iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Arielle Bennett @arielleb.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

It's my favourite time of year back again! 🎉🎉🎉 Turing Way Book Dash is a collective, collaborative hackathon covering the additions, revisions, collisions, and joy that go into maintaining the project. No prior experience necessary, just enthusiasm and curiosity ✨

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tunes to make you run away @whippoorwont.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

"people are anthropomorphizing LLMs because they are so astonishingly good at processing human thought and language" people will anthropomorphize a chair if you put the stitches in the right place.

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Arielle Bennett @arielleb.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Also shout out to @bennopt.bsky.social @softwaresaved.bsky.social & my IRS Fellowship mentor Michelle Barker for their support during my fellowship year and beyond!

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Arielle Bennett @arielleb.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

How will agentic coding tools reshape contributions open source research software? How do we evaluate whether any of the systemic interventions underway to support research software actually work? And how do contributors get institutional backing to support maintenance work?

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Arielle Bennett @arielleb.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

All in all, there's a lot still to dig into in these datasets and the insights coming out of this (and other #IRSC26 talks) really generate more questions for me, namely...

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Arielle Bennett @arielleb.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Recognition is also patchy - people typically reported acknowledgement from the software project or community rather than their institution (although I did also see that 21% of survey respondents who called open source "extremely important" to their role don't cite it!)

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Arielle Bennett @arielleb.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

💡Another notable result: people who maintained projects rated contributor training as less effective than those who weren't already maintainers. Is this because maintainers are more skeptical given their experience, or because they see a burden for themselves, or some other reason? #IRSC26

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Arielle Bennett @arielleb.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Surprise: when we asked people about the perceived effectiveness of different contributions, maintainer funding (money) and institutional policies (might support time) came out on top #IRSC26

Graph with the title "mean effectiveness rating of possible interventions by maintainer status" showing pairs of effectiveness ratings from maintainers vs non-maintainers for categories including maintainer funding, institutional policies, contributor training, documentation, community engagement, OSPOs, onboarding

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Arielle Bennett @arielleb.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Barriers largely focused on skills, confidence, a lack of recognition, and the challenges around learning project dynamics and ways of working (Honourable mention for Git which was listed multiple times specifically as a barrier!) #IRSC26

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Arielle Bennett @arielleb.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Why do they do this? Motivation ranges from personal values around contributing to the research commons, a drive to develop professional skills, through to needing to fix a bug or add a feature to tools people are using in their work #IRSC26

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Arielle Bennett @arielleb.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Highlights from today: Plenty of academics, even those who don't consider themselves contributors, contribute to open source on a regular basis #IRSC26

Frequency scale showing the different contribution frequencies for different types of open source contributions. Most people report opening issues, reviewing PRs and contributing code, while comparatively few report engaging with leadership, finances or community building.

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Arielle Bennett @arielleb.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Lovely to share a snapshot of my @softwaresaved.bsky.social fellowship work at #IRSC26 today exploring open source contributions and culture in academia through a 130 person survey (already OSS-engaged) and an #RSECon25 workshop (mostly RSEs/adjacent)

Blue and yellow slide with black text on a white background "Notes from the road: exploring open source culture in academia" Arielle Bennett https://zenodo.org/records/22599367

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Arielle Bennett @arielleb.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

Hi @bozimojoseph.bsky.social nice to e-meet you! What are you planning to submit as your project? Do you have any questions about applying or being an SSI fellow? Happy to answer them :)

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Berkeley Institute for Data Science (BIDS) @ucbids.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

🚨 BIDS is hiring! With support from Eric and Wendy Schmidt, @lightconeresearch.bsky.social is hiring 3 roles, one in Paris at Centre AISSAI du CNRS @cnrs.fr and 2 here at BIDS, part of @berkeleycdss.bsky.social . Find out more, incl how to apply: www.lightconeresearch.org/careers #AgenticAI

lightconeresearch.org

Careers — Lightcone Research

Join Lightcone Research and build the open-source infrastructure that makes AI-assisted science rigorous by construction. Roles in Berkeley and Paris.

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Arielle Bennett @arielleb.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

today I have discovered that if you copy and paste from one Word document to another, your footnote formatting will not translate over.

static.klipy.com

Stick Man's Computer Rage Meme

ALT: Stick Man's Computer Rage Meme

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Arielle Bennett @arielleb.bsky.social · 29/06/2026

nearly at the point of just removing all the references so I don't have to deal with them anymore

static.klipy.com

Stick Man's Computer Rage Meme

ALT: Stick Man's Computer Rage Meme

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Arielle Bennett @arielleb.bsky.social · 29/06/2026

all I want from technology today is a program that can manage footnotes in word documents.

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Arielle Bennett @arielleb.bsky.social · 23/06/2026

I've been awake for approximately an hour and we're already onto the third rendition of "Southgate you're the one" in this household

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The Turing Way @turingway.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

📣 The Turing Way’s June Community Forum! Our second Community Forum of 2026 is taking place on: 🗓 25th June 2026 ⏰ 5:00 PM (UK), 6:00 PM (Central Europe), 12:00 PM (Eastern US), 9:00 AM (Western US) This session brings together our community to share updates and connect about our ongoing work.

forms.gle

The Turing Way Community Forum - June 2026

Date: 25 June 2026 - 5pm UK/6pm Central Europe/12pm Eastern US/9am Western US Community Forums bring together members of The Turing Way community - including people who have not yet contributed to…

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Jo Grady @drjogrady.bsky.social · 12/05/2026

Yesterday Kier Starmer announced Labour will nationalise British Steel, and save 2700 jobs. Today, the Uni of Nottingham put 2700 staff at risk of redundancy. This is just one university. Across the UK 15,000 higher education jobs need saving. Where is the rescue package for our universities?

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The Turing Way @turingway.bsky.social · 17/04/2026

🎉📖 Applications are open for The Turing Way Book Dash: 18th & 19th May 2026! Deadline: 27th April 2026 (midnight, anywhere on Earth 🌏) The Turing Way Book Dash is a collaborative event where you'll work with others to add to and improve The Turing Way book and become a part of its community ✨

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Society of RSE @society-rse.org · 06/03/2026

The RSECon26 Call for Submissions is open! Share the tools you build and the RSE practices you are advancing. We welcome talks, workshops, and posters from all domains. Check the guidelines and submit your proposals today! Link: rsecon26.society-rse.org/calls/submis... #RSECon26

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Berkeley Institute for Data Science (BIDS) @ucbids.bsky.social · 02/03/2026

📣 This week at the #OSPO Knowledge Exchange on Zoom: Roadmap Workshop for #JupyterHub and Binder Share Out Learn how the JupyterHub team’s reflections can be applied in your projects with guest @arielleb.bsky.social ! events.berkeley.edu/BIDS/event/3... #UCOSPO #OpenSource #OpenScience

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Better Images of AI @betterimagesofai.bsky.social · 08/01/2026

❓Did you know that you can donate your own better images of AI to our library? If you make your own images and would like to help improve the transparency and inclusivity of AI media, the Better Images of AI Submission Handbook makes this easier 🙌🏽 blog.betterimagesofai.org/submission-h...

blog.betterimagesofai.org

Submission Handbook for Better Images of AI - Better Images of AI Blog

To make the process of submitting images to our library easier for everyone, we've released our Submission Handbook to Better Images of AI.

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Arielle Bennett @arielleb.bsky.social · 06/01/2026

Happy New Year! If you've got FOMO from #RSEcon25 you can catch all the videos of sessions online now! Including my workshop sessions on open source in academia: youtu.be/PSRTMScz3Tg?... And one of my favourite sessions on accessibility testing for software (with geese!): youtu.be/M-5KPeUtTys?...

youtu.be

From code to contributions: exploring open source culture in academia- Arielle Bennett, Markus Hauru

YouTube video by Society of Research Software Engineering

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Arielle Bennett @arielleb.bsky.social · 11/12/2025

As you might be able to tell from the subject matter, I'm not a 100% AI skeptic, but this is a feature no one asked for, which makes no ones life better.

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Arielle Bennett @arielleb.bsky.social · 11/12/2025

Reviewing case study PDFs in Adobe, and it's "helpfully" given me an AI summary of the file contents. INSTEAD OF THE ACTUAL FILE NAME WHICH HELPS ME DISTINGUISH BETWEEN THE SEPARATE FILES.

A tab selection of four files which all read "Business applications of Artificial Intelligence". Helpful.

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Data Workers’ Inquiry @dataworkersinquiry.bsky.social · 09/12/2025

🚨NEW INQUIRY! Imagine sharing your private fantasies with what you believe is a bot that cannot judge or remember. Just that, on the other side, is a man in a one-room home in Nairobi, pretending to be an AI companion. That man is Michael, and this is his story: data-workers.org/michael/

data-workers.org

The Emotional Labor Behind AI Intimacy, by Michael Geoffrey Asia.

Imagine confiding your most private fantasies to what you believe is an unfeeling algorithm that cannot judge or remember. Now imagine that on the other side of that conversation is a man sitting in a...

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Justin Sherin @wychstreet.bsky.social · 09/12/2025

You will be visited by three spirits.

Mr Humphries, Captain Peacock, Mrs Slocombe

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Alex Blechman @alexblechman.bsky.social · 05/12/2025

Cloudflare is just one guy holding two cables together. The entire internet runs through them. He is being electrocuted 24/7 but holds on because he knows people need the world wide web. When he passes out from pain & exhaustion we get 404 errors

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Institute for Research Software @softwaresaved.bsky.social · 02/12/2025

◾ The first DisCouRSE Focus Group on Team Culture and Leadership in dRTP contexts will be held on Monday, 19 January at King’s College London. The session will explore how leadership can influence a healthy team culture in a dRTP context. Find out more: www.software.ac.uk/news/discour...

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Pru Madeley @prum.bsky.social · 02/12/2025

I hope someone draws this wonderful story about Tom Stoppard's Arcadia and the power of the arts to help us see things differently, to the attention of our Education Secretary. Do read it, it will lift your spirits.

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Aram Zucker-Scharff @chronotope.aramzs.xyz · 28/11/2025

Look, if you're not an expert you wouldn't know, but this chart is bullshit. They could not possibly measure this as 1. How can you tell for sure? There's no reliable automated way. 2. You're not counting the many sites that are blocking crawlers now. But there's an even more important reason...

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Molly Crabapple @mollycrabapple.bsky.social · 18/11/2025

Hey authors! Check to see if Anthropic stole your book to train their slop generator on. You’re entitled to $1500 per stolen Work. Look up your work, and if you’re in the database, file a claim secure.anthropiccopyrightsettlement.com/lookup/

secure.anthropiccopyrightsettlement.com

Submit a Claim

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Berkeley Institute for Data Science (BIDS) @ucbids.bsky.social · 06/11/2025

So much activity at #JupyterCon 2025 -> tutorials 🧠, meetups 🤝, talks 🎤! Thankfully, Silas Santini captured some highlights and shared some valuable resources! Read "Themes of Day 1, JupyterCon 2025: Collaboration and Modularity" for details: bids.berkeley.edu/news/themes-...

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Justin Hendrix @justinhendrix.bsky.social · 31/10/2025

We now have multiple visualizations of this phenomenon from various news organizations. Which one is the best?

New York Times graphic depicting circular nature of OpenAI investments and business relationships.

WSJ graphic depicting circular nature of OpenAI investments and business relationships.

FT graphic depicting circular nature of OpenAI investments and business relationships.

Bloomberg graphic depicting circular nature of OpenAI investments and business relationships.

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Arielle Bennett @arielleb.bsky.social · 29/10/2025

Last year @turingway.bsky.social took part in an ethnographic study on hybrid hackathons and the paper is finally out for folks to read! dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1... (see if you can guess which one we are 😁)

dl.acm.org

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Arielle Bennett @arielleb.bsky.social · 29/10/2025

As if I didn't have enough to do this week, outlook has changed the location of the flag & delete buttons - such a small change but so rage inducing and jarring every, single. time.

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Better Things Are Possible @internethippo.bsky.social · 03/10/2025

"We're going to create superintelligence" How about making outlook search work first. How about that

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Arielle Bennett @arielleb.bsky.social · 10/09/2025

Slides from my #RSECon25 workshop "From Code to Contributions: Exploring Open Source in Academia" are now up on Zenodo: zenodo.org/records/1709... Excited to share the write up once I've digested all the miro board notes and HackMD contributions - thanks to everyone who participated!

zenodo.org

From Open Code to Open Contributions: Exploring Open Source Culture in Academia

"It is a truth universally acknowledged that a code repository with an open source license must be in want of an extra maintainer." - Jane Austen, probably. While academic researchers and research tec...

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Arielle Bennett @arielleb.bsky.social · 10/09/2025

kicking off day 2 of #RSECon25 with a fantastic keynote on the power of recognition - if you've ever needed three different metaphors for the difference in scale between publications and software submissions to REF, this talk is for you! slides.com/simonhettric...

slides.com

RSE Con 25

A presentation created with Slides.

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Jost Migenda @jostmigenda.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 10/09/2025

“I built my entire career by putting blindingly obvious things on slides.” —Simon Hettrick #RSECon25

Photo of the keynote speaker. Slide in the background says: “If we don't recognise everyone who is vital to research, we limit our ability to conduct research.”

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