iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Andrew Weeks @meloncholy.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

Great to have you here again and looking forward to the talk!

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Andrew Weeks @meloncholy.bsky.social · 02/05/2026

This period was the peak for MS media design 😊

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Andrew Weeks @meloncholy.bsky.social · 29/04/2026

I’ve seen great results getting an LLM to write thorough and detailed prompts for another LLM. It’s great to see this area explored in a much more thorough and systematic way.

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c0nc0rdance @c0nc0rdance.bsky.social · 20/02/2026

I LOVE when science is applied to "toddler questions" like "Why is the sky blue?" or "Why is ice slippery?" Because the answers can be so SUPRISING. Let's dig into recent revelations about how ice skates work & why tires skid across black ice. First, we'll dismiss 3 VERY GOOD hypotheses as wrong.

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Cat Hicks @grimalkina.bsky.social · 05/02/2026

I've been in SF for four days and on each day I've had multiple conversations where people (self included) express deep feelings, fear, wonder and worry about their skills being replaced or (this is less named explicitly but an assumed driver I think) no longer valued by others. Big threats to feel

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Tyler Burch @tylerjamesburch.com · 01/02/2026

The better LLMs get, the more data scientists are going to find out the truth.

Always has been meme.
“Wait, domain knowledge is the most valuable thing a data scientist can have?”

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Andrew Weeks @meloncholy.bsky.social · 18/01/2026

This is a really nice example of a tool being repurposed! Windows had a print screen option in like 1993 (and DOS before that), but the move from “capturing the state of my computer” to “capturing the state of the world” made it so much more valuable post internet & social media.

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Ross Mudie @rmudie96.bsky.social · 18/01/2026

Must read. I’ve spent much of the past year visiting Big Locals, and have never been more certain that its model would deliver significant results if backed at scale (as the government is doing with Pride in Place) It is remarkable what some places have done given just a little money and time.

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Andrew Weeks @meloncholy.bsky.social · 18/12/2025

Arthur Ganson’s “Machine with Concrete” The magic of gears: the input shaft is driven at 200 rpm, but the output shaft will take over two trillion years to make one turn. So the final gear is embedded in a block of solid concrete. Via @kottke.org makezine.com/article/craf...

makezine.com

Arthur Ganson's "Machine with Concrete" - Make:

Arthur Gansen's kinetic sculpture includes a gear train that will take well over two trillion years before the final gear makes one turn.

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Hilary Mason @hilarymason.com · 16/12/2025

"Synthetic Panels" make no sense. The LLM is trained on data from a particular point in time. This is the same as querying the distribution of responses from an LLM with built-in assumptions about what the distribution can look like. Well done surveys are designed for the opposite.

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Andrew Weeks @meloncholy.bsky.social · 16/12/2025

It’s why they’re able to fly, Hugh!

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Jessica Rosenkrantz @nervousjessica.bsky.social · 20/11/2025

Radiolaria are microscopic unicellular sea creatures that create skeletons from silica. Their skeletons are among the most beautiful and complex natural microstructures, resembling elaborate filigree. blog post: n-e-r-v-o-u-s.com/blog/?p=9861

four radiolaria sculptures sitting on a black surface

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PyData London @pydatalondon.bsky.social · 22/10/2025

It's nearly that time again! Join us on Tue 4 Nov for the 101st PyData London meetup. Using Hugging Face's smolagents framework to create a Fantasy Premier League AI Agent - @geirfreysson.bsky.social No More Boilerplate: Data-Driven Testing Made Easy - @feregri.no www.meetup.com/pydata-londo...

meetup.com

PyData London - 101st Meetup, Tue, Nov 4, 2025, 7:00 PM | Meetup

**Venue**: Riverbank House, 2 Swan Ln, London EC4R 3AD **Please note**: 1. 🚨🚨🚨A valid photo ID is required by building security. 🚨🚨🚨 2. This event follows the **[Nu

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Andrew Weeks @meloncholy.bsky.social · 13/10/2025

Seeing flowers from my new aster for the first time is a real autumn treat!

Close up of pink aster flowers leaning out of a vertical garden plant box. The flowers are new: some have emerged but many are still buds.

Another close up of pink aster flowers a few days later, now bathed in late afternoon sunlight. More flowers have emerged giving a beautiful crowded display of daisy-like pink flowers with yellow centres.

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Dean Wampler @deanwampler.com · 09/10/2025

I recommend this post from @simonwillison.net: simonwillison.net/2025/Oct/7/v... He lists the engineering skills required to use AI-generation most effectively to build quality software, based on his experience using AI on his projects. In short, we can't replace software engineers with vibe coding

simonwillison.net

Vibe engineering

I feel like vibe coding is pretty well established now as covering the fast, loose and irresponsible way of building software with AI—entirely prompt-driven, and with no attention paid to …

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Andrew Weeks @meloncholy.bsky.social · 09/10/2025

Liberalism’s answer would probably be the harm principle: community moderation strives for that at least. Also reflecting that we tend to give states a monopoly on violence for a reason…

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PyData London @pydatalondon.bsky.social · 06/10/2025

It’s nearly time for our 100th Meetup! 🥳 Looking forward to a full roster of lightning talks, reflections from organisers past and present (including many of the OG crew!) and of course well-deserved celebrations--maybe even with cake! 🎂

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Laura K. Nelson @lauraknelson.bsky.social · 21/09/2025

*deep breath* the fact that these models produce plausible output and also hallucinate (e.g. produce completely novel but reasonable output) has always been why they're so exciting for computational social scientists

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Brad Aimone @jbimaknee.bsky.social · 21/09/2025

Incidentally, my personal favorite interpretation of advancements in computer science is that most of the progress we've made has been in defining the problems themselves. Many successes correlate to clearer definitions of what "good" means or abstracting the task away from weak definitions.

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Andrew Weeks @meloncholy.bsky.social · 10/09/2025

Great to hear Customs House will be redeveloped! Such a grand building in an amazing location by the Thames, but today you have to follow a rickety walkway and peer at it through railings. Big improvement for the Thames Path there. customhouse2024.co.uk www.ianvisits.co.uk/articles/his...

customhouse2024.co.uk

Custom House 2024

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PyData London @pydatalondon.bsky.social · 09/09/2025

Python: The Documentary | An origin story What began as a side project in the 1990s now powers AI, data science and some of the world's biggest companies. But Python almost disappeared at one point. Featuring Guido van Rossum, Travis Oliphant, Barry Warsaw, and many more! youtu.be/GfH4QL4VqJ0?...

youtu.be

Python: The Documentary | An origin story

YouTube video by CultRepo

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Andrew Weeks @meloncholy.bsky.social · 03/09/2025

I was particularly pleased to hear Ruby Waller tell us about apprenticeships in data. I had no idea this was a possible route into DS until she told me at the conference this year. So glad she agreed to share her journey!

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Andrew Weeks @meloncholy.bsky.social · 03/09/2025

Had a great PyData London tonight! Was a real treat to hear from @gaelvaroquaux.bsky.social on @skrub-data.bsky.social and the real world data pains its solving. (Try it if you haven’t already; super easy to get going!)

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PyData London @pydatalondon.bsky.social · 25/08/2025

PyData London 2025 keynote: Tony Mears -- Innovation is Dead Innovation gets stifled in the public sector by risk aversion and punishment for failure. But there is hope: Tony shares a way forward, drawing on his experience directing operations in the NHS and UK Space Agency. youtu.be/XMLbJYM46xo

youtu.be

Keynote- Tony Mears | PyData London 25

YouTube video by PyData

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Andrew Weeks @meloncholy.bsky.social · 21/08/2025

Fascinating interview from Odd Lots on what happens when a startup dies. Not often formal bankruptcy. Finding buyers for some company assets can be challenging—like human skulls! podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/o...

podcasts.apple.com

This Is What Happens When a Startup Dies

Podcast Episode · Odd Lots · 20/08/2025 · 47m

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Olivier Grisel @ogrisel.bsky.social · 19/08/2025

Today at #EuroScipy2025, @glemaitre58.bsky.social and I presented a tutorial on pitfalls of machine learning for imbalanced classification problems. We discussed what (not) to do when fitting a classifier and obtaining degenerate precision or recall values. probabl-ai.github.io/calibration-...

probabl-ai.github.io

Imbalanced classification: pitfalls and solutions — Probabilistic calibration of cost-sensitive learning

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Jack Lynch @jacklynch000.bsky.social · 17/08/2025

I'll admit, I was skeptical when they said Gemini was just like a bunch of PhDs. But I gotta admit they nailed it.

Google's Gemini AI tells a Redditor it's 'cautiously optimistic' about fixing a coding bug, fails repeatedly, calls itself an embarrassment to 'all possible and impossible universes' before repeating 'I am a disgrace' 86 times in succession

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Andrew Weeks @meloncholy.bsky.social · 22/07/2025

Fusion energy start-up claims to have cracked alchemy This is really cool: modifying the fusion process could produce gold from mercury almost as a side effect, worth almost as much as the electricity produced each year. on.ft.com/3IXXlWD

on.ft.com

Fusion energy start-up claims to have cracked alchemy

San Francisco start-up says modified fusion process could be used to produce gold from mercury

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Andrew Weeks @meloncholy.bsky.social · 22/07/2025

It's a good reminder that these models are great for problems that have already been solved and well documented many times, but much riskier for those that haven't. And that matters because a huge advantage LLMs have over traditional search is solving the "I don't know what I don't know" problem.

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Andrew Weeks @meloncholy.bsky.social · 22/07/2025

Whisper bug report: 'Complete silence is always hallucinated as "ترجمة نانسي قنقر" in Arabic which translates as "Translation by Nancy Qunqar"' social.coop/@brainwane/1... It's fun, but as the thread points out not a new problem, e.g. fanfare -> "subscribe"—and would be fixed in English already.

social.coop

Sumana Harihareswara (@brainwane@social.coop)

A few days ago I came across this amazing bug report against Whisper, the LLM-based transcription tool: 'Complete silence is always hallucinated as "ترجمة نانسي قنقر" in Arabic which translates as "Tr...

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Andrew Weeks @meloncholy.bsky.social · 21/07/2025

Visited a few Sculpture in the City exhibits on my afternoon cycle today. Will see if I can find the rest over the next few weeks! www.sculptureinthecity.org.uk

Looping Loop by Andrew Sabin

Looping Loop was made in an evolving mould made entirely of pastry margarine. The sculpture’s material is stone aggregate, put into the mould dry and then bonded with a liquid plastic (bonded stone).

Roots: Palace by Ai Weiwei

Iron sculpture modelling elements of endangered Brazilian tree roots and branches.

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Andrew Weeks @meloncholy.bsky.social · 04/07/2025

Lovely evening for a cycle yesterday.

Looking out at the Thames from Blackfriars Bridge just after the sun has set. The Sea Containers building is lit up in rainbow coloured lights and reflected in the water below.

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Andrew Weeks @meloncholy.bsky.social · 02/07/2025

Nice! I have a couple of slot Pentium IIs from the same time I’d love to get out again. From memory most things ran with dual CPUs on NT/Win2000 but I did have to return a modem as it crashed the computer.

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Andrew Weeks @meloncholy.bsky.social · 25/06/2025

Great panel on driving meaningful change to developer experience. "We need better measures than satisfaction that connect directly to things *under our responsibility*, like are people able to access their best problem solving selves, is wellbeing being protected, and quality of problem solving"

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Andrew Weeks @meloncholy.bsky.social · 24/06/2025

Excited the videos are coming out so I can catch up on the talks I wanted to see at the time (like this one) but missed!

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Randall Munroe @xkcd.com · 12/06/2025

Good Science xkcd.com/3101/

5-panel comic. (1) [teacher with long hair next to whiteboard] TEACHER: I’m supposed to give you the tools to do good science. (2) [teacher addressing students] But what *are* those tools? Methodology is hard and there are so many ways to get incorrect results. What is the magic ingredient that makes for good science? (3) TEACHER: To figure it out, I ran a regression with all the factors people say are important: [embedded list in sub-panel, cut off at end] Outcome variable: correct scientific results. Predictors: collaboration; skepticism of others’ claims; questioning your own beliefs; trying to falsify hypotheses; checking citations; statistical rigor; blinded analysis; financial disclosure; open data (4) TEACHER: The regression says two ingredients are the most crucial: 1) genuine curiosity about the answer to a question, and 2) ammonium hydroxide. (5) STUDENT: Wait, why did *ammonia* score so high? How did it even get on the list? LONG HAIR: ...And now you’re doing good science!

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Andrew Weeks @meloncholy.bsky.social · 12/06/2025

Poundland sold for less than a pound on.ft.com/4kWnJOy The article doesn’t say if they went into a shop to complete the transaction, but I choose to believe they did.

Screenshot of FT article.

Poundland sold for less than a pound.

Investment firm Gordon Brothers plans to restructure struggling UK discount retailer after sealing acquisition.

UK discount retailer Poundland has been sold for less than £1 to Gordon Brothers, an investor that specialises in acquiring distressed assets, after a series of costly mis-steps by its Warsaw-listed parent.

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Andrew Weeks @meloncholy.bsky.social · 07/06/2025

Data practitioners are still rare in the workforce. There are a lot of steps and checks to what they do to convert data into real business value.

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Andrew Weeks @meloncholy.bsky.social · 07/06/2025

We’re seeing a rise of AI experts. Not the same as being a data practitioner. Project owners are moving from sharing business outcomes to output-like tech specs. Not everyone has to be a mechanic to drive a car!

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Andrew Weeks @meloncholy.bsky.social · 07/06/2025

Really good keynote from Leanne Fitzpatrick @financialtimes.com at @pydatalondon.bsky.social this morning. AI slop: gen AI is the perfect marketer’s tool. But with a lot of negative externalities!

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PyData London @pydatalondon.bsky.social · 07/06/2025

Welcome to the PyData main conference! 🎉 @jaspajjr.bsky.social getting things going with opening remarks alongside Andy Terrel from @numfocus.bsky.social

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PyData London @pydatalondon.bsky.social · 05/06/2025

LAST CALL! PyData London starts TOMORROW! Looking forward to being part of all the conversations and human connections you just can't get online--so make sure you're in the room. A few last-minute tickets still available if you're quick. See you there! pydata.org/london2025

PyData London conference advertisement. Text reads

Final call. Future you is watching.

1 day left.
June 6-8 2025, Convene Sancroft, St Pauls, London.
Last 5% tickets left.

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Chelsea Parlett @chelseaparlett.bsky.social · 01/06/2025

I’m really* fun at parties, and today a complete stranger made the mistake of telling me they play Civilization, so I broke out one of my favorite topics: 🧠The psychology of randomness in video games *(completely not)

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Andrew Weeks @meloncholy.bsky.social · 31/05/2025

Fair point. Not my area, but by showing what can be done I’d hope they can inspire others working with smaller budgets. Another way is possible!Perhaps not the central lift, though I’m really glad it exists!

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Andrew Weeks @meloncholy.bsky.social · 31/05/2025

Isn’t this just another example of “victim is not perfect enough so we will continue to blame the victim”? Yes discourse online can be pretty toxic, but that does not seem like the real blocker here—as your article in fact highlights.

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