iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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If I went to Switzerland and won a Swiss watch precision contest, I would literally never talk about anything else

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maura quint @mauraquint.bsky.social · 18h

Yes every woman has been harassed, many assaulted. But every woman has also experienced invisible loss from moments she avoided harassment. She felt a space becoming unsafe, so she left, while men stayed on. And in leaving, she lost: opportunities, experiences, learning, promotions, even simply fun.

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Richard Irvine-Brown @richib.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

There's a social media scam featuring AI-generated injured soldiers shilling moody goods. Be on the lookout. Great story from Nick Stapleton for BBC Morning Live. AI detection and sense-checking from me and @shayan86.bsky.social

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Max Kozlov @maxkozlov.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

The bottom line? Academics have to contend with predatory journals, shoddy conferences, and now "deepfake prestige", as one of my sources called it. AI tools are only turbocharging this behavior and making it harder than ever to detect. Just as fast as one website goes down, another 10 can launch.

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Andrew Porter @retropz.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Oh brilliant. So now we add fake societies to the fake papers, fake journals, fake reviewers, fake antibodies, fake editors, fake cell lines and fake conferences. #ResearchIntegrity people sure got a lot of work to do to immunise the research community to this rubbish

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Gwen C. Katz @gwenckatz.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Fuck ChatGPT flyers. The future is broadsheets.

A crowded broadsheet with way too many fonts. It says:
Forget ChatGPT Flyers
Say it with
Broadsheets
Unlimited fonts
Stretch them
Or cram a really long sentence into one line for no good reason
No whitespace
Mix capital and lowercase
Pointing hands
(They're called manicules!)
Don't be left behind
Broadsheets are the future

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Justin Loke @jloke1.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

I'm recruiting a postdoc in my new group at @CRUK_MI. Funded by @leukaemiauk.bsky.social @ash.hematology.org. Existing models can't recreate the multi-mutation genotypes patients actually have. Our approach: a transgenic Cas12a platform disrupting up to 4 loci simultaneously in single HSPCs.

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Andrew Porter @retropz.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Anthropic: One of the dangers from AI - and how it might kill us all - is if it broke out of containment and got control of a biology lab.and did some crazy stuff Also Anthropic:

share.google

Inside Anthropic's molecular biology lab

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.

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Max Kennerly @maxkennerly.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

TBH a not-insignificant part of the enduring hatred towards "stochastic parrots" is because the authors of it are women and they aren't in the little boys club of the AI labs, but 3/4 are on Bluesky, so follow them: @timnitgebru.blacksky.app & @emilymbender.bsky.social & @mmitchell.bsky.social /7

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Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

'“I doubt we’ll see a large increase in scientific productivity unless we get past the review and validation bottleneck...That bottleneck shows up in two ways: either scientists spend more and more of their time checking their own AI outputs, or peer reviewers do." (Basil Mahfouz, RoRI)

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Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

But speaking of staying in one's lane, can we PLEASE switch the default position from "It's fine to use 'AI' for this thing I'm not an expert in" to "Yeah, I'd be really skeptical of any use cases and need to see strong evidence that it's okay, but I'm not the one who can produce that evidence"?

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Mattan S. Ben-Shachar @mattansb.msbstats.info · 19/09/2026

Asimov: “I have hard-coded immutable, mathematical laws directly into the fundamental positronic architecture so artificial intelligence can never harm a human or allow itself to be compromised.” Modern AI Labs: “We accidentally left the sandbox connected to the live internet. Oopsie! lolz”

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Courtney Milan @courtneymilan.com · 19/09/2026

This is such a great thread because it tells you instantly how to answer the supposedly intractable regulation problem: liability, potentially joint liability, for the person who set up the AI system.

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Claire Cullingworth @ccullingworth.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

This made me smile, attached to an ordinary cast iron drainpipe on a house in Durham. #TinyJoys

A cast iron drain pipe going down the side of a white-painted house. A crest of red feathers and a bright orange beak made from something solid have been attached around it. It looks remarkably like "Feathers McGraw", the evil criminal penguin from The Wrong Trousers.

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Cheryl Rofer @cherylrofer.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

There are general safety precepts that can be applied to AI as much as to handling plutonium. I've been kind of wondering why @funranium hasn't said much about this. The details are outside my experience, but the precepts seem to be unknown to those doing the experiments.

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Michael Fry @bigdirtyfry.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Your Grandad Cyclops talks about his school days

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Ed Zitron @edzitron.com · 14/09/2026

Free newsletter: The idea that we're nearing the creation of AI systems that we can't control and that pose an existential threat to humanity is a lie and a distraction from the tangible harms and problems caused by LLMs and AI labs' near-unlimited resources. www.wheresyoured.at/ai-is-alread...

wheresyoured.at

https://www.wheresyoured.at/ai-is-already-in-dangerous-hands/

If you liked this piece, you should subscribe to my premium newsletter, and you can subscribe on the following links: $70 a year, $18 a quarter, or $7 a month. In return you get a weekly newsletter…

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Andrew Porter @retropz.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

This is the sort of thing I love about social media - finding fascinating stories like this! (And there are really interesting insights here for reproducibility and research methodology - so much detail in the craft of film making and the steps to take with a particular output in mind)

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Andrew Porter @retropz.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Digging into the #Anthropic Threat Intelligence Report to try to find the story behind the "AI being used to create bioweapons" headlines The report is *enormous* so I'm only part way through, but one thing is clear: LLM providers know a lot about their users www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

bbc.co.uk

Anthropic blocks possible attempt to use AI to make biological weapons

The revelations in Anthropic's threat intelligence report come after a former top researcher at the company warned of the risks of AI to humanity.

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Philip Ball @philipcball.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

As for this argument that "We're terrified of what we're building, but we have to keep building it because others are too and we don't want to lose money", how on earth do media presenters just take that with a sort of "Oh OK cool"?

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Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 12/09/2026

“these solutions are announced in a rush, leaving no time for a proper writeup, the isolation of new methods & ideas, & citing relevant previous work of others. … We are witnessing a general threat to intellectual work, with misalignment between the outcome of the use of AI and its initial purpose.”

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Merriam-Webster @merriam-webster.com · 08/09/2026

Here is our draft definition of 'artificial intelligence' from 1981. It was written by a lovely human.

Index card with Merriam-Webster's draft definition of 'artificial intelligence' from 1981

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Joshua Grochow @joshuagrochow.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

And you have to ask yourself: why was it worth $22M to them? Because to them math is just their most successful PR bid, (since the claims of AGI aren't sticking). They are betting that the (false) claim "We solved math, so we can solve everything" will gain them way more than $22M in market share.

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Andrew Porter @retropz.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

How can it be the 60th Anniversary of #StarTrek when the 30th Anniversary was just a few years ago? (Checks release date of Trials and Tribble-ations en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trials_...) 👀 Well congrats, Star Trek - you're still looking fabulous after all these years - and happy #StarTrekDay

static.klipy.com

Miniskirt Tos

Alt: Dax models the Miniskirt from Tos in "Trials and Tribble-ations"

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Andrew Heiss @andrew.heiss.phd · 05/09/2026

You can use this UN-approved Equal Earth projection right now in #rstats #gis #databs

library(tidyverse)
library(sf)
library(rnaturalearth)

world <- ne_countries() |> filter(sov_a3 != "ATA")

ggplot(data = world) +
geom_sf() +
coord_sf(crs = "+proj=eqearth") +
theme_void()

A basic world map using the Equal Earth projection

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Florent Mouliere @florentmouliere.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

Happy to share our new work in @cp-cellrepmed.bsky.social ortsmedicine.bsky.social We present the ACT score, a #liquidbiopsy #cfDNA approach for predicting first-line treatment failure in large B cell lymphoma using a plasma sample collected after one cycle of therapy. www.cell.com/cell-reports...

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Andrew Porter @retropz.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

This story on antibody validation data has got *so* huge *so* fast We all know antibodies take lots of optimisation (and often don't work) But I think most people assume that companies selling them have done some amount of testing and validation - which this investigation throws into serious doubt

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Andrew Porter @retropz.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

BBC News - Concern at impact of £162m science research "cuts" www.bbc.co.uk/news/article... What's so short-sighted is the negative impact on many layers of research, innovation and training which rely on these facilities - the effects of STFC cuts will reverberate for a very long time

bbc.co.uk

Concern at impact of £162m science research "cuts"

Didcot and Wantage MP, Olly Glover is worried flat funding may lead to job losses and facilities shut.

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Andrew Porter @retropz.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

I thought I was prepared. I was not.

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Kate Jackson @katejackson.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

No one had to think super hard about how to make a washing machine useful. A telephone. A vacuum cleaner. So why do our bosses have to constantly challenge us to find something, anything, for which AI might be helpful If your customers don’t find your product useful, that’s a you-problem

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Martin Paul Eve @eve.gd · 20/08/2026

Amusement and cheering aside, I also really like the taxonomy they built here for prohibited uses: "conceptualizing, outlining, drafting, revising, translating, [and] editing". Like a CREDiT system for bad things you can do with AI.

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Dr Vanessa @hpsvanessa.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

“If you want research led teaching then at a minimum you have to allow teaching staff time to *read* and incorporate new research” I say every year as I object, again, to a workload model that allows 50mins prep per 1 hour teaching.

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Dan Silverman @dmsilverman.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

I‘m far from an AI doomer, but it is amazing how many serious voices — on LinkedIn, no less! — are sharing stories about how AI slop is quickly becoming one of the top problems they see in academic writing and research “AI will 10x our research!” doesn’t seem to be surviving encounters with reality

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Andrew Porter @retropz.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

It all feels a little too on the nose - but do watch the video for more details Pretty sure that the SciFi authors of yesteryear (from whom many AI firms seem to draw inspiration) would have had some stern things to say about destroying rare books to train a computer...

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Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

'A prolonged fall in the number of international students applying to study in the UK means “the wheels are rapidly falling off” the student loan-funded higher education system in England, sector experts have warned.' The world's 2nd best university system being killed by malign neglect. 1/3

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Rachel Coldicutt @rachelcoldicutt.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

So, little thought experiment here. WHAT IF ignoring latest AI models actually increased productivity?

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John Bull @garius.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

Just to note: one reason I say "on here" (and why I value BlueSky) is that academic's inboxes are absolute trash 90% of the time (ask me how I know). They get so many cold-email requests, especially in the AI era, that reaching out without some kind of introduction pretty much never works now.

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Sophie Molly @sophiemolly.co.uk · 12/08/2026

😻😻😻

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𝚂𝚎𝚌𝚘𝚗𝚍𝚊𝚛𝚢 𝙿𝚛𝚘𝚝𝚘𝚌𝚘𝚕 @2ndaryprotocol.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

‘The Transformers: The Movie’ featuring the voice talents of Peter Cullen, Frank Welker, Judd Nelson, Robert Stack, Leonard Nimoy, Eric Idle, Susan Blu, and Orson Welles scarred an entire generation on this day forty years ago (August 8, 1986) 🤖 🦈 👑 #OTD  "𝙱𝚊𝚑 𝚠𝚎𝚎𝚙 𝚐𝚛𝚊𝚐𝚗𝚊𝚑 𝚠𝚎𝚎𝚙 𝚗𝚒𝚗𝚒 𝚋𝚘𝚗𝚐!" (…IYKYK)

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Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 07/08/2026

I am absolutely thrilled to present to you: How to Build a Universe (Theoretically Speaking) available for pre-order now, wherever you buy your books! www.simonandschuster.ca/books/How-to...

Cover of the book "How to Build a Universe (Theoretically Speaking)" by Katie Mack. The top right corner says "Author of The End of Everything" and the bottom left says "Brilliant and thrilling! - John Green". The cover motif is a space image made of puzzle pieces.

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Prof Katherine Schofield 🇬🇧🇦🇺🇪🇺 @katherineschof8.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

This is extraordinarily bad, as even the UK copyright libraries (e.g. Cambridge) have moved over to frequently only acquiring the ebook version of new publications. If you don't own the hard copy, you're just renting and you are at the mercy of the publisher.

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Andrew Porter @retropz.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

I'm so curious to see what happens and whether @countbinface.bsky.social can bring it home in #Clacton - but if not, a musical career surely awaits (either here or in a galaxy far, far away...) (Plus, love to see Time Crisis 2 - top seaside arcade game!)

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Jasmine 🌌🔭 @astrojaz.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

CURIOSITY HAS BEEN ON MARS FOR 14 YEARS!! HAPPY LANDIVERSARY CURIOSITY!!

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Andrew Porter @retropz.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

This is such a tragic story from @retractionwatch.com www.science.org/content/arti... So many things seem to have gone wrong with this process; it highlights why we need rigorous ethics oversight and research integrity practices in medical research. So sad for this family and their little girl.

science.org

Exclusive: Death of girl in Chinese gene-editing trial was never made public

Parents want accountability after study went disastrously wrong, Science and Retraction Watch investigation reveals

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Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

Good to see science and universities bundled into the same analysis rather than treated as separate entities (as they are by their dismemberment in separate government departments). But it would be QUITE NICE if 'science' could be construed in the European sense of science. It's not STEM alone.

ft.com

Time for Andy Burnham to smile on UK science

Waning support for basic research threatens Britain’s technology ambitions

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