which to subjugate.

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Max Edward Perry @0404am.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

I think the obsession on this website with what we should probably just call bourgeois manners to be… worthy of some critical reflection.

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Max Edward Perry @0404am.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

I am sceptical of the valorisation of existing accountability procedures but I think this essay correctly identifies a relationship (that has been productive) between research and critique that is eroding.

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Max Edward Perry @0404am.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

“It’s too easy to distil research down to its most enjoyable or artistically viable elements. We should be skeptical of any version of research that excises itself from accountability procedures in the name of loftier goals...“

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Max Edward Perry @0404am.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

I agree. FWIW, I think the book and essay — as a medium are good and we should protect them. I was, following Will, suggesting that they are doomed by contemporary trends, and that they might only maintain as these poor manifestations. I was indulging in a fatalism.

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Max Edward Perry @0404am.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

To be slightly more serious. I think there are two paths — the historic symbolic value of “the book” and the behaviourist account of reading (as self care). They are not, IMV, straight forwardly compatible.

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Max Edward Perry @0404am.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Why not enjoy both? Without being snooty, booktok has long contained a clear image/identity component, and wellness culture has long promoted reading (particularly 10 pages a day) as self improvement.

Webpage “10pages a day”. Open book on a table, with the following text overlay.
“FOR THE PERSON WHO SHOWS UP.
10 PAGES A DAY
You are what you do each day.
This isn't about reading more. It's about becoming the kind of person who shows up for themselves - quietly, consistently, every single day.”

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Max Edward Perry @0404am.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

This is fascinating. Thanks for sharing here, I hadn’t seen it. It would make a fine double bill with Benjamin’s Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.

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Max Edward Perry @0404am.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

I’d fear terrible for anything written in the current climate of that ilk. Mostly because you can imagine the type of folk attracted to such a project! Maybe in 100 years we can have something half playful and funny that explores what you are right to describe as an “interesting life”.

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Max Edward Perry @0404am.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

Also — obvs — there’s Stuart Elden’s four books and website… there’s plenty of biography in there.

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Max Edward Perry @0404am.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

I think a lot of that is owed to Foucault’s express resistance to it. I also recommend the Miller book that I saw someone else suggest. Beyond that, this is beautiful, and it’s illusiveness fitting IMO (see also; My Friend Who…). thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/herve-guiber...

thereader.mitpress.mit.edu

Hervé Guibert: 'A Man’s Secrets'

One of Guibert’s most powerful and unforgettable stories, a tender summoning of his close friend Michel Foucault upon his death.

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Owen Ashworth @advancebase.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

Hi. Here's a free live album. advancebase.bandcamp.com/album/in-mil...

advancebase.bandcamp.com

In Milwaukee, by Advance Moon Base Type

11 track album

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Max Edward Perry @0404am.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

That is, Khosla and others have long been in the game of trying to routinise the deployment of healthcare, to stabilise and centralise oracular control over pathological categories. This requires an old critique of pathologisation, not a paean to the very well protected class of doctors.

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Max Edward Perry @0404am.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

I have written about this here: thepolyphony.org/2026/07/29/d... We must resist any defence of human doctors that suggests they have exceptional epistemic capacities. Instead we must critique the fascistic determinism of those that argue AI is better at resolving pathology than humans.

thepolyphony.org

Dr Bot: Why Doctors Can Fail Us — and How AI Could Save Lives | Book Review

Max Edward Perry reviews Charlotte Blease Dr Bot: Why Doctors Can Fail Us — and How AI Could Save Lives (Yale University Press, 2025), reflecting on its arguments in the context of today’s debates …

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Max Edward Perry @0404am.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

Hello — awful news, hope you recover soon! Sorry to be annoying, but that “RA7” number is your hospital number. Unlikely anyone could really do anything with it on its own, but I’d still suggest cropping it from the image if I were you.

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Max Edward Perry @0404am.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

Be interested to see what this means for the hype cycle (@hypestudies.bsky.social), my instinct is that we are about to return to an altogether more familiar approach to sales than what we have experienced over the last few years.

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Max Edward Perry @0404am.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

Feels to me like we are really at the moment now where the “AI product” is the product we have — “AGI” and “the singularity” will now disappear off to the lab for several years until we need a new product to hawk. www.axios.com/2026/08/05/g...

axios.com

Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis is stepping aside

oogle's AI organization is undergoing a profound change as the company struggles to keep pace with OpenAI and Anthropic.

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Elizabeth Lopatto @lopatto.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

I see a lot of you talking about "dopamine" and I wish you'd go back to talking about your astrological signs because at least then you wouldn't be confusing yourself about a real thing

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Max Edward Perry @0404am.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

Wonder if they’ll use any Hacking, or… you know… any sociology? Be good if they let me do my “livers are socially constructed” bit. Used to like doing that.

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Max Edward Perry @0404am.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

So much in Dr Bot feels typical of contemporary AI boosterism. An unhealthy relationship with evolutionary biology, a decidedly unsociological sense of what error and success is, a complete absence of desire, and a reactionary totalitarian sensibility.

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Max Edward Perry @0404am.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

Perhaps it’s the contrarian in me, but I’m quite enjoying the photographic image’s fall from its privilege status of representation. Interesting to note that “deep fakes” haven’t really materialised as potent events, but a new scepticism of the image has. Every cloud… etc etc.

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Max Edward Perry @0404am.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

Thanks Des! Now we’re home, we’re all doing grand. (This is good, bloody mindedness is a great motivator).

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Max Edward Perry @0404am.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

First trip out as a Papa. Wonder if I’ll ever finish any of that writing now…

Me, with a big pink pram containing baby Frank.

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Max Edward Perry @0404am.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

I hear the England team have each been given a bouncy ball to unwind at the hotel.

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Max Edward Perry @0404am.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

Just read this myself and was left with the same feeling. Not really the point, but the thing that most struck me was how he's writing 'take home essays' that clearly have "right" & "wrong" answers rather than asking for a thoughtful & considered response to a provocation?

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Max Edward Perry @0404am.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

Wonder if I’ll ever top that…

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Max Edward Perry @0404am.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

I drunkenly got some friends to visit his flat with me.

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Max Edward Perry @0404am.bsky.social · 29/05/2026

That is, LLMs aren’t automating anything, people are. When people automate for themselves, labour remains pleasurable. When bosses do it, it becomes shit… and not always more efficient.

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Max Edward Perry @0404am.bsky.social · 29/05/2026

Yeah, I can see all of this. Im sceptical about the capacities of LLMs in the context of their boosters, but clearly they open all manner of interesting things. That said, their capacities is less interesting to me than the folk who think about what aspects of work they can replace.

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Max Edward Perry @0404am.bsky.social · 29/05/2026

I mean, there’s always some dance required between the Apollonian and the Dionysian. But making/doing things is generally pleasurable. I took that from you, as it happens. When you described wanting to treat your work more like your art.

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Max Edward Perry @0404am.bsky.social · 14/05/2026

I do think, increasingly, that it is important to question whether automation has ever been about efficiency, and to ask instead whether it has not been driven by a punitive desire to cleave a rift pleasure and labour.

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Max Edward Perry @0404am.bsky.social · 13/05/2026

This article is v.good and full of interesting quotes. It seems obvious to me that AI is continuous with a whole history of bureaucratic techniques which have the effect of alienating folk from their labour.

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Max Edward Perry @0404am.bsky.social · 30/04/2026

Yeah, I suppose I was trying to apply a good faith interpretation of hallucinations current use. Which is to say, IMO, basically regard it as a meaningless/nonsense statement.

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Max Edward Perry @0404am.bsky.social · 30/04/2026

It hallucinates in the same way that a hammer hallucinates when it misses the nail.

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Max Edward Perry @0404am.bsky.social · 28/04/2026

“Tell me more about this ‘Daddy Pig’ Des.”

Freud sat next to his famous couch in his study.

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Max Edward Perry @0404am.bsky.social · 16/04/2026

This is Nick Cave all over again.

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Max Edward Perry @0404am.bsky.social · 18/03/2026

I am not listed on the Eventbrite, but am speaking in the 5pm session. Not sure if that encourages or discourages folk, but it is what it is…

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Max Edward Perry @0404am.bsky.social · 18/03/2026

I am now speaking in the afternoon session *as well*. Both the morning and afternoon session is online and free. I am told that BUP is giving a 50% off discount code for the book to attendees too. Link for 5PM session here, other session listed below. www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/part-2-boo...

eventbrite.co.uk

Part 2 Book Launch: Using Documents in Research - When, where, why and how

Two online book launch sessions, at 10am or 5pm, with chapter authors discussing document analysis, methods and real-world research.

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Max Edward Perry @0404am.bsky.social · 16/03/2026

A funny thing about that clip is that he’s making a kind of Nietzschian/Foucauldian argument, but as though it were made by a Chris Morris character. The thing could be read as a sophisticated in-joke regarding Foucault’s account of the neoliberal subject & some of the subsequent scholarship.

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Max Edward Perry @0404am.bsky.social · 07/03/2026

I personally like VAR. It’s a perpetual public humiliation for a society that convinced itself objectivity was a mere technological innovation away.

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Max Edward Perry @0404am.bsky.social · 05/03/2026

Hmm… that’s a very poorly arranged sentence. I promise that it is not indicative of the writing in the book!

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Max Edward Perry @0404am.bsky.social · 05/03/2026

Link to the full book: policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/using-docume... My chapter: doi.org/10.51952/978...

doi.org

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