iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Alex Tarr

Ingrid Burrington @lifewinning.com · 07/10/2026

Pete doing some good service journalism here for tld heads

Alex Tarr @avatarr8.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

for me its server racks. One of the last largish factories in Worcester, MA is now an Eaton facility building custom racks for data centres, but started out as the Wright Line factory in the 1930s making equipment for managing punch cards. nearly a century of welding furniture for data storage

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Alex Tarr @avatarr8.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

This is actually perfect. The whole reason I was reading about Stargate is that the one promised (threatened?) to be built outside of Newcastle has quietly disappeared.

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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 · 21/04/2026

is that what we're calling Bob Dylan now? But there's definitely a fun George Kaiser Family vs Henry Kaiser Family project to be done.

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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

“ investors worry a lack of insurance could leave them exposed to risks such as natural disasters, which could cause major damage to data centres that cost tens of billions of dollars to build. Others are struggling to secure sufficient cover for costly future disruptions in power or water supply.”

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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

Once we started letting people do the geography of outerspace, it was over.

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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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Reposted by Alex Tarr

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 · 22/02/2026

This is great! I was just searching for Jill Lepore’s bit on the national data center from “If/then” for students, and this Acker piece is even better for driving home the “this all could be different” point.

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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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Reposted by Alex Tarr

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

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

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Reposted by Alex Tarr

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

I’m sure it was much more nuanced in the original French.

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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

is this a question or an imperative?

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

not me on the BART website checking if they still run trains before 8 am

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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 · 14/01/2026

I mean, it'll definitely bias the audience towards jet-lagged nerds and help filter out the dudes who just show up to conferences to behave badly with their old pals 🤷‍♂️

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