iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Alex Tarr @avatarr8.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

"It’s important to note that the Stargate Project is not affiliated with Project Stargate, the CIA’s defunct psychic research program of similar name, nor the science fiction series it inspired. This version is grounded firmly in data, energy and capital—not clairvoyance or wormholes." IBM's AI blog

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Alex Tarr @avatarr8.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

"A hyperscale data center should not be considered a one-time purchase." IBM always providing reliable personal financial advice.

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Alex Tarr @avatarr8.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

Happy new @downtownboys.bsky.social record day to all who celebrate! Listened through twice now already and, without hesitation, everyone should go out and get a copy!

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Alex Tarr @avatarr8.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

Love everything about this project: digital cooperative building publicly accessible tools to uncover who owns land in the UK! Help them out-- www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/land-explo...

crowdfunder.co.uk

Help us build a better Land Explorer!

LandExplorer makes it simple to find out who owns the land & buildings in your community. Help us keep it free for everyone who needs it!

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Alex Tarr @avatarr8.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

who is writing the cultural history of how hoodies became the symbol of hackers in the popular/design imaginary?

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Alex Tarr @avatarr8.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

remember when capitalism was about profits?

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Alex Tarr @avatarr8.bsky.social · 28/05/2026

The hill I will die on (because it will be the death of me) is that file name conventions still matter. Lost *hours* again this week due to getting files names as short paragraphs (breaks ms cloud still 🙄), generic ("final final" ), or inaccurate ("my data.docx" is actually the final portfolio).

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Roopika Risam @roopikarisam.bsky.social · 02/05/2026

Preorders HUGELY help a book succeed. If you’re inclined to read (in hardcover, ebook, or audiobook), please preorder DATA EMPIRE or ask your library to order a copy! North America: tinyurl.com/DataEmpireUS Everywhere else: tinyurl.com/DataEmpireUK

tinyurl.com

Data Empire

From clay tablets to the algorithmic state, a groundbreaking new lens on human history arguing that information has always been the seed of power, for reade...

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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 30/04/2026

it is not judicial activism when it is going after what scalia called a “racial entitlement.” you know, voting rights.

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Alex Tarr @avatarr8.bsky.social · 29/04/2026

"We've been saying for years that you don't need a representative democracy!"

Digital cover of NYTimes from April 29, 2026, headline reads "Supreme Court Deals Blow to Voting Rights Act" with image replaced by photo of King and Queen of England with the President and his wife from earlier in the day,

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Alex Tarr @avatarr8.bsky.social · 29/04/2026

reading all these stories about AI companies changing their token billing models, and what is the tech-company form of carcinisation where they all eventually look like Esri? esrinisation?

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Shannon Mattern @shannonmattern.bsky.social · 29/04/2026

A critical supplement to this 🌟 list are those folks who help us imagine other political economies: Christina Dunbar Hester on community radio, Nathan Schneider on co-ops, Joy Lisi Rankin on the public history of computing, @hellobrittparis.bsky.social on other Internets... (plus me, too?)

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Sonja Drimmer @sonjadrimmer.bsky.social · 24/04/2026

If our classroom activities comprise teaching students how to use a commercial product then we are not teachers; we are salespeople.

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Alex Tarr @avatarr8.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

absolutely wild to see multiple Howard Rheingold references into contemporary work on digital media. Not in a historicising sense, just like "let's see what ol' Howard has to say about TikTok."

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Alex Tarr @avatarr8.bsky.social · 26/03/2026

In Berkeley for less than 10 min, at original Peets, a stranger is telling me about a girlfriend sleeping with Bob Weir, tweaking machine language code to port millipede for Atari when working there in the 80s, and significance of discrete cosine transformation in making jpgs of his b&w photographs.

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Alex Tarr @avatarr8.bsky.social · 24/03/2026

FT over here going “gee, would be a real shame if something were to unexpectedly happen to your data centre…” www.ft.com/content/5ba0...

ft.com

Lenders struggle to find insurance cover for mega data centre projects

Lack of sufficient cover means some investors are walking away from deals

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Alex Tarr @avatarr8.bsky.social · 20/03/2026

8 am AAG session and once again can't keep track if we're talking about NDVI or NVIDIA

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Alex Tarr @avatarr8.bsky.social · 10/03/2026

Sometimes I am still amazed Silicon Valley has become what it has become.

Screen grab of 1984 "Silicon Valley" illustrated map showing several technology companies, a western themed sheraton, pendleton windery and the Chuck E Cheese corporate headquarters.
https://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/s/stq9h8

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city-journal.bsky.social @city-journal.bsky.social · 16/02/2026

Forum on Climate change and urban agrarian solidarities. From food, water, and energy to social reproduction, the forum asks: how do we move from urban agrarian opposition to political solidarity? Read: tandfonline.com/toc/ccit20/current

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garrett miller @garrett.bsky.social · 26/02/2026

hello! meet MOSS, the newest painting toy from @brainfruit.bsky.social MOSS is a pixel art creator with programmable brushes and shareable pads. it's kind of like if procreate and asesprite got together and made something weird together. www.moss.town

moss.town

MOSS — A Painting Toy Where Every Brush Is a Tiny Program

A 128x128 pixel canvas with programmable brushes. Code a brush, see what it does, share it with your friends.

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Alex Tarr @avatarr8.bsky.social · 24/02/2026

Yes. But the real villain all along was the "learning management system" ... and the entire neoliberal for-profit, ed-tech, text-book-publishing, anti-intellectual, anti-union, "efficiency" and metrics driven apparatus behind it. This is the last nail? Calling it 'Einstein' is a low blow though.

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Alex Tarr @avatarr8.bsky.social · 17/02/2026

Happy annual re-reading of George Lipsitz’s seminal 1988 essay “Mardi Gras Indians: Carnival and Counter-Narrative in Black New Orleans” to all who celebrate. (it is admittedly gets more dated by each passing year, but remains such a point of departure in my life)

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Shannon Mattern @shannonmattern.bsky.social · 16/02/2026

"When Ursula K Le Guin was writing a new story, she would begin by drawing a map. The Word for World, a book co-published by Spiral House + AA Publications, brings Le Guin’s maps together with poems, stories, interviews, recipes and essays" — video of AA launch (via @the-syllabus.bsky.social)

youtube.com

The Word for World: The Maps of Ursula K Le Guin

YouTube video by AA School of Architecture

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Xander Lenc @xlenc.bsky.social · 10/02/2026

Replacing all social media with RSS feeds would fix the internet immediately.

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Karen Gregory @karengregory.bsky.social · 03/02/2026

"A budget is a statement of our values..." Would be nice to hear this reflected in how we discuss financial modelling in UK HE. Currently, we seems to stuck at "number go up, number go down" rather than what kind of institution are we and why?

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Alex Tarr @avatarr8.bsky.social · 03/02/2026

For years I've relied on Grace Hopper's explanation that sending data via satellites is inherently slow because of the distances information has to travel up and down... but all the StarLink hoopla and NASA's TBRID, realising I may not really have a good grasp on this. Anyone have a good primer?

Grace Hopper holds up a piece of wire representing how far an electron can travel in one nanosecond.

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Alex Tarr @avatarr8.bsky.social · 02/02/2026

A bing news update on my work computer has informed me that the Victorian era ended on this day in 1901. So you can stop debating that point at least.

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Alex Tarr @avatarr8.bsky.social · 22/01/2026

have reached a moment where friends and colleagues fully know their use of gen AIs is bad for everyone but the corporations who make them, but unprompted are pre-emptively defensive about it. Getting a lot of the same vibes from cigarette smokers in the 90s, "everyone does it, why am I the bad guy?"

1950s advertisement for CAMEL cigarettes with a smiling doctor holding a cigarette, modified to read "More Doctors prompt CHATGPT than any other generative ai." The doctor has six fingers as if made by an ai.

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Alex Tarr @avatarr8.bsky.social · 20/01/2026

more like they're Bored of Peace?

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Ingrid Burrington @lifewinning.com · 15/01/2026

thinking about this some more

the meme of Fred from Scooby Doo unmasking the villain—text above villain in masked frame says "infrastructure", text above villain in unmasked frame says "the means of production"

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Alex Tarr @avatarr8.bsky.social · 14/01/2026

Could really use more reporting on the geography of why US companies 'need' Venezuelan oil. i.e. FT mentions in passing Gulf Coast refining infrastructure is built for crude they can't access now, so hundreds of billions in fixed capital not producing expected profits. Fix those spatial problems!

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Alex Tarr @avatarr8.bsky.social · 25/11/2025

I’d start with Oracle, personally, but any start seems wise.

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Karen Gregory @karengregory.bsky.social · 14/11/2025

Just to say, I am a supervisor here: UKRI AI Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) in Responsible and Trustworthy in-the-world Natural Language Processing www.responsiblenlp.org/2026-student... If you are reading things like this and planning PhD project, do reach out: www.ft.com/content/e5b7...

responsiblenlp.org

2026 Studentships

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Alex Tarr @avatarr8.bsky.social · 14/11/2025

I know this paper is way over the word count, but just can’t bring myself to delete the footnote that simply states “Packard-Bell is not Hewlett-Packard.”

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Alex Tarr @avatarr8.bsky.social · 06/11/2025

"AIs, the models work just like us!"

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Alex Tarr @avatarr8.bsky.social · 04/11/2025

Thinking about the early 2000s on this momentous November day, and what's really popped into my head is that, if I'm honest, my all time favourite rhyming lyric is "Candy left over from halloween, a unified theory of everything."

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Alex Tarr @avatarr8.bsky.social · 22/10/2025

computational humanities ==! digital humanities Is this a conversation worth trying to have in 2025?

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Ilias Alami @iliasalami.bsky.social · 16/10/2025

To follow!

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Alex Tarr @avatarr8.bsky.social · 16/10/2025

WARNING: THIS COMPUTER MUST BE EARTHED Top of page 1 of the 1986 BBC AIV (advanced interactive video) user guide that accompanied the BBC Domesday Project (on 2 custom laser disks), where nearly a million UK children collected data for an interactive map, photos, videos and virtual tours project?!

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Alex Tarr @avatarr8.bsky.social · 07/10/2025

Who's writing the "From Counterculture to Cyberculture" style book on how we got from a 2000s free/remix-culture liberal dream that the Internet could break the corporate stranglehold on life to this moment of Tech Corporation actively trying to end life as we know it by seizing control of culture?

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Internet Archive @archive.org · 24/09/2025

We’re not just planning for a digital future: we’re living in a digital present. How do we make a sustainable cultural memory? @TJOwens.bsky.social & @ShannonMattern.bsky.social discuss in the #booktalk AFTER DISRUPTION. 🗓 Thurs Sept 25 🕖 10 AM PT / 1 PM ET 🎟️ www.eventbrite.com/e/1633230118...

Promotional image for an online book talk titled 'After Disruption.' Left side shows portraits of Trevor Owens and Shannon Mattern with text: 'After Disruption Book Talk, with Trevor Owens & Shannon Mattern.' Center panel reads: 'September 25th, 10am PT / 1pm ET, Online. Join us for a book talk with Trevor Owens, author of After Disruption: A Future for Cultural Memory, in conversation with Shannon Mattern, as they explore how libraries, archives, and museums can reclaim their role in shaping a just and sustainable digital present.' Logos of Internet Archive and Authors Alliance appear at the bottom. Right side shows the book cover for 'After Disruption: A Future for Cultural Memory' by Trevor Owens, featuring a photo of a grand library entrance.

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Alex Tarr @avatarr8.bsky.social · 04/08/2025

"Cities continue to change, in response to access to and control over their energy supplies, as well as to their will to exploit and conserve. But our ability to penetrate our surroundings-to distinguish myth from reality, wish from fulfilment has only begun to cope with environmental change..." 1/2

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Alex Tarr @avatarr8.bsky.social · 13/03/2025

who writes about the origins of 'data' as something a subject possess? In something like an ontological sense- in the same way that a subject (once) possessed a soul or personality, one now *has* data. Data that is to be guarded, protected or given at will? When did "my data" enter the zeitgeist?

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Alex Tarr @avatarr8.bsky.social · 21/02/2025

Most reposting to remind fellow urbanists that you can now follow @city-journal.bsky.social on bluesky! But, of course, also welcome more feedback on the editorial. (come for the great art by Tom Schofield, stay for the non-sequitur, but maybe prescient, swipes at Larry Ellison and Oracle)

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Alex Tarr @avatarr8.bsky.social · 14/02/2025

semi-annual reminder that Japancakes covered My Bloody Valentine's "Loveless" in its entirety and it is perfect. All instrumental (the cellos and pedal steels work brilliantly) so you can put it on at your place of work today! japancakes.bandcamp.com/album/loveless

japancakes.bandcamp.com

Loveless, by Japancakes

11 track album

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