iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

michael lascarides @mlascarides.bsky.social · 4h

I recently got an email from my bank telling me *my loan had been approved* and it was so barely literate and typo-ridden that I would have binned it straight to the phishing folder had I not instigated the conversation myself. Shit is getting dire.

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Christchurch City Libraries Ngā Kete Wānanga o Ōtautahi @christchurchlib.bsky.social · 6h

Minami Yoshida and Chris Wang have just launched their first board game after spending hundreds of hours perfecting it. They have used the Tūranga laser cutter to prototype many parts of their boardgame. www.newsline.ccc.govt.nz/news/story/b...

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Idiot/Savant @norightturnnz.bsky.social · 8h

Reminder that this will probably be an objectionable publication in Aotearoa (and other civilised countries), and any murder-porn fetishist who watches it here could face 14 years in jail.

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michael lascarides @mlascarides.bsky.social · 10h

Weird synchronicity, was just thinking about City Bakery yesterday for the first time in a decade and a half when my kid asked me what my favourite cookie was and flashed back to those sit-down-and-eat-it-like-a-meal chocolate chunks.

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Andrea Reyes E (she/her) @altibel.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Similar to (scientific) publishing: increase of shitty things produced > increase review time (wasting precious time), while ppl further deskill themselves cause "lifelong learning" + "technology = job security." The tech narrative is so powerful that ppl cannot imagine a different present & future.

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Dr. Katja Thieme (she/they) @katjathieme.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

As someone who has a literary degree (among other degrees) and who has been teaching research writing courses—for so many years now, including to hundreds of applied and natural science students—this kind of realization perfectly fits with my long-bending pedagogical arc, I'm pleased to say.

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Ghostly Bree @mostlybree.kitrocha.com · 06/10/2026

While I was struggling with protecting my mom's site from the bot swarm I kept asking everyone who is still in the industry how small sites who don't have a kid with a computer science degree survive and the answer was pretty much "they don't" and that's so grim

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michael lascarides @mlascarides.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

100% this. Currently working on projects that'll let our management do a better job of telling our story to the public. Letting the funders know that our public a) loves us and b) votes in large numbers is a job with existential consequences.

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Ryan CrawCour @ryan.crawcour.social · 06/10/2026

there are STILL nearly 450,000 - yes, nearly 10-12% of elligible voters are NOT registered yet. Only 19 days left to register! PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE speak to everyone you know that should be elligible to vote to please ensure they are registered. IT'S CLOSE. EVERY VOTE IS GOING TO COUNT! #nzpol

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Erin Okuno @thiserin.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

"Librarians are defenders of democracy. We’re defenders of the freedom to read. We’re protectors of patron privacy. Libraries are one of the few places in this surveillance economy that are not trying to collect and sell your data." www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

nytimes.com

Forget the Shushing. Librarians Have a Whole Lot to Say. (Gift Article)

We asked dozens of them about America’s libraries — what they provide, what they need to survive. Here’s what they told us.

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michael lascarides @mlascarides.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

This shirt is amazing and I bought one instantly.

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Keith Ng @keithng.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

Me, setting the blender to MAX with the lid off: "technology is truly advancing beyond our control"

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AP Stylebook @apstylebook.com · 23/09/2026

Artificial intelligence systems do not think, feel, want or understand. Avoid language that gives them human characteristics.

apnews.com

https://apnews.com/article/openai-safety-ai-framework-089e75b95bc935af092da7b79d92706d

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michael lascarides @mlascarides.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Any definition of intelligence that makes sense to me starts from a sensory experience of its environment, by which measure a bacterium possesses more intelligence than even an infinitely large digital model.

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Josh Hadro @hadro.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

With new VLM OCR models ushering in an OCR renaissance of sorts, it's time to once again laugh at the fact that many of the challenges for OCR with historical cultural heritage materials are actually challenges of layout recognition & segmentation, which are often harder to solve than the OCR itself

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Erika Hall @erikahall.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

I have bad news for the speculators. We've run out of future, so we need to start living in the present.

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Louie Stowell @louiestowell.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Libraries BUY books. Unlike tech companies wot steal them. Also: PLR! The Public Lending Right scheme meaans authors in the uk and ireland and a few other places get money for each library loan!

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Sascha Stronach🏳️‍⚧️, The Sunforge out now @understatesmen.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

my favourite minor NZ historical figure is Jimmy the Needle. He's just a random boatman who keeps showing up in South Island historical accounts like a cryptid. He's very tall and slim and everybody seems to know and like him. I have read multiple accounts of him assisting births.

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michael lascarides @mlascarides.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

As someone who works on Papers Past, I find this utterly delightful.

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michael lascarides @mlascarides.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

This might have even pre-dated stopping and restarting the Dunedin Hospital, and probably a whole heap of else…

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the babahuck @tylerhuckabee.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

rip annie dillard

One of the things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water. Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.

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michael lascarides @mlascarides.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Tearing up a bit reading this. How important her writing has been to me.

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Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru.blacksky.app · 16/09/2026

Reading proofs from book & remembering what I wrote in 2015: "I am very concerned about the future of AI. Not because of the risk of rogue machines taking over. But because of the homogeneous, one-dimensional group of men who are currently involved in advancing the technology.”

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michael lascarides @mlascarides.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Which of those excellent slogans am I supposed to be angry about?

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michael lascarides @mlascarides.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

I strongly believe that a prerequisite for intelligence is a sensing physical body that can make sense of the world in real time, and that every whale and slime mold and tree and beetle and diatom possesses more of it than any piece of software ever could.

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Rick CarBOOso’s Private Fire Crew @amandasmith.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Been on a tech billionaire reading binge lately and these last paragraphs in An Ugly Truth from 2021 are, in retrospect, hilarious. Zuckerberg’s best bets on the future are as prescient as asking a 5 year old what they’ll be when they grow up.

By the time you read this book, Facebook could look very different. Zuckerberg may step away from the job of CEO to spend more time on his philanthropic endeavors. The way people connect on Facebook may not be on a phone but on some other device, like augmented reality headsets. The company's most popular utility may not be status updates and shares, but something like blockchain payments for retail goods or the production and distribution of blockbuster entertainment.

With $55 billion in cash reserves, the company has endless options to buy or innovate its way into new lines of business, as Google has with autonomous vehicles and Apple with health devices. Even during his annus horribilis of 2020, Zuckerberg was looking toward the future. In a quest to break into the lucrative field of corporate communications software, in late November, Facebook bought Kustomer for $1 billion.
The popularity of the Zoom tool during the pandemic had rankled, and Zuckerberg challenged employees to come up with a videoconferencing rival. He directed more engineering resources to expand functions on virtual reality and augmented reality headsets, which he described as the new frontier for how people would communicate in the future. The company was also toying with publishing tools for users, fifteen years after the Washington Post's Donald Graham offered to buy a stake in the tech start-up. And despite pressure from regulators, Zuckerberg was committed to developing its Libra blockchain currency project, which it rebranded as "Diem."

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Andrew Dickson @andrewdickson13.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

That's roughly 90,000 infections. Around 275,000 lost work days. About $110 million in GDP this winter, range $50-225m. Three times the cost of running the attendance system itself. Attribute even 1 death in 10-20 to this channel and the toll climbs toward $1 billion. 8/

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KnitMeAThneed @thneed.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

#nz The Hocken Collections want NZ election ephemera please! They need 2–3 people from each of the electorates listed here. Can you help? DM and I'll give you the details. They will provide a prepaid envelope, for election-related flyers, brochures, stickers, posters etc Please spread the word!

Screenshot: Kia ora koutou,
Since 1966 Hocken staff have been collecting ephemera for every general election and making it available to researchers. Besides contacting every political candidate (with varying success), we are also collecting election ephemera from every electorate. Ideally, we would like to have two or three people from each electorate.
At the moment we still need to find people in the following electorates:

· Māori electorates
· Botany
· East Coast Bays
· Epsom
· Hamilton West
· Henderson
· Kaipara ki Mahurangi
· Māngere
· Mt Albert
· Mt Roskill
· Napier
· North Shore
· Ōtāhuhu
· Rangitīkei
· Takanini
· Tāmaki
· Tauranga
· Upper Harbour
· Waikato
· Waimakariri
· Whangārei

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Andrew Jull NZRN (he/him) @andrewjull.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

Anybody supporting the B4-16 ban, this is what you, as adults, will face (it is not just under-16s that will have to verify their age). It will breach S14 of the NZ Bill of Rights Act 1990, endanger isolated young ppl who find their communities online, and give big tech more access to your data.

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Joel @itsjoels.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

This is the letter kids got at the end of Dolly’s Imagination Library. I defy you to read this and not cry.

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Eddie Clark @dreddieclark.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

Almost like us parliamentary process dorks had a point about one of the perils of abusing urgency.

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Jasmin Taylor @meshedlight.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

Ōtepoti: community solidarity Otago Polyfest is needing volunteers to support with this years event! It's happening 7-11 September 2026 There are a variety of tasks you could help out with Sign up sheet: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

docs.google.com

2026 | OTAGO POLYFEST KAIMAHI REGISTRATION FORM

Complete this form to register as a volunteer for Otago Polyfest 2026. Please email ops@otagopolyfest.nz if you have any questions.

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Andrew Dickson @andrewdickson13.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

All this is built on a fundamental causal fallacy: school attendance does not inherently cause achievement. Forcing sick kids into class doesn’t fix education outcomes bro... it just accelerates viral spread to teachers, classmates, and vulnerable family members. /6

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evacide @evacide.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

I cannot overstate how much the revolution needs kind, reliable, people who show up when you need them and does not need drug-addled cut-rate Hunter S. Thompson impersonators.

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Tony Santos @tony.webeasties.com · 15/08/2026

@monteiro.bsky.social’s newsletters are always great, this one is especially important right now. take it from me, someone who jumped off the aspiring ”design leader” train during the blockchain mania and who was laid off and replaced by Claude Code this past April buttondown.com/monteiro/arc...

buttondown.com

How to usher in an era of abundant vengeance

A lot of people on the Internet who I once respected seem to have full-blown AI brain worms. Am I going to get conned like them at some point? Have you ever been conned by something as pervasive as th...

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American Library Association @amlibraryassoc.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

In celebration of ALA’s 150th anniversary, the iconic David Bowie READ poster, first released in 1987, is back in print. An avid reader and library fan, Bowie was one of the first celebrities to pose for the READ campaign. Limited run. Get yours while supplies last: bit.ly/4qgL3dK 📚💙

A young David Bowie wearing a black and white varsity jacket and jeans, is holding "The Idiot" by Dostoevsky while mid-leap. The word "READ" is prominently displayed at the top. Text reads "David Bowie for America's Libraries.

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By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 12/08/2026

As Leek puts it: "Once prediction shapes the choices in front of us, we lose the ability to tell the difference between what people wanted and what the system made easy to want." 14/

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Brooke @curly.kiwi · 13/08/2026

Sure enough, as expected we have one FSU person (Douglas Brown) and one non-FSU person (Bianca Grizhar) elected to the InternetNZ board The institutional takeover crept further along tonight. Dispiriting, yes, but let it be galvanising. We'll all be here next year, won't we ❤️

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Tze Ming Mok 莫志明 @tzemingdynasty.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

A thankfully brief explainer for any worthy folks Zooming in to the InternetNZ AGM again tonight to be human shields against weird entryist nonsense. Vote No on David Ward's Everything.

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Dylan Reeve @dylanreeve.com · 13/08/2026

The email is from: InternetNZ <elections@mi-voice.com> The subject line is: InternetNZ Annual General Meeting 2026

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Ed Burmila @edburmila.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

You don’t have to like this guy‘s politics to recognize that everyone who has insisted for decades that The Issues are almost all too complicated and too nuanced to explain to voters let alone address was lying to you.

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Nanoraptor @nanoraptor.danamania.com · 10/08/2026

Wake me when an ai “breaks containment”, gets into HR, finds 7500 employees illegally misclassified as contractors and files their paperwork with the local departments of labour and/or employment for years of backpay.

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