iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Ken Appleby @kenappleby.bsky.social · 5h

Myself am dismayed at the number of posts here that are intended to entertain or inform myself but fail because the authors don't know that 'myself' is a reflexive pronoun. As in "I taught myself to write proper." #grammar #myself #english #aargh

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Ken Appleby @kenappleby.bsky.social · 6h

"amassed by myself" is ungrammatical. You mean "by me". 'Myself' is a reflexive pronoun, as in "I taught myself to write more effective prose."

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Ken Appleby @kenappleby.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Why does the presenter talk to me as if I am a 12 year-old with ADHD?

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Ken Appleby @kenappleby.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

In her early 30s this woman wrote, and was responsible for, the embedded software for the in-flight Apollo missions. "We had to find a way, and we did. ... there was no choice but to be pioneers.” news.mit.edu/2026/margare... This news really affects me. What a life she had. #apollo #software #mit

news.mit.edu

Margaret Hamilton, computing pioneer who led software development for the Apollo program, dies at 90

Margaret H. Hamilton, a profoundly influential computer scientist best known for leading the software engineering team at MIT’s Instrumentation Lab during NASA’s Apollo program, died at age 90.

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Ken Appleby @kenappleby.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Yes, Herefordshire. My wife blames my hot compost bin though.

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Ken Appleby @kenappleby.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

She told me that her doctor at the time informed her that it was possible now, so she went ahead and asked for the scan. She was 28 at the time.

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Ken Appleby @kenappleby.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

I was lucky then. My mother had an X-ray in 1953 because she wanted to know if she was bearing twins. She wasn't. It was just me. I remember also, as a 3 or 4 year-old that the shoe shop had an X-ray machine for seeing if your feet fitted the shoes.

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Ken Appleby @kenappleby.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

The "Sheep Improvement Scheme"! That's satire, surely?

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Ken Appleby @kenappleby.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

After Antrim we explored the Donegal coast. Some vast, clean beautiful beaches. I found myself calculating how many sand grains this one held. And then worked out that a litre of water has about 10 million times as many water molecules as this beach has sand grains. 8-} #donegal #ireland #beaches

A large deserted, wet, sandy beach at mid-tide, with sea-smoothed rocks and pools in the foreground.

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Ken Appleby @kenappleby.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Last week we walked the cliffs of Antrim to the Giant's Causeway and back. There were many magnificent sights like this.

High, rugged, rocky cliff with basalt columns and stacks overlooking a wild sea.

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Ken Appleby @kenappleby.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

So it's not the case that consuming more protein than you need is necessarily inconsequential to health? Yes, I learned about the destination of the resulting nitrogen from reading James Lovelock a long time ago!

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Ken Appleby @kenappleby.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Is it true that if we consume more protein than we need, the excess is converted to either carbohydrate or fat, depending on the amino acid, and stored?

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Ken Appleby @kenappleby.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

We're in Donegal, on a short stay which has been rather spoiled by some appalling cruelty to two small dogs abandoned in a filthy pen outside the apartment. Is it worth reporting to the NSPCA?

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Ken Appleby @kenappleby.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

So according to Burnham's description, the new agency will go after the billionaire press, and bbc news who amplify them.

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Ken Appleby @kenappleby.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Google gave up on "Don't Be Evil" 20 years ago, sadly, inevitably. But what, do you think, are their motives for this move? If you want an "open platform" there are alternatives like /e/OS, which I haven't personally switched to, yet, but am considering.

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Ken Appleby @kenappleby.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

We're just catching up watching the Last Night of the Proms. It reminds me of why I stopped watching almost all television. Why do the presenters have to speak as if to 7 year-olds? It's insulting. #bbcproms

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Ken Appleby @kenappleby.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Richard Feynman was a really smart man. But he did pronounce "in situ" as "in sigh too".

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Ken Appleby @kenappleby.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

There is something in our pond. The pond is tiny, little more than 1m across and ~0.5m deep. Occasionally, when I show myself, there is an audible "plop" and a sizeable disturbance in the water, as the "something" hides. Will I ever discover what it is? #ukgardening #pondlife

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Ken Appleby @kenappleby.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Thank you for this great explanation of such complexity. Fascinating possible connection with condensates.

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Ken Appleby @kenappleby.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

So, in summary, software engineers built a system that ended up behaving in a way they had not realised they were allowing, in an environment they didn't really understand. SNAFU, in my experience.

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Ken Appleby @kenappleby.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Thank you for this link. It's a very heartening and welcome analysis.

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Ken Appleby @kenappleby.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

This is so good. A hugely well-informed, intelligible and insightful analysis of so-called "AI".

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Ken Appleby @kenappleby.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

The Scandinavian countries are extremely "socialist", by the US definition of the word. They also have the highest standard of living, the highest quality of life, the happiest citizens, the fewer working hours and the least inequality.

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Ken Appleby @kenappleby.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Our tomatoes have gone bananas this year. #ukgardening

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Ken Appleby @kenappleby.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Strong fermentation now. The OG was 83, slightly less than last year's, but still good, I think, for a garden English red grape.

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Reposted by Ken Appleby

Philip Ball @philipcball.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Ah, this Anthropic guy resigning over AI risks. lots of headlines. And I see little to no questioning of what he's actually saying. Well after all, he's the expert, right? He actually worked on this stuff, right? mashable.com/tech/anthrop...

mashable.com

Anthropic researcher quits, calls AI an existential threat to humanity

An Anthropic spokesperson confirmed it believes AI could kill all humans.

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Reposted by Ken Appleby

Philip Ball @philipcball.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

There's a serious problem here. A lot of scientists outside biology, especially in physics and computer science, seem to have largely a 1960s view of biology.

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Ken Appleby @kenappleby.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

At first this feels like a mad idea. But perhaps it makes some sense. Instead of searching the surface of an infinitesimal cone, search the volume of an infinitesimal cone...

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Reposted by Ken Appleby

Knepp Wilding @kneppwilding.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

What is the future of sheep farming in Britain? Upland sheep farms cover 20% of agricultural land in the UK but provide only 3% of our food.

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Ken Appleby @kenappleby.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

This is a powerful stuff from Philip Ball. A little more, I suspect, than just a book review. I look forward to reading Graham Farmelo's book. His one on Dirac was a great read.

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Ken Appleby @kenappleby.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

That review says the things I would say about Hawkins' books if I only had the skill to articulate them.

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Ken Appleby @kenappleby.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

This is all from one vine growing against the back of the house. Last year the blackbirds feasted on it. We've hardly seen any this year.

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Ken Appleby @kenappleby.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

We now have 18 litres of grape must. They will sit for 48 hours, then be strained off the skins ready for fermentation. I'm expecting we'll get more than enough for our target of 12 bottles.

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Ken Appleby @kenappleby.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

An amazing coincidence? Then I thought, why was I working on that song? It was because I had heard it played at a local music session that I went to last night. The person playing it had probably watched Only Connect when it was broadcast on Monday. So not really a coincidence at all. :-)

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Ken Appleby @kenappleby.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

This evening I was working on a guitar arrangement of the magical and beautiful Nick Drake song "Riverman". Minutes later we caught up on the quiz show Only Connect on BBC iPlayer. Part of the first question was "'Riverman' by Nick Drake (mostly)". An unbelievably unlikely coincidence? #coincidence

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Ken Appleby @kenappleby.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

The same friend also says, with complete assurance: "There are no facts." "Climate change is a hoax." "Paul McCartney died in 1966." And "Oh, I've read lots of books." What do I do? :-)

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Ken Appleby @kenappleby.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

I have a friend who when asked the question "Is the Earth flat?" replies "I don't know." I don't know how to deal with that.

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Ken Appleby @kenappleby.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

Yes. That's clearer than a lot of things I have read on the subject.

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Ken Appleby @kenappleby.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

People close to me eat large quantities of meat because they believe it is our "natural" evolved diet. I have tried in vain to dissuade them: e.g. an ancient human eating a root and living in a temporary shelter doesn't leave any archaeological evidence, unlike someone in a cave butchering a boar.

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Ken Appleby @kenappleby.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

It's likely this was one of the bedrocks of the "It's never aliens" premise which has quite rightly pervaded astro sciences ever since. How incredibly ironic that it was most likely wrong! #itsneveraliens #astrobiology

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