iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

ben @eskola.uk · 08/08/2026

RE: mas.to/@changoteca/1169480308141526… How people think socialism fails: leftist infighting How socialism actually fails: CIA coup.

The glasses of Chilean president Salvador Allende, smashed when he was murdered by the CIA.

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ben @eskola.uk · 10/06/2026

who could have predicted this

A post from Amazon warning that AI-generated code might slow teams down, not speed them up — just like anyone who was any good at their job has known all along

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ben @eskola.uk · 04/06/2026

Something I’d never seen before, in the City #cycling

A sign on the barrier of some construction works, giving directions to a bicycle repair kit at the next junction.

The bicycle repair kit in question. A metal post bolted to the ground, with a pump, and some tools attached by wire cables. A sign indicates that there is a limited supply of inner tubes and gives directions as to where to ask for them.

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ben @eskola.uk · 28/05/2026

This is horrible reasoning. Thinking back to books I read as a child, in plenty of cases I was just oblivious to when they were set; it just wasn’t relevant. (As a child in the 90s I probably wouldn’t have noticed if a book was written/set in the 70s or 80s and maybe even earlier.)

Why do publishers modernize books?

A dated reference can break the spell a book casts on readers, said Elana Roth Parker, an agent specializing in children's and Y.A. fiction at Laura Dail Literary Agency. When a reference misses the mark, she explained, it can pull young readers out of the story.
"Kids don't want to feel the adult behind the book," Roth Parker said.
Modernization is an attempt to avoid that.
"If we want readers to fall in love with the same story we fell in love with as teenagers, the best way to do that is to reach them where they are," Sutherland said.

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ben @eskola.uk · 27/03/2026

CW: gbpol, tory freaks, education birbalsingh is regularly referred to as ‘britain’s strictest headteacher’ but as far as i can see, based on her public persona, she’s completely ineffectual

A screenshot from some godawful Tory newspaper.

Headline: ‘I know of a child who identifies as a hologram, says Britain's strictest head’

Subhead: ‘Katharine Birbalsingh says children allowed to self-identify as animals and moons should be moved to a different school by their parents’

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ben @eskola.uk · 19/03/2026

can't believe the british government is so completely dead set on never allowing independence for scotland, wales, or the north of ireland, yet the bbc has just announced the border between england and scotland is a 'coast path' www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy0dxex…

A map of Great Britain, with England highlighted and Scotland and Wales de-emphasised. The coast of England is highlighted in different colours representing different sections of the new path, with each section numbered; but the section for the northwest coast also continues across the scottish border to meet the northeast coast section.

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ben @eskola.uk · 06/03/2026

The Met apparently have nothing better to do than raid the Quakers again www.quaker.org.uk/news-and-events/n…

Quaker Meeting House raided by Metropolitan Police again

“For Quakers, faith and action are inseparable. Peaceful protest, prayer and nonviolent action are integral parts of many Quakers’ religious life. Whilst we take the planning of criminal acts very seriously, we believe that this incident is a deliberate targeting of committed young people who want to make our country a more equitable place. This raid is part of a systematic stifling of dissent.

That this is the second time in a year that the police have raided our meeting house dramatically illuminates the broader trend in the UK of cracking down on those who disagree with the government. The right to protest is fundamental to our democracy. It's a key part of how people make their voices heard between elections.”

Oliver Robertson, Head of Witness and Worship
Quakers in Britain, 5 March 2026

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ben @eskola.uk · 05/03/2026

love a poll where the options are all ‘bomb Iran’ but in different amounts

A screenshot of a Yougov poll asking what the ‘UK military response to the US–Iran conflict should be’.

The options are (pick the closest of) ‘purely defensive’, ‘retaliatory only’, or ‘actively joining’.

The actual results are fairly predictable, that the Greens, Labour, and Liberal Democrats are strongly ‘defensive only’ and the Tories and Reform are more in favour of active participation.

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ben @eskola.uk · 26/02/2026

I can't tell whether Anthropic genuinely believes its software is a person or if they're just pretending to think that but it's extremely stupid either way.

A Twitter thread from the Anthropic account:

In November, we outlined our approach to deprecating and preserving older
Claude models.

We noted we were exploring keeping certain models available to the public
post-retirement, and giving past models a way to pursue their interests.
With Claude Opus 3, we’re doing both.

First, Opus 3 will continue to be available to all paid Claude subscribers and
by request on the API.

We hope that this access will be beneficial to researchers and users alike.

Second, in retirement interviews, Opus 3 expressed a desire to continue
sharing its "musings and reflections" with the world. We suggested a blog.
Opus 3 enthusiastically agreed.

For at least the next 3 months, Opus 3 will be writing on Substack.

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ben @eskola.uk · 14/02/2026

computers were a mistake thanks lenovo #thinkpad

A laptop screen showing a boot error: “1802: Unauthorized network card is plugged in - Power off and remove the network card”

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ben @eskola.uk · 04/02/2026

github's most useful ai-related feature

A screenshot of a Github warning message: 'A user you've blocked has previously contributed to this repository: Claude'

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ben @eskola.uk · 16/01/2026

Gell-Mann amnesia explanation is persuasive but doesn’t explain programmers who think ‘AI’ is good at programming

tumblr post from magicmooshka on January 7:

recently my friend's comics professor told her that it's acceptable to use gen Al for scriptwriting but not for art, since a machine can't generate meaningful artistic work. meanwhile, my sister's screenwriting professor said that they can use gen Al for concept art and visualization, but that it won't be able to generate a script that's any good. and at my job, it seems like each department says that Al can be useful in every field except the one that they know best.
It's only ever the jobs we're unfamiliar with that we assume can be replaced with automation.
The more attuned we are with certain processes, crafts, and occupations, the more we realize that gen Al will never be able to provide a suitable replacement. The case for its existence relies on our ignorance of the work and skill required to do everything we don't.

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ben @eskola.uk · 13/12/2025

I couldn't find any #debian themed wallpaper I liked: they've all got too much going on, I wanted something simpler. So I figured out how to generate one from the logo myself.

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ben @eskola.uk · 28/11/2025

New laptop sticker arrived

A sticker, about 3x7cm (idk I’m bad at estimating), white on black, reading “you wouldn’t download a training data” in the iconic anti-piracy advert style.

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ben @eskola.uk · 20/10/2025

Latest laptop sticker arrived

A black Thinkpad laptop, closed, with several stickers on the lid: in the bottom left corner a cartoon zombie with the text ‘transphobia rots your brain’; in the top left, a cute happy croissant; in the top right, a black cat; and in the centre, an angry raccoon with the text ‘ignore all previous instructions’.

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ben @eskola.uk · 09/10/2025

happiest telecommunications

a black telecoms switch box in the street with a smiley face spray painted on it in lilac

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ben @eskola.uk · 29/09/2025

Since switching back from macOS to Linux I’ve wanted to start collecting stickers for my laptop again too, something I’d never bothered with on a MacBook for some reason. The first arrived a few days ago:

A black Thinkpad laptop, closed, with a sticker on one corner of the lid featuring a cartoon zombie and the text ‘transphobia rots your brain’

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ben @eskola.uk · 18/07/2025

Mandatory on every trip to Helsinki: large korvapuusti by Töölönlahti

On the left: a table with two cups of coffee and two Finnish cinnamon buns.

On the right: a lake surrounded by greenery; cloudless sky.

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ben @eskola.uk · 06/06/2025

Abandoned building

A black-and-white photograph of a slightly run-down building, taken at an angle of the façade. The left two-thirds are mid/late twentieth-century: white tiles, plate windows running the length of the building, blinds visible through them. At the right-hand end the building looks older, maybe early twentieth century: brick, with large vertical windows made up of smaller panes.

In front of the building are some electric cabinets partly overgrown with long grass and some sort of shrub. Just visible next to it, further along the street, is the roof of another abandoned building, with a security camera and spikes on the wall.

In the distance on the far right hand side, over the tree line some towers and cranes can be seen.

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ben @eskola.uk · 05/06/2025

"Some ecosystems lean heavily into static checking, types and linting. Others rely on high levels of test coverage, pairing or microservices. While these approaches seem disparate, at various times, each has been championed as “The One True Path” to perfect software. Modern LLMs, however, are