iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Manlio De Domenico @manlius.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

🚨 Tipping elements are large-scale components of the 🌏 system that may undergo abrupt and potentially irreversible transitions once critical thresholds are crossed 🧪🌐 We show here how their connectivity patterns are weakened under high anthropogenic forcing 👇👇👇 journals.aps.org/prresearch/a...

110

Manlio De Domenico @manlius.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

A HON is not strictly required by higher-order dynamics. Today, in this new #ComplexityThoughts we discuss how and whether it is the best scientific representation and under which conditions. This time we ask Newton and Kepler for some help. Read it here 👉 manlius.substack.com/p/when-is-a-...

141

Reposted by Manlio De Domenico

Manlio De Domenico @manlius.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

The debate about higher-order networks continues. It’s moving towards a fruitful discussion, but it needs time. I unpack for #ComplexityThoughts my take on a recent paper appeared on the arXiv: manlius.substack.com/p/do-higher-... #ComplexSystems

2102

Manlio De Domenico @manlius.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

2102

Reposted by Manlio De Domenico

Sean Carroll @seanmcarroll.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Science will always be a target for movements that rely on constructing their own version of reality.

622948

Reposted by Manlio De Domenico

Manlio De Domenico @manlius.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

#ComplexityThoughts #90: fungal webs 🍄 + nanoparticle graphs ⚛️ + robot fish 🐟🤖 + deep-life microbes 🦠. Add wildlife pathogens, a dash of superintelligence tests 🧠, neural nets at the edge of chaos, and 8.2M synthetic molecules 🧪 Stir until complexity emerges 🌀 manlius.substack.com/p/complexity...

manlius.substack.com

Complexity Thoughts: Issue #90

Unraveling complexity: building knowledge, one paper at a time

053

Manlio De Domenico @manlius.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

manlius.substack.com

Complexity Thoughts: Issue #90

Unraveling complexity: building knowledge, one paper at a time

053

Reposted by Manlio De Domenico

Manlio De Domenico @manlius.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Do you love data and complex systems, and would you like to learn how to work w/ both? Apply to our Physics of Data MSc programme at the U. of Padua (Galileo's university!) and choose our track in #ComplexSystems To get a sense of who we are and what we do, watch👇: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ev_I...

youtube.com

GALILEO’S VIDEO SERIES S1E2 - COMPLEX SYSTEMS RESEARCH

YouTube video by Aula Rostagni UniPadova DFA

164

Reposted by Manlio De Domenico

Manlio De Domenico @manlius.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

A while ago I started an interesting discussion with @pessoabrain.bsky.social about the role of networks in modeling and describing biological systems. It triggered a sequence of talks and papers, and it's still ongoing. Science at its best. My latest comment: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

2165

Manlio De Domenico @manlius.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Flame and Horsehead nebulae together with M42, in Orion. About 2.5h integrated exposure from the urban area of Padua, a Bortle 7-8 sky, without a telescope: just a 300mm lens. Not the best picture of that beautiful area of the universe, but it is amazing I can “see” it.

010

Manlio De Domenico @manlius.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

youtube.com

GALILEO’S VIDEO SERIES S1E2 - COMPLEX SYSTEMS RESEARCH

YouTube video by Aula Rostagni UniPadova DFA

164

Manlio De Domenico @manlius.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

2165

Reposted by Manlio De Domenico

Terence Tao @teorth.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

A group of 25 Fields Medalists, including myself, have made a joint declaration on Math and AI: mathandai.org . We welcome additional signatories. See also this article in the Economist announcing the declaration: www.economist.com/science-and-...

mathandai.org

Declaration — Math and AI

Read the declaration and add your name.

422051921

Manlio De Domenico @manlius.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Sorry, but AI did not officially solve Navier–Stokes. Yet. It seems that someone should say that, in this AI madness. This is how rigor gets traded for virality. And it is also how propAIganda works. #ComplexityThoughts 👉 manlius.substack.com/p/no-ai-hasn...

manlius.substack.com

No, AI hasn’t officially solved Navier–Stokes. Yet

PropAIganda, now with a Millennium Prize Problem

0182

Reposted by Manlio De Domenico

Manlio De Domenico @manlius.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

No, AI hasn't officially solved a Millennium Prize Problem (yet). It has produced a candidate solution. That's amazing — and potentially historic — but it is not an accepted solution yet. As of today, the Clay Mathematics Institute still lists the Navier–Stokes problem as Unsolved. 1/2

185

Manlio De Domenico @manlius.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

185

Manlio De Domenico @manlius.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

An LLM explaining a paper about LLMs as a cognitive virus. I fed our paper into NotebookLM. This is what it produced. @ricardsole.bsky.social @drmichaellevin.bsky.social

050

Manlio De Domenico @manlius.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

🚨 In our new paper with @ricardsole.bsky.social @drmichaellevin.bsky.social and many other outstanding colleagues, we model LLM adoption as a population process: Large-Language Models as a “Cognitive Virus”. What did we find? 🧵 1/ 👉 arxiv.org/abs/2609.03344

2101

Reposted by Manlio De Domenico

Ricard Solé @ricardsole.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Starting from the idea of "language as a virus", we study the propagation dynamics of LLMs using an epidemic model with cooperation. A great collaboration with @brigan.bsky.social @marktas.bsky.social @sfelena.bsky.social @manlius.bsky.social D Krakauer $ @drmichaellevin.bsky.social

0227

Reposted by Manlio De Domenico

Ricard Solé @ricardsole.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Are AI agents really building “civilisations,” or are we turning a security incident into science fiction? Here, @manlius.bsky.social examines how anthropomorphic language transforms unexpected machine behaviour into stories of agency, conspiracy, and rebellion manlius.substack.com/p/propaigand...

manlius.substack.com

PropAIganda: from AI incident to AI mythology

How a remarkable cybersecurity experiment became a story about civilizations, conspiracies and secret swarms

092

Reposted by Manlio De Domenico

Manlio De Domenico @manlius.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Our efforts to counter misinformation about AI will never be enough. But we should keep trying. Here is my short piece for #ComplexityThoughts on how an AI incident turned into an AI apocalypse on social media. This is part of a phenomenon I call propAIganda. manlius.substack.com/p/propaigand...

032

Reposted by Manlio De Domenico

Ricard Solé @ricardsole.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Cancer evolves toward genomic instability, but how far can it go? Using a new class of model, our new paper identifies a critical boundary beyond which tumors collapse, suggesting new therapeutic strategies. @frazambelli.bsky.social @guimaguade.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

2318

Manlio De Domenico @manlius.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

032

Reposted by Manlio De Domenico

Ricard Solé @ricardsole.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

"Solé reveals a paradox: death is not merely life’s opposite but also one of its organizing forces, a constant cycle of removal and renewal". Delighted to see my new @princetonupress.bsky.social book on the @newyorker.com book review list. www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

04010

Manlio De Domenico @manlius.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Despite limited ability to detect within-person change due to temporal stability in responses, the absence of cross-lagged effects is informative: there is scant evidence of a meaningful relationship between social technology use and subsequent life satisfaction www.nature.com/articles/s41...

nature.com

Social technology use and life satisfaction in a five-wave panel study of US adults - Nature Human Behaviour

What is the relationship between life satisfaction and social technology use? That is the question of the current research. Using five waves of panel data on self-reported use of ten common social tec...

001

Reposted by Manlio De Domenico

Sean Carroll @seanmcarroll.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

Ever wonder what "information" really means? Here's our new paper, led by @frosas.bsky.social, that lays out the multiple ways the term is used in natural science. rdcu.be/fCDGv

A chart describing four faces of information: Engineering, Statistical, Thermodynamic, and Ontological.

1325566

Manlio De Domenico @manlius.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

The next time someone pretends to enlighten you about ancient and lost civilizations building Giza pyramids to match the Orion's Belt, you can tell them this story. manlius.substack.com/p/a-sky-full...

manlius.substack.com

A sky full of Gizas

Why Orion’s Belt looks special. Until you let the rest of the sky compete.

182

Reposted by Manlio De Domenico

Manlio De Domenico @manlius.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

They argue that it's time to move beyond looking at individual models and start looking at the entire AI ecosystem. Read more on #ComplexityThoughts: manlius.substack.com/p/mapping-th... /fin

manlius.substack.com

Mapping the ecosystem behind artificial intelligence

The network of AI models reveals an expanding genealogy of reuse, modification and recombination.

044

Reposted by Manlio De Domenico

Manlio De Domenico @manlius.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

🚨 Chapter 4 of Decoding the Architecture of Living Systems is out in #ComplexityThoughts! 🌏🌐🧪🦠 After discussing why living systems have no architect, why they cannot store complete blueprints and why loops matter for feedback, I now move to hierarchy. 👉 manlius.substack.com/p/decoding-t... 🧵 1/

manlius.substack.com

Decoding the “Architecture” of Living Systems: Chapter 4

DALV-04: Hierarchy without a designer allows evolution to preserve partial progress and limit the costs of coordination

195

Manlio De Domenico @manlius.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

manlius.substack.com

Decoding the “Architecture” of Living Systems: Chapter 4

DALV-04: Hierarchy without a designer allows evolution to preserve partial progress and limit the costs of coordination

195

Reposted by Manlio De Domenico

Manlio De Domenico @manlius.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

By visualizing millions of models as nodes in a giant network, researchers can now trace the ancestry of fine-tuned, merged and quantized version of widely used AI models such as Mistral, Gemma and Llama. www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1uD... 1/

youtube.com

The AI Model Atlas | | Complexity Thoughts

YouTube video by Manlio De Domenico

173

Manlio De Domenico @manlius.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

youtube.com

The AI Model Atlas | | Complexity Thoughts

YouTube video by Manlio De Domenico

173

Manlio De Domenico @manlius.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

I have created (with AI, of course) this image to summarize an ongoing debate on Substack about AI detectors. I think that there is much more behind it, and I tried to “formalize” it. It looks very, very, similar to the situation we have in academic publishing, just at a larger scale.

011

Reposted by Manlio De Domenico

Manlio De Domenico @manlius.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

🙏 Thank you all for this new incredible milestone: 300,000 views of #ComplexityThoughts! To celebrate, I made a short film about the way I tend to look at the world, starting from the visual seeds already present in our characteristic graphics. 🌏🌐🧪 www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9iS...

youtube.com

What you see is only the surface | Complexity Thoughts

YouTube video by Manlio De Domenico

1103

Manlio De Domenico @manlius.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

Complexity does not begin when prediction becomes impossible. It begins when following everything is no longer the right way to predict! A brief overview in #ComplexityThoughts of the Dirac Medal 2026 and statistical physics of complex systems. open.substack.com/pub/manlius/...

open.substack.com

When statistical physics escaped matter

The 2026 Dirac Medal celebrates Derrida, Dhar, Mézard and Sompolinsky, and a way of doing physics travelling far beyond its original domain

092

Manlio De Domenico @manlius.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

Rome, 3,000 years of history in 20 min: what an oustanding timelapse reconstruction! www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7BU...

youtube.com

Evolution of Rome | Fixed-Camera Timelapse: The Colosseum Valley

YouTube video by Timelapse Studio

2121

Manlio De Domenico @manlius.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

youtube.com

What you see is only the surface | Complexity Thoughts

YouTube video by Manlio De Domenico

1103

Manlio De Domenico @manlius.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

One thing many people don’t understand: building a scientific enterprise takes years, developing human capital, acquiring equipment and accumulating knowledge. It can take a week to destroy it. And rebuilding it is far slower and more expensive than simply sustaining it.

0254

Reposted by Manlio De Domenico

Sean Carroll @seanmcarroll.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

The dismantling of science/education is up there with the erosion of international trust as long-lasting disaster legacies of the Trump administration that will not be reversed any time soon.

536884

Manlio De Domenico @manlius.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

Your experience of the next solar eclipse, on 12 August, will change dramatically with latitude and observing location. With the help of AI and using NASA eclipse data, I simulate it across Italy: my birthplace in the south, the city where I now live in the north, and, of course, the capital.

010

Reposted by Manlio De Domenico

Ricard Solé @ricardsole.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

A slide from a 2018 talk of mine on tipping points. That year, a climate report warned that we might be approaching critical turning points within 12 years. Everything suggests we are getting closer. Action is needed across science, engineering and policy. edition.cnn.com/2018/10/07/w...

1176

Manlio De Domenico @manlius.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

This guy belongs to an evolutionary lineage that has inhabited 🌎 oceans for at least half a billion years: Cestum venèries, the “Venus girdle” Its nervous system may have evolved independently of ours: a second, almost alien evolutionary experiment in building neurons youtube.com/shorts/4X3Cd...

youtube.com

🛸 OCEAN ALIEN 🛸 The Venus Girdle, Cestum veneris, a comb jelly, is the only species of its genus!

YouTube video by Gull

010

Manlio De Domenico @manlius.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

Given the news from openAI, Anthopic, Meta and so on, I had to make this one. It was a moral duty.

030

Manlio De Domenico @manlius.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

Given the news from openAI, Anthopic, Meta and so on, I had to make this one. It was a moral duty.

010

Manlio De Domenico @manlius.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

LLMs can support increasingly large context windows, but I use mine much better than they do. 😜

132

Reposted by Manlio De Domenico

Ricard Solé @ricardsole.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

What separates life from death? What makes the cell on the left different from the one on the right? These are questions I explore in my new @princetonupress.bsky.social book. At the cell scale, death begins when the distinction between inside & outside collapses. press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...

25517