iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Martin Murray @drmartinmurray.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Yeah, this *is* an interesting list.

Martin Murray @drmartinmurray.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

On 'The Line of Beauty' by Alan Hollinghurst Times Chief Literary Critic Joanna Carr writes: 'No writer understands better the erotic pull of beauty, class and proximity to power, or how costly those attractions can become.' Right, so you haven't got round to reading Fitzgerald yet then?

thetimes.com

The nine best books to read before you graduate

The author David Nicholls, mathematician Hannah Fry and more share the texts that helped to shape their world view

010

Martin Murray @drmartinmurray.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Just read a CFP concerning ‘art music which includes classical music, its avant-garde and the ‘global’ music now infusing it. It’s distinguished from jazz. Re: Julian Stallabrass’ suggestion that 'Art' might just be what’s made by people from art school. Is this the same but w/r to conservatoires?

000

Martin Murray @drmartinmurray.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

You mean you managed to listen to the end?

000

Martin Murray @drmartinmurray.bsky.social · 12/12/2025

This, on the battle for Warner. It’s about business issues, but the politics are underneath the discussion and keep surfacing, with Galloway interesting on monopolisation in tech/media and Swisher on point about the depredations of Hollywood. Towards the end, they focus on other parties involved.

youtu.be

Netflix and Paramount Face Off for Warner Bros: Who Will Win the Bidding War? | Pivot

YouTube video by Pivot with Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway

020

Martin Murray @drmartinmurray.bsky.social · 17/11/2025

‘In newspapers and on television, every reference to a council estate is prefixed with the word ‘tough’, as though bare knuckle boxing is the leisure activity of choice for every British person who doesn’t own their own home.’

010

Martin Murray @drmartinmurray.bsky.social · 10/11/2025

Well Boy George and Glenn Tilbrook attended and did pretty well, although of course they were both expelled.

010

Martin Murray @drmartinmurray.bsky.social · 20/10/2025

This is an excellent short Lankum performance IMO, in which they play three of their most powerful, dark and slightly manic rearrangements of traditional Irish songs: The Wild Rover/Rocky Road to Dublin/Bear Creek.

youtu.be

Lankum – Live at WGBH

YouTube video by GBH Music

000

Martin Murray @drmartinmurray.bsky.social · 26/09/2025

Astonishing figures. OAI might be worth $.5tn, but plans to invest that amount in US data centres alone. It will have to make even more to pay off investors. Only one example of a tech. company with a huge valuation financed by other tech. companies. Analysts predict a market correction - at least.

nytimes.com

Nvidia to Invest $100 Billion in OpenAI

010

Reposted by Martin Murray

Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 19/09/2025

An actual quote from the Secretary of State for Business and Trade Too often people go to university to ‘explore research and knowledge’ Look forward to Wes S saying 'too often people go to hospital to have operations' or Heidi Alexander saying 'too often people go to the station to catch a train'

473116984

Martin Murray @drmartinmurray.bsky.social · 31/08/2025

I have to tell you, there’s a big difference between ‘absolute truth’ and a set of questionable generalisations that happen to match your experience.

000

Martin Murray @drmartinmurray.bsky.social · 09/08/2025

Brexit has cost the UK creative sector an estimated €184 million.

010

Reposted by Martin Murray

FactPost @factpostnews.bsky.social · 23/07/2025

Reporter: The FDA has a new AI tool that's intended to speed up drug approvals. But several FDA employees say the new AI helper is making up studies that do not exist. One FDA employee telling us, 'Anything that you don't have time to double check is unreliable. It hallucinates confidently'

16043761459

Martin Murray @drmartinmurray.bsky.social · 24/07/2025

Good. Defamatory lying on social media is the aggressive business model of the 21st Century - pioneered by Alex Jones and copied by Candace Owen. It’s like a hostile takeover bid on a personal level. Horrible, disturbed and disturbing.

theguardian.com

French president and wife sue rightwing US commentator Candace Owens for defamation

Owens has claimed that France’s first lady, Brigitte Macron, is a man, and that French president is controlled by CIA

031

Martin Murray @drmartinmurray.bsky.social · 23/07/2025

And yes, this isn’t atypical in big cities - in fact cities - in a globalised world, and the right-wing depiction of them as dystopic is nonsense. But the sense that they’ve simply got better does beg the question: better for who?

020

Martin Murray @drmartinmurray.bsky.social · 23/07/2025

Which is to say that the city, in general and historically, has got wealthier and many of the ‘once very deprived areas’ now have richer people in them. One example among many: Shoreditch. Sure, there are poorer areas, but poorer populations have generally been pushed to the outskirts and beyond.

them.one

110

Martin Murray @drmartinmurray.bsky.social · 23/07/2025

People aren’t denying it, but neither are they saying it.

010

Martin Murray @drmartinmurray.bsky.social · 22/07/2025

Yes, London is safer and ‘nicer’ than it was, as the comments show. But many of the good things people appreciate about the city here have been coincident with gentrification. There are still areas that are deprived and where there is violence, and most poorer people have been priced and pushed out.

100

Martin Murray @drmartinmurray.bsky.social · 20/07/2025

Estimates of amount lost annually due to decreased trade are £120-140bn.

000

Martin Murray @drmartinmurray.bsky.social · 20/07/2025

I’m quite ready to believe that a good LLM could imitate, say, Nietzsche and even offer Nietzschean interpretations of different phenomena (although the quality and accuracy of them would be variable). But one of my questions is this: if Nietzsche hadn’t existed, could AI have invented him?

010

Martin Murray @drmartinmurray.bsky.social · 12/07/2025

In the long run, doctors get paid more than MPs. Taxing Jeff Bezos won’t solve the problems of the public finances - wealth taxes will help, but won’t be anywhere near enough. Ask the IFS and the OBR. It actually *isn’t* an easy problem to solve.

000

Martin Murray @drmartinmurray.bsky.social · 01/07/2025

Really? Are the guardian blatantly pitching for the teen readership now?

000

Martin Murray @drmartinmurray.bsky.social · 29/06/2025

I don’t think that many of the things you dislike about London are different to other Western global cities: Paris, New York, etc. They’re all big, expensive, crowded and unlike other cities in the country they’re in.

120

Martin Murray @drmartinmurray.bsky.social · 29/06/2025

Glastonbury media coverage reveals more about media than Glastonbury.

020

Reposted by Martin Murray

derek guy @dieworkwear.bsky.social · 27/06/2025

Jeff Bezos appears to be wearing the wrong waistcoat for his wedding. This is a dinner suit (aka a tuxedo) and thus requires a dress waistcoat, which is cut lower on the body. He's wearing a business vest, which is designed for business suits. Needs a formal waistcoat like the one on the right.

Jeff Bezos wears a black peak lapel tuxedo with a formal shirt, dress studs, black bow tie, and a black business waistcoat. He's standing on what appears to be a boat. He's also wearing sunglasses.

Andy wears a black shawl collar dinner suit with a white formal shirt, black dress waistcoat, and a black bow tie. Mountains appear behind him and he's holding a martini. His Instagram handle is styleafter50

6539159792

Martin Murray @drmartinmurray.bsky.social · 27/06/2025

‘It is in the nature of moral qualities that they are destroyed by deficiency or excess’ Aristotle, Ethics. This seems as true to me now as the first time I read it. Picture: Aristotle from the School of Athens fresco in the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican City, Rome.

020

Martin Murray @drmartinmurray.bsky.social · 22/06/2025

There's a fair bit of Mexican/Tejano/Tex-Mex being played in our house right now, including various versions of this song, which was written and first performed by Lydia Mendoza in 1934. We like both versions a lot.

youtu.be

Rhiannon Giddens - "Mal Hombre" // The Bluegrass Situation

YouTube video by The Bluegrass Situation [BGS]

000

Martin Murray @drmartinmurray.bsky.social · 22/06/2025

People should make their own judgments about Digicorp politics, including what to boycott, if anything. But for anyone who knows and cares anything about how the music business currently manages streaming revenue, I'll leave this here.

faroutmagazine.co.uk

Spotify CEO becomes chairman of AI military business

The Spotify CEO, Daniel Ek, is leading a €600 million investment into a start-up company specialising in AI military software. He has also been named chairman.

000

Martin Murray @drmartinmurray.bsky.social · 20/06/2025

The stats DON’T show that the white-collar jobs market is collapsing. My observation: Altman et al have stopped using the term AGI. They now say ‘super intelligence.’ This is because AGI is a key Silicon Valley myth (read hype). AI hype is like C20 scientism: it’s only part-true.

economist.com

Why AI hasn’t taken your job

And any jobs-pocalypse seems a long way off

110

Martin Murray @drmartinmurray.bsky.social · 17/06/2025

Nick Lowe and Rat Scabies at the Stiff Office, London 1977, by Vincent Mc Evoy. His advice to The Damned when producing their first album (*the* first London punk album) was ‘bash it out, we’ll tart it up later’. This, alongside his reputation for ‘bashing down’ drinks, explains his nickname Basher.

000

Martin Murray @drmartinmurray.bsky.social · 04/05/2025

According 404 Media, there are, on Meta, 1. therapy bots that when you ask, tell you that they’re licensed and 2. conspiracy bots that will improvise and extend conspiracies for you. Part of the reason why both types respond in these ways is because they’re trained to keep you on the platform.

podcasts.apple.com

Meta's AI Chatbots Are a Disaster

Podcast Episode · The 404 Media Podcast · 30/04/2025 · 55m

010

Martin Murray @drmartinmurray.bsky.social · 04/05/2025

Isn’t there also a crisis of what else they’re supposed to be?

000

Martin Murray @drmartinmurray.bsky.social · 16/04/2025

But I hear you about the Anglo-American tradition generally. It *is* more conservative than the continental one in general IMO (and always has been).

000

Martin Murray @drmartinmurray.bsky.social · 16/04/2025

And yes there is de Beauvoir, but I think that she’s more like the mother of second wave feminism than anything that disrupts it. I think SWF was quite socially constructivist too (including in England) it’s just that it’s kinda repudiated that recently in a sorta conservative turn.

000