iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Owen Barder @owen.org · 21/09/2026

who had "US joins Comecon" on their bingo card?

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Owen Barder @owen.org · 21/09/2026

I don't think it likely that ground beef is a Giffen good.

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Scuzzy Mortspider 🕷️ 🎃 @jussienorthside.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

The British government is a major user of X. They’re not watching helplessly, they’re encouraging people to use X every day.

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Anna Alexandrova @annaalexandrova.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Frank Ramsey now on the wall along with the portraits of other former fellows of @kingscollege.bsky.social I am proud to have advocated for this recent addition

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Owen Barder @owen.org · 25/07/2026

My father, Brian Barder, was a resident clerk at the beginning of his career - which enabled my parents to get married in a Westminster registry office.

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Peter Tennant @pwgtennant.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

How do people feel about the term "data-driven research"? I hear it a lot, and - as an epidemiologist - it makes me cringe. If your research is exploratory, then you can reasonably adopt a "data-driven" approach. But for inferential research, I believe your analysis should by theory-driven.

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Mike Murphy @mjamurphy.bsky.social · 22/06/2026

Still have a hard time wrapping my head around development economists continuing to pay money to the guy who has done probably more damage to international development than anyone else this century

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Owen Barder @owen.org · 14/06/2026

The population of Curacao is smaller than the population of Kingston Upon Thames. (Though tbf Kingston has given us Declan Rice and Luke Shaw...)

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Lauren Gilbert @lgilbert.co · 17/04/2026

We've launched In Development! It is aiming to be the New Yorker for global development. We want to promote discourse on development without dogma - stories doing deep-dives into pressing development issues, backed up by evidence, argument, and experience. Subscribe here: indevelopmentmag.com

indevelopmentmag.com

In Development

evidence and argument for a developing world

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Ian Moss @ian.allenmoss.co.uk · 13/04/2026

I believe in the year 2026 that schools could offer their term/inset dates as calendar files and not PDFs on the website.

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Owen Barder @owen.org · 26/03/2026

Why don't we ask the EU to put biometric registration terminals in the departure areas of UK aiports?

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Owen Boswarva @owenboswarva.bsky.social · 24/03/2026

GDS's big refresh of www.data.gov.uk is now live "The home of UK public data to inform decisions and build services" #govtech #datasharing #opendata -adjacent

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Tobias Denskus @aidnography.de · 26/02/2026

As aid budgets gets slashed & the US withdraws from global institutions, this is an excellent opportunity to finally bring in a non-American leader for WFP (and please stop with the plastic press releases...)

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Owen Barder @owen.org · 04/02/2026

My experience exactly. LLMs do not do data cleaning or organisation reliably. And it is troubling that they do not know they cannot do this. So far the only use I have found for LLMs is vibe coding. Which is fine if you don't care about the security of your code.

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Owen Barder @owen.org · 22/01/2026

I suspect we are all going to need to read up on Akrotiri and Dhekelia - an example of a military base on an island (Cyprus) for which the military power (UK) has sovereignty. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akrotir... www.cvce.eu/content/publ...

cvce.eu

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Owen Barder @owen.org · 19/01/2026

I do not think that the answers to these questions should in any way lead us to waver on the principle that the future of Greenland is up to the people of Greenland. But I would like to understand whether and how NATO should strengthen the defence of the Arctic.

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Owen Barder @owen.org · 19/01/2026

I am more interested in these questions than in tedious political speculation by the commentariat about the tone of political communications.

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Owen Barder @owen.org · 19/01/2026

Would like to read analysis of: a. what would defence of the Arctic, including Greenland, look like? How much would it cost? b. what exactly are the valuable economic assets in Greenland? c. which businesses in the UK and EU countries would be adversely affected by an increase in US tarrifs?

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Owen Barder @owen.org · 19/01/2026

An occasional reminder that, in context, Joan Robinson did not use her famous analogy about throwing rocks in your own harbour to suggest that retalation against tarrifs is never rational.

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Owen Barder @owen.org · 19/01/2026

Joan Robinson "Beggar-My-Neighbour Remedies for Unemployment" 1937 ia802806.us.archive.org/16/items/ess... (p170-184)

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Owen Barder @owen.org · 12/01/2026

Rate of change over time, yes. Think of prices vs inflation, GDP vs growth, number of immigrants vs net migration , tax rate vs tax cuts , crime rate vs increases or reductions in recorded crimes.

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Owen Barder @owen.org · 02/01/2026

Sorry to hear that. This is why I reluctantly took up triathlon. Lots of cardio but lower impact from the biking and running.

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Center for Global Development @cgdev.org · 17/12/2025

FCDO's internal “best buy” documents identify which interventions deliver the greatest impact—but aren't publicly available. Euan Ritchie makes the case for publishing them to support partners and improve systems: go.cgdev.org/4q8qsa6

cgdev.org

FCDO’s Best Buys Deserve a Larger Audience

FCDO has produced several sectoral documents specifying which types of interventions are likely to be most cost-effective based on a review of evidence— known as “best buys.” These documents—while imp...

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Owen Barder @owen.org · 05/12/2025

Being development-friendly is not only, or even mainly, about how much aid you give. That is the point of the CDI.

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Owen Barder @owen.org · 05/12/2025

Sweden is the most development-friendly country for the third year running.

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Owen Barder @owen.org · 27/11/2025

31 years ago I set up the first UK government website to publish the budget online - the first country to do so. I took an ASCII version of the documents from the typesetters, and worked overnight to put in HTML tags by hand. I didn't FTP it to the server until the Chancellor sat down.

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Florian Scheuer @florianscheuer.bsky.social · 10/10/2025

I am delighted to share that Nobel laureates Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee will join our Department of Economics @econ.uzh.ch at the University of Zurich on July 1, 2026, as Lemann Foundation Professors of Economics. 🧵 1/7

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Owen Barder @owen.org · 18/09/2025

Haha. Academia.edu account duly cancelled.

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Soumaya Keynes @soumayakeynes.ft.com · 03/09/2025

As a former resident of wonk-land, this made me snort www.economist.com/britain/2025...

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Owen Barder @owen.org · 02/09/2025

I would happily buy a smart speaker that responds to voice commands to play music or the radio, and to control lights and other home automation, but which does not make recordings nor send data to a tech company. Why does this not exist? Is there not a big enough market for it?

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Owen Barder @owen.org · 01/09/2025

I think my family in Denmark might want to quibble with that ....

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Owen Barder @owen.org · 01/09/2025

Chris - let me know if you want me to try to help you to move the archive. - Owen

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Owen Barder @owen.org · 18/08/2025

The evidence in favour of unconditional cash transfers continues to mount.

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Owen Barder @owen.org · 15/08/2025

Why does the amount of computational power needed for each query go up when the number of queries or number of users goes up?

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Owen Barder @owen.org · 15/08/2025

The marginal cost is greater than zero (perhaps non trivially so). But why would the marginal cost increase with the number of users?

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Owen Barder @owen.org · 12/08/2025

If the ad-supported streamers are doing it, they are doing it very badly. We get adverts (and trailers) that are almost entirely irrelevant to me or anyone in the household.

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Owen Barder @owen.org · 12/08/2025

All this. Also, why aren't the advertisements targeted?

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Owen Barder @owen.org · 12/08/2025

This does not signal a high degree of tech literacy among UK civil servants (at least, not the ones in DEFRA responsible for water). It might have been a good idea to check this with DSIT. www.gov.uk/government/n...

Screen shot of DEFRA press release which says

HOW TO SAVE WATER AT HOME
Install a rain butt to collect rainwater to use in the garden.

Fix a leaking toilet – leaky loos can waste 200-400 litres a day.

Use water from the kitchen to water your plants.

Avoid watering your lawn – brown grass will grow back healthy.

Turn off the taps when brushing teeth or shaving.

Take shorter showers.

Highlighted bullet: Delete old emails and pictures as data centres require vast amounts of water to cool their systems.

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Owen Barder @owen.org · 06/08/2025

Lots of people seem to want to produce content using AI, but nobody seems to want to consume content produced by AI.

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Owen Barder @owen.org · 06/08/2025

Giving cash has low overheads and it demonstrably works. (Though I don't think that evidence is driving decisions about foreign assistance right now.).

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Owen Barder @owen.org · 04/08/2025

This is true - but it is only going to be politically feasible if digital systems are also designed to protect the liberty and privacy of the citizen. That is possible, but it has not been on offer in the UK. owen.org/blog/12159/