iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

James Vincent @jjvincent.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

any historians/philosophers of science who've been writing/researching the impact of AI? looking to speak to people for a piece if anyone has any suggestions...

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Reposted by James Vincent

Gregk Foley @gregk.co.uk · 16/09/2026

Thinking of/with antiwar activist A. J. Muste:

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Once a reporter asked him, "Do you really think you are going to change the policies of this country by standing out here alone at night in front of the White House with a candle?" A.J. Muste replied softly: "Oh I don't do this to change the country. I do this so the country won't change me.

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Reposted by James Vincent

Justin Hendrix @justinhendrix.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

"The US military acknowledged for the first time on Monday that it has weapons in space, as China and Russia grow their military programmes in orbit."

ft.com

US military reveals it has weapons in space

Security experts warn announcement could result in the proliferation of weapons by other governments

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James Vincent @jjvincent.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

fascinating translated essay seemingly written by a deepseek engineer - first half is him contemplating his own replacement by AI; conclusion is geopolitical, saying US winning AI race is "no less than letting Hitler master atomic bomb technology before the Allies” docs.google.com/document/d/1...

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Absolutely, recognized it immediately

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never a bad idea to pack a lunch and go for a walk

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it's Jean Giono! Colline, from 1929 - translated as Hill of Destiny in english. the first i'd heard of - or read - from him!

wrote about it here should you care for details. i used an old contact lens case for the salt and pepper; bought rabbit from a local butcher and wrapped it in leaves from a tree in a park; and got the pot of jam from a wetherspoon's breakfast substack.com/home/post/p-...

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Oli Franklin-Wallis @olifranklinwallis.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

came across this description ages ago of a French peasant’s dinner and decided to recreate it on a walk yesterday

picture of lunch spread on a teacloth in the woods. the contents of the lunch are in the next picture description

"He carries his dinner with him: a fresh cheese in its wrapper of aromatics; six cloves of garlic; a jug of oil, stopped up with a piece of paper; salt and pepper in an old pill box; a cut of ham; a hunk of bread; wine; a roast rump of rabbit, rolled up in a vine leaf, and a small pot of jam. All these provisions lie pell-mell in his leather pouch."

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Reposted by James Vincent

Revisiting one of the best magazine stories ever written, Tom Junod for Esquire on the falling man image of 9/11 www.esquire.com/news-politic...

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Paid Phones | Daniel Kolitz

"It’s true that I know at least four guys named Dave and none named Bank of America. At the same time, not one of the Daves I know—nor even Bank of America—has tried to saddle me with a 400 percent APR on a two-figure loan." thebaffler.com/salvos/paid-...

thebaffler.com

More and more Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. Albert, Cleo, Brigit, and Dave are here to help—but terms and conditions apply.

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qntm's lena is brilliant, yes - but it missed the mechanism by which digital immortality would actually be achieved... not as some scientific project, but the result of a political assassination followed by an attempted taboo on the reproduction of your image

London Review of Books - Landing

beautiful write up from you - i'm jealous, i've never been to any cave art! also, on the lrb front, not to be on the upsell, but i did just check and you can get 12 issues for 12 quid as a tester which seems a bargain subscription.lrb.co.uk/offers/store

subscription.lrb.co.uk

Europe’s leading magazine of ideas, published twice a month. Book reviews and essays (and much more online) renowned for their fearlessness, range and elegance.

beautiful, mind-bending piece by T.J. Clark arguing that palaoelithic art like the chauvet caves were a reaction to the rising hegemony of language over thought — a counter-proposal that attempted to dissolve the linear, hierarchical structure of language www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

"My idea, essentially, is that the cave art of the Upper Palaeolithic was an answer to this deficiency. The answer was unthinkable without the hegemony of language; it came out of language’s power, and specifically its power to reflect on that power’s limits; and the extraordinary flowering of the answer (flowering and then withering, seemingly, in the Neolithic, leaving behind few traces of its brilliance and humility) is the best symptom we have of what it must have been like to live in the new, all-conquering world of speakers, rules, assent, ideas. Depiction was non-language in its full, not ‘first-steps’, being. Revelling in its capacity to not speak back – to be about things in a way that speakers would never be able to approximate."

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Rebecca Solnit @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

I see the point but I have to say I suspect this may be a factor of age. I have no data, but i wonder how much have nyt app games and tiktok recipes sated their respective audiences? And how much have those changes in consumer habits affected overall nonfiction sales?

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Reposted by James Vincent

I think I noted during the recent Belfast riots that a certain kind of man is not really interested in protecting women & girls; he's interested in protecting the exclusive right of his kind of man to abuse and control women and girls.

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Lincoln Michel @thelincoln.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

been thinking on this and while the absolute figures are bad more granular numbers would be helpful. how much does cooking, celebrity memoir, puzzles etc account for nonfiction sales? aren’t these activities being eaten by online as much as history fans going to podcasts? bsky.app/profile/thel...

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Reposted by James Vincent

Fascinating if depressing piece on the collapsing nonfiction book market dearheadofmine.substack.com/p/the-nonfic...

Let’s bring the nonfiction collapse into current day context. Two weeks ago, the entire hardcover nonfiction bestseller list sold 42,000 copies, whereas just the top two bestselling fiction hardcovers the same week—The Calamity Club in its 15th week on-sale and Yesteryear in its 19th week on-sale—sold 52,000 copies. It’s not inconceivable that on the right week, one fiction hardcover with first week sales could outsell the entirety of the hardcover nonfiction bestseller list.

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yeah, and just terrible to have your field become nothing more than a slide in a deck fluffing openai's IPO

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as the always-correct v points out, there are *degrees* of AI use in these problems, and i'm describing a rather extreme scenario of full automation. but we look to the extremes for contrast and illumination, and there will be subtle diminishing even with partial AI use bsky.app/profile/v21....

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yep, absolutely! i'm thinking of the extreme end of full automation of science/maths whereas — as in all cases — there will be a middle ground...

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the history of accidental scientific breakthroughs is almost the history of science itself... the discovery of the CMB while cleaning up antenna noise... the discovery of CRISPR while investigating phage resistance yoghurt cultures, etc.. does the automation of science threaten such future moments?

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obviously the effects of AI varies in different disciplines, but tao's insights can be generalised to other fields. in short: what is lost when we teleport to an answer instead of following a path? we lose our ability to map the intermediary domain, for one, and miss accidental discoveries en route

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