iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Bethan M Jenkins @gwenynen.bsky.social · 28/01/2026

I saw the following article opening after this thread and thought it fitted. "I realised just how far the association of classical music with relaxing affect instead of real emotion had gone." www.theguardian.com/music/2026/j...

theguardian.com

Why Max Richter’s Hamnet needle-drop left me cold | Tom Service on music

In a new weekly column about the world of classical music, Tom Service bemoans Hollywood turning pieces into slop through overuse. Plus: Philip Glass withdraws his symphony from the Kennedy Center

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David Ho @davidho.bsky.social · 22/05/2025

So…about AI’s energy use… “…to create a five-second video, a newer AI model uses ‘about 3.4 million joules, more than 700 times the energy required to generate a high-quality image’. That's the equivalent of running a microwave for over an hour.”

mashable.com

Report: Creating a 5-second AI video is like running a microwave for an hour

That's a long time in the microwave.

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Alan Rusbridger @arusbridger.bsky.social · 30/04/2025

Can anyone with a highly trained editorial eye spot the mistake on this front page ? 😂

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DariusB @dariusbat.bsky.social · 22/04/2025

Picked up piano parts for playing in orchestra later this week; this sign-off from the copyist at the end of John Adams Short Ride made me smile

End of a hand-written orchestral piano part, signed off "David Ocker, tired music copyist"

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Tom Bowman @tomkbowman.bsky.social · 17/04/2025

The Cruel Fantasies of Well-Fed People. A couple of years old now, from @georgemonbiot.bsky.social A long read so get yourself a cuppa. TLDR = 8 billion+ people need an efficient food system not a rural fantasy. #food #sustainability #doughnuteconomics www.monbiot.com/2023/10/04/t...

monbiot.com

The Cruel Fantasies of Well-Fed People

The astonishing story of how a movement’s quest for rural simplicity drifted into a formula for mass death

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DariusB @dariusbat.bsky.social · 01/04/2025

The right time of year for the satisfyingly cynical 'Spring' by Edna St Vincent Millay (1892-1950). I discovered it thanks to the wonderful @kukukadoo.bsky.social who posted it on X (but sadly doesn't seem to post on here).

To what purpose, April, do you return again?
Beauty is not enough.
You can no longer quiet me with the redness
Of little leaves opening stickily.
I know what I know.
The sun is hot on my neck as I observe
The spikes of the crocus.
The smell of the earth is good.
It is apparent that there is no death.
But what does that signify?
Not only under ground are the brains of men
Eaten by maggots.
Life in itself
Is nothing,
An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.
It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,
April
Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers

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DariusB @dariusbat.bsky.social · 29/03/2025

In a change to the schedule, our final concert of the current organ recital series this Monday lunchtime at Leeds Cathedral will be a tribute to Simon Lindley. I'll be joined by David Greed, violin, to perform pieces he regularly played with Simon, as well as some of SGL's favourite organ pieces.

Obituary for Simon Lindley on the homepage of the Leeds International Concert Season

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DariusB @dariusbat.bsky.social · 23/03/2025

Two new concerts from Leeds online - Tom Winpenny's fantastic recital from February, and mine for International Women's Day - here's a taster from that of Rachel Laurin's spectacular Toccata - a lot of work but worth the effort! www.leedsconcertseason.co.uk/watch-online/

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George Monbiot @georgemonbiot.bsky.social · 21/03/2025

A gobsmacking story. Water companies let toxic waste disposers, for cash, dump their loads into sewage farms. The sewage sludge is then spread, untested, on farmland, potentially poisoning vast areas, entire ecosystems and the people (you and me) eating the food. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

theguardian.com

What’s in the millions of tonnes of sludge sprayed on to farmland? The answer won’t make you happy | George Monbiot

Thanks to breathtaking negligence, the liquid fertiliser used to help grow our food bubbles with a lethal cocktail of toxins, says Guardian columnist George Monbiot

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DariusB @dariusbat.bsky.social · 19/03/2025

A suitable epitaph for a musician? ‘A life devoted to the study of musical science, and shortened by unremitting application and anxiety in attainment of its object’. Stephen Storace, aged 36, English composer and brother of Nancy (who was the first Susanna in Marriage of Figaro).

Memorial wall plaque in Marylebone Parish Church

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DariusB @dariusbat.bsky.social · 19/02/2025

Any organ music enthusiasts in Central London this Saturday, it would be great to see you at Bloomsbury Baptist church at 4pm - I’ll be playing Demessieux, Bach, Saint-Saens, Mendelssohn, Franck, Coates and Lemare.

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Ian Dunt @iandunt.bsky.social · 14/02/2025

The hidden-away bill charting a course back to Europe: No-one wants you to look at the product safety and metrology bill and there's a really good reason for that iandunt.substack.com/p/the-hidden...

iandunt.substack.com

The hidden-away bill charting a course back to Europe

No-one wants you to look at the product safety and metrology bill. And there's a really good reason for that.

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DariusB @dariusbat.bsky.social · 11/02/2025

Rehearsing Philip Glass with the Halle today with the Halle with the Halle the Halle the Halle with the Halle with the Halle with the Halle the Halle with the Halle the Halle with the with the Halle the Halle with the Halle etc (repeat 3x) (also trying to avoid RSI)

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DariusB @dariusbat.bsky.social · 07/02/2025

Just finished this, and can’t recommend it highly enough. So moving and beautifully written.

Cover of ‘time’s echo’ by Jeremy Eichler - Music, Memory and the Second World War

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The City of Oxford Choir @oxfordchoir.org · 02/02/2025

A concert millions of years in the making! 🦕🦖 'Unearthed', a choral celebration of palaeontology in Oxford, includes works by Pearsall, Clara Schuman, and Whitcare as well as the world premiere of 'Monster' by @hutchingsmusic.bsky.social. Tickets on sale now. 🎟️ oumnh.ox.ac.uk/event/city-o...

Image: Stone museum building with dinosaur in front.
Text reads: The City of Oxford Choir and Oxford University Museum of natural History.
Unearthed, a choral celebration of 200 years of palaeontology in Oxford.
Friday 28 March 2025, 7:00 pm.

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DariusB @dariusbat.bsky.social · 30/01/2025

Hoping to get Leeds Concert Season to leave the other place and start posting here, but meanwhile I'll be posting our recital videos here. This is Gordon Stewart's excellent concert from last week with some rarities! www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMOo...

youtube.com

Dr Gordon Stewart - Leeds Cathedral, 13 Jan 2025

YouTube video by Leeds International Concert Season

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DariusB @dariusbat.bsky.social · 27/01/2025

I enjoyed this thread, learnt some useless zoological info as well

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Aparna Nair @disabilitystor1.bsky.social · 23/12/2024

I know academics who use AI regularly, for work and play, and I'd really like them, and universities, to tell me how they contend with AI's bottomless appetites for power and water. Is asking ChatGPT to interpret a Xmas song or making it write your syllabus worth this to you?

Cameron, Ariz. Living on one of the largest swaths of land in America without electrical power, Thomasina Nez's entire life is a scramble to complete basic tasks. To take a hot shower, she must wait for buckts of water to come to a boil on a small propane stove outside her wood framed roundhouse. To make meals, she relies mostly on canned goods because unfridgerated produce rots qucikly in the Arizona heat. Its a struggle to stay warm at night, because she refuses to use her coal-powered heate after its fumes killed her two dogs.

A fierce battle for electric power is being waged across the nation, and Nez is one of thousands of people who have wound up on the losing end. Amid a boom in data acenters, the energy intensive warehouses that run supercomputers for Big Tech companies, Arizona is racing to increase electricity production. In February, the state utility board approved an 8 percent rate hike to bolster power infrastructure throughout the state, where data centers are popping up faster than almost anywhere in the US But it rejected a plan to bring electricity to parts of the Navajo Nation land, concluding that electric consumers should not be asked to foot the nearly $4 million bill.

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DariusB @dariusbat.bsky.social · 26/12/2024

Youngest gave me a John Cooper Clarke collection. Think this is my favourite. Brutal but true

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DariusB @dariusbat.bsky.social · 08/12/2024

The amazing Robert and Debra have completed the Leeds Town Hall facade pipe restoration! Have a look for the video on FB from the Upright Gilders (I can’t make the link work here, so here are a couple of pictures.)

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DariusB @dariusbat.bsky.social · 26/11/2024

I love it when @petroc.bsky.social plays something that makes you stop what you're doing and just listen - that Earl Wild/Gershwin was just wonderful - thank you!

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DariusB @dariusbat.bsky.social · 24/11/2024

Was recently entertained to learn that Herbert Howells used to call his ABRSM examining duties 'ass-boarding'. I hope he would have enjoyed my examining room this week, complete with bar and slowly rotating glitter-ball, as much as I did.

A small theatre-type room with a piano, ornate table lamp, and glitter ball and stage lights

A bar illuminated in red with beer taps and wooden counter, optics behind

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DariusB @dariusbat.bsky.social · 22/11/2024

I can’t believe that a year ago I didn’t know this piece, and now I’ve played the organ for it 3 times, with 3 choirs, 2 conductors, and directed many choir rehearsals. I still find more in it every time, the beauty, intensity and total mastery of harmony and orchestration. It’s just extraordinary.

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DariusB @dariusbat.bsky.social · 17/11/2024

It was a great recital - well worth a listen!

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