iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Matt Morris @matthewmorris.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Indeed, wiil no-one think about the beetles? One thing that particularly irks me is that this all got comprehensively torn apart decades ago, repugnant conclusion Parfit blah blah blah. But they don't read books so (shrug). Makes me ashamed to be a coder

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Matt Morris @matthewmorris.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

I think they probably *do* think it's ok? The ethic a lot of the tech crowd go by is Utilitarianism, so they chuck everyone's utility into a hopper to be jointly maximised. Sucks to be an individual on the wrong side of that. Utilitarian theory can't be easily used to rule out slavery.

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Matt Morris @matthewmorris.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

I so want this to work out for him

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Jon Patience @smoulderstoat.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Friends, on the matter of dodgy men in transit vans, allow me to tell you about me, two future members of the House of Lords, and the massive suspect package.

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Tom Freeman @tomfreeman.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

I mean, any time now would be good. If it's not too much trouble

Headline: "‘Outright racist’ Daniel Thomas will face full force of law over any crimes, says home secretary"

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Matt Morris @matthewmorris.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

I’m not anti-AI (I’m a coder! I use it a *lot* at work!) but it feels like there’s a split between (1) those who think that human-to-human interaction has intrinsic value in and of itself, and (2) those who would actively prefer to put tech in the middle of everything. I am VERY pro-(1) & anti-(2).

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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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Matt Morris @matthewmorris.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Well, nope. I think this where I mute you. I disagree with almost everyone on this website but - unlike you - I am managing to avoid taking it personally. You’re skating off somewhere that I can’t be bothered to follow.

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Ian Boudreau @ianboudreau.com · 09/09/2026

We believe we are actively creating an extinction event for humanity. We will not be asking your county planning board for zoning variances because fuck you. Why are you being so hostile

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Matt Morris @matthewmorris.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

I use LLMs a lot for coding but they are utterly shit for writing, at least for any writing that’s supposed to help you work out your ideas or to communicate them to others. They’re good at spotting typos but apart from that 🤷

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Matt Morris @matthewmorris.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

This -> bsky.app/profile/matt...

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Matt Morris @matthewmorris.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

This -> bsky.app/profile/matt...

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Matt Morris @matthewmorris.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

More specifically, there is not something that is modelling itself and gathering input from experiences that it has, and using that to correct its model of the world. There is a static set of weights that are very useful when responding to input. It does not have "motivation".

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Matt Morris @matthewmorris.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

A sceptic such as myself regards these as fragments that the models have picked up and are synthesizing into something aping reason. Kind of like sticking a pair of googly eyes on a rock. There is no "there" there.

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Matt Morris @matthewmorris.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

Counterpoint: grownups aren’t taking the poll seriously

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Matt Morris @matthewmorris.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

Clearly Burnham didn’t mean every full postcode, that’s just a bad-faith interpretation. I’d personally interpret that rhetoric as meaning postcode area (eg SW, 224 of those) or district at a pinch (eg SW8, 3118 of those).

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Tony Keetch @tonykeetch.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Just remembered that a friend told me he took his mother to see Cleopatra. She looked at Richard O’Sullivan as Ptolemy and said, ‘She’s not that pretty, is she?’

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Matt Morris @matthewmorris.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

You can get them mail order. I remember someone got one for work once: 4.5kg, 80cm long. It lasted less than an hour: feral scenes

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Matt Morris @matthewmorris.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

The construction isn’t via recent sponsorship, but via rhyming slang: “Barclay’s Bank” -> “Wank”. Been around since the 1930s, apparently.

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Matt Morris @matthewmorris.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

It’s still bad when it happens to the likes of Milo. But it’s also amusing, for hopefully obvious reasons. Two different things at the same time.

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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 23/08/2026

here is the thing. if you tell me that you believe that race is a biological category and that it is a guide to the objective superiority and inferiority of groups of people, i am not calling you a racist to *insult* you, i am calling you a racist because it best describes your beliefs.

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Matt Morris @matthewmorris.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

Well, as someone who uses a lot of AI in my day job, I’m sympathetic to people put off by the hype. They see what it’s bad at (~anything artistic), and they don’t work with the more pattern-matching stuff that it’s so great on (coding, drug design, root cause analysis…)

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Matt Morris @matthewmorris.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

These graphs from the paper the article refers to are far more informative - the ones getting the higher scores are pretty much exactly the ones who are replacing time spent learning by just getting AI to generate the answers.

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Matt Morris @matthewmorris.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

It’s more that you can’t use AI to build understanding for you: it doesn’t save time on that - check out the graphs below. Using it for unreflective donkey work remains worthwhile. Knowing the difference is probably the real superpower.

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Matt Morris @matthewmorris.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

This is the key graph - the ones getting high scores are the ones just getting AI to do it all for them and not putting time into understanding the concepts

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Matt Morris @matthewmorris.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

It was into Farage as an MP. Now he’s an MP again. Briefly he wasn’t.

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Jonn Elledge @jonnelledge.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

I see that Toby Young had written about an elite university messing up by elevating someone who may not have been actually qualified to be there. Interesting stuff

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Matt Morris @matthewmorris.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

You have my sympathy: I started getting it and managed to head it off. I’ve a relative who has suffered for 2 years but is now in the mend. I hugely recommend seeing a physio, there are some weird exercises that can help (slowly) improve things.

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Matt Morris @matthewmorris.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

Yeah, 20k steps is about 3h of walking daily, not really practical for non-retirees - I was on “gardening leave” between jobs at the time. Nowadays my daily commute involves 10k steps, then I add in ~30/40m in gym (gym is at work, so is easy to fit in). Hard to get any more in than that though…

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Matt Morris @matthewmorris.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

I walked 20k steps every day for a few months to lose weight. Worked really well, but if you’re flirting with something even vaguely similar there’s one crucial thing to do early on: get proper shoes/boots from a specialist shop that fit your arch height. Plantar Fasciitis is grim. Good luck with it

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Matt Morris @matthewmorris.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

I found a Rarity-79 word worth 93 pts in OUTLIER. SHARPSHOOTER · 836 points · 10 rare words. 8 finds no one else found today. OUTLIER: the daily word hunt where the rarest words win. Can you beat me? playoutlier.com/s/MG6W33

playoutlier.com

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Matt Morris @matthewmorris.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

In the UK there’s something called “Which?” run by the Consumer’s Association (a charity, although Which? Itself is commercial) - this does unbiased, thorough reviews and tests. Costs c. £5/mth but avoids this problem.

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Matt Morris @matthewmorris.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

I was really lucky: my own symptoms responded well to the treatment I was given. But I share your reservations about progress more generally while the terminology remains so vague. It looks to me like “Long Covid” is currently being used to describe many very different things.

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Matt Morris @matthewmorris.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

What LG said online was more along the lines of “it’s debatable whether Long Covid points to anything real”, which is rather different - and pretty irritating to anyone who has suffered one of the conditions currently untidily piled together under that name.

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Matt Morris @matthewmorris.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

I had (a type of) Long Covid, and I think that what you say is sensible. I hope that as research continues, the too-vague “Long Covid” umbrella will be gradually subsumed by more tightly-defined, tractable, treatable, concepts and definitions: as is happening with e.g. autism, dyslexia, etc

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Matt Morris @matthewmorris.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

That’s not what you said!! You said “Long Covid is a disputed subject, at best.” Not at all the same thing. You’re just throwing out controversial takes for views and failing to own them later. Cowardly and disingenuous; something I refuse to waste time on interacting with. Unfollowed and muted.

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Matt Morris @matthewmorris.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

Assuming that she *is* competent at the relevant law (and I imagine that she quite possibly is) then surely some other - less flattering - interpretations of her behaviour suggest themselves.

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Matt Morris @matthewmorris.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

So is climate change. So is vaccine safety. So is whether the Earth is round. Plenty of people disputing all of these. But what these, and Long Covid, have in common is a massive weight of scientific consensus on one side of the question. (Yes, I’ve had Long Covid. Not recommended)

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Matt Morris @matthewmorris.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

Yeah we had two (that I knew of). Male teachers at an all-boy's London comp school. I wasn't the right type for either of them, thankfully. Bigger brothers took revenge at least once each: one got shot in the arse with an air rifle, the other was beaten up on school premises. Life's rich pageant.

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Matt Morris @matthewmorris.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

My favourite fact on that: the insane Hansel and Gretel speech was written by the scriptwriter's *dad* 😀 (I looked it up afterwards especially)

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