iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Sam Freedman @samfr.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

My son told me a joke. Two cats have a swimming race. They're called "one two three" and "un deux trois". Which one wins? "One two three" because un deux trois quatre cinque.

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404 Media @404media.co · 18/09/2026

It’s easy to see why the AI companies wanted to hide this from the public. The statements are some of the most damning indictments of the ways LLMs were trained, how they work, and the immediate threat they pose to human labor. @jasonkoebler.bsky.social reports. www.404media.co/doom-loop-op...

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Mike Cook @mtrc.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

This is going to be looked back on as one of the stupidest periods of human history. People will simply not understand why it played out the way it did given how obvious every single thing happening was. And the answer is just: everyone involved was either stupid, easily bought, or both.

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Rafe Meager (they/them) @economeager.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

we have got to put that into a causal inference lecture

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Simon Kuestenmacher @simongerman600.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

I honour of @erlinghaaland let me reshare this reminder that the Norwegian flag is the Swiss Army knife of flags: It contains six other flags!

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Mike Frank @mcxfrank.bsky.social · 29/06/2026

Most of the statistical tests you learned in stats class — t-test, ANOVA, correlation — are actually special cases of a single thing: linear regression. Ch 7 of Experimentology argues that thinking in models, not tests, is more flexible and a better foundation for theory. 🧵 experimentology.io

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Matt Ashby @mattashby.com · 26/06/2026

Fantastic @reducingcrime.com podcast discussion between my colleague Shane Johnson and @jerryratcliffe.net on some of the many ways all types of crime are changing due to technology. Essential listening if you’re interested in crime of any sort.

m.soundcloud.com

#96 (Shane Johnson)

Stream #96 (Shane Johnson) by Reducing Crime on desktop and mobile. Play over 320 million tracks for free on SoundCloud.

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Dylan Difford @dylandifford.bsky.social · 21/06/2026

So how did we get here, with Starmer on the way out after two years? To some extent, it does go back to the beginning. It was not an enthusiastic victory for Labour. Getting rid of the Tories was the top reason people voted for them in 2024, though with their message of 'Change' also resonating.

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Matthew Hodson @matthewhodson.bsky.social · 24/05/2026

Section 28 was passed on this day in 1988. It didn’t come out of nowhere. It came from a society where 75% of people thought homosexuality was wrong. It came from a society that believed ignorance was better for children than any knowledge of lesbian or gay lives. 🧵 1/16

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Dr Duncan Robertson @duncanrobertson.bsky.social · 08/05/2026

I think politicians should be banned from saying 'let me be clear'.

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Mike Cook @mtrc.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

Next Level is out in just three days - some people already have their preorder copies, which is scary and cool! I'm doing a few threads this week about some of the stuff I cover in the book, today let me tell you about two very special games. (Pre/order it here: linktr.ee/next_level)

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Mike Cook @mtrc.bsky.social · 18/04/2026

How’s everyone’s reading pile of shame looking so far in 2026? I keep trying to find more time to read but it’s so hard.

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Mike Cook @mtrc.bsky.social · 16/03/2026

I've written a book! Next Level: Making Games That Make Themselves is the story of procedural generation - the tech behind games like Minecraft and Dwarf Fortress. It's about how it works, the games that use it, and the art and magic behind it. Out May 7th, in bookshops: linktr.ee/next_level 🎲🔮

A picture of a hardback book on a washed blue background. The title is Next Level: Making Games That Make Themselves, by Mike Cook.

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Andrew Heiss @andrew.heiss.phd · 02/11/2025

Wrote up a little intervention post/explanation for my class about why using LLMs for trying to learn programming (as first time learners!) is bad and detrimental datavizf25.classes.andrewheiss.com/news/2025-11...

In the first week of class, I had you read an article about how ChatGPT is philosophical “bullshit”, as well as this other post about AI and LLMs in this class.

I’ve seen a surprising increase in the amount of ChatGPT-based weekly check-ins and graph interpretations in the exercises. (In the past, I’ve even had students tell me they PDFs of the slides into ChatGPT to generate interesting and confusing things.) Don’t do this! LLMs cannot find three things that you personally found interesting from the readings. LLMs are not you.

It’s a huge waste of time for all of us to for me to spend time evaluating and grading output from ChatGPT. I want to read what you think and do, not what a computer invents.

NoteMy personal stance on AI and LLMs
Many of you have asked about how I think about and use LLMs in my own work (and in the class materials). Please check this short little page where I explain what I do with text, images, code, research, and learning.

In short, I do not use LLMs to create any of the materials for this class, and I do not use them to grade or evaluate any of your work.

I’ve even had several students submit completely made up stuff for mini projects and final projects. In your final project, your job is to take a dataset, make three different plots with it, and combine the plots into one graphic that tells some sort of story. I’ve (really truly) received projects like this:

(a ChatGPT-generated plot of completely made up data from gapminder)

At a very quick glance, that looks like a plausible image. But holy crap it falls apart fast, both comically and tragically. Comically because, like, look at the y-axis in the scatterplot; or the x-axis ticks in the population grown chart that are sometimes spaced every 20 years, sometimes every 10 years, and has 1980 there twice; or the weird blobs in the map.

Tragically—and most importantly—literally nothing in this image is real and none of the annotations make sense and none of the colors make sense and everything here is completely meaningless and devoid of any information. It’s pure philosophical bullshit—an image “produced without concern for its truth.”

That’s what I mean when I say that it’s a forgetful and unreliable resource. Lots of that code is helpful as an illustration of what’s going on. Lots of the explanation is good and fine. But it subtly changed its mind halfway through and didn’t realize it (because it can’t realize it! it’s just a chain of statistically likely text!)

Hopefully you can see where this is dangerous for learning. It can often “teach” you wrong, and you can only recognize that if you know stuff already.

It’s extra dangerous if you then take that example output, paste it into your exercise, and submit it.

I’m not even concerned about the plagiarism aspect of that—code is code and there are only a few ways to write {dplyr} code that will do this, and it’s easy to adapt from real human-based examples online, so I’m less worried about stealing other people’s work here.

I’m concerned that it’s not real data.

It made up values of 1, 2, 3, and 4 for some countries to illustrate grouping and summarizing. That’s good and normal.

None of that is real. Don’t treat it as real.

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Jerry Ratcliffe @jerryratcliffe.net · 20/02/2025

This is an exceptionally evidence-based and important thread from @mattashby.com debunking some biased nonsense published in the Grauniad by Amnesty International. Thread is a perfect primer on predictive policing.

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Oli Hutt @olihutt.bsky.social · 20/02/2025

As always, a well thought-through and clear thread from Matt. It frustrates me no end to see all forms of "predictive policing" conflated as if it's all the same. The Amnesty report just reminded me of a similar Liberty report from 2019 that did the same.

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Mike Cook @mtrc.bsky.social · 28/01/2025

This is such a wild thing to report. Google Gemini does this! It does it all the time! Why is this *front page news*??? (I know why) www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

theguardian.com

Chinese AI chatbot DeepSeek censors itself in realtime, users report

Depending on version downloaded, app approaches its answers with preamble of reasoning which it then erases

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Oli Hutt @olihutt.bsky.social · 19/01/2025

I spent Friday getting more and more frustrated that I couldn't turn this off as it kept popping up. It's 100 times more annoying and useless than Clippy and I wish there was a simple way to just turn it all off. When will this con finally die?

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ProPublica @propublica.org · 16/01/2025

🧵 THREAD: Our reporter spent the past year reporting inside the State Department, trying to answer the central question of Biden’s foreign policy: How did the U.S. let Israel get away with widespread horrors in Gaza?

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Holger Hestermeyer @hhesterm.bsky.social · 05/01/2025

It is hard for public institutions to change gear and communication policies. But consider this: UK and German public institutions that post information on twitter but not on bluesky are providing free benefits and competitive advantages to a platform that aims to put the far right in power.

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Oli Hutt @olihutt.bsky.social · 14/12/2024

I've had to take soooo many flights this year. Thankfully this will be the last one.

A photo of a Ryanair Boeing 737 from the rear door along the fuselage at night as passengers board.

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Nate Holdren @nhold.bsky.social · 12/12/2024

hey bluesky, in case anyone's interested, I wrote this for my students about why I don't want them to use anything AI in my classes. It interrupts the course calendar part of the syllabus, coming immediately after the first day there's a writing assignment assigned. docs.google.com/document/d/1...

docs.google.com

A note on AI usage

A note on AI usage I genuinely want you to succeed in this class. One of my very favorite things about my job as a professor is when students are succeeding and I feel like I helped. I want you to suc...

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Seven Machina Rasmussen @toomanyspectra.bsky.social · 30/11/2024

can I code fast? no. but can I code well? also no. but does my code work? alas, no

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Neil Renic @ncrenic.bsky.social · 04/12/2024

Two stages of writing: 1) This shouldn't take too long 2) Oh no

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Cassia Rowland @cassiarowland.bsky.social · 19/11/2024

Yesterday, there was a major change in the criminal justice system that’s largely sneaked under the radar: the doubling of magistrates’ court sentencing powers. What does that actually mean, and is it good or bad?

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Gavin Hales @gmhales.bsky.social · 19/11/2024

This is my favourite example of perverse incentives arising from police performance management. library.college.police.uk/docs/Policin...

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Ed Conway @edconway.bsky.social · 19/11/2024

🧵SALT🧵 It's been snowing in the UK and the road gritters are out in force, begging the question: Have you ever wondered where that grit actually COMES from? The answer is more magical, beautiful and fascinating than you probably realised. 1/14

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Gemma Abbott @gemabbott.bsky.social · 18/11/2024

There are some bloody brilliant people on this #CriminalJustice #StarterPack Lawyers, commentators and NGOs working in/ discussing topics from the police to the courts to prisons (hi 👋) to probation… Please do share - and let me know if you’d like to be added go.bsky.app/2sQ9xmz

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Jack Greig-Midlane @thejackgm.bsky.social · 18/11/2024

If you’re a new Bluesky user and interested in criminology, see this thread for lists feeds and starter packs.

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Oli Hutt @olihutt.bsky.social · 17/11/2024

We're looking for a lead Quant Analyst to join our team. Interested in a new challenge, or know someone who might be? Feel free to get in touch if you have any questions or apply here: www.crestadvisory.com/post/we-are-...

crestadvisory.com

We're hiring a Lead Quantitative Analyst

The Lead Quantitative Analyst is a newly introduced role at Crest Advisory, created to support the growth of our data analytics services for clients in the justice, policing, and public safety sectors...

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Oli Hutt @olihutt.bsky.social · 09/11/2024

And one night and day in Dresden. We'll be going back again in about a month because we didn't have time to do any of the museums this time but the old town centre is absolutely stunning.

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Oli Hutt @olihutt.bsky.social · 08/11/2024

In Sächsische Schweiz for a few days enjoying some fantastic views.

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Charles Logan @charleswlogan.bsky.social · 12/10/2024

"And should a state rely on a private company, whose methods are not entirely transparent, to make decisions on sensitive school issues?" No. The answer is no. Full stop. No.

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