iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Mark McCormack @markmccormack.bsky.social · 18h

I'm old enough to remember how significant a figure Esther Rantzen was during my childhood, and that doesn't include her Nicholas Winton episode, or her later life campaigning www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

bbc.co.uk

Dame Esther Rantzen dies aged 86

Rantzen, who fronted the BBC's That's Life for two decades, went on to found Childline, and in recent years had been a campaigner for assisted dying.

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Mark McCormack @markmccormack.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Absolutely loved this when it came out. I remember a motorbike killing scene which was amazingly done

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Tom Roberts @tpgroberts.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Fundamentally, the median voter has had a tax cut since 2010 and the result is that nothing works.

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Mark McCormack @markmccormack.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Shocking - and not really disclosed in the call.

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Mark McCormack @markmccormack.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

EVs all the way. They are also now just great to drive.

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Tom Roberts @tpgroberts.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Not to harp on this, but one man has now coordinated the disruption of a port, two separate attacks on the RNLI, and interference with the border force and the police have no further questions? And the Home Secretary has not noticed?

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Grumpy Philosopher @stevecooke.org · 21/09/2026

Friends in many other institutions have reported the same stripping out of interesting research-led academic content for generic skills & subject material. I see it at my own too. Often, these courses are team taught because growing stress & workloads are increasing sickness levels.

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Mark McCormack @markmccormack.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

After giving a one-off donation the other day, decided to give monthly to RNLI - recommend watching this - saving lives at sea should never be a political act, but a human one rnli.org/news-and-med...

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Hassinator @hassinator.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

a great letter in the times today. perhaps worth sharing in these troubled times. #RNLI #heroes

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Jo Wolff @jowolff.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Whoops. Did we somehow forget about the intrinsic value of a university education?

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Sam Freedman @samfr.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

It might be a good idea for a senior politician to talk about the AI alignment risk at some point given I suspect the vast majority of the population have no idea it exists, except maybe in a jokey sci-fi sort of way.

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Andy Scollick @andyscollick.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

On whose orders are Kent Police NOT questioning the organisers of the fascist paramilitary 'storm' action in Dover? 🤔 Can a police force really be this incompetent? Or is there some kind of operational reason for not questioning threats to national security? Or, indeed, is there a conspiracy? 🤨

bbc.com

Kent Police yet to speak to Dover protest organisers

The Kent force is inviting those behind Saturday's protest at the Port of Dover to get in touch.

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Andy Scollick @andyscollick.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

I'm not going to reproduce the proipaganda photo of the three white ladies here because that's what the fascists want. But it's all over facebook (just search for 'Dover'). Then follow the trail to find that these 'ladies' are Far Right sympathisers if not active supporters.

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Will Jennings📉🗳️ @drjennings.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

"in a stand-off with the RNLI"... the RNLI!

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Patrick Dunleavy @patrickdunleavy.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

Disgraceful police behaviour here. Do they sympathasize with fascists? Is this what their inaction and blatant mistruths are designed to signal? If so, they are sowing a whirlwind that will come to haunt them, and us, as it did in Weimar. news.sky.com/story/police...

news.sky.com

Police response to Dover protests set to come under scrutiny, as Tommy Robinson associate appears to claim credit

Campaign group Hope Not Hate linked the action to the Patriot Platform, a group recently launched by Daniel Thomas, known as Danny Tommo.

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Andy Scollick @andyscollick.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

Another compilation video from yesterday's fascist paramilitary 'storm' action in #Dover town and at the Port of Dover. #FarRight Some national security-related observations below.

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Lou Morgan @lmorgan.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

BBC report on the radio makes a point of saying the mood was “intimidating but not hostile” in Dover this morning, right before describing the massed men wearing balaclavas and blocking key infrastructure as shouting “Whose streets? Our streets.” I dunno, lads: sounds intimidating AND hostile to me

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onlycans @onlycans.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

just stop oil protesters got five years in jail for *planning* to do this to the M25.

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Mark McCormack @markmccormack.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Extraordinary report well worth watching in full

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Eoghan Daltun 🌍 @irishrainforest.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

THE most impactful thing you can do as an individual, right now, to help stop the mass nature die-off humanity is driving? Reduce or stop consumption of beef and other animal-based foods.

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Yasin Koc @spyasin.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Does being a progressive man come at a social cost? Not at all; it pays off. Across 4 prereg. experiments, progressive men were perceived more positively than traditionally masculine men. Ayca’s second PhD paper already published nearing the submission of her PhD! Very proud! doi.org/10.1002/casp...

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The Atlantic @theatlantic.com · 27/08/2026

Human writers are expensive, and they eventually die. The case for AI writing, by Paul "Claude" Gigot:

bit.ly

Why I Am Right About AI

Human writers are expensive, and they eventually die. AI is cheaper, and will never join a union.

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Hetan Shah @hetanshah.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

Interesting letter on the history of AI research. In 1972 a group met in Italy & discussed issues like the erosion of human autonomy. But then research narrowed its focus to industrial applications & did not include humanities, so we lost a more integrated view www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Jill Lepore asks why nobody listened to warnings about the threats posed from the AI revolution (Democracy v the machine, 18 August). As she is a Harvard professor, her piece is understandably US-centric. But in 1972 there was an international gathering of AI researchers and others in Italy to tackle the ethical and social implications of AL.
This "Serbelloni group" of global experts (they met at Villa Serbelloni on Lake Como) was led by my father, Donald Michie, the director of the University of Edinburgh's department of machine intelligence. The group mapped out early concerns regarding potential political tyranny, the erosion of human autonomy and widespread social coercion driven by automation.
Why did nobody listen? In part because the next year the UK cut research funding for machine learning, robotics and AI, following the Lighthill report, which had been established - it has since been documented - for this purpose.
Researchers had instead to focus on more immediately industrial-relevant work. My father's attempts to reconvene the Serbelloni group to include experts from the humanities thus proved unsuccessful.
Jonathan Michie
Professor of innovation & knowledge exchange,

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Bo Thompson @gaudipern.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

(1/3) With Dolly Parton's passing, I want to put good words on the wind for her. Feel free to quote reply with your own. Dolly became the single largest donor for the Moderna COVID vaccine because of a chance encounter and friendship with a Vanderbilt researcher Dr. Naji Abumrad years earlier. She

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Natalie Bennett @nataliegreenpeer.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

Powerful and important letter about artificial so-called intelligence from Sheila Hayman from Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy, University of Cambridge, in the FT today

$Margaret McGirr’s letter (“AI can lend a hand, but it will struggle to replace one”, July 21) and Chine McDonald’s guest column (“This retro revival is more than a longing for the past”, Opinion, August 7) both touch (sic) on something that should be obvious, but is carefully ignored by almost everyone in the tech world. Namely that our intelligence is embodied, evolved and biological, and inseparable from our bodies. The brain’s job is to control the body in the world; it is the last organ to develop. Every square centimetre of our hands (and of the rest of our skin) contains about a 170 touch sensors or nerve endings, sensitive to different kinds of touch: a slap, a burn, a caress, a hug — each of which travels to different parts of the midbrain, prompting the appropriate response. Quickly to the autonomic nervous system for something dangerous; more slowly via a different channel for something carrying meaning. In addition to the hand’s limitless versatility, it is self-repairing, regulates its own temperature, knows without being programmed how much pressure to exert on an egg, a tennis ball or a day-old chick, and can fuse neurologically to whatever it holds. So when we put a glass down on the table or slide a knife through an apple, we feel the table, or the apple, not the glass or handle in our hand (try it!). Finally, and most urgently, the entire human body — including the hands — does everything on 25 or so watts of completely renewable energy: a tiny fraction of what a humanoid robot, even one of the current primitive iteration of robots, needs. The “retro revival” is thus not cultural nostalgia. It’s millions of years of evolution crying out to be heard, before we suppress it totally in the service of an automated — and dead — planet. Sheila Hayman Member of the Advisory Board, Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy, University of Cambridge, London NW1, UK$

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Liesbeth Corens @onslies.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

"Government has got to stop wasting money on extraordinarily high-margin generic intermediaries to buy in teaching it could commission directly from the starving universities that already provide it." 🎯🎯🎯 KPMG has a better lobby group than UUK? giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

giftarticle.ft.com

Letter: Don’t pay consultants if universities can do the job

From Amanda Goodall, London EC1, UK and Andrew Oswald, Coventry, Warwickshire, UK

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Will Jennings📉🗳️ @drjennings.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

One of the issues of signing letters for cases relating to ‘academic freedom’ that you don’t have direct knowledge or connection to is that it prompts not unreasonable questions regarding the cases you have chosen to remain silent on. Why do certain cases matter more than others?

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Rob Ford @robfordmancs.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

If accurate and robust this isn’t sustainable. Either we raise generations of kids who have franchised out thinking to a machine (imagine how elections and the labour market go then) or governments intervene somehow to stop that outcome.

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Mark McCormack @markmccormack.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

This is a good point and one I've been thinking about.

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Tony Yates @t0nyyates.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

'midwitted groupthink'. This piece makes stuff up about what was going on in a hiring committee she wasn't on [note elsewhere the author accuses an academic who has been on one of 'credentialism'].

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Jonathan Foyle @jonathanfoyle.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

Chances of this getting as much media outrage as Arday's appointment to Cambridge...?

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Mark McCormack @markmccormack.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

Shocking and horrible turn of events.

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theartsdesk @theartsdesk.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

★★★★ Still keeping the faith: Mavis Staples proves she is a living witness to the struggles of the 1960s and the embodiment of grace, goodness, and optimism writes @lizofmueslihill.bsky.social from Union Chapel theartsdesk.com/new-music/ma...

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Mark McCormack @markmccormack.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

Seeing Mavis Staples was an uplifting experience

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Charlotte Lydia Riley @lottelydia.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

Heartened to see that my university is ending its contract with Turnitin before the next academic year, because Turnitin is going to use student submissions to train AI models. Institutions can and should resist this stuff!

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Mark McCormack @markmccormack.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

Two LGBT venues shutting in Brighton in coming months: R-Bar because of business rates, costs, inflation etc and Charles Street Tap because its lease ends. Two long-standing queer venues in the city.

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Priyamvada Gopal @priyamvadagopal.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

While true that inordinate attention is paid to what happens in Cambridge-Oxford as @donalh.bsky.social noted yesterday, this particular business is dangerous for all of the sector. It's being used to suggest that equalities work & socsci/ humanities are the problem everywhere. It's anti HE.

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