iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Dan Jones @danjoneswords.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

It sometimes seems that the history of innovation is really the history of lucky accidents - and here's another case in point open.substack.com/pub/originso... #inventions 🧪

open.substack.com

Smoke signals

How one scientist’s dirty habit gave us a staple of home safety

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Dan Jones @danjoneswords.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

Buble Wrap: we all know it, we've all used it, we've all popped it. But did you know that the product as we know it was not what the inventors intended when they created it in the 1950s? Read on to discover Bubble Wrap's curious history originsofeverything.substack.com/p/cushioning... #inventions

originsofeverything.substack.com

Cushioning the blow

How a failed wallpaper design became the world’s most famous packaging material

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Dan Jones @danjoneswords.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

Did you enjoying thumbing through The Guinness Book of Records books when you were younger (or perhaps still do!)? Ever wondered who came up with the concept for the book, and why? 👇

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Dan Jones @danjoneswords.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

Oh look, a bunch of joyless, souless, loveless idiots can't throw a decent party, quelle surprise

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Dan Jones @danjoneswords.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

In case your creeping feelings of existential dread were beginning to wane, here's your booster shot

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Dan Jones @danjoneswords.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

Old British bodies can't cope with the heat. Unfortunately, I'm stuck with the same one I had last year...(I'm not *old* but I do turn 50 next week and that sounds, well, bloody old to my eternally youthful mind)

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Dan Jones @danjoneswords.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

Want to look into space? Want to *really* look into space? Then trip on this (you may need to download a 9Gb - yes, 9Gb - image. Worth it...)🔭🧪

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Dan Jones @danjoneswords.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

If you're ever feeling like you're a pathetic loser, you can always favourably compare yourself to this ridiculous man-child in red (both of them, actually)

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Dan Jones @danjoneswords.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

"It would basically kill the AI industry overnight" Oh boo fucking hoo. Always thought this guy was a prick (Clegg, not Ball)

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Dan Jones @danjoneswords.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

If the origins of life interest you, but you don't where to start, I wrote a two-part deep dive into what is perhaps the greaest outstanding question in all of science - get part 1 here: originsofeverything.substack.com/p/genesis-st...

originsofeverything.substack.com

Genesis Story: Part I

The deep origins of life on earth

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Dan Jones @danjoneswords.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

Super interesting new research exploring the fuzzy zone between non-life/life, and perhaps where the latter came from 🧪🧬

originsofeverything.substack.com

Genesis Story: Part I

The deep origins of life on earth

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Dan Jones @danjoneswords.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

Always had the sneaking suspicion that I somehow bound all life together, now it's all falling into place! Thank you for the epiphany.

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Dan Jones @danjoneswords.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

Leave it out with the clever words mate. (And if I now spend hours checking the left-hand side of every page and still find nothing about me I'm going to be livid.)

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Dan Jones @danjoneswords.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

I've read this supposed history of everyone who ever lived by @adamrutherford.bsky.social , and I don't get a single fucking mention, absolute scammer! But seriously, the talk sounds well worth going to....

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Dan Jones @danjoneswords.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

LEGO. We’ve all played with it. We’ve all built with it. We’ve all trodden on it in the dark. And we all know it’s a Danish concept through and through – right? Well, not quite: it was actually inspired by a British toy maker who never saw his own inventions succeed like LEGO blocks.

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Dan Jones @danjoneswords.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

Have you ever wondered about how the universe came into being, but felt intimidated by the physics/didn't want to read a whole book about it? Here's the shirtest, gentlest version of this amazing, mind-boggling origin story that I could manage 🧪🧬 originsofeverything.substack.com/p/the-bigges...

originsofeverything.substack.com

The Biggest Origin Story of All

How our universe came to be

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Dan Jones @danjoneswords.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

This event was so pathetically embarassing and I love that fact

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Dan Jones @danjoneswords.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

Traffic lights before cars? That's right - find out more about the curious history of this essential feature of the modern world originsofeverything.substack.com/p/stopgo

originsofeverything.substack.com

Stop/go

The Victorian origins of the traffic light

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Dan Jones @danjoneswords.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

Long before germ theory, quaratines were a staple of public health policy. Here's where they came from.... open.substack.com/pub/originso...

open.substack.com

The Forty-Day Law

From the Black Sea to the Black Death: the gruesome origins of the quarantine

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Dan Jones @danjoneswords.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

Cool thread on a story I most likely would not have looked into in much detail, but am glad to know the revelant details 🧪🧬

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Dan Jones @danjoneswords.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

Well colour me double intrigued then! (Haven't got round to reading your piece yet...)

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Dan Jones @danjoneswords.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

Always down to watch a Ken Burns doc

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Dan Jones @danjoneswords.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

danjoneswords 1m I am also going to shamelessly use this as an excuse to link to my Substack essay that offers an introduction to this area for the totally unitiated - it's in two parts, and you can check out the first installment here 🧪🧬 #scicomm originsofeverything.substack.com/p/genesis-st...

originsofeverything.substack.com

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Dan Jones @danjoneswords.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

@michael-marshall.bsky.social wrote an excellent book on the origins of life a few years back (The Genesis Quest: amzn.eu/d/09s…) so no better guide - I'm looking forard to hearing about the latest thinking in this tricky area...🧪🧬 #scicomm #originoflife

amzn.eu

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Dan Jones @danjoneswords.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

The fad exploded. Within 2 years, more than 100 million Slinkys had been sold. Over the coming years the Slinky continued to sell, while Richard James became obsessed with a religious sect, finally leaving his wife and six children in 1960 to live with the group in Bolivia.

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Dan Jones @danjoneswords.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

James’s wife, Betty, immediately saw its potential as a children’s toy, and taking inspiration from its sinuous movement dubbed it the Slinky. Debuting their product at a Philadelphia department store in November 1945, they sold the 400 they had with them in 90 minutes.

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Dan Jones @danjoneswords.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

Intrigued by the unusual motion, James set out to make a version that would delight people by “walking” down a flight of stairs. After 2 years and many experiments, he patented the original Slinky: 80 feet of spring wire coiled into 98 loops, sitting 2.5 inches high at rest.

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Dan Jones @danjoneswords.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

James had a number of prototypes stacked on his desk when one day he knocked one off. Rather than clanking to the floor and coming to rest, the spring did something surprising: it “stepped” down onto a stack of books and then again onto the floor before landing upright, re-coiled in a neat stack.

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Dan Jones @danjoneswords.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

The idea of the Slinky, a regular on Top 10 20th Century Toys lists, was an accidental by-product of distinctly unplayful research. In 1943, naval engineer Richard James was developing new tension springs to stabilise sensitive instruments on warships traversing rough waves and ocean swells.

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Dan Jones @danjoneswords.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

Chances are you’ve owned a Slinky. I have, and over the past 80 years so too have some 300 million people. Here’s it's origin story in brief [🧵👇] #toys #inventions

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Dan Jones @danjoneswords.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

Always torn about separating the art from the artist - generally I'm quite tolerant but there are definitely limits (eg, I won't listen to the one song by the Lost Prophets that I liked, because of Ian Watkins). Interested to take a moment out and think more deeply about my position here.

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Dan Jones @danjoneswords.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

No expert in this area but apparently the newer models have low or zero audio latency so make sure that's a feature (I think there are some people who live with the video and audio being out of sync, but that's insane on the face of it).

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Dan Jones @danjoneswords.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

I would not have thought Rob Kenyon had a novel in him. I suspect that is where it should've remained. But I can't pretend I'm not intrigued to see at least excerpts...

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Dan Jones @danjoneswords.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

Brilliant and detailed dive into the connections and networks of reciprocal favours that bound the Epstein class of scientist-thinkers.

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Dan Jones @danjoneswords.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

Really good piece. In the late 90s/early-to-mid 00s I was reading a lot of the big names of the Edge community, and the New Atheism. Started to get turned off a lot of these thinkers for Epstein-unrelated reasons, but my parting of ways has only become more sensible as the years go by.

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Dan Jones @danjoneswords.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

Painful to recall my optimism of 2008, and my naivety of the coming whitelash...

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Dan Jones @danjoneswords.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

"Man, why do people stop talking about problems once they've solved them? Pretty sus, no?" 🤔🧪

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Dan Jones @danjoneswords.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

Exactly 100 years later, cardiologist David Littman invented the modern, lightweight version of the stethoscope still in use in your doctor’s office today. 🧪🧬

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Dan Jones @danjoneswords.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

The idea caught on, and other doctors began adding their own innovations. First came more funnelled designs that offered enhanced acoustic properties, then, in 1851, the creation of a stethoscope with two rubber listening tubes, one delivering sound to each ear while blocking out external noise.

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Dan Jones @danjoneswords.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

Laënnec grabbed a piece of paper, rolled it into a tight tube, placed one end against his patient’s chest, and put his ear to the other. With this simple diagnostic tool Laënnec could hear her heart more clearly than the standard methods ever allowed, and soon fashioned a more robust wooden version.

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Dan Jones @danjoneswords.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

Then inspiration struck. Laënnec recalled something he’d recently seen while walking through the courtyard of the Louvre: two children sending messages along a length of wood by scratching one end with a pin, and listening to the transmitted sound emerging at the other.

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Dan Jones @danjoneswords.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

In late 1816, a 35-year-old French doctor called Rene Laënnec was summoned to assess a young, full-figured woman showing symptoms of heart disease. Laënnec deemed a hand on the chest a waste of time and, due to the patient’s age and proportions, was too embarrassed to lay his head on her bosom.

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Dan Jones @danjoneswords.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, if a doctor wanted to get a sense of how your heart or lungs were functioning they had two options. They would either place a hand on your chest to feel for any irregularities, or they would place their ear against the chest to listen directly.

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