iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Ben Cooper @btcooper.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Had a lovely explore of Warriston Cemetery as part of e Edinburgh's #OpenDoorsDay. A lovely mix of history and wildlife on a beautiful day!

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Ben Cooper @btcooper.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

My primary meme-sharing group is called His Dank Materials, which might be the greatest name I've ever come up with for anything. Still proud of it, years later.

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Tom Duffin Photographer @tomduffinphotos.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

The moon last night over the Bronze Age burial cairn that sits atop West Cairn Hill in the Pentlands. I don't normally shoot the moon unless it's full or a crescent but I had to stop for this one. @astroroyalscot.bsky.social can you tell me about the dent top R in the moon?

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Ben Cooper @btcooper.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

Latest mad thing to be carried on my cargo bike - 35kg of plywood in ~1m long chunks. Interesting effect on the handling - *very* stable above ~10km/h but basically could only be steered like a ship. Incredibly loud over any slightly rough road surfaces... But all in all, great success!

A cargo bike with a bunch of quite heavy plywood sheets trapped to the back with a combination of ratchet straps and bungee cords

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Ben Cooper @btcooper.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

Thor living up to his name during last night's thunderstorms

A cat staring out of a window, fully illuminated by a stroke of lightning

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Sacha Coward @sachacoward.bsky.social · 20/06/2026

Game: Majora's Mask (2000) Moment: You save the world, you reunite lovers, you help countless folk heal and rebuild. Then the world ends, the game resets, everything is forgotten. Learning: Doing kind things is important even when you cannot be there to see the outcome. /4

static.klipy.com

Majora's Mask: Final Day Moon Crash

ALT: Majora's Mask: Final Day Moon Crash

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Ben Cooper @btcooper.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article... This is shoddy reporting by the BBC, and stuff like this will massively contribute to the problematic hype around LLMs and AI. Makes it seem like they just said "Hey ChatGPT, design me a vaccine".

bbc.co.uk

'World-first' vaccine designed by artificial intelligence

Cambridge scientists say they have, for the first time, tested a vaccine designed by AI.

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Ben Cooper @btcooper.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

Little known fact - he also moonlighted as a @bobgooday.bsky.social impersonator.

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EldritchSophie 🏳️‍⚧️ - Perturabo's discord kitten @eldritchsophie.bsky.social · 22/05/2026

I for one will continue to use single sex spaces, and if any so called 'defender of women and girls' tries to stop me from using the toilet, I will gladly piss on their shoes 😤

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Chris @chrsphr.uk · 22/05/2026

at least you can be as trans as you want on a hovercraft

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Andrew Hickey @andrewhickey.500songs.com · 06/05/2026

This is the problem. A pitch to voters "turning to Greens and Reform". You have to actually choose between the voters who want what they perceive as a socially liberal socialist environmentalist party and the ones who want fascism. You can't appeal to both, and now they all hate you.

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Science Magazine @science.org · 05/05/2026

Deepfakes are everywhere, but digital forensics investigators are fighting back. Learn more: scim.ag/42dMPBg

To verify images, digital forensics investigators will often check whether the geometry of the scene is realistic. In a real photo, lines that run parallel in reality—like floor tiles—should meet at a single vanishing point. In this image, however, the dotted lines do not meet in a single point, indicating it is a fake.
Image: an AI-generated image of soldiers marching down a hallway in three lines, wearing fatigues and carrying rifles. Four dotted white lines have been added over the image, running along the floor tiles visible in the foreground and extending back to where the vanishing point should be, behind the soldiers. Instead of meeting in a single point, the lines all cross at different points.

Investigators also examine reflections. The lines connecting points on an object to matching points in its mirror image run parallel in reality, so similarly should meet at a vanishing point. In this image, the lines again do not converge on one point, revealing it to be a fake.
Image: An AI-generated image of a plastic cartoon dinosaur toy with its reflection visible in a small mirror. Four dotted white lines are layered over the image, connecting points on the toy with the same points on its reflection: the top of its eye, the end of its jaw, its hand, and its foot. The lines extend out to the side of the image, where they all cross at different points rather than meeting at a single point.

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Ben Cooper @btcooper.bsky.social · 21/03/2026

I'd forgotten how terribly laid out Leeds station is. If you have a platform 0A, something has gone terribly wrong

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Ben Cooper @btcooper.bsky.social · 08/03/2026

This year’s “Woman you should know about” for International Women’s Day is Josephine Baker. Dancer, singer, actress, civil rights activist, pilot and recipient of France’s highest order of merit, the Legion of Honour. 🧵 1/22

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Ben Cooper @btcooper.bsky.social · 05/03/2026

Prince Phillip, the Duke of Edinburgh, once asked me if I had ever seen anyone die. When I responded "No", he said "Well, it's only a matter of time" and walked away.

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Ben Cooper @btcooper.bsky.social · 22/02/2026

Incredible. I cannot stop watching this!

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Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 19/02/2026

these memes are fresh

lobsters fighting meme, both lobsters and the cheering people all labeled "STATISTICIAN"

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Daniel Williams @daniel-williams.co.uk · 10/02/2026

A letter to Martin Rhodes, my MP, regarding the recently-announced budget cuts to astronomy and other curiosity-driven science in the UK. (Full text in on my blog, apologies that I couldn't fit it all in alt text: daniel-williams.co.uk/2026/02/10/l...)

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Ben Cooper @btcooper.bsky.social · 04/02/2026

Incredible for a BBC article to just drop this nickname in there with absolutely zero context on who he is (other than "shark expert") and why he has that nickname. No notes.

Screenshot of news article: Shark expert Tom 'The Blowfish' Hird explains that bull sharks have "certainly got a fire inside them" and "are known to retaliate when they have been either chased by boats or when they've been tagged".

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Ben Cooper @btcooper.bsky.social · 22/01/2026

Are you a data scientist who wants to help improve dog welfare? Come and join my team! R or Python, fully remote within the UK, £37k, closes 29th January. Please reskeet! careers.dogstrust.org.uk/en/postings/...

careers.dogstrust.org.uk

Data Officer

Job Opening: Data Officer at Dogs Trust in Home-based.

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Ben Cooper @btcooper.bsky.social · 22/01/2026

careers.dogstrust.org.uk

Data Officer

Job Opening: Data Officer at Dogs Trust in Home-based.

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Ben Cooper @btcooper.bsky.social · 21/01/2026

Additional escalation in my "what's the maddest thing I can transport by cargo bike?" This is a track saw in the panniers plus 2.4m of tracks. Additionally, more bikes should have a rudder to aid steering :D

A cargo bike with fully-loaded pannier bags. Strapped to the back, like a rudder or tail, is a long strip of aluminium, extending from underneath the saddle, and sticking off the back of the bike.

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Ben Cooper @btcooper.bsky.social · 14/01/2025

Happy Feast of the Ass day to all who celebrate

Image showing two figures on a donkey, being led by a third. The image is titled "Feast of the Ass", and an information box tells us that this is a Western Christian festival celebrating the "Flight into Egypt" which occurs on the 14th of January.

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C. Robert Cargill @crobertcargill.bsky.social · 06/01/2026

We've been through this. There is no shame in easy mode. There is no shame in reading/watching tutorials. Some people have 80hrs/wk to pump into gaming. The rest of us have families & jobs. A built in "Fuck, how do I get past this so I can start having fun again?" button? Sure. Let people have fun.

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Hugh Brechin @hughrbrechin.bsky.social · 29/12/2025

calling a military tech company Anduril: honestly, solid name, vibes of Aragorn's sword positive calling a data company Palantir: sinister, but at least in a way that makes sense calling your home security company *Sauron*, a cartoonishly evil villain famously undone by poor threat monitoring: ???

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John Bull @garius.bsky.social · 07/11/2025

Something worth noting: Rockstar is leaning HEAVILY on the excuse that the unionising employees were "leaking private company information" They want people to assume this means game info or assets. But I will bet you CASH MONEY this translates to: 'they were comparing salaries and work contracts"

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Disappointed Optimist @disappoptimism.bsky.social · 13/10/2025

If this happened at a steel plant there would be talk of government bail out to secure jobs

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Ben Cooper @btcooper.bsky.social · 13/10/2025

Incredible thermal inversion over Edinburgh from the pentlands this morning. Taken from Carnethy hill looking north-east, you can see Turnhouse, Castlelaw, Allermuir and Caerketton hills. What you can't see is any of the city of Edinburgh! @threadinburgh.scot @secretedinburgh.bsky.social

Looking out over the city of Edinburgh, hidden in fog. Four hills are visible, which look like islands in a sea of clouds.

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Marie Le Conte @youngvulgarian.marieleconte.com · 12/10/2025

since we're talking about The Other Place, one now pointless gripe I still have is that actually it could have remained a fair bit more pleasant and usable and useful if more people just used the non-algorithmic timeline and I'll never understand why they didn't just do it

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Peter Tennant @pwgtennant.bsky.social · 09/10/2025

Just because an LLM can produce a report with various figures & charts doesn't mean it is good at statistics. Because good statistics is not about producing code. It's about deep knowledge of study design & conduct. In my opinion, 95% of all data science problems come from poor questions & design.

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Ed Zitron @edzitron.com · 29/09/2025

Newsletter: This is The Case Against Generative AI, a comprehensive analysis of a financial collapse built on myths I’ll dispel, the markets’ unhealthy obsession with NVIDIA's growth, and the fact that there is not enough money in the world to fund OpenAI. www.wheresyoured.at/the-case-aga...

wheresyoured.at

The Case Against Generative AI

Soundtrack: Queens of the Stone Age - First It Giveth Before we go any further: This is, for the third time this year, the longest newsletter I've ever written, weighing in somewhere around 18,500 wo...

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Andrew Sissons @acjsissons.bsky.social · 29/09/2025

New blog: we *think* the UK government's crucial Warm Homes Plan will launch next month. So what does it need to do to be a success? I've set out 7 tests for the Warm Homes Plan here - from making electricity cheaper to making local delivery work. www.nesta.org.uk/blog/seven-t...

nesta.org.uk

Seven tests for the government’s Warm Homes plan

Accelerating the switch from gas to electricity, make electricity cheaper, and balancing electrification with insulation are key policies that could reduce bills and carbon emissions for households

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Dreadnought Holiday @dreadships.bsky.social · 11/09/2025

Despite easily being the most British fighting vehicle ever developed, the mock-Tudor AT-AT programme was sadly cancelled due to budgetary concerns

The Old Wellington Inn in Manchester, being jacked up on stilts to the new street level during redevelopment. It definitely looks like it's about to waddle out of the picture.

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Paul Duane 🥔 @paulduane.bsky.social · 11/09/2025

I don't think it is callous of me to observe that it is weird to see the PM of the UK, the leader of the Opposition of the UK, and the ex UK PM all putting out solemn and devastated tweets about the death of a podcaster who is only a big name if you're constantly on Twitter

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nude antifa goat @goat.sex · 07/09/2025

"but we can't support trans rights, it's unpopular!" just a reminder that US approval for marriage between black and white people at the start of the civil rights movement was 4%, reaching a whopping 20% by the end of the movement it's 95% now you don't wait for popularity for a rights movement

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horror Ewacui @ewacat.bsky.social · 09/09/2025

this is called "doing a streeting" which is to position yourself firmly on the wrong side of an issue for no reason and to no one's benefit

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Ben Cooper @btcooper.bsky.social · 08/09/2025

Ooof, chilly start to the day...

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Ben Cooper @btcooper.bsky.social · 22/08/2025

Oh cool, Windows 11 has tabbed file browsing. That feature that's been in most Linux distributions for 15+ years! Well, better late than never!

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👻madeline bOoOoOoOodent👻 @oldenoughtosay.com · 27/05/2025

one in a billion means statistically it should happen roughly once per lunar cycle in the UK, about 13 times in a calendar year

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Ben Cooper @btcooper.bsky.social · 24/05/2025

Found in the Highlands and presented without comment

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Hugh Brechin @hughrbrechin.bsky.social · 08/05/2025

still possible that Mr Blobby bursts through the window and out onto the balcony overlooking St Peter's Square

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Micah @rincewind.run · 07/05/2025

the fundamental disconnect between the manosphere and reality is that they are incapable of understanding that this is - according to every woman I’ve ever met - the sexiest thing a man has ever done

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Bob Gooday @bobgooday.bsky.social · 01/05/2025

happy beltane and international workers day my celts and comrades

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John Bull @garius.bsky.social · 30/04/2025

My standard rule is that before anyone is allowed to talk shit about a university's economic role, they have to tell me how many people they think it employs. They're normally wrong by a factor of ten. This should also be the first question to any MP offering thoughts on the topic.

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