iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

There are actually two by-elections in London today. One of them is a council by-election where I live! The Labour GOTV operation is major.

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Charlie W @charlie-w.bsky.social · 13h

Using an LLM to do their accounts.

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Charlie W @charlie-w.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Another Fairford arrest. Idly rehearsing the idea that the theory <despite their denials, the van people were unwittingly assembling a bomb following piecemeal instructions from others> is unfalsifiable, so you could 'follow leads' forever.

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Charlie W @charlie-w.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Warhammer is a big UK business success, sure. I was at one of their shops at the weekend with the kid and it's £25 for _one small miniature that you have to glue together and paint yourself_. But the place does have a v. happy vibe.

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Charlie W @charlie-w.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

So, _district heating_ and heat pumps. Does anyone know if there is UK government support (or GLA support) for switching a district heating system form gas to heat pumps?

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Charlie W @charlie-w.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Also, the Caterpillar company is complicit as hell in both anthropogenic climate change and the data centre abuses.

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Charlie W @charlie-w.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Very much as suspected. ‘Backup generators’ aren’t.

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Charlie W @charlie-w.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

OK, question for energy-minded followers. When do you think that the UK national grid will be free of gas? 2035? Later?

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Charlie W @charlie-w.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Happy morning out at the Japan festival even if the crowds were emetic. Photos attempted, but not with the phone. Brunch (not Japanese) was good value in the sense of no more food being needed until Tuesday.

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Carla Denyer @carladenyer.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

My thoughts on tomorrow's conference motion 'Zionism is Racism’

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Charlie W @charlie-w.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Just read ‘Zionism is racism’ as ‘Zionism isn’t racism’ and wish I’d been correct first time. Also it would be good if UK politics didn’t fall into this trap constantly. Except for right parties. They can.

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Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan @london.gov.uk · 03/10/2026

Oxford Street has long been the nation’s high street. On Monday 26 October, it’ll go permanently traffic-free and pave the way for a greener, more welcoming street with new opportunities for retail and leisure.

lbc.co.uk

Oxford Street to be pedestrianised from October | LBC

Vehicles will be prohibited from accessing almost a kilometre between Orchard Street and Great Portland Street from October 26

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Shannon Vallor @shannonvallor.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Get in losers, we're reinventing Narrow AI

Excerpt reads: "Smaller models fine-tuned for industries such as law and finance - or even individual companies - could make AI cheaper to run. Trained on specialist or proprietary data, they may require less computing power while outperforming general-purpose frontier models on narrow tasks."

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Charlie W @charlie-w.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Victoria line closing 'for track repairs' starting at 7:30 on a Saturday night is a fairly cunty move, I would say.

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Charlie W @charlie-w.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

To get the big productivity transformation, AI has to perform on a par—not with 'a PhD' or whatever—but on a par with a professional team. Not just at the level of some team member; they have to be able to sunset the team itself. How it looks to me, anyway.

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Charlie W @charlie-w.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Minor point, also, and ignore me. But ChatGPT passing an exam or whatever doesn't perhaps signal what it might. People need to pass exams to be accepted into some activity. But inside the activity itself, the task changes. You now don't have to pass, you have to _get it right_ (whatever it is).

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Charlie W @charlie-w.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

My feelings also. There's surely something there, and it can do low grade (by most accounts) coding, which is enough for many companies. And it can precis a vast amount of literature, as long as you like errors. But we're still waiting for a somewhat new approach to come onto the scene, no?

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Charlie W @charlie-w.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Was reminded of the hydraulic computer that models the economy (along Keynesian lines afaik) of which the London Science Museum has a version. It's fun. It shows money as absurd, and what's best is that it also seems to be accurate and true. www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAZa...

youtube.com

Making Money Flow: The MONIAC

YouTube video by Reserve Bank of New Zealand

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Charlie W @charlie-w.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Has anyone had good experiences with Octopus for electricity?

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Charlie W @charlie-w.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Not given to dunking on companies on SM but why does my electricity company seem to think that I'll help them arrange a 'meter upgrade to 5G' with building management? It's their productivity gain. They can just come and read the sodding meter instead if they want.

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Charlie W @charlie-w.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Things I like about Bill Gates (on AI): (1) Global perspective; he talks about effects on poor, middle income, and wealthy countries. (2) A grounded view on near-term risks (AI-enabled terrorism, essentially). (3) An optimistic longer view, conditional on the needed social changes being made.

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Charlie W @charlie-w.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Gates is one of the more cogent voices on AI that I've heard.

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Judah Grunstein @judah-grunstein.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

What I don't get about the "AI as jobless future" scenario is where the money comes from. Gates says tax the companies for using the AI agents, but if no humans are working, who is paying the companies for the AI services they're providing so the companies can pay taxes?

nytimes.com

Opinion | Bill Gates’s Blunt Warning on A.I. (Gift Article)

As A.I. capabilities accelerate, the technologist is shocked by the “complete lack of engagement” with the question of how to manage its risks.

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Lisa Messeri @lmesseri.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

one of the reasons that I warn researchers away from adapting commercial LLMs into their pipeline is that Big Tech has a history of sunsetting popular, usable products and replacing them with worse ones. (i'm trying to ween myself off of google scholar, but it is hard).

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Charlie W @charlie-w.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

The Guardian's 'You Be The Judge' has been a bit off lately. Or at least the readers have been off. Burning a wok is not OK—although 55% say it is—and while we're yet to have the verdict on the stupid football calendar, I have a bad feeling.

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Charlie W @charlie-w.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

So the fuel thieves somehow are connected to Iran? Can’t imagine any scenario there that makes sense to me so won’t try.

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Charlie W @charlie-w.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Let's rehearse instead the idea that consumers are trying to improve their material conditions for good reasons—that they are pursuing excellence—and that they are capable of discriminating between wasteful and non-wasteful production.

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Charlie W @charlie-w.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

I'd be interested, then, to see what happens when you drop from sustainability discourse all of: 'artificial needs', 'status', 'display', 'consumerism', and the like. Let's not assume that there are 'basic needs' to be set apart and pursued in preference to unhealthy needs.

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Charlie W @charlie-w.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

I don't think that's automatically true. Some contemporary consumer goods seem markedly more durable than earlier goods; that is, they are 'better' in a deeper sense than having a new and useful functionality (like colour in a television).

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Charlie W @charlie-w.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

There's an assumption there, though, that consumer goods always have obsolescence designed into them, and that producing firms always chase novelty simpliciter as opposed to improvement.

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Charlie W @charlie-w.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

'Prosperity Without Growth' comes down fairly hard against novelty, seeing it as a driver for over-consumption (and the breaching of one or more planetary boundaries). Jackson doesn't have much time either for consumer goods as status display, and tends to frame acquisition as 'anxiety-driven'.

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Charlie W @charlie-w.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Doing a quick read of Tim Jackson's 'Prosperity Without Growth' (2009). Contemporary with 'The Spirit Level' (on inequality). References Sen (briefly).

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Charlie W @charlie-w.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

(From the previous): “In contrast to [GDP] … post-growth conceptualises human wellbeing in terms of a wide range of subjective and objective measures of wellbeing, with a focus on satisfying basic needs.” <- Here is the problem.

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Charlie W @charlie-w.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

So I take from that the wider idea of ‘pursuit of excellence’ without increased resource use, as a motivator & source of meaning within a post-growth society.

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Charlie W @charlie-w.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Another interesting post-growth paper suggests ‘increased customer satisfaction’ as an alternative metric for the growth of a business within a post-growth economy.

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Charlie W @charlie-w.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

A 2017paper on post-growth economics says that the ending of fossil fuels will be roughly $ equivalent to the 19th C. expropriation of slave owners, which if true gives some insight into current US politics.

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Charlie W @charlie-w.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

I will say, by way of personal confession, and to give perspective: I find the idea that my own day job (designing buildings) is a _futile_ activity (because of the contribution of building to climate change); well, that idea is very demoralising. I want there to be an answer to this problem.

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Charlie W @charlie-w.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Well this is probably going to need to go to the blog, reactivating it. But start to think that the politics of the 'green transition' are best understood as two distinct problems. (1) the problem of reassuring workers today that their enterprise is _not futile_ and will not be sunsetted.

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Charlie W @charlie-w.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

For the politics of it, I guess the obvious things are: triangulation with Lib Dem (and Green?) supporters over PR, blocking the right; an implicit pledge to rejoin the EU after the next election.

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Charlie W @charlie-w.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

But then, I don't think politicians anywhere have much to go on when it comes to the industry of the 'post-growth' world; what that world will value, how the people in it will find inspiration to be active and creative, and not just slump; in short, what people will do.

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Charlie W @charlie-w.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Made time for Burnham's speech and liked it. Wanted more on industrial stuff though. More than 'we'll use AI'.

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Andrew Sissons @acjsissons.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

The link between electricity and gas prices has already begun to break - and the government can take some credit for that... www.nesta.org.uk/blog/the-ene...

Chart showing gas bills rising by 88% and electricity bills by 68% between April and October 2022. And then gas rising by 33% and electricity by 9% between April and October 2026

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Charlie W @charlie-w.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

The country is having a hard time coming down from this Fairford thing. I’d worry, only it’s actually an improvement from the Birmingham six, Guildford four, etc.

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Charlie W @charlie-w.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Investigation INTO WHAT???

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Charlie W @charlie-w.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I actually believe they may teach 'do not speculate' in police school. Not under how to police, but as part of their general mentoring / career development curriculum. 'Only make the most guarded statements at all times'. Farage on the other hand ...

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