iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Tom Fisher @drsamaki.bsky.social · 16/03/2026

He also, despite his intellectual prominence, didn’t spend his time flying on the private jet of a billionaire pedophile.

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Tom Fisher @drsamaki.bsky.social · 05/02/2026

Farewell, CIA World Factbook; you’ll be remembered most of all for your weirdly precise estimates of country’s Population.

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Tom Fisher @drsamaki.bsky.social · 20/01/2026

Tautologous headline: King Harold coins could ONLY come from 1066! …. Too soon?

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Tom Fisher @drsamaki.bsky.social · 25/12/2025

Happy “When is Bin Day” Day to all who celebrate.

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Reposted by Tom Fisher

Nanjala @nanjala.bsky.social · 18/12/2025

Appreciate this piece from Marcus but the piece that’s missing from this essay is the fact that Kenyans and Indians are the primary content moderators or “clean up crew” for the commercially available AI data sets. So yes, he’s right to be upset at the implication but the next step is asking “why?”

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Tom Fisher @drsamaki.bsky.social · 02/12/2025

Die Hard with a Vengeance is also a Christmas movie. Yes, it’s set in summer, but it has endless Christmas references, jokes, Characters humming carols etc.

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Tom Fisher @drsamaki.bsky.social · 26/11/2025

Dear Ars Technica, I wish to draw to your attention the error in the image for this article.That’s no moon.

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Tom Fisher @drsamaki.bsky.social · 23/11/2025

Wish I had an interesting anecdote for this. My own career path is just so cliched, you’re seen it a thousand times. (lecturing in North African history at a Tanzanian University/road safety charity in Huddersfield/privacy NGO/civil service).

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Tom Fisher @drsamaki.bsky.social · 11/11/2025

A tour-de-force on the history of the lindy hop, written with an infectious joy that appeals even to someone like me who can barely manage the Hokey Cokey.

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Tom Fisher @drsamaki.bsky.social · 01/11/2025

This is good news! The weapon we have against the AIs conquering the world isn’t military resistance, or that humans are capable of love: it’s cat memes. And if there’s anything the human race is good at, it’s producing inane nonsense on social media. The world is safe.

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Tom Fisher @drsamaki.bsky.social · 01/11/2025

I originally included a footnote on this very issue in my PhD on the political history of Kilimanjaro. However, I followed the advice of a friend and removed it. I have regretted it ever since.

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Tom Fisher @drsamaki.bsky.social · 22/10/2025

I don’t know what to worry more about: A) the subeditor who decided that “Pharoh’s anus” would make it click bait; or B) the algorithm that decided I was a Pharoh’s anus kind of guy.

Apple News headline on a click bait article featuring a oharoh’s anus

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Reposted by Tom Fisher

medConfidential @medconfidential.bsky.social · 17/10/2025

Today in anonymisation is hard: bsky.app/profile/waff...

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Tom Fisher @drsamaki.bsky.social · 16/10/2025

Was a picture of a larger weevil also submitted to the contest; did they choose the lesser of two weevils?

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Tom Fisher @drsamaki.bsky.social · 16/09/2025

Will I be able to understand MacOS 26 if I’ve not seen MacOS16 to 25?

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Tom Fisher @drsamaki.bsky.social · 31/08/2025

Clever people of BlueSky, help me out: a) Putnam’s ant on a beach drawing a caricature of Winston Churchill is disturbingly similar to an AI Chatbot, but why isn’t it? And: b) does that mean I’m a brain in a vat or not?

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Tom Fisher @drsamaki.bsky.social · 29/08/2025

My daughter ended up in the ICU after one of the rare complications to chickenpox. While she made a full recovery, I’m delighted that no other kid has to go through that. Brilliant news that the vaccination will be offered on the NHS!

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Tom Fisher @drsamaki.bsky.social · 27/08/2025

Great stuff. I know that these are in no way have personalities, but I do find it amusing how often AI comes across as just being really lazy. For LLMs, it’s always Friday afternoon, with a hangover, in a job they hate.

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Tom Fisher @drsamaki.bsky.social · 17/08/2025

Hehe President POO-tihn. Yes, I have been spending the a lot of time with my 5-year olds this summer holiday, why do you ask?

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Tom Fisher @drsamaki.bsky.social · 03/06/2025

Not now, giant doomsday herring. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

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Tom Fisher @drsamaki.bsky.social · 01/06/2025

“The Boss” (whoever they are) is a a scary villain. Anita is pregnant to the Head of HR, who she started a relationship with when potentially in a vulnerable state after finding out about The Doctor and Rogue. This raises serious questions about the HR policies of this mysterious “Boss” character.

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Tom Fisher @drsamaki.bsky.social · 01/04/2025

Or “pen name”, which is almost a name.

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Tom Fisher @drsamaki.bsky.social · 27/03/2025

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say, yes it will survive.

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Tom Fisher @drsamaki.bsky.social · 27/02/2025

The head of Teleperformance SE says that Indian accents are “difficult to understand”. www.dailymotion.com/video/x7sr3t

dailymotion.com

Jonathan

Dailymotion video by willce

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Tom Fisher @drsamaki.bsky.social · 26/02/2025

If you’re a fan of superheroes randomly getting new powers halfway through a movie: watch out for the scene in Captain America: BNW where Cap inexplicably gains the power to negotiate plea deals.

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Tom Fisher @drsamaki.bsky.social · 24/02/2025

A level of soft power that Britain has had for a long time: how many African independence leaders studied in Britain? Nyerere, Kenyatta, Nkrumah.. www.theguardian.com/education/20...

theguardian.com

UK universities educate the most national leaders globally, analysis shows

Research reveals UK institutions educated 50 world leaders in post in 2022, despite job cuts, course closures and a fall in foreign students

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Tom Fisher @drsamaki.bsky.social · 23/02/2025

Through necessity at work, been dealing with a travel agent all week; dear God, trying to explain what you want with words is so much harder than a well-designed website. Of course, if anything goes wrong, I’ll be glad to have someone at the end of the phone. But I want a human for that.

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Tom Fisher @drsamaki.bsky.social · 21/02/2025

This story on the impact of quantum computing on cryptography reads like Good News to me: a future problem was spotted; clever people came up with a solution in good time (except for maybe a handful of edge-cases). www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

bbc.co.uk

Will quantum computers disrupt critical infrastructure?

Quantum computers will be able to crack existing encryption and threaten critical infrastructure.

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Tom Fisher @drsamaki.bsky.social · 20/02/2025

As we see once-unstoppable franchises fizzle out, Bond was truly remarkable run of form. I don’t see that continuing under Amazon, to be honest. www.theguardian.com/film/2025/fe...

theguardian.com

James Bond producers give Amazon full creative control of 007

Deal is struck with heirs to film producer Albert ‘Cubby’ Broccoli, long-serving stewards of franchise

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Tom Fisher @drsamaki.bsky.social · 20/02/2025

It’s unprecedented because so much of it MAKES NO GODDAMN SENSE.

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Tom Fisher @drsamaki.bsky.social · 19/02/2025

The world might be in a deeply pessimistic place, but there are people trying to make it better. How awesome would a norovirus vaccine be?

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Tom Fisher @drsamaki.bsky.social · 17/02/2025

There’s a parallel universe when AI didn’t become big when it did, and so Meta was stuck talking about the metaverse. They’d be in serious trouble.

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Tom Fisher @drsamaki.bsky.social · 17/02/2025

On the plus side, the avatars now have legs! On the down side, I really wish they didn't.

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Tom Fisher @drsamaki.bsky.social · 15/02/2025

It’s a little on-the-beak.

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Reposted by Tom Fisher

Migrant Voice @migrantvoice.bsky.social · 14/02/2025

It is always said that you can't put a price on love, yet that is exactly what happens when people want to marry someone not born in the UK. This #ValentinesDay we are calling on this government to scrap the Minimum Income Requirement and let people be with their loved ones.

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Tom Fisher @drsamaki.bsky.social · 14/02/2025

A BBC news story is a clearly structured piece of writing; it will have a clarity, and won't contain any tricky things like irony or insinuation. So if an AI has trouble summarising a BBC news report, it's not going to be able to manage anything else.

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Tom Fisher @drsamaki.bsky.social · 10/02/2025

What gets me is how pointless this whole thing is. Best case scenario: the end result would be a similar number to now with government-issued ID (passports and driving licenses at the moment). Those without access to ID at the moment will be the people who have difficulty getting an ID card.

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Concepts of a Rae @alsorae.bsky.social · 08/02/2025

Lord, we see what you’ve done for dinosaurs and we are ready to receive.

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Tom Fisher @drsamaki.bsky.social · 07/02/2025

They have top men working on it right now.

The real box was in the custody of a Yorkshire family called Jowett through five generations. Southcottians have campaigned since Joanna's death in 1814 for the box to be opened, maintaining that it is vital this is done before Judgment Day, in 2004. The box was eventually handed over to Annie Stitt, the head of the Southcottian Society, who lived in Joanna's old home, Rock Cottage, and in 1966 she put it for safe keeping in the British Museum. `It is safe in their care and well guarded,' she wrote. `The head man in London took me to see the big table with 24 seats round it, where the Bishops will one day open the box.'

But the museum opened the box and selected papers they felt were of interest. These are now kept in the museum library. The actual box and the rest of the contents were stored in the museum basements and museum officials have lost track of it.

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Tom Fisher @drsamaki.bsky.social · 07/02/2025

I don’t think Gordon Brown gets enough credit for this political master stroke: he was famous for his Golden Rule (of not borrowing for day-to-day spending over the economic cycle). But when the financial crisis hit, how to justify that apparently flying out the window? 1

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Tom Fisher @drsamaki.bsky.social · 07/02/2025

Fascinating article on accountancy - wait! It really is! - and how it’s alleged “objectivity” played out in nationalisations in Tanzania, Chile. www.bostonreview.net/articles/the...

bostonreview.net

The Politics of Price - Boston Review

How accounting protocols undermine public goals—from decolonization to climate action.

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Tom Fisher @drsamaki.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

It's also based on the idea that the only way that people contribute to this country is through earning a high salary. A brutal view of the world.

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Tom Fisher @drsamaki.bsky.social · 05/02/2025

Politicizing foreign intelligence is what ended us with the invasion of Iraq. This does not bode well.

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Tom Fisher @drsamaki.bsky.social · 05/02/2025

Meanwhile, I’m saddened by the death of Aga Khan, who I know little about except from the high-quality hospitals and schools he built. Musk has never appreciated the power (soft and otherwise) of philanthropy.

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Tom Fisher @drsamaki.bsky.social · 04/02/2025

At last, a Marvel villain able to throw a copper kettle over a pub.

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