iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Tony Durham @rhamdu.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Once UK pensions catch up with other European countries, the ratchet component of the triple lock will have served its purpose. I didn't think we had got there yet. Burnham seems to think we have. The sop is free social care. It will be huge if chronic illness doesn't mean burning through savings.

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Tony Durham @rhamdu.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

The parcel says DHL, it's a DPD van and the driver is in Evri kit. Is it all just one big company now?

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Tony Durham @rhamdu.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

BBC #Countryfile has investigated the spread of data centres in rural areas and their demands for energy, water and land. 70GW of data centres in the planning pipeline. Industry says 8 to 15GW will actually be built. Hard to imagine what benefit could justify burning 250W for each UK adult or child.

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Tony Durham @rhamdu.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Cognitive neuroscience is like trying to reverse-engineer a crashed flying saucer.

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Tony Durham @rhamdu.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Endless different versions of "machines can't think because you can't think if you are not alive." I'm tired.

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Tony Durham @rhamdu.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Having ditched homuncular theories of vision, some scientists still clung on to a homuncular theory of imagination. Findings like these are now telling us that there is no Cartesian theatre anywhere in our heads.

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Tony Durham @rhamdu.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Denmark accepts the American cuckoo into its Greenland nest. An embarrassing and painful moment for Europe.

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Tony Durham @rhamdu.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

What if consciousness isn't real? Tim Bayne hasn't adopted full-on illusionism. He accepts something is going on. But C may not be the right word for it. Many languages have no word for phenomenal consciousness but have other ways of talking about mind www.scientificamerican.com/article/what...

scientificamerican.com

What if ‘consciousness’ isn’t real?

Our understanding of consciousness could be fundamentally wrong

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Reposted by Tony Durham

M a r c u s 🏳️‍🌈🇧🇧 @marcusjdl.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Bonnie Greer famously sat with her back to the BNP’s Nick Griffin when he appeared on Question Time in 2009. There was much criticism of the BBC platforming the far right, Now every episode of Question Time is wall to wall far right talking points with open arms and a seat kept warmfor Reform

Author and critic
Bonnie Greer dies aged 77
Culture
16 Sep 2026, 13:41
GETTY IMAGES - picture of Bonnie Greer an elder Black woman with short red Afro hair wearing a black button up shirt

Paul Glynn
Culture reporter
British-American author and cultural commentator Bonnie Greer has died at the age of 77 after a brief illness, her husband has said.

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Reposted by Tony Durham

Tony Tassell @tonytassell.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

the Revolut hack story is quite something www.ft.com/content/97f3...

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Tony Durham @rhamdu.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

The implications of self-improving artificial intelligence. AI pioneer Marvin Minsky speaks to us across 60 years. (From Scientific American magazine, September 1966.)

Once we have devised programs with a genuine capacity for self-improvement a rapid evolutionary process will begin.
As the machine improves both itself and its model of itself, we shall begin to see all the phenomena associated with the terms "consciousness," "intuition" and "intelligence" itself. It is hard to say how close we are to this threshold, but once it is crossed the world will not be the same.
It is reasonable, I suppose, to be unconvinced by our examples and to be skeptical about whether machines will ever be intelligent. It is unreasonable, however, to think machines could become nearly as intelligent as we are and then stop, or to suppose we will always
be able to compete with them in wit or wisdom. Whether or not we could retain some sort of control of the machines, assuming that we would want to, the nature of our activities and aspirations would be changed utterly by the presence on earth of intellectually superior beings.

Cover of Scientific American magazine, September 1966, "Information" special issue, price sixty cents. The cover art is the circuit diagram of a simple digital logic circuit, featuring diodes, resistors and a transistor.

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Tony Durham @rhamdu.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Omygawd, just discovered someone I went to school with became a notorious Holocaust denier. Didn't know him well so I can't tell you if there were early warnings.

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Tony Durham @rhamdu.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

A lot to remember today, including the 1973 coup in Chile and the death of President Salvador Allende.

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Tony Durham @rhamdu.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

This letter has my address IN FULL. naming my country as United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Either it's from somebody in Ireland trying to make a point, or it's my long-awaited invitation to become a Fellow of the Institute of Pedantry.

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Tony Durham @rhamdu.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

I am so tired of coffee nerdery. I like filter coffee but will accept a weak espresso, so I used to ask generically for a long black coffee. In France I ordered café allongé. Now I learn that long black, allongé and the despised Americano are all precise and different drinks. Choices, choices.

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Tony Durham @rhamdu.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

I have a lot of sarky suggestions for who JDV's antichrist might be. I am sure you have thought of the same people yourself. It's not that funny really. Nobody who believes this end-times stuff should be anywhere near nuclear weapons.

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Tony Durham @rhamdu.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Spiders often use plants to support their webs. But is this an example of a plant using a spider web for support? The web may not be there for long. But it's a fast-growing plant and this might be enough to get it across a gap.

A bean shoot attached to a strand of spider silk and apparently growing along it.

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Tony Durham @rhamdu.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Microsoft's Windows lockscreen features iconic landscapes around the world. Today it's a local spot: the Seven Sisters cliffs and the coastguard cottages in East Sussex. Sadly MS mislabels the scene as the white cliffs of Dover, which are about 50 miles up the coast (and not as beautiful IMHO).

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Tony Durham @rhamdu.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

She was a financial statistician who lived near Brighton. Hove actuary.

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Reposted by Tony Durham

👻madeline bOoOoOoOodent👻 @oldenoughtosay.com · 25/08/2026

everybody is (rightfully) remembering her incredible charity work, the 300 million books and counting for kids, the moderna vaccine, all of it she also wrote 'I Will Always Love You' and 'Jolene' on the same dang day. absolutely peerless

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Tony Durham @rhamdu.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

Learning by imitation can be very deep or very shallow. I think they are suggesting this is not totally shallow :)

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Tony Durham @rhamdu.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

Nothing about the new Morrisons trolley requires AI. From #bbcR4Today description it's just a normal self-checkout, but on wheels.

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Tony Durham @rhamdu.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

An electric toothbrush is a great mood meter. If I am chilled, I'm like wow, 2 minutes already? Give it another 30 seconds to be sure. If I am anxious and restless I'm like, no way my mouth has four quadrants. What is a quadrant even?

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Tony Durham @rhamdu.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

Catching up with Thursday's BBC Prom commemorating Miles Davis. Ambrose Akinmusire and his quartet are fine musicians. But since a Prom needs big arrangements, they are relying on Miles's collabs with Gil Evans and ignoring the rest. tbh I'm not that keen on giving jazz the orchestral treatment.

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Tony Durham @rhamdu.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

Don't address me as friend, or worse still, Friend. It's passive-aggressive AF. Got that, matey-boy?

So what about you, Friend? We're interested in hearing your experience of this crisis

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Tony Durham @rhamdu.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

Fading light from the west. A grey canopy overhead. Rain softly falling. The occasional flash and rumble. The suddenly refreshed garden seems intent on turning into one of Henri Rousseau's jungle paintings.

A back garden in Brighton. Foliage silhouetted against the blues and greys of a twilight sky.

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Tony Durham @rhamdu.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

Just found out that Inman Harvey has died. I remember him as the fellow-student at Trinity, Cambridge who went to Afghanistan and brought back a load of those sheepskin jackets that were fashionable in the 1960s. He did a lot of other cool stuff, too... users.sussex.ac.uk/~philh/pubs/...

users.sussex.ac.uk

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Tony Durham @rhamdu.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

Questions for people who do #sudoku and similar #puzzles. In solving a puzzle, do you ever rest your logic on the knowledge that the puzzle has only one solution? Do you feel OK about this or slightly naughty?

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Tony Durham @rhamdu.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

If you call your project a "gigafactory" and then change your plans, everyone knows the change isn't going to be "actually we thought we'd make it a bit bigger".

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Tony Durham @rhamdu.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

Brighton 4am. Actual downpour. First for two months.

Weather radar map showing heavy rain near Brighton on England's south coast.

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Tony Durham @rhamdu.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

It has been raining gently for much of the night. After weeks of drought, we can give the plants rainwater again. The first runoff from the roof will be a strong solution of herring gull guano, disgusting but nourishing for the garden. Tyre dust, sea salt and microplastics, not so good.

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Tony Durham @rhamdu.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

I have criticisms of Southern Water management, but their staff can be friendly and helpful. Yesterday I noticed a guy in SW overalls working in our street. Asked his advice on a problem with our stop tap. He knew the answer and was happy to tell me.

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Tony Durham @rhamdu.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

Urban explorers have the mindset of a cat. You go through a door, confident that you will get out again. You climb, confident that you can get down.

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Tony Durham @rhamdu.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

If only people brushed their teeth for enough time to make a difference by turning off the tap. #water

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Tony Durham @rhamdu.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

Sadly, as a science journalist I never wrote the big article about Stanley Prusiner's prion theory. But it instantly made sense to me that diseases like BSE are transmitted by misfolded proteins. Many scientists refused to believe that an infectious agent could replicate without nucleic acid.

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Tony Durham @rhamdu.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

They should have thrown in a free pair of eclipse glasses with every colander sold.

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Tony Durham @rhamdu.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

Pinhole image of the eclipsed sun, projected from a roughly pierced cardboard box onto a bath towel 5 metres away #nocolander

Crescent image of sun, in partial eclipse, projected on a grey towel, with a finger for scale.

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Tony Durham @rhamdu.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

And this is the moment to remind you that the moon shows the same sequence of crescent shapes every month, whereas a partially eclipsed sun can take on any of a wild variety of crescent shapes, from a baby fingernail through nibbled biscuits to an almost complete ring.

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Tony Durham @rhamdu.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

The sun is now about 20% eclipsed and the daylight seems noticeably dimmed, which I was not expecting yet, because the visual system usually adapts so well to changing light levels. I remember a previous partial eclipse when the daylight seemed fairly normal but traffic lights were weirdly bright.

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Tony Durham @rhamdu.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

The sun is up there shining happily, and me down here telling it "you won't believe what happens next". #solareclipse

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Tony Durham @rhamdu.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

"Quantum consciousness" theory seems to rest on a belief that QM permits miracles. Uh, nope. Quantum randomness can't explain agency. No version of physics predicts phenomenal consciousness. Now there is a 'mathematical' disproof of quantum C 🤨 (reg wall) www.newscientist.com/article/2579...

newscientist.com

Can consciousness be quantum? We may now have an answer | New Scientist

A mathematical analysis suggests that the notion of agency, which is a prerequisite for consciousness, cannot be purely quantum in nature

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Tony Durham @rhamdu.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

Once we used candles to smoke glass. Then we peeked at the sun through layers of exposed photo film. Candles? Gone. Film? Gone.. It's like every technology that incidentally enables people to watch solar eclipses is doomed to obsolescence. Just give up and buy the damn glasses.

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Tony Durham @rhamdu.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

IP experts please comment. Can an invention be both patented and a trade secret?

(from Wikipedia) ...AccuWeather has been granted a United States patent on The RealFeel Temperature,[29] but the formula is a trade secret

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Tony Durham @rhamdu.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

How it started: free the Ukrainians from their nazi oppressors. How it's going: see how the ungrateful Ukrainians like having their children blown to pieces

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Tony Durham @rhamdu.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

The futility of using lamps on a bright summer morning.

A glass IKEA table lamp illuminated from behind by morning sunlight and from within by a 'warm white' lightbulb.

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Tony Durham @rhamdu.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

Buy a pair of glasses from Specsavers and I get nagging emails for ever more. This one starts "We haven't seen you..." which invites a sarcastic reply.

Email notification from SpecSavers "We haven't seen you yet..."

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