iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Charles Williams @nicander.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

@jim.londoncentric.media great news about the Prince Charles, any chance of having a look at the proposal to turn Beckenham Odeon into a mega-church? Dodgy finances in the church's background, they're stonewalling the local MP etc.

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Charles Williams @nicander.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

Witnessed in the wild today: a grumpy old man refusing to give some kids a ball back when they kicked it over the fence, even after adults spoke to him. Thought that sort of thing was basically extinct. Baffling.

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Charles Williams @nicander.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

I know two people who have been murdered, both women, both by their partner. I have no idea why reporting would dance around this.

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Charles Williams @nicander.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Everyone who ever owned a Creative Zen knows this is bullshit.

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Charles Williams @nicander.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

The real problem here is that anyone can just look back and see this artist has been creating work of similar look and quality for many years, long pre-dating AI. I am unsure how this will work for young people wanting to build careers and followings today.

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Ryan CrawCour @ryan.crawcour.social · 01/10/2026

BREAKING NEWS: Tensions between Thor and the Care Bears have escalated rapidly overnight.

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Frank Conniff @frankconniff.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

I might be a little less distrustful of AI if the dudes promoting it, supporting it, insisting on it, and advocating for it weren’t the worst fucking people on the planet.

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Charlie Warzel @cwarzel.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

There is a moment at the very very end of Abdul El-Sayed's podcast with Ezra Klein (book recommendation section) where he talks about the idea of "speaking truth to pain" and this will be staying with me for an extremely long time. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/25/o...

But there’s also something about truth to pain. We talk a lot about truth to power, but I think it’s actually a lot harder to speak truth to pain. I say that as someone who went to medical school, realizing that in a lot of our politics right now, we’ve got to get a lot better at speaking truth to pain if we’re going to get through some of these challenges that we have.

What does “truth to pain” mean?

It’s one thing to look power in the eye and say: You’re wrong about this. But there’s a way in which pain is very difficult to reason with. Because when somebody is in their pain, they’re in their trauma. They see that pain, and they may not see what’s causing it.

I remember just very explicitly being in a trauma ward with a gunshot wound patient and watching this big guy with his hand on his gunshot wound. All the folks are trying to pull his hand off his pain, that point of his gunshot wound, this clear vulnerability.

And this emergency room doctor had the presence of mind to be like: Everyone, stop. And she looks him in the eyes, and she’s like: I get that really hurts, and I’m so sorry that you’re here. You don’t want to be here. We don’t want you to be here. But if you don’t let us fix this, you could die. So I’m going to take your hand, and I’m going to move it off, OK? Because I need to get there so that you can live.

She was speaking truth to pain. He understands he’s at the hospital, he needs care, but he also doesn’t want anybody to touch the wound. Which is a natural thing. And I think it is a really great metaphor for how we think about a lot of these challenges we talked about today.

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Charles Williams @nicander.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

If this is pitch-rolling for extensive use of AI in new Doctor Who, I think that's where the show ends for a lot (many? most?) fans.

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Charles Williams @nicander.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Look, it's: 1. Deadwood 2. The Leftovers 3. The Wire 4. Halt and Catch Fire 5. Breaking Bad

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Charles Williams @nicander.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Honestly I've been surprised by how many middle-aged male football fans I've seen saying they really don't want the van lifted. I think most people recognise the benefits.

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James Murray @james-bg.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

This is a low key tragedy. A broad consensus torched by a handful of ideologues and opportunists who do not even understand what net zero target is and why it was adopted. The reality is temperatures will continue to spiral until we reach net zero or civilisation collapses, whichever comes first.

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Charles Williams @nicander.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

I'm sorry, I really don't do this very often but absolutely fuck this guy.

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Charles Williams @nicander.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Well this thread must have twisted and turned.

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Cameron Clark @cameronclark.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

As I’ve said before, if a government doesn’t think it can win the argument on “violent, murderous thugs are bad, actually.” then it’s finished, both electorally and morally

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Nick Davies @njdavies.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Great to hear the PM say “We are going to be much prouder in standing up for our values and the rule of law” re foreign information warfare. I wonder if he or the Home Secretary might consider doing the same when it comes to masked vigilantes shutting down infrastructure and harassing the RNLI

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Kate Jewell @katejewell.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

My kid has launched a petition to change his high school’s handbook policy on AI use. He’s pissed. (He really hates AI)

4 Search 8:58PM Mon Sep 21
Scanned Document 9-21-26 at 8.51.43PM v
=100% O
This is a petition to change the BHS Al policy from this, which was copy & pasted directly from the student Handbook google document on Monday, September 21st of 2026.
BHS Al Policy
Unauthorized use of generative Al tools to substantially complete an assignment is not permitted.
This petition to change the Al policy would like to change the following:
• Remove the word substantially from the policy all together
a. The usage of the word substantially is ambiguous at best, and disingenuous at worst. For example, who is it that decides when Al was used substantially, who decides what substantially means, and why is any amount permitted
when the use itself is unauthorized?
Require a more descriptive decision on how Al is and is not permitted in assignments and projects
a. If students do not know what is permitted, how do they know what is not
b. If Al is used in 100% of the creation process except for editing, would that count as substantial usage? Most would probably argue yes, but it is possible for an argument to be posed of the opposite, that the baseline was made with Al but the final product was made by humans. That argument could be made,
and could be accepted., even if it goes against what the policy means.
c. If Al is used for the basis of the brainstorming of talking points, but nothing
else, would that count as substantial usage? Most would probably argue no,

but again, it is possible to argue the opposite. It could be argued that because the baseline of the passage was Al generated, everything else built on that foundation does not count as real work.
Have a more active description of why Al is prohibited
a. Why is Al prohibited? Is it because you just don't like it? Is it because it harms the environment? Is it because it harms the learning capabilities of people no matter the age or gender? Specifics are important.
• Expand restrictions on Al and what possible punishments might be
a. What happens when you break the rules? Nothing? Suspension? A grade drop? Or should it be decided by the teacher?
b. What specifically is not permitted when using Al? Is image generation allowed? Probably not in art. Is source generation allowed? Who knows, not
us.
c. Are teachers allowed to use Al? Why or why not? It sends mixed messages when teachers use Al in their classroom slides and then turn around and say
"No! This technology is really bad and horrible and don't use it?"
• Require a more expansive curriculum on Al and its problems
a. Anything would be helpful. Even an assembly would be helpful because people do not know anything about what Al does to them, or the environment. This is a BARE MINIMUM.
Each request will be signed on individually in this petition. Each change would be requested individually and discussed with those who have the power to change it individually.

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Shannon Vallor @shannonvallor.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

The very first line is a lie, and we all know it. *None* of this was ever designed to help us, which is why it hurts us and we hate it. It really is that simple, but the media simply cannot bring themselves to say it.

cnn.com

The humans are rejecting the machines that were supposed to help them | CNN Business

Touchscreens and self-checkout machines were designed to help customers. But restaurants and retailers are ditching them to humanize stores and attract workers.

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Robert Saunders @robertsaunders.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

A serious democratic society simply cannot allow this. That's £72 million from just two men. (Both, until lately, based overseas). The average UK earner (full-time) would have to work for over 1,800 years to raise that much. It's a nuclear strike on any pretence at the equality of political power

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Charles Williams @nicander.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

I'd somehow never read this and the last panel broke me.

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Charles Williams @nicander.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

I only read the online version for obvious geographical reasons but The Onion's 9/11 coverage remains one of my core memories of that awful, bizarre time.

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Charles Williams @nicander.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

This is tangential to his main points about AI (which I completely agree with) but his view on the ending of Pan's Labyrinth (which I've heard before) is one of the main things that convinced me authorial intent doesn't matter. It would be half the film it is if his interpretation was right imo.

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Julia Carrie Wong @joolia.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

personally I think we should just take the ai doomers at their word and shut it down if they’re telling the truth, well, good thing we shut it down. If they’re exaggerating, well, they shouldn’t have done that

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Charles Williams @nicander.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

If you honestly believed this, not only would you stop building it, but you would take drastic measures to destroy the technology as best you could.

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John Bull @garius.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Dreamcast was the best console ever made. Still not over it.

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Chris Terry-Enescu @cjterry.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Truly wild to have lived through moral panics about teenagers wearing hoodies and Muslim women wearing the head dress to now experience 'but is a large group of organised far right activists in balaclavas really that scary'

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Jonn Elledge @jonnelledge.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

oh my god they're gonna kill their own bounce in under a month aren't they

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Martin Calladine @uglygame.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

This is negligence on such an astonishing scale that it must call into doubt the government's judgment on any issue.

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Charles Williams @nicander.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

No, these are different things. They don't want masses of pissed-up men in their 50s anymore. They want a smaller number of trained and coordinated men who they can deploy at will. The two things are completely dissimilar.

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Charles Williams @nicander.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

It was clearly a test run for something and they will have seen it as a total success. I hope behind the scenes the response isn't as blase as the public statements have been.

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Jonn Elledge @jonnelledge.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

I simply do not understand what's going on in Labour that renders its leaders incapable of finding a TV camera and speaking out against street violence. Even if you assume they agree about immigration, violence is wrong, unpopular AND against the interests of any even vaguely left wing govt.

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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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Charles Williams @nicander.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

PSA that Adults on Disney+ is a really creditable GenZ stab at filling the Friends/HIMYM gap. Charming cast, funny, mix of classic sitcom plots with stuff that feels inherently 2020s. Two short seasons available that I blitzed through.

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Jamie McKelvie @mckelvie.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

A reminder that a ban on social media for under 16s is also this inevitably happening to the rest of us.

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Charles Williams @nicander.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Gloria Steinem's name has been misspelled on the BBC News homepage for two hours and counting.

screen grab of BBC News homepage in which Gloria Steinem's surname is misspelled as Steinham in a headline

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Dan Whitehead @danwhitehead.net · 29/08/2026

Websites aren't being replaced with something that offers an improved experience. They're just being broken and rundown by C-suite ghouls who only view things by how much monetary value they can extract from them. The usable web is being killed off for absolutely no good reason.

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Dan Whitehead @danwhitehead.net · 29/08/2026

Like, where do we go from here? What viable business model is even left for "places to read about the things you enjoy"?

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Dan Whitehead @danwhitehead.net · 29/08/2026

It was depressing enough to live and work through the death of magazine publishing, but it's absolutely wild to already be living and working through the death of the internet - the thing that replaced magazines - less than 20 years later.

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Juliet E McKenna @julietemckenna.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

Journalists need to stop describing these incidents in terms implying software has agency and intent. It does not. The people who created a faulty and dangerous product are the ones responsible for whatever happens, and must be held to account, with punitive financial penalties for damage done.

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Gary Whitta @garywhitta.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

My Hollywood comedy podcast SEE YOU IN HELL is currently on hiatus, but here are a few script pages from a recent episode that dealt with AI in Hollywood as they sum up my thoughts on the matter better than I'm usually able to express them in my social posts:

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Charles Williams @nicander.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

How many people with me in the Gabriel Knight Tim Curry era?

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Charles Williams @nicander.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

Neutral in the culture wars?!? She was *consistently polite in her strong beliefs*, sure, but that's not the same thing.

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Charles Williams @nicander.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

It is very interesting. But it probably doesn't state as clearly as it might that *if the impact of AI is as stated* then our entire economic and political model does not work. And, as one of the replies to Stephen's post points out, where ownership of AI as a utility sits is a huge part of that.

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Stephen Bush @stephenkb.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

"For as long as I can remember, I’ve wished innovation could happen faster. With AI, my feelings are more complicated." Fascinating and important essay by Bill Gates:

gatesnotes.com

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Charles Williams @nicander.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

What is the the Mayor for if not for things like this?

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Charles Williams @nicander.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

All ready to go to Amsterdam on the train for a nice mini-break with the family...and I think I've broken my toe. FFS.

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Charles Williams @nicander.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

To celebrate new Jean Grey casting, let's relive her finest hour, ie nearly falling into a hole. (same era of Marvel in which the Avengers heavily implied the Wasp was just some sort of mascot)

Three panel X-Men comic in which Jean Grey nearly walks into an obvious hole in front of her, has to be warned by Cyclops and telekinetically saves herself with a log

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Gavin Jackson @gavinjackson.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

Bad. www.ft.com/content/e1eb...

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Robert Saunders @robertsaunders.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

You can demand a return to "Christian values", or you can attack empathy as "suicidal". You cannot do both.

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