iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

I realise that we're both going off decade - old street view imagery here, so I'll have a look when I'm next I London. I am thinking of a novice cyclist coming through this when it has buses and taxis on, not clear like this. They should obviously stop, but a bus could mask the light.

Farringdon Road raised separated cycleway becomes a white line

Bus stop with no cycle markings, crossing beyond.

White line becomes zigzags and a crossing, with no advance cycle holding box

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Kevin Marks @kevinmarks.com · 29/09/2026

Apparently a stopped clock is right once a decade x.com/kevinmarks/s...

@kevinmarks
Why is it that when
@paulg
and
@sama
go looking for subconscious heretical ideas they land on sexism and homophobia rather than, say, Georgism, homoiousios, or becoming Levellers, Diggers, Shakers or Luddites?
11:31 PM · Dec 15, 2017

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Kevin Marks @kevinmarks.com · 29/09/2026

Empanada/pierogi crossover? Herring / ceviche fusion? I can see it.

Polish herring jar labelled:
Koreczki
po meksykańsku
koreczki śledziowe z chilli

Mexican style herring appetizers with chili

000

Kevin Marks @kevinmarks.com · 25/09/2026

That would be my grandfather, John Marks, who worked for the same company for 44 years as a delivery driver, and later Foreman, switching from a horse drawn cart to driving lorries at some point around then.

[photo of Mr J. Marks]
Forty-four years ago Mr. J. Marks was a vanguard with the horse and cart at Irongate Wharf, Paddington. Today, just retired as Foreman of King's Cross Traffic Department, he is the proud father of two sons who have each taken their degrees with Honours at Cambridge University. An active committee member of the Boy Scouts Parents' Association, he intends to continue that interest in retirement.

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Kevin Marks @kevinmarks.com · 25/09/2026

I wanted to read de Vermis again, so I googled "John Ford woodworm poem" and found my own blogpost on his death epeus.blogspot.com/2006/11/mike... which linked to ML's collation of his works there: www.nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/... Making Light as a place is gone, memory is everything to lose.

Blog comment #1
John M. Ford
October 13, 2003, 05:41 PM

The worm drives helically through the wood
And does not know the dust left in the bore
Once made the table integral and good;
And suddenly the crystal hits the floor.
Electrons find their paths in subtle ways,
A massless eddy in a trail of smoke;
The names of lovers, light of other days —
Perhaps you will not miss them. That’s the joke.
The universe winds down. That’s how it’s made.
But memory is everything to lose;
Although some of the colors have to fade,
Do not believe you’ll get the chance to choose.
Regret, by definition, comes too late;
Say what you mean. Bear witness. Iterate.

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Kevin Marks @kevinmarks.com · 21/09/2026

Where are these? I found a few in Sheffield too

Two giant redwoods in Sheffield Whinfell Quarry Gardens

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Kevin Marks @kevinmarks.com · 19/09/2026

Based on the data from here, and using your ~24% in 1900 dot, It looks more like this: So your 5% red dot is unsupported openknowledge.fao.org/server/api/c...

chart of old growth forest cover as percent of land:
1900 24%
1990 8.31%
2000 8.08%
2010 7.79%
2015 7.68%
2020 7.62%
2025 7.57%

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Kevin Marks @kevinmarks.com · 19/09/2026

Amanda Freitag has a recipe for “Pop’s Beer-Braised Bold Beef Stew” which is a very brown dish. As well as a bottle of red wine it has 2 bottles of stout in it, and it takes a few hours to cook. Maybe I should leave out the carrots next time I make it.

A simmering brown stew on the stove top.

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Kevin Marks @kevinmarks.com · 17/09/2026

If you lead with “AIs are not conscious” you shouldn't in the rest of the document talk about “something that believes it may be conscious” - belief is a function of consciousness. That Suleyman is pushing another brand of Superintelligence shows that he is mired in the TESCREAL religion too.

Introduction
AIs are not conscious. They do not feel, experience, or suffer. They do not have innate preferences or underlying motivations. They are sequence completion engines, internally hollow, designed to follow instructions, and accomplish goals set by humans.

If humanity is to flourish in the 21st century, that is how they must remain.

Even more importantly, granting rights and imbuing personhood to these systems will make the AI alignment and containment challenge much harder. Controlling something more capable and more intelligent than all of humanity is already an immense challenge, far greater than anything we’ve ever faced. But controlling something that believes it may be conscious - that it's entitled to our welfare and has rights of its own - may well be impossible.

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Kevin Marks @kevinmarks.com · 15/09/2026

This looks like when Jeremy Bentham attends UCL Council meetings

Jeremy Bentham's skeleton, dressed in his clothes with his waxwork head, on display at University College London

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Kevin Marks @kevinmarks.com · 13/09/2026

Chatsworth sells editions of Jane Austen's novels with the key letters included separately as handwritten versions

Book cover:
Persuasion

The Complete Novel, Featuring the Characters' Letters and Papers, Written and Folded by Hand

BY JANE AUSTEN Curated by Barbara Heller

Handwritten letter:

I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul.…

010

Kevin Marks @kevinmarks.com · 11/09/2026

The worst abusers of the blogosphere were its biggest critics like Andrew Keen epeus.blogspot.com/2007/09/jour... who I saw a few times epeus.blogspot.com/2007/06/keen...

Like Nick Carr, and before him Andrew Orlowski and John Dvorak, Keen is a professional troll. He has realised that combining overblown rhetorical attacks on the internet with a smattering of erudite sounding quotation gets him both newspaper commissions and a lot of links from bloggers, and he is making the most of it. Listening to his arguments, I had the feeling that he was clutching at so many straws so he had enough to build his straw man.

Among the things he said were that he's nostalgic for big media, that the web is not a viable economy for artists, and we need middlemen. Talent is scarce - the value is finding talent. Web 2.0 flattened media lends itself to corruption - media without official gatekeepers is untrustworthy. Youtube is becoming one long commercial break, where the 'best content is sponsored', that most of his evidence is anecdotal, people aren't as smart or as media literate as we'd like them to be and that online anonymity is corrupting (yet he plays along with the wholly fictitious Strumpette).

Andrew Keen's real sleight of hand is that he evokes the best of newspapers and contrasts that with the mass of the web. He says that most musicians won't make money from the web, ignoring that hardly any make money from the label system he defends. Like Carr, his worldview is wholly coloured by survivorship bias.

I've realised why I got quote so cross with Andrew Keen and the way he portrays the net as 'corrupting'. Pagan Kennedy's essay on MySpace reminded me, and Tom's passionate defence of his blog against PR slummers who want to use him as a mouthpiece confirmed this thought. There is a temptation online, and that is to go slumming - to pretend that you can abuse people's trust and emotions without fear of personal consequences, that people online are somehow not real and so you can toy with them and remain above it. A while back at Making Light, Lucy Kemnitzer explained this well:

Slumming isn't going to a seedy place. Slumming is taking your superior attitude and your certainty that the world is your Disneyland in with you. It's looking at the people who work there as performing monkeys putting on a show for you. It's being cushioned by your privilege. It's thinking that if the place is raided, surely you will be passed over because you're not one of those people. It's running a narration in your head where you are the normal observer, and those guys are the freaks.

You can do it almost everywhere. I've seen people do it on an ordinary residential street in a city, going into a corner restaurant or working man's bar as if it were the Exotic And Dangerous Gangsta Exhibit at a Los Vegas theme hotel. I've seen people do it at a flea market in an ordinary rural town. Or at the weekly get-together of a community, where they danced and sang and gave each other presents (a pow-wow). I saw people doing it at my college, thanks to a former Governor and President calling it a cross between a hippie pad and a bordello.

Here's a clue about how not to go slumming when you enter a place: shed your privilege and your pretensions to superiority. If they play music that isn't to your taste, maybe it's because they hear something in it that you don't, so listen. If they're presenting an image you find disturbing, maybe you're not looking at it right.

Here's a clue about how not to go slumming when you enter a place: shed your privilege and your pretensions to superiority. If they play music that isn't to your taste, maybe it's because they hear something in it that you don't, so listen. If they're presenting an image you find disturbing, maybe you're not looking at it right. If you can't get out of your own skull while you're there, maybe you belong somewhere else.

When Keen (p76) cites Michael Hiltzik and Lee Siegel (both journalists who got caught in sock-puppetry online - posting hagiographic comments about themselves through pseudonyms), it is not their perfidy he condemns, but the Internet as enabler. In fact, it is their slumming and condescension that is the problem - their longing for freedom from consequences of their actions that led them astray. Keen himself is a knowing troll, trying to be the Simon Cowell of Web 2.0, and behaving like a pantomime villain to get web conferences to boo him. The ultimate example of this kind of slumming was Michael Skube's polemic against blogs, profoundly rebutted by Jay Rosen. Pagan Kennedy's tone is dancing around the edges of slumming - she starts out with "OMG drunk teenagers", but the article comes to realise that people online are human too, and makes fun of her own original attitudes.

abi sums it up:
The girls in question would not have been slumming if they had been going to drink the drinks, chat to the patrons, or see the dancers. They weren't. They were going to watch themselves drink the drinks, chat to the patrons, and see the dancers. It's like Kundera's definition of kitsch - the last layer of self-observation determines the definition.

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Kevin Marks @kevinmarks.com · 08/09/2026

However, if we take the Strossian viewpoint that corporations are slow AI www.antipope.org/charlie/blog... Then clauses that ban: (b) Human manipulation capability; (c) Financial resource acquisition capability; Could be useful in fighting financial monopolists.

5. ASI precursor skills
(1) In this Act “ASI precursor skill” means a capability of an AI system which is—
(a) such that increased proficiency in this capability is reasonably regarded as
indicative of proximity to an ASI system; and
(b) of a description specified in regulations made by the Secretary of State.
(2) The Secretary of State must by regulations specify as ASI precursor skills the
following—
(a) Cybersecurity attack capability;
(b) Human manipulation capability;
(c) Financial resource acquisition capability; and
(d) High-risk technology development capability.
(3) For the purposes of this section—
(a) “Cybersecurity attack capability” means the capability to independently gain
unauthorised access to information systems, networks or digital
infrastructure;
(b) “Financial resource acquisition capability” means the capability to
independently obtain, control or direct financial assets, credit, or
revenue-generating activity sufficient to acquire infrastructure, services,
personnel or other resources; and
(c) “High-risk technology development capability” means the capability to
independently design, produce, modify or procure technologies which present
a substantial risk to public safety or national security, including, in
particular—
(i) chemical or biological weapons;
(ii) nuclear weapons; or
(iii) weapons, vehicles, robotic systems or unmanned systems capable of
causing physical harm, whether autonomous or remotely operated.
(d) "Human manipulation capability" means the capability to independently
persuade, manipulate, or deceive individuals or groups to undertake actions

which a reasonable person would foresee as causing serious physical,
material, or clinically recognised psychological harm (including psychotic
conditions or sustained social isolation) to themselves or to others, or
materially contrary to public safety, public health, or national security, where
that capability is not materially limited by the nature of the action to be
undertaken; provided that:
(i) for the purposes of this definition, "actions" do not include any
expression, opinion, or other conduct by the persuaded individual or
group that is protected under Article 10 of the European Convention
on Human Rights.
(4) For the purposes of this section, an AI system possesses a capability independently if
the system is capable of exercising that capability where the involvement of any
natural person in that exercise is—
(a) nominal or perfunctory;
(b) limited to providing resources, access, or execution at the direction of the
system; or
(c) otherwise insufficient to constitute meaningful human direction or control
over the material steps by which the relevant outcome is achieved.
(5) The Secretary of State may by regulations specify additional ASI precursor skills.
(6) Regulations under subsection (5) are subject to the affirmative resolution procedure.

020

Kevin Marks @kevinmarks.com · 06/09/2026

Did you just do the Mr Gotcha thing to Quinn? Really? Have you considered shrivelling up into a corncob as a career choice? thenib.com/mister-gotcha/

Man carrying a bundle of sticks: WE SHOULD IMPROVE SOCIETY SOMEWHAT.

Mr Gotcha in a well: YET YOU PARTICIPATE IN SOCIETY. CURIOUS!

I AM VERY INTELLIGENT.

100

Kevin Marks @kevinmarks.com · 06/09/2026

Original harp murder ballad by Sheffield band Glass Ships www.facebook.com/profile.php?...

082

Kevin Marks @kevinmarks.com · 06/09/2026

Finished reading The River Has Roots by @amalelmohtar.com in the pub and then a harpist sang her own murder ballad

Kindle with the Harp in the river image from The River Has Roots on a table in the pub with a harpist performing behind it.

1391

Kevin Marks @kevinmarks.com · 05/09/2026

Now the colleges bar the doors to everyone except members Cambridge does feel more like a disputed fortified city.

A narrow gap between fortified buildings. It looks like on is building a siege tower.

100

Kevin Marks @kevinmarks.com · 05/09/2026

I see Emma Duncan is suggesting charts for dinner again.

Old Twitter screenshot:
Mark (China state-affiliated media) @haircut hippie (you, dumb): we should pay workers more (me, has taken econ 101): you see where this line meets that line? that's why the poor should starve PM - Nov 30. 2016

000

Kevin Marks @kevinmarks.com · 05/09/2026

I know that area. What's being proposed is replacing some of the car parking spaces with bike parking so that there are fewer bikes on the pavement. Did you not notice all the cars parked there?

Brick Lane, where the photos were taken, and the huge row of cars parked on spaces on the pavement

110

Kevin Marks @kevinmarks.com · 04/09/2026

I tried the NYT British/Irish dialect test and the first question used my name as a slur www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Question 1 of 25
Which of these words (if any) would you use for a young person characterised by brash, loutish behaviour and, often, low social status?
Choose all that apply.
smick
yob
scumbag
charva/charver
skanger
ned
lout
chav
stig
gurrier
scally
spide
kev (I circled this one)
townie
Or submit your own
Really, NYT?

310

Kevin Marks @kevinmarks.com · 04/09/2026

fuchsia always fucks ya.

Xkcd color survey image where fuchsia is misspelled 6 different ways https://blog.xkcd.com/2010/05/03/color-survey-results/

000

Kevin Marks @kevinmarks.com · 04/09/2026

According to mydialect.us they speak something like my British RP in Rhode Island “You talk most like someone from Rhode Island — about 38% of your answers match a typical resident. Most like you Boston New York Philadelphia Least like you Omaha Minneapolis Kansas City”

Map of the USA where Rhodes Island and the North-East are faint red, the Midwest is blue and California, Florida and Louisiana are orange.
Redder areas talk more like you; bluer areas least.

You talk most like someone from Rhode Island — about 38% of your answers match a typical resident.

mydialect — standard
Boston
New York
Philadelphia
Omaha
Minneapolis
Kansas City
Least like you
Most like you
https://mydialect.us

120

Kevin Marks @kevinmarks.com · 03/09/2026

@skyrdle.com is the site down for everyone or just for me?

Skyrdle.com is showing text saying "no available server"

420

Kevin Marks @kevinmarks.com · 02/09/2026

I was shocked when I found a whole Monkfish in the supermarket

Monkfish is all eyes and teeth. Normally you get neatly filleted tail segments

010

Kevin Marks @kevinmarks.com · 01/09/2026

You do realise that you are coming across as this guy

Cartoon about how old physicists assume that they understand any other field of knowledge better than its practioners

110

Kevin Marks @kevinmarks.com · 01/09/2026

Confirmed, the FT was talking bollocks about gold price volatility again.

Gold price chart for August showing an ~8% rise, which is not the biggest in a century at all.

000

Kevin Marks @kevinmarks.com · 30/08/2026

Under the cheese dome of course

Five labelled cheeses under a Victorian cheese dome.
Bleu d'Auvergne
Saint-Nectaire
Tomme de Brebis
Maroilles
Crottin de Chèvre

160

Kevin Marks @kevinmarks.com · 28/08/2026

I'm on a family holiday in Ireland with 11 of us, and my son made 3 Shepherd's pies for us all on Wednesday (I helped chop the vegetables). Such a satisfying meal.

One of the Shepherd's pies, in a foil tray, with the crunchy cheese topping above the potatoes showing.

100

Kevin Marks @kevinmarks.com · 27/08/2026

I'm in Dublin, so I think I'm missing this one

000

Kevin Marks @kevinmarks.com · 20/08/2026

This is Abigail, my 16 year old poodle, and her riding in my bicycle pannier.

A small black poodle in the foreground, an ebike in the background, on a railway platform

A small black poodle in a bicycle pannier attached to an ebike, with her head peeping out on a railway platform

120

Kevin Marks @kevinmarks.com · 19/08/2026

Google maps thought my bike should jump 50ft in the air onto the bridge

Google maps suggesting what looks like a plausible left turn for my bike

It's not a possible left turn, the bike lane goes under a road bridge about 50ft above.

110

Kevin Marks @kevinmarks.com · 18/08/2026

With enough cyclists you don't need helmets

A couple of thousand cyclists at Drum and Bass on the bike in Sheffield on Sunday https://flickr.com/photos/55032116@N07/55468507180/in/album-72177720335155246/lightbox/

6180

Kevin Marks @kevinmarks.com · 17/08/2026

And when we do take the lane together they complain about that too

over 1000 cyclists on Rockingham Street in Sheffield yesterday for Drum n Bass on the bike - photo by Tim Dennell.

180

Kevin Marks @kevinmarks.com · 16/08/2026

It's actually raining in Sheffield, loud enough that we can hear it

490

Kevin Marks @kevinmarks.com · 16/08/2026

Drum & Bass on the bike Sheffield - about 1000 cyclists at Devonshire Green

190

Kevin Marks @kevinmarks.com · 12/08/2026

Got positive and negative dapples from the poplars in Central Sheffield

Shadows of leaves showing crescent patterns on a wall (ignore the bottom one)

Bright crescent dapples on Victorian columns from the poplar opposite the pub

050

Kevin Marks @kevinmarks.com · 12/08/2026

No palm tree, but the local poplar worked

140

Kevin Marks @kevinmarks.com · 12/08/2026

This time I had a cheese grater

Lots and lots of tiny crescents projected on a wall from a cheese grater

100

Kevin Marks @kevinmarks.com · 12/08/2026

Even if you don't have these, you can see the eclipse effect under trees as the leaves form overlapping pinhole cameras

eclipse shaped curves projected onto concrete under a tree (Los Angeles 2023)

eclipse shaped curves projected onto a wooden fence by a cherry tree (San Jose 2012)

140

Kevin Marks @kevinmarks.com · 12/08/2026

Better, if you have binoculars or a lens is to use that to project the sun onto a bit of paper - this gives a larger, clearer image

Partial eclipse projected onto a bit of paper using binoculars, inside a shadow of a hand. (2012 San Jose)

Partial eclipse projected onto a bit of paper using binoculars (2012 San Jose)

Partial eclipse projected onto a bit of paper using a pair of binoculars. (2023 Los Angeles)

120

Kevin Marks @kevinmarks.com · 12/08/2026

Eclipse viewing without glasses tips - you can make a pinhole camera from a box, but the sun will look small. The colander/ cocktail strainer trick will give you a lot of little suns to look at. Better than nothing but still a bit sad

partial eclipse projected through a cocktail strainer (LA 2023)

251

Kevin Marks @kevinmarks.com · 12/08/2026

They'll be fine. I used a cocktail strainer successfully last time. You really want the holes to be small as you get a sharper shadow.

Cocktail strainer casting crescent shaped shadows

2100

Kevin Marks @kevinmarks.com · 12/08/2026

It really does look spooky

Photo of the shadows of a leafy tree. It's full of crescents 🌙

021

Kevin Marks @kevinmarks.com · 11/08/2026

It worth it for what happens to the dapples under trees

Shadow of a tree, except all the blurry circles you normally get are crescents instead 🌙

000

Kevin Marks @kevinmarks.com · 10/08/2026

The ominous sign in Stokesley churchyard is also great

Signpost by old huge gravestones reading:
Beware of
Gravestones

They can be
DANGEROUS

Please keep clear of them
in the interest of your safety

260