iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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William Gibson @greatdismal.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Having long been aware of those tech bros who read my work as utopian porn, where they’ve taken that doesn’t exactly surprise me.

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Ulrike Franke @rikefranke.eu · 06/10/2026

Basically all European states have financial issues and basically all are discussing (further) restricting social services/support/etc for the wealthier. See UK re childcare above £100 000. I totally get it. However: we need to acknowledge that this is creating a social contract problem.

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Jess Miers 🦝 @jmiers230.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

This adds way more color: "it is essential for lawmakers, and the public, to understand that none of the reported incidents actually involved loss of control at any time, or arguably even “rogue agents,” or any kind of humanlike agency on the part of AI models." aiguide.substack.com/p/misleading...

aiguide.substack.com

Misleading Metaphors, Real Risks

What To Fear from AI Agents and How to Reclaim Our Human Agency

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Christina Holland @mortalwombat.info · 31/08/2026

Data centers aren't new but the concept of a data center that can exist in the real world near you is new to a lot of people because they used to go up with no more fanfare then a warehouse but now they announce them as "your town's chance to be part of the AI revolution" which is kinda an own goal

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Damien Smith @indysmith.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

Room [gap] blur [enormous gap] corporate.

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Isaiah Bishop @isaiahbishop.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

Most manufacturing outside of electronics and pharma makes like no gross margin. in textiles its 2%, food 5%, motor vehicles 5%. The idea that like the problem here is distribution of profits is pretty wild

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Stephen Bush @stephenkb.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

My column this week is the product of my frustration at a series of myths that I think have grown up at Westminster that provide comfort to the various parties (not all of which I had space to grumble about) to avoid confronting the real choices we actually have:

ft.com

Austerity denial and the mystery of Britain’s shrunken state

There is a ready supply of explanations on offer at Westminster

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Rachel Coldicutt @rachelcoldicutt.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

Anyway, just leaving that there with the observation that all of tech policy is just basically different flavours of men being emotional about things and really what am I doing with my life

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Dmitry Grozoubinski @explaintrade.com · 10/08/2026

I think Abundance tripped over the exact same problem Effective Altruism did: many of the people pushing it got immediately bored with what it actually entails and started talking up whatever gets them invited into Silicon Valley WhatsApp groups.

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lauren @lauren.rotatingsandwiches.com · 03/08/2026

this is an interesting interview and if i were clipping it for social media i would have excerpted "We're still a place where we don't downrank links. We love sending traffic to people. We send two million clicks a day to publishers" rather than the part that'll just piss people off lol

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Maia @maiamindel.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

the dumbest argument about this is "new technologies produce increases in wellbeing that aren't easily captured in economic metrics", which sure, but you can't tell me facebook increased wellbeing more than electricity

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Nolan Hicks @ndhapple.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

Putting another set of hands in calculating the value for money proposition is a cart-and-horse idea. What's needed is a permanent department with the capability to do the planning and early design work, the ability to understand and guide the work the engineering consultants hand back.

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Dare Obasanjo @carnage4life.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

Anthropic and OpenAI are creating a Streisand Effect where their ongoing attacks on open Chinese AI models lets everyone know those models are actually so good that they’re worth checking out.

nytimes.com

Silicon Valley Splits Over Closing the Borders to Chinese A.I. (Gift Article)

Anthropic and OpenAI are clashing with the rest of the tech industry over whether “open-source” models from China should be freely available or restricted.

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Tomas Hirst @tomashirstecon.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

Should make a stronger claim at the end here: You do not want *AI specialists* to help your company take advantage of the tech, you need *domain specialists* using the tech to tell you whether they can get something useful out of it.

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Damien Smith @indysmith.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

Thread worth reading. I'd add that Britain has to contend with a globalisation that, despite rhetoric to the contrary, isn't reversing.

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mtsw @mtsw.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

like the way Messi is just magically absolved for the shitty conduct of his teammates on and off the pitch is really something. he's the captain!

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Jeremy Goldkorn @goldkorn.bsky.social · 18/07/2026

In 2011, WeChat destroyed my presumption that China could not innovate (in tech, design, business model), and you can't visit China today without noticing innovations large and small. A decade and a half of easily-observable innovation, but much of the American punditry has not caught on yet.

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Karthik Sankaran @rajakorman.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

2 yrs ago, moaty SV firms were relative beneficiaries of the macro effects of CN-driven disinflation, because they operated in domains (social media/search) segregated from CN by the firewall & so immune to such disinflation. But AI has been different (so far??) open.substack.com/pub/sankaran...

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Karthik Sankaran @rajakorman.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

Just started the BIS paper on AI and www.bis.org/publ/work136...

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Tomas Hirst @tomashirstecon.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

Lot of hot takes on housing flying around at the moment. My basic contention is that the problem has always been that you can’t have a thing that provides shelter, your primary savings vehicle, and something that acts as the main collateral for small businesses all be the same thing.

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Rachel Coldicutt @rachelcoldicutt.bsky.social · 04/07/2026

For a long time, UK tech policy has been burdened by the desire to be best in the world at something (anything) rather than delivering more of what we're already good at. As such, it's tended to be flimsy - good for announcements, bad for delivery, because typically there is no plan for delivery

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Tomas Hirst @tomashirstecon.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

Anyway, no doubt we’ll get rounds of “true rebalancing has never been tried” over the next few years but I see this period as a pretty strong reason to push back against the kind of oversimplified hydraulic macro that these mental models betray.

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Tomas Hirst @tomashirstecon.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

The full remote -> hybrid -> back to office trajectory should be mapped against signals of labour bargaining power. Not seeking to litigate which is the better model here, but it’s fairly clear to me that there has been a pretty radical rebalancing from employees to employers between 2021 and 2026.

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David Henig @davidheniguk.bsky.social · 29/06/2026

Overwhelming message from an ECIPE webinar on the subject - globalisation is a hugely powerful force which cannot be turned off. That this is not accepted in Europe whether by politicians or media is undoubtedly a factor in relative decline.

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Dmitry Grozoubinski @explaintrade.com · 28/06/2026

I call this phenomenon "CEO skim-read Forbes in the Business Class Lounge" and once you notice it you can't stop seeing it everywhere. Open plan offices, beanbags and pool tables, everything-must-be-blockchain, everything must be in the cloud, outsource everything, AI everything...

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Dan Davies @dsquareddigest.bsky.social · 14/06/2026

The UK also has one of the best university systems in the world so we can train our own people to do high skill jobs. And the whole concept of "high skill" is dodgy anyway; there is human capital in excess demand and human capital not in excess demand.

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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

Full comic here: www.smbc-comics.com/comic/gold-5 #smbc #comics

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Arin Dube @arindube.bsky.social · 31/05/2026

The funny thing is that the real threats from LLMs are not what the boosters and doomers actually tell us. It's a world of mediocrity, where some asks are much easier from LLMs, but we lose some skills and that leads to at modestly higher living standard but more bullshit noise.

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Sarah O'Connor @sarahoconnorft.ft.com · 30/05/2026

It is often said that a “wave” or “tsunami” of technological change is heading our way. These metaphors are powerful because they shape our sense of what is reasonable, and what is unreasonable. What does AI as a "wave" imply is a reasonable course of action? (1/...)

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David Henig @davidheniguk.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

Maybe Europe's problem can be summarised in one question - what does a continent do when its leading competitive advantage is that people from around the world want to be there but its electoral politics says that immigration must come down?

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Micah @rincewind.run · 17/05/2026

the overwhelming message the AI industry has sent to young people is “this will ruin any chance you have at a stable career”, of course college grads are booing it regardless of the reality of the claims, the way this technology has been sold is one of the greatest self-inflicted PR disasters ever

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Sam Freedman @samfr.bsky.social · 20/04/2026

Also if you believe AI is going to take both white collar and manual jobs then what is the point of education and reskilling? Reskilled as what exactly?

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Damien Smith @indysmith.bsky.social · 17/04/2026

We kind of knew this was going to happen but...Coldplay? Really?

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Amanda Mull @amandamull.bsky.social · 13/04/2026

Maybe I’ll write about the Affordability Discourse one day but I think that one thing (among many both material and perceptual) that this hard to untangle is that everyone—including those who are doing fine in material terms—has a lot more visibility into how well the rich are doing than in the past

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Sharon 🪳🌹 @sharonk.bsky.social · 13/04/2026

posting is not an alternative to organizing neither is populism

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Dare Obasanjo @carnage4life.bsky.social · 06/04/2026

Nate Silver pens an essay about how social media is dead as a way to build an audience because Twitter is now a right wing cesspool where Catturd gets more engagement than the New York Times. Weird that it never occurs to him that Twitter is the problem and there’s more to social media l. 🤷🏾‍♂️

natesilver.net

Social media is turning into a freak show

The ecosystem is incredibly unhealthy, especially on Twitter. But if it dies, good riddance.

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Damien Smith @indysmith.bsky.social · 01/04/2026

One day I need to reread Snow Crash and rediscover the joy before the modern Metaverse. open.substack.com/pub/nealstep...

open.substack.com

My Prodigal Brainchild

Reflections on the latest and greatest Death of the Metaverse

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Robin Wigglesworth @robinwigglesworth.ft.com · 12/03/2026

I swear, if the British diverted just a little bit of the time and energy they spend discussing the likes of TV baking shows, animals on bank notes, Wagatha Christie and the weather then it would be the richest most dynamic country in the world.

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Damien Smith @indysmith.bsky.social · 23/02/2026

My handwriting is terrible and I don't really try to reread my own notes but I still find the practice of note taking valuable. (I still over-rely on my own memory though.)

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Sam Freedman @samfr.bsky.social · 16/02/2026

New post out: We have a guest post today from the excellent @dsquareddigest.bsky.social. "Build the Rail! Save the snails!" Or how we don't need to sacrifice the environment to speed up our mad planning processes. (Free to read) open.substack.com/pub/samf/p/b...

open.substack.com

Build the Rail! Save the Snails!

How to speed up the planning system without trashing the environment

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farner @farnerb0cken.bsky.social · 06/02/2026

[jason statham voice] they’re colled skeets mate. nawt tweets. tweets are frum the offa websoite

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SMBC Comics @smbccomics.bsky.social · 08/11/2025

This is more easily executable with a three-wish genie, but it's good to be prepared for all circumstances. COMIC ◆ www.smbc-comics.com/comic/fish-3 PATREON ◆ www.patreon.com/ZachWeinersm... STORE ◆ smbc-store.myshopify.com

5-panel SMBC comic update where a man catches a wish-granting talking fish. The fish tells him : "Set me free and you may have anything. But whatever you get, I will instantly give it to your neighbor, twice." The man asks for a magic box that gives him all his neighbor's money one second after he receives any money. The final panel shows the man lounging in a pile of gold saying "infinite money gliiiiitch!" to the dismay of the magic fish, that says that this is why they hate logicians.

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Maia @maiamindel.bsky.social · 31/10/2025

Not to go all Robert Gordon but the potential benefits as a % of GDP are also much smaller. Going from no internet to internet is a much bigger bang for your buck than going from internet to AI

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Tomas Hirst @tomashirstecon.bsky.social · 30/07/2025

This is a good blog post (which people should read) and I attach some random musings about how we got to this point in the thread below. Housing cost problem is a wholesale regulatory failure.

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lastpositivist.bsky.social @lastpositivist.bsky.social · 19/07/2025

I decided to make a long blog post combining general sociological things I am aware of with personal observations of cultural and lifestyle differences between the UK and USA. sootyempiric.blogspot.com/2025/07/comp...

sootyempiric.blogspot.com

Comparisons Between Life in the UK and the USA

For most of my life I have lived in the UK, but for six years I lived in the United States of America. Somewhat erratic and unpleasant polit...

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