iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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James Arthur Cattell @jacattell.bsky.social · 9h

Q: Do you know of any #public or #community owned conference venues in #Manchester that can host 250 people and have at least 8 breakout rooms, please? Dates needed are either Saturday 16 or 23 January 2027. @ukgovcamp.com 2027 ( #ukgc27 ).

A 2x3 grid of six photos from the UKGovcamp 2017 event, showing participants speaking into microphones, organizing sticky notes on a grid board, and celebrating during presentations.

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Richard Elwes @richardelwes.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

...OpenAI has seemingly done just that. So can Sam Altman expect to recieve a bottle of 15yo single malt? Asaf explains why not here, calling the recent drop a Denial of Service attack on mathematicians. 2/2 karagila.org/2026/openai-...

karagila.org

OpenAI, the Partition Principle, and mathematics

By the time I got out of bed yesterday, I had three people ask me if I'd seen the OpenAI announcement that the Partition Principle does not (...)

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Richard Elwes @richardelwes.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

The set theorist Asaf Karagila (a friend and colleague at Leeds) once promised a bottle of expensive whisky to anyone who resolves the Partition Principle negatively... 1/2 karagila.org/problems

karagila.org

Open Problems | Asaf Karagila

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Jennifer Chapman @jelizachapman.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

📣Call for Papers-The International Journal of Legal Information (IJLI) invites submissions for upcoming issues. Submissions are reviewed on a rolling basis #CallForPapers www.degruyterbrill.com/journal/key/...

degruyterbrill.com

International Journal of Legal Information

The International Journal of Legal Information (IJLI) is the official publication of the International Association of Law Libraries (IALL). Published three times a year (Spring, Summer, and Winter), t...

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John Sheridan @johnlsheridan.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Exactly! Somehow, some important attributions, for past work, keep being skipped or missed.

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Vincent Carchidi @vcarchidi.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Is it "easy for computers" if it first requires humans to build civilization?

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Matthew Somerville @dracos.co.uk · 07/10/2026

“[...] These include OpenAI’s announced Navier-Stokes proof. In particular, we show that the formalised Lean proof does not correspond to the NL proof of blow-up of solutions to the Navier-Stokes equations” 😂 – arxiv.org/pdf/2610.08144 via @struan.exo.org.uk

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John Sheridan @johnlsheridan.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

That’s outrageous, Shannon. I don’t know if this helps, but it’s inconceivable to me, that they might come close to matching your knowledge, insight, or talent and skill for writing. I recommend *your* book often. Meanwhile, there’s a lot of bad books out there.

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Matthew Somerville @dracos.co.uk · 07/10/2026

Will “The Lean proof that OpenAI provided isn’t the same as their printed proof, so who knows if any of it is actually right” get as much publicity as the original PR, I wonder. The final 20% is 80% of the work. Whether it’s a website, a Photoshop knock-off, or a Millennium prize problem

Example 3.1 (The NL paper claims a stronger inverse estimate than the cited Lean formalisation). Figure 3 concerns the estimate in Lemma 8.6, equation (8.19), of OpenAI’s Finite time blowup for Navier–Stokes. We compare this estimate with the cited Lean declarations at commit f9e8bc5 (click to see the documentation on Github). The issue is a change in the order of the input derivatives required to bound the output derivatives. In particular, we have the following discrepancy. With m a nonnegative integer, the comparison in Figure 3 is
NL paper, equation (8.19): ∥N−1F∥Cmy ⩽ Cm∥F∥Cm+4y, (3.1)
Lean Estimate: ∥N−1F∥Cmy ⩽ Km∥F∥Cm+5y. (3.2)
Summary: The Lean code produced by OpenAI often has stronger conditions on bounds on the derivatives of various functions than the corresponding results in the NL paper.

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John Sheridan @johnlsheridan.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

I appreciate Richard’s take on this.

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James Elder @jameselder.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Thing is though, this is not that different from the activity by AI company scraper bots that has been regularly knocking library, archive and museum catalogues offline for the last 3 years. That wasn’t ‘rogue agents’, it was an attempt to harvest training data at breakneck speed.

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Tom Coates @tomcoates.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

One use of AI I have no trouble with is restoring lost online projects. You can tell it to go and look them up on archive.org and then rebuild them in a new location. Also fixing legacy stuff. Do you have a whole bunch of archives that are in the wrong format or are broken? Get an AI to fix them.

archive.org

Internet Archive: Digital Library of Free & Borrowable Texts, Movies, Music & Wayback Machine

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John Sheridan @johnlsheridan.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

I’ve just been nosing through the timeline. This is nice work, Colin. Good luck with the research.

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James Elder @jameselder.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

I think for anyone jaded by all the extremely stupid uses of AI in the context of history (chat with Abraham Lincoln! make people in prison mugshots smile! draw spurious links and conclusions!), this might be interesting. How professionals, volunteers and an LLM can make real progress.

makingfamilyhistory.com

Untangling The Victoria Police Charge Books With Fable 5 AI

How Anthropic's Fable 5 AI helped a stalled indexing project came back to life by consolidating 18,000 records from Victoria's 1870s.

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John Sheridan @johnlsheridan.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Thanks for sharing James! I enjoyed this :-)

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John Sheridan @johnlsheridan.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

That’s a really good idea! As a regular book buyer, I’d find it encouraging.

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Shannon Vallor @shannonvallor.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Not a single perspective here from someone who didn’t write the report. This isn’t journalism, it’s an author’s abstract. Every para is just “this is what the paper says.” It’s exactly what you would get if you asked an undergrad to read it and write a summary. Or get one from a chatbot.

theguardian.com

AI godfathers warn of runaway ‘intelligence explosion’

OpenAI chief scientist also among authors of report on prospect of ‘most consequential technological development in history’

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James Arthur Cattell @jacattell.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Looking to speak to anyone who's migrated their organisation from @microsoft.com to #Linux, especially end user devices, please. #opensource

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Scott Wortley @scottwortley.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

a little thing by me on the importance of teaching legislation and legislative interpretation as a discrete subject (underpinned by despair that in the UK we generally don't teach enough of this in law degrees (never mind how little there is in conversion courses))

blogs.ed.ac.uk

In Support of Teaching Legislation and Legislative Interpretation as a Discrete Subject – Edinburgh Private Law Blog

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James Elder @jameselder.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

But, as an archivist, I must say that we are not just throwing our hands up and wailing about it. As a profession we are getting on with finding methods and systems so that digital records do endure. And it’s a little dispiriting when the media periodically repeats the ‘Digital Dark Age’ story.

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Andrew Sissons @acjsissons.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Honestly, trying to read about AI is exhausting. Always need to know who the author is, what their motives are (often opaque), how much they actually know, what assumptions they make (omg we so badly need some common analytical framing)… Spend more time checking out the author than actually reading

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Jack Kirby @jdk653.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

From 1880 until 1952. Wait until you hear about Putney Bridge and Hurlingham. Best single source of info on London Underground station renaming is Doug Rose's diagrammatic history (not mobile friendly, easiest to view on a desktop or laptop). www.dougrose.co.uk/tube-history...

dougrose.co.uk

The London Underground: A Diagrammatic History

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Russell Garner @rgarner.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Impact

Alt text: A six-panel comic about a small white ghost haunting a table lamp. The ghost says, “I’m the ghost of this lamp. Just this lamp.” It reflects that it could have haunted “something bigger. A room. A house,” but chooses to “focus my craft” where its impact is “small but does not go unnoticed.” The lamp suddenly clicks on by itself. In the next panel, a confused man asks, “Who turned on this lamp?” while the ghost peeks out from behind the table. The final panel shows the ghost hiding beside the table with a pleased smile as the lamp glows.

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Rachel Coldicutt @rachelcoldicutt.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

Walking through the little touristy area next to Tower Bridge, which is home to both a Starbucks Reserve (what the what) and a Paul where you can get an ice cream in a croissant, and sometimes real life seems indistinguishable from generative AI

An A frame advertising an ice cream croissant

what even is this? a fever dream? a starbucks reserve with some unreadable graffiti about ideas, that looks like a render because it can't possibly be a real building

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Saganism @sagan.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

41 years ago, Carl Sagan gave a clear and elegant explanation of the science behind global warming.

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John Sheridan @johnlsheridan.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

Listening to Schubert’s Impromptus, D.935, played by Radu Lupu. This is very beautiful music. Hard to explain, but Schubert somehow mixes events and memories: “let’s dance” -> “remember when we danced”, “let’s talk” -> “remember when we talked” and so on. Schubert had a tender soul.

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Shannon Vallor @shannonvallor.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

“AI will supercharge government”

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Prof Penny Endersby @pennyend.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

If you live inland you may not have noticed that the Met Office app has tide times, wave heights and weather-appropriate sea safety advice for beach locations. Very useful in planning your day out

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Richard Pope @richardpope.org · 20/07/2026

An extended version of the preface to Platformland - on waiting, digital, and the surfaces the state presents to the world -: richardpope.org/2026/07/20/an-exten…

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Open Data Institute @odihq.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

Last chance to book our exclusive webinar with Sir Nigel Shadbolt as he asks if AI is now part of daily life, but the data underpinning it is often poorly governed and inadequately protected. How do we fix this? buff.ly/yi1C5qV #Sovereign_Data #Data_Ai #AI

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Charlie Feldman @parlcharlie.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

#CALC26 begins! Excited to see so many legislative drafter colleagues from across the globe! It’s one of the few places you can make a niche statutory interpretation joke and deem the laugher to have occurred :p

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Melinda Haunton @melindahaunton.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

In summary: come and see, you will never see so many famous docs from that period all at once in the UK. If you're coming on Sunday it's Archives Fest, ticketed and with loads of extra goodies www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/whats-on/exh...

nationalarchives.gov.uk

Revolution 250: America's Independence Story 1763–1783

Marking the 250th anniversary of The US Declaration of Independence, this powerful free exhibition charts the emergence of the United States of America.

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Melinda Haunton @melindahaunton.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

I had time to buzz round our Revolution250 exhibition today. Some great mixes of government and parliament records. These are the Townshend Acts, frex, and a War Office account of the Boston Tea Party

Four huge parliamentary acts, partly unrolled, looking like vast stripes on the walls

Short note with covering envelope and further note, explaining this is an eye witness soldier account of the Tea Party

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John Sheridan @johnlsheridan.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

Managed to see it for myself this evening! :-)

Photograph of recently discovered’Exeter Print’ copy of the US Declaration of Independence, from 1776. Item held by The National Archives, UK.

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John Sheridan @johnlsheridan.bsky.social · 04/07/2026

But lots of people seem interested? I think it’s a great story, how this record was found, and how it came to be in the archive.

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Dr. Emily Friedman @ecfriedman.com · 03/07/2026

This is what we mean by the whole “not everything is digitized” — not everything is fully *catalogued* yet! This is at the UK National Archives at Kew.

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Melinda Haunton @melindahaunton.bsky.social · 03/07/2026

This just *keeps* happening to us. (This is a great, great story, about brilliant work in the now and fascinating print diffusion in the past. Come and see the exhibition which is STUFFED with this kind of story.)

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John Sheridan @johnlsheridan.bsky.social · 03/07/2026

You’ll be able to see it as part of the exhibition on the war of independence. It is well worth an hour or two. www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/whats-on/rev...

nationalarchives.gov.uk

Revolution 250 season

Britain and America. One Story, Two Nations

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John Sheridan @johnlsheridan.bsky.social · 03/07/2026

Glad you enjoyed this. Our press team will be pleased that their careful explanation has made it into print.

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John Sheridan @johnlsheridan.bsky.social · 29/06/2026

We have some *quite good* records concerning these events.

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