iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Clare Moriarty @quiteclare.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Some thoughts on: weird fixation on foetuses and the implicit logic of legally compelling women to "take time to think"

Clare Moriarty @quiteclare.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

TFW, after some consideration, you finally settle on the pun that will frame the title of a talk you are giving. Very special.

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Clare Moriarty @quiteclare.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

The British Society for the History of Mathematics Christmas Meeting and AGM Lineup is looking lively. Looking forward to talking about Flann O'Brien's Surprising Literary Ultrafinitism bshm.ac.uk/event/bshm-c...

Snip of the event timetable from the BSHM website. Text reads:

"Programme

1.30 – 2.30: AGM
2.30 – 2.40: Break & Christmas Meeting welcome.
2.40 – 3.20: Benjamin Wardhaugh, Counting from Blombos to cyberspace
3.20 – 4.00: Sarah Hart, The Granddaddy of Algorithms
4.00 – 4.20: Break
4.20 – 5.00: Ellen Abrams, Rugged Abstractions: Toward a Cultural History of Modern Mathematics
5:00 – 5.20: Tom Briggs, From Research in Progress to Network in Practice: Integrating History into Lower Secondary Mathematics Lessons
5.20 – 5.30: Break
5.30 – 5.50: Clare Moriarty, Infinitesimal Horrors – The Surprising Ultrafinitism of Flann O’Brien’s The Third Policeman
5.50-6.30 : Christopher Hollings, Incompetence in the History of Mathematics
6.30-6.40 : Close of Meeting"

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Clare Moriarty @quiteclare.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Did a more festive one. Need to get back to adult knitting now 😫

A knitted child's cardigan in 6-12m size, with cable designs on the yoke, and festive buttons with deer on them, in beige, green and red. Lying in a wooden table.

The same item as before, but the view is of the back of the garment

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Luke Ontario @coolhand.bsky.social · 07/07/2025

Everyone stop, this is important

A black and white drawing of three dachshunds arranged vertically, each holding a different optical illusion object in its mouth, and the dogs themselves drawn as if a single line optical illusion. The top dog holds a Penrose triangle, the middle dog holds a Necker cube, and the bottom dog holds a Penrose trident. The dogs’ bodies are elongated in an exaggerated cartoon style. The artwork is signed “@IndieTheIntrovert” in the bottom right corner.

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Clare Moriarty @quiteclare.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

If you are bored this morning or your seminar plan is incomplete, here are the first ten #philosophy anagrams I wrote for our departmental quiz recently: (year of death in brackets; one missing umlaut, so as not to give it away)

snip of an MS Word page, with the following words:
Round 4: Philosopher Name Anagrams (15 points)

1. Got Lurked (d.1978) _________________________
2. Edgier Nightmare (d.1976) _________________________
3. Horrid Music (d. 1999) _________________________
4. Racy Workman (d. 2019) _________________________
5. A new Canyon (d. 1679) _________________________
6. Mechanizes able bot (d. 2001) _________________________
7. Karmic Infrared alive _________________________
8. Womanishly omit lit alive _________________________
9. Nerd Oddities (d. 1784) _________________________
10. Queer jar, dad [sic] (d. 2004)_________________________

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H 🍉🌿 @helendublin.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

"parents have separated but both are forced to remain living together" "Gross motor skills of babies and toddlers are being delayed or negatively impacted" because of LT emergency accommodation" #speirgorm Finally being forced to live with your abuser 😤

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Clare Moriarty @quiteclare.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

More anti-mammy invective from Toland It's okay that we think their prattling is cute, a Sheáin

Snip of text from Toland's 'Christianity not Mysterious' where Toland says: "A Mother is more charm'd with the lisping half-form'd Words of her prattling Infant, than with the best Lan∣guage, and most solid Discourses. "

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Abortion Rights Campaign @freesafelegal.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Why are we marching? Because the 3 day waiting period must go! "It made me feel like I was not trusted to make my own decision and caused me a great deal of mental and physical distress" Join us at 2pm at the Department of Health this Saturday (26/09/26) for the 15th annual March for Choice.

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Dr Mary McAuliffe @drmarymcauliffe.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Our minister for justice is a disgrace … seems cruelty is the point.

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Tom Gauld @tomgauld.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

My latest @newscientist.com cartoon

Course: Introduction to Basic Philosophical Astronomy
Type: Six-week evening class
Location: Physics Building Roof

Modules:
Week One - Whoa, look at all those stars
Week Two - Dude, there are, like, bajillions
Week Three - let me blow your mind with some big bang facts
week Four - d'you think aliens are doing this on their planet?
Week Five - Let's just chill out and take it all in for a while
Week Six - Seriously, it's crazy how many stars are up there

Image: figures sprawl on the roof of a building, gazing at a sky filled with stars.

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Clare Moriarty @quiteclare.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

I cannot imagine what this does to the doctors, midwives and nurses working with these babies, let alone the parents. Maternal health and neonatal care are vital elements of a society's continued survival. Continuing to act in a way that obliterates them is genocidal.

"In March, the UN's humanitarian agency OCHA said that one in three pregnancies in Gaza were high-risk and 70 percent of newborns were premature or underweight."

""Against this background, rates of miscarriage, stillbirth, low-birthweight infants and congenital defects have increased," the UN's Independent International Commission of Inquiry said."

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Clare Moriarty @quiteclare.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Just overheard someone use "lovely hurling" in the swimming pool and I don't know why that phrase delights me so much but it unfailingly does. Semantics-wise it just seems like a funny way to express approval. I'm going to try and get it into a journal article somehow this year.

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Clare Moriarty @quiteclare.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Absolutely; it's pathological. How many examples do we need?!

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Marsh's Library @marshslibrary.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe (1546-1601) created this great brass globe to record the precise position of over 1000 stars he observed from his observatory at Uraniborg. Kepler used Brahe's observational data in formulating his laws of planetary motion. From Astronomiae instauratae mechanica, 1602.

Engraving showing a globe with a celestial map

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Donal Coffey @donalcoffey.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

We are launching the Research Centre for Legal Historyon 16.09.26. I am delighted to say that we have a great line up of incredible speakers. We have a very limited number of spaces in the room, but wanted to open it up to the wider legal history community www.eventbrite.com/e/2000181837...

eventbrite.com

Research Centre for Legal History Launch

This event is the launch the Mayooth University School of Law and Criminology's newly established Research Centre for Legal History.

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Niamh NicGhabhann Coleman @niamhroisin.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

I must say that the slow, over-crowded nature of most Dublin public transport is harder to put up with knowing that it is going to be even more expensive soon with no known improvements… 🚌 🚃 🚊

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Clare Moriarty @quiteclare.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

I WILL FINISH THIS CHAPTER TODAY 🥀MANIFEST 🥀MANIFEST 🥀MANIFEST 🥀

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Clare Moriarty @quiteclare.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

The pivot from "fund everything forever" to "spend our tax money wisely" is so key. Do they want us to use these services or not? Ditto for bike infrastructure. The wrecked lanes are hazards. Uneven surfaces and bad drainage make it hard to know whether a puddle is a puddle or a big hole

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Clare Moriarty @quiteclare.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

"Those who get up early every morning and go to work in a car" he surely meant. Also, this is such ridiculously stale rhetoric. The work landscape has changed. If you mean hard-working ppl, say that. If you just mean you're giving us a budget that benefits men in finance jobs, we already knew that.

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James Kelleher @jameskelleher.pilcrow.ie · 03/09/2026

Today’s stories from Ireland

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Clare Moriarty @quiteclare.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

Birthday luxury bag haul from daughter. Big one is "for really everything", small one for "smaller treasures"

Flat lay of 2 bags made from a4 paper. On the left, an a4 size bag with a green and yellow paper handle is decorated with a drawing of my daughter and me and lots of hearts and spirals. The one on the right is half size, slightly more robustly constructed and decorated with 7 purple hearts.

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Clare Moriarty @quiteclare.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

Have been listening to La Perla by Rosalia in the car, and my 5yr old gaelscoil-er really likes it and keep asking for "the song about béarla" 😄

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Clare Moriarty @quiteclare.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

This is the most insidious stuff on earth.

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Clare Moriarty @quiteclare.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

When I signed up for a long swim tomorrow morning, it was in the heady days of last month's weather. I would never have done so if I thought real weather was coming back

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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 24/08/2026

As LLMs get better at certain tasks and much more convincing, it's a useful exercise to ask about a subject you know intimately. Here, ChatGPT 5.6 diagrams the wrong game, doubles down, then finally admits its mistake. It cites a paper that doesn't exist, doubles down, and finally confesses again.

ChatGPT query: Diagram the enquist model of agonistic signaling

[poster output]

User: This is fucked up. So you just made that up.

ChatGPT: Yes. I did, and you’re right to call it out.

My first description was not a faithful account of Enquist’s model. I supplied a plausible generic sequence for agonistic assessment—“initial assessment → signaling → reassessment → escalation”—without having verified that those were actually the stages or assumptions in Enquist (1985). Then, when you challenged the “prior information” point, I compounded the problem by giving another specific reconstruction instead of checking the source first.

I’ve now checked secondary material explicitly discussing Enquist’s 1985 model, and it describes the model as one in which players choose among possible displays/actions in an agonistic game, with the evolutionary question being when those choices can constitute honest signaling. That is importantly different from the staged assessment process I initially gave you.

So: do not use either of my previous stage descriptions as a representation of Enquist (1985). I should have looked up the paper/model before answering a source-specific question.

ChatGPT: Yes. You’re right — again.

The poster actually says:

Enquist, M. (1985). “Communication during agonistic encounters.” In R. R. Hinde (Ed.), Advances in the Study of Behavior, Vol. 15, 65–106. Academic Press.

And that citation is not the original Enquist model paper I should have been using.

I made three separate errors here: I generated an unverified citation, then misreported what the poster said twice. That’s a basic source-handling failure.

If you want, I can now do this properly: verify the actual Enquist agonistic-signaling model from the primary paper and give you only the real sequence/stages, with no reconstruction.

User: The paper on the poster doesn't even exist.

ChatGPT: Correct. That poster citation is fabricated. I generated a title and book chapter that do not exist.

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Natalie Bennett @nataliegreenpeer.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

Powerful and important letter about artificial so-called intelligence from Sheila Hayman from Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy, University of Cambridge, in the FT today

$Margaret McGirr’s letter (“AI can lend a hand, but it will struggle to replace one”, July 21) and Chine McDonald’s guest column (“This retro revival is more than a longing for the past”, Opinion, August 7) both touch (sic) on something that should be obvious, but is carefully ignored by almost everyone in the tech world. Namely that our intelligence is embodied, evolved and biological, and inseparable from our bodies. The brain’s job is to control the body in the world; it is the last organ to develop. Every square centimetre of our hands (and of the rest of our skin) contains about a 170 touch sensors or nerve endings, sensitive to different kinds of touch: a slap, a burn, a caress, a hug — each of which travels to different parts of the midbrain, prompting the appropriate response. Quickly to the autonomic nervous system for something dangerous; more slowly via a different channel for something carrying meaning. In addition to the hand’s limitless versatility, it is self-repairing, regulates its own temperature, knows without being programmed how much pressure to exert on an egg, a tennis ball or a day-old chick, and can fuse neurologically to whatever it holds. So when we put a glass down on the table or slide a knife through an apple, we feel the table, or the apple, not the glass or handle in our hand (try it!). Finally, and most urgently, the entire human body — including the hands — does everything on 25 or so watts of completely renewable energy: a tiny fraction of what a humanoid robot, even one of the current primitive iteration of robots, needs. The “retro revival” is thus not cultural nostalgia. It’s millions of years of evolution crying out to be heard, before we suppress it totally in the service of an automated — and dead — planet. Sheila Hayman Member of the Advisory Board, Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy, University of Cambridge, London NW1, UK$

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Eve @evenicholls.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

Now with alt text, as this fabulous interview richly deserves.

Take me to the moment where you finally arrived on the beach after swimming so far. What did that feel like?

A little uncomfortable because my legs gave out and I fell onto some barnacles, so that was fun. And then there was a bunch of people, so that was wonderfully overstimulating, so I had to put on a smile — "Yay, I'm suffering on the inside! Too many people!" Had to pretend I was an extrovert.

Now, you had a support team nearby on a boat. How reassuring was that for you during this process?

They were great. They did everything that they were supposed to. They had to give me food every 30 minutes just to keep my blood sugar levels up. And because I was nauseous, I did a lot of, "no, I don't want to eat, go away!" But they forced me to eat. So that was good.

Did you think about giving up?

Oh, God, no. I was more so just thinking, "oh, can this be done yet? Nope, still not there."

I just swam through the stream. Otherwise, if I didn't keep swimming, I was going to be sitting in my own vomit.

What made you decide that you wanted to do this particular stretch?

I just think every time I've ever been on the ferry, I thought, I kind of want to jump in and swim across. And I've had a lot of people tell me that's not possible. So I think a lot of it was spite.

Right before jumping in, I thought "this is going to be the worst day of my life," and then when I got in the water, I thought, "oh, it's not too bad temperature-wise, so I shouldn't have any problem making it to the other side." I was really concerned about hypothermia.

Melanie, you don't feel great now, you didn't feel great when you finished, and you were feeling dread at the beginning and worried about hypothermia. Why did you do this?

I guess I thrive on self-loathing.

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Catherine Stocker @catzstocker.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

With the level of discussion of the Lindsay Clancy case I feel it's timely to remind folks in Ireland that despite promises made by govt in 2017 - there is not single inpatient psychiatric mother and baby bed in Ireland. #SpeirGorm #IrishSky #LindsayClancy

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Clare Moriarty @quiteclare.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

In hopes of proving my credentials in both the jock & dweeb spaces, I've a piece on sporting bodies in the IT today and spoke about competitive Scrabble on Newstalk on Fri. www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2026... newstalk.com/podcasts/highlights-from-the-hard-shoulder/are-board-games-beneficial-to-you

irishtimes.com

The discourse around super-thin is fraught: Could we replace it?

On SkinnyTok, a TikTok subsection devoted to ‘thinspiration’, people claim extreme caloric restriction is the new mindfulness

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Clare Moriarty @quiteclare.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

It's actually pronounced "Bork-lee"

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Clare Moriarty @quiteclare.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

Here is something I've been thinking of writing about. For all that there are such malign potentiality in the relationship between grief and technology, there are some overlaps that are harder to characterize. Today is the 4th anniversary of my brother's (very surprising) death.

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Clare Moriarty @quiteclare.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

I would also like to note that this is coming off the back of a compass sting *on my face* in dun laoire a fortnight ago

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Clare Moriarty @quiteclare.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

I was so brave and decided to do a 🏊‍♀️ race in the Liffey despite how yucky I imagined it would be. How was I rewarded for this bravery? A massive lions mane sting to the left tit. Yours, etc, in waves of electric shock agony,

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Clare Moriarty @quiteclare.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

I can't believe the European champion of the hardest event is a Dubliner. Beyond exciting and inspiring!

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Clare Moriarty @quiteclare.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

Women are wild. 200m athlete Mujinga Kambundji running in the semi final after giving birth in November. Ó mo dhia, What on earth 🤯

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Clare Moriarty @quiteclare.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

5yr old & I very nearly hit on the bike by an elderly woman turning left across the bike lane. Not wanting to be ageist, but from the 2 seconds of braking & swerving, I could see from her posture over the wheel that she'd struggle to have the range of motion to look back into her blind spots.

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Dave Richeson @divbyzero.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

At Bridges, @quiteclare.bsky.social spoke about Oliver Byrne and his version of Euclid's Elements. She mentioned that Byrne's last known work (unpublished but in the archives at Trinity College Dublin) was "The Trinal Calculus," which was his attempt to put calculus on a rigorous

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Clare Moriarty @quiteclare.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

My anxiety is not coping well with watching all the people running around in the bit where the shots, discuses and javelins land. Like, don't run towards that discus, folks! It's really moving.

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Darach Ó Séaghdha @darach.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

This kid’s wrist moves like the wing of a wren

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Matt Weiner @mattweiner19.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

You'll find yourself lost and in need of my solutions Call me J.L. Austin 'cause I got the illocutions

The cover of the Beastie Boys' Ill Communication, but it says Illocution

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Clare Moriarty @quiteclare.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

I had an amazing time at my first Math Bridges conference in University of Galway last week. There was a planar modular origami workshop, another on the calculus of cat's cradle, a maths-fashion show, an Irish dancing lesson with numerical emphasis, and a family day full of activities for young ppl

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Clare Moriarty @quiteclare.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

Ah come on!! What are we to call ourselves, so?!

Snip of the NYT Spelling Bee game interface. The game is rejecting "DIRTBIRD", a popular derogatory Irish term.

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WWN @waterfordwhispers.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

Government To Recognise Data Centres As Religious Orders, Exempt From Tax And Criticism waterfordwhispersnews.com/2026/08/0…

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Clare Moriarty @quiteclare.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

The service was one of the most impacting I've ever attended, showing Greenberg for the passionate, hilarious, and spectacularly multifaceted guy he was. From lovingly bruitalising Chris Cowie in rugby to adding lyrics to Jurassic Park music, he truly contained multitudes.

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