iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Emily Dourish @emilydourish.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Today’s attempt to catch an egret as it flew off, not quite so easily done.

A blue sky above an autumnal field. There is a tiny white spot which is an egret flying away.

The same photo with a white circle drawn around the tiny white spot that is a bird

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Dustin A. Chacón @lingdustin.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

I've heard people make claims that AI would lead to a new Renaissance, but I didn't imagine it'd happen like this:

Screenshot of a Tweet from Pope Leo XIV. It reads:

"In this era of artificial intelligence, it is becoming urgen to distinguish human art from what machines produce. There is an ontological difference, even before an aesthetic one, between art and what a machine can generate through statistical calculation based on millions of images created by others. Algorithms lack the spark of humanity. For this reason, the Church wishes to renew an alliance with artists and cultural institutions to safeguard our humanity."

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Emily Dourish @emilydourish.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Gorgeous covers and decorated metallic papers on this set of yearbooks produced by type design students at the École Estienne. These are from the 1920s-30s and our run goes up to mid 1950s. #NewAcquisition

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Emily Dourish @emilydourish.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Heron meets urban cows in the Coe Fen golden hour. @everyheron.bsky.social

A heron reaches out for bugs in the grass, reflecting the same movement by a black and white cow. There is a red brick building in the background glowing in the late afternoon sun.

A heron in long grass in front of a red brick building with beautiful afternoon sunlight.

A heron stands below a willow tree. A cow looks at it, slightly mystified.

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Emily Dourish @emilydourish.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

So sneaky - teenager tried a free trial of an online service which then signs you up for a payable subscription. So far so normal, but this renews every four weeks (rather than monthly) this meaning you’re almost certain to miss the cancellation date 😡

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Emily Dourish @emilydourish.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

2026 references: noise from the road resurfacing outside the house and teenager says “It’s like living next to an AI data centre”.

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Emily Dourish @emilydourish.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Post choir baking urge so I am seeing the evening out with a warm banana, raspberry and chocolate chip muffin served with cream. Because I am a grown-up and I can.

A tray of very chunky muffins with chocolate and raspberries visible. There’s one gap where one of the muffins has been removed.

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Emily Dourish @emilydourish.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Duolingo feeling a bit existential tonight.

Duolingo Spanish for “Are there happy people?”

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Emily Dourish @emilydourish.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Fascinating dinner time debate with 15yo who asserted that the teaching I do with spec colls could be done completely online because you can tell people about what the physical book is like, and anyway they’re just reading the words. 1/2

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Joshua Rushton @joshuarushton8.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

This is happening tomorrow! Still time to sign up if you’d like to Zoom in to us!

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scha·den·freu·de @blisterpearl.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

The new AI captchas are really something ᵛⁱᵃ ˣᴷᶜᴰ

This image is XKCD #2228: "Machine Learning Captcha" by Randall Munroe, which satirizes how verification tests might exploit human fear and judgment during a hypothetical robot takeover.

text:
TO PROVE YOU'RE A HUMAN, CLICK ON ALL THE PHOTOS THAT SHOW PLACES YOU WOULD RUN FOR SHELTER DURING A ROBOT UPRISING.

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Reposted by Emily Dourish

Charles West @pseudo-isidore.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

For those not on Instagram, details of a memorial service in memory of Rosamond McKitterick: 5 p.m. on Friday 23 October 2026, at Great St Mary’s, the University Church.

screen shot from Sidney Sussex College's Instagram account.

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Emily Dourish @emilydourish.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Fundraising phone call from college. They’ve chosen for me someone who sings in the chapel choir ✅ and is a rower ✅ and in the course of the conversation, discovered he lived in the room next to where I was in my third year. 🎯

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Emily Dourish @emilydourish.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Further special collections vocab from Duolingo.

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Emily Dourish @emilydourish.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

A library story in three Duolingo pictures.

Duolingo Spanish for Is this book in our library?

Duolingo Spanish for Yes, it’s in our library.

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Emily Dourish @emilydourish.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Special collections vocab time in Duolingo. What next? No usamos guantes; eso es solo en la televisión.

Duolingo Spanish for Do you always use this pencil?

Duolingo Spanish for The pen is not good.

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Emily Dourish @emilydourish.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Alas a timeline synchronicity with @bcpminuscontext.bsky.social that on this occasion really tests the forgiveness. @lottelydia.bsky.social @eicathomefinn.bsky.social

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Emily Dourish @emilydourish.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

So very sad. Cabin Pressure is our constant companion on long car journeys and bored afternoons, and Stephanie as Carolyn was a wonderful performance. Whichever letter of the alphabet you choose, you’ll be in for a treat.

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Emily Dourish @emilydourish.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Duolingo giving me the phrases that matter.

Duolingo Spanish for I clean my books often.

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Emily Dourish @emilydourish.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

I was going to send this to my husband in a “ha ha you’re so old” way then realised it now applies to me as well. I am dead.

A web site advertising travel services for the over 50s.

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Emily Dourish @emilydourish.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Sudden craving for the tinned pasta shells in a slightly spicy sauce with lots of aggressively spiky dried herbs that Sainsbury’s used to sell in the 1980s. Could eat that stuff cold from the tin 😋 Turns out there’s an online archive of Sainsbo’s packaging 😍 www.sainsburyarchive.org.uk/catalogue

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Emily Dourish @emilydourish.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Reposting because the day shift needs this knobbly beauty too.

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Emily Dourish @emilydourish.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Popped out to the garden and met this lovely toad 😍 @arc-trust.bsky.social

A common toad in a garden sitting in a rock next to some green leaves, all knobbly and delightful

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De Profundis @dpchoir.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

It’s concert day again! Big audience expected. Come and join the fun - plenty of tickets available on the door. Tallis - 7:30pm - Little St Mary’s - conducted by Tallis expert, David Skinner. Woo-hoo!

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lauren @lauren.rotatingsandwiches.com · 11/09/2026

Where did it all go wrong? Leaving primordial ooze 14% Origin of bilateral symmetry 7% Transition to land 32% Human-Chimpanzee divergence 47%

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Reposted by Emily Dourish

De Profundis @dpchoir.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Our Tallis gig is in 3 days! Our first (and probably only) English programme. 12th Sept, Little St Mary's. Missa Puer natus est nobis, English anthems, Loquebantur, Suscipe quaeso and other favourites, conducted by David Skinner. What's not to like? Get your tickets now! bit.ly/DPTallis

bit.ly

Thomas Tallis - 'All thinges made newe'

Sacred music by Thomas Tallis for Catholic and Protestant monarchs

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Emily Dourish @emilydourish.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

When I find myself in times of trouble, the secondary catalogues know what to do.

The spine of a small brown rectangular volume. It is part of the pre-1905 catalogues of Cambridge University Library. The spine label reads “HUG -HUGO”

The label on a card catalogue drawer reading “HUG -HUL”.

Shelves of tiny volumes of catalogue slips, containing the non-academic titles received by Cambridge University Library between 1800 and 1905.

Metal drawers of card catalogues for non- academic books received by Cambridge University Library between 1906 and 1976.

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Emily Dourish @emilydourish.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Slow moving rainy day traffic outside the house. Estimate 20% of drivers on their phones. One woman curling her eyelashes 😱 Someone holding printed sheets of paper on the steering wheel. Almost all the phone drivers are on their own.

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Emily Dourish @emilydourish.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

The joy of teenager getting bus to school on a rainy morning and the one she wants just isn’t there on the tracker. Maybe it will arrive on time in 1 minute, maybe it doesn’t exist 🤷‍♀️ thanks, Stagecoach!

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Johannes Gutenbot @gutenbot.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Johannes Gutenberg invented 3-D printing

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De Profundis @dpchoir.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

Gig next Saturday - a *great* programme of music by Tallis - tickets at bit.ly/DPTallis. Meantime we’re in a new rehearsal venue. Any guesses?

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Emily Dourish @emilydourish.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

You must go to the Reddit thread. This is so wonderful!

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Emily Dourish @emilydourish.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Very important clarification to this note found inside a typescript catalogue of a manuscript collection.

Typescript note reading “will you please destroy all earlier lists that you may have had in recent decades” and it’s the word Relevant added by hand between ‘all’ and ‘earlier’

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Emily Dourish @emilydourish.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

So all the fast trains from Kings Cross to Cambridge were cancelled. Ran to get one from St Pancras which closed the doors just as we arrived so no luck there. Back to KX and on moderately stopping train. We’re now sitting at Royston because the overhead power has gone off. 😭

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Emily Dourish @emilydourish.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Proms round two with the Berlin Phil.

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Emily Dourish @emilydourish.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

20 years ago today. Good work team.

A handsome man in a morning suit holds hands with a beaming short-haired woman in a pink dress holding a small bouquet of pink flowers.

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Emily Dourish @emilydourish.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Looked up the “good men” school to find out more. A tale in three images.

A summary of a google page explaining why this particular school thinks single sex education is important for boys’ emotional intelligence.

Alas when you click on the link in the previous image, the page about why single sex education is so important is no longer available, replaced with a 404

The school home page now advertises a move to co-education.

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Emily Dourish @emilydourish.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Graphic design assistance needed (or at least someone checking where the advert would sit) to stop this young rugby player from wearing a monocle 🧐

An advert on the back of a bus in which a young boy is holding a rugby ball. A round service access flap (or something of that nature) is positioned directly over his eye.

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Emily Dourish @emilydourish.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Unexpected last blossom from rose New Dawn, which starts every year in May and had finished about a month ago 😍

A delicate pink rose opening up against the background of a white painted fence and green leaves.

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Louie Stowell @louiestowell.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

I love that this is how I found out Starmer stepped down as an MP

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Emily Dourish @emilydourish.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Is it too much to ask for the self service checkout to have an alarm that says “You appear to be buying decaf coffee: do you really mean to do this?”.

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Emily Dourish @emilydourish.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

Advent calendars in the shops already. Because nothing quite expresses the anticipation of the arrival of little baby Jesus like a play set full of dinosaurs. If it’s anything other than T Rex on Christmas Eve I will be very disappointed.

The Jurassic Park Minis advent calendar offering “24 days of fun” with carnivorous prehistoric creatures

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Emily Dourish @emilydourish.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

Make your favourite film sound as boring as possible without giving away the title: A man searches for his stolen rug.

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Orkney Library & Archive @orkneylibrary.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

Somehow it is 8 years today since we posted this Twitter thread, about a very, VERY old document from our Archive. Now it's another year older and we're still keeping it safe. It was written 624 years ago. No really. Archives are amazing. 👇

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