iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Andrew Cherry @kolektiv.xyncro.com · 28/09/2026

I mean, that would just be silly...

Andrew Cherry @kolektiv.xyncro.com · 28/09/2026

They could get pushed into a minimum wage job - zero hour, no real prospects. Good for the stats, but a ludicrous waste and another step on the road to a declining economy.

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Andrew Cherry @kolektiv.xyncro.com · 28/09/2026

Yeah, exactly this. Ministers are completely detached from the reality of being an ordinary young person without funds or connections. At the exact same time, we have young people with skills and ambition sitting around wishing to make some use of them.

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Andrew Cherry @kolektiv.xyncro.com · 28/09/2026

Make it easy to start businesses; make it easy to grow them. Make it easy to enter new markets; make it easy to find suitable funding; make it so that people of all ages can create opportunity for themselves and others. Morale does not improve with more beatings, and it never will.

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Andrew Cherry @kolektiv.xyncro.com · 28/09/2026

Of all of the levers to pull, and of all of the people to blame, "reduce benefits" and "the young and unemployed" are probably the least morally valid, no matter how much you use the term "moral crusade".

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Andrew Cherry @kolektiv.xyncro.com · 28/09/2026

Because from a potential employer's perspective, I'm not seeing them. It's not becoming easier to start businesses; it's not becoming easier to seek/receive investment; it's not becoming easier to export - it's not even becoming easier to sell to the local market, because people feel worse off.

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Andrew Cherry @kolektiv.xyncro.com · 28/09/2026

So if you don't address that, and you don't address things either side of the problem (education, employment, the fundamental state of the economy) then you'll just be punishing the young for living in a poorly performing economy. Where are the measures that are going to drive job creation?

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Andrew Cherry @kolektiv.xyncro.com · 28/09/2026

Very little is paired in this discussion with "why aren't the young people in jobs to start with?" Because unless you believe in an entire apathetic/lazy generation, you surely have to start with causation. And what young people are saying is, "I've sent hundreds of applications and got nothing".

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Andrew Cherry @kolektiv.xyncro.com · 28/09/2026

Pretty disappointed in all of the stuff around "give young people a job and training rather than benefits". I mean, yes, obviously that's better, but there needs to be something on offer. Jobs aren't going to magically appear if you remove benefits or make them less accessible.

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Reposted by Andrew Cherry

The Booker Prizes @thebookerprizes.com · 26/09/2026

Mary Beard, Chair of the Booker Prize 2026 judging panel, on why she dislikes the phrase ‘I really love reading’. This clip is provided courtesy of the Southbank Centre, and you can watch the full Booker Prize 2026 shortlist event on their YouTube channel: youtube.pulse.ly/axkmrdaxr9

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Andrew Cherry @kolektiv.xyncro.com · 24/09/2026

Yup, showers were a communal tiled gauntlet when I was at school (UK, not US, but similar horror). Cleaned, like, whenever, man, and with absolutely no concept of dignity. PE teachers would stand at the ends to make sure you didn't cover up. There was absolutely no reason, beyond meanness/sadism.

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Andrew Cherry @kolektiv.xyncro.com · 24/09/2026

Does showing your whole arse in public count under the same kind of banner?

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Andrew Cherry @kolektiv.xyncro.com · 24/09/2026

Why is it always the ones you most suspect?

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Andrew Cherry @kolektiv.xyncro.com · 24/09/2026

For people that are supposedly all about business and capitalism, these folks sure don't understand supply, demand, and the creation of (black) markets do they?

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Andrew Cherry @kolektiv.xyncro.com · 23/09/2026

BRB, off to start a company based on pure nihilism and hastening the inevitable decay of civilisation into heat death and mulch. Calling it Entropic.

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Andrew Cherry @kolektiv.xyncro.com · 23/09/2026

I congratulate you on your relative youth, and lack of CVS-based trauma.

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Andrew Cherry @kolektiv.xyncro.com · 23/09/2026

I'm "no it doesn't know what directories are, it's best to avoid anything that fancy" years old! Yay!

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Andrew Cherry @kolektiv.xyncro.com · 23/09/2026

I'm sorry I think there's been a misunderstanding, we said *bite*-sexual. Sometimes the teeth don't help with the enunciation, you know?

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Andrew Cherry @kolektiv.xyncro.com · 23/09/2026

Grumpy middle-aged man reporting in. They're just aggravating! The most bits used to convey the least amount of information. I don't need added drama and production added to every single basic fact, and not every basic fact needs to be monetised to death in short-form video. Make it stop!

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Andrew Cherry @kolektiv.xyncro.com · 23/09/2026

When I was little, I didn't realise the "motorised" difference between a dirigible and a basic balloon, and wondered how people got where they wanted reliably. Now I'm a little sad it doesn't work that way. "Sorry, can't make the meeting. Got the 9.15 from Brighton, but... Where am I? Posnan."

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Andrew Cherry @kolektiv.xyncro.com · 23/09/2026

Yeah, absolutely. Or, absolument, I guess...

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Andrew Cherry @kolektiv.xyncro.com · 23/09/2026

"Would Inspector Sands please make his way to the station office? There is a Massive Bo - <what do you mean we're not supposed to read that bit? Well, it's a bit late now, isn't it? It's not very clear! Maybe nobody hea - yes, I can hear the screaming, fine...>"

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Andrew Cherry @kolektiv.xyncro.com · 23/09/2026

I had assumed John Cleese was at least Reform, if not Restore, long ago - it's like suddenly hearing about a musician you assumed had died in the 80s. "Wait, what - they're still going? Shit!"

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Andrew Cherry @kolektiv.xyncro.com · 23/09/2026

I am very concerned about the "safer" terminology, as if we have edible electronics now, but you know, they're dicey... Who is eating electronics?! (I'm guessing it's probably internal/medical use, which is cool, but edible is just... not really the word?)

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Andrew Cherry @kolektiv.xyncro.com · 23/09/2026

And yes, you know what, I am wearing trackie bottoms and a baggy T-shirt because I'd rather be comfortable, and it's not the 1950s, so I didn't dress up for my flight. Are you aware that professionals with reasonable expense accounts also own comfortable clothes? Arseholes. Never flown BA since.

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Andrew Cherry @kolektiv.xyncro.com · 23/09/2026

I once got full-on sneered at after asking whether the plane I was getting on for a 14-hour flight was likely to have power outlets. I said I'd pay for an upgrade to whichever class guaranteed it, at which point they gave me a full up/down look and then scoffed and turned away.

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Reposted by Andrew Cherry

Ash Oro @ashoro.co.uk · 22/09/2026

1/23 Sorry, this will be long... There is a lot of shouting about what happened in the Channel yesterday. So I want to go back to basic law. Not immigration policies or political rhetoric. At sea, the starting point is simple: Preservation of life comes first under all maritime conventions.

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Andrew Cherry @kolektiv.xyncro.com · 23/09/2026

Ok, you're asking the question, I presume in expectation of a particular answer given the framing, so do you think it does? If so, what problems do you think it causes?

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Andrew Cherry @kolektiv.xyncro.com · 22/09/2026

That was the first thing (well, second, after The Lion Thing) that jumped out at me as well. I'd question her suitability for headteacher because she misuses "big words" to sound clever and more important than she is. The kind of deeply insecure mind that shouldn't be near kids...

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Andrew Cherry @kolektiv.xyncro.com · 21/09/2026

This is fair. I'm married and not really planning on changing that, but it's good to know that spreadsheets are a valid technique. Looked at realistically, should I suddenly find myself single, they're likely my biggest chance.

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Andrew Cherry @kolektiv.xyncro.com · 21/09/2026

Right? Your hinge date was a fool!

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Andrew Cherry @kolektiv.xyncro.com · 20/09/2026

yeah, it's a good point that blaming the media exclusively removes the agency/responsibility from those who knowingly design systems in this way, and allow/encourage/propagandise an understanding which they know to be false.

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Andrew Cherry @kolektiv.xyncro.com · 20/09/2026

Yeah, my wish about the media is as much about "if everyone ignored the obviously mendacious crap, it wouldn't be such a problem" as anything in that sense. As it is, it needs pushing back, true.

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Andrew Cherry @kolektiv.xyncro.com · 20/09/2026

"...in future we can think about investing that wisely." <looks at general recruitment and strategy and sketches in the presumably unspken coda> "(But for now we'll just spaff it up the wall like normal)"

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Andrew Cherry @kolektiv.xyncro.com · 20/09/2026

Yeah, much wider than AI, it took me too long in life to realise that even engaging with the "prove me wrong!" types is just disastrous. That approach only comes from people unable and/or unwilling to engage with how any kind of meaningful debate works. I wish the media would stop engaging too...

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Andrew Cherry @kolektiv.xyncro.com · 18/09/2026

Just the pastiest, sweatiest remake of Society you can ever imagine. A Sankey diagram that makes Cronenberg throw up in his mouth a little.

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Andrew Cherry @kolektiv.xyncro.com · 17/09/2026

That said, it shows the foresight of having the Paralympics follow the Olympics, for those athletes who can now double up.

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Andrew Cherry @kolektiv.xyncro.com · 17/09/2026

"Astonishing results in the sprint canoe this evening, where every finisher registered a new personal best, although there is some concern about the relatively low finishing rate this year. We tried to speak to the coach of one such athlete, but we can no longer find hi - "

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Andrew Cherry @kolektiv.xyncro.com · 17/09/2026

Man, just imagine how much cooler and more successful Socrates, Aristotle, Plato, and so on would have been if they had been smart enough to realise they needed to bet on everything. /s

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Andrew Cherry @kolektiv.xyncro.com · 12/09/2026

I don't think AI is the cause of that; I suspect it's been the case for a long time after digitisations that simply replicated analogue processes - but AI is quite useful at throwing it into sharp relief. Done with AI, it has no value - but it didn't before! It was simply much harder to spot...

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Andrew Cherry @kolektiv.xyncro.com · 12/09/2026

I think it also highlights just how much of many organisations' work has very little real value! Noticing little difference when something is auto-written and then auto-digested/summarised seems to reveal how much of some work is just "shuffling papers around".

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Andrew Cherry @kolektiv.xyncro.com · 11/09/2026

Paging @cstross.bsky.social... It seems your imagination has escaped containment again...

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Andrew Cherry @kolektiv.xyncro.com · 10/09/2026

Would you like to see the cabinets that van der Rohe designed? Donald Judd's tables? Rietveld's chair that isn't that one, or the other one? An Eames non-chair? Well, tough shit, because that's not happening. You'll take your 500 images of the same chair, and you'll like it.

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Andrew Cherry @kolektiv.xyncro.com · 10/09/2026

Admittedly, this is the firstest of world problems, but if you're trying to look for images of all the furniture made by some interesting architect/designer, you can't - because all of the results will be of the one most famous thing they did, almost certainly a chair.

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Andrew Cherry @kolektiv.xyncro.com · 10/09/2026

It's a genuine "what is this even for?" moment, which is how I know I'm old now. I don't want to watch a movie on my phone, and as it turns out, I don't want to watch a movie on a slightly bigger phone for twice the price.

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Andrew Cherry @kolektiv.xyncro.com · 10/09/2026

Always reassuring when I see Apple launch a new flagship product and immediately think "yeah I've got no need or desire for that whatsoever". That keynote feels like it saved me money. Of all the things I've wished my phone had, a hinge has never been one.

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Andrew Cherry @kolektiv.xyncro.com · 08/09/2026

I can only imagine being the tech person in those meetings. "No, you can't... It doesn't work like tha - ..." What do we have to say just to make her go away? Just say it, and then we'll put our out-of-office on until the next election...

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Andrew Cherry @kolektiv.xyncro.com · 08/09/2026

Itamar! Quickly! Fetch me my 2017 copy of Debrett's Anti-Peerages! This'll show them we mean business...

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Reposted by Andrew Cherry

The Author, Séamas O'Reilly @seamas.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Have seen this Nature piece about the effects of X's algorithm mentioned again and it bears repeating; exposure to a right wing algorithm makes you - measurably and predictably - more right wing, even after you stop using it. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

nature.com

The political effects of X’s feed algorithm - Nature

Among users initially on a chronological feed, 7 weeks of exposure to X’s algorithmic feed in 2023 shifted political attitudes and account-following behaviour in a more conservative direction compared...

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Andrew Cherry @kolektiv.xyncro.com · 08/09/2026

Oh, I know! We need to be pushing back much harder on the perception and challenging the narrative, offering alternatives, shifting the window back towards meaningful/realistic/factual positions!

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