iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by The Author, Séamas O'Reilly

Hugo Gordon @hugogordon.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Have said this before but one thing I noticed about Twitter/X before I left it was how many previously normal and largely apolitical sports accounts I'd followed had clearly started to go a bit insane and conspiratorial. Brains cooked in an increasingly toxic stew.

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The Author, Séamas O'Reilly @seamas.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Have seen this Nature piece about the effects of X's algorithm mentioned again and it bears repeating; exposure to a right wing algorithm makes you - measurably and predictably - more right wing, even after you stop using it. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

nature.com

The political effects of X’s feed algorithm - Nature

Among users initially on a chronological feed, 7 weeks of exposure to X’s algorithmic feed in 2023 shifted political attitudes and account-following behaviour in a more conservative direction compared...

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The Author, Séamas O'Reilly @seamas.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Way back when, I canvassed Twitter for similar tales. My favourite, and one I still think about eight years later, was this.

Tweet from @michaelkellyk: My brother @feenish told an american visitor that the 4 provinces of Ireland were Ulster, Munster, Funster, and Gunster.

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The Author, Séamas O'Reilly @seamas.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Orwell warned us about people like you.

Quote from the Newspeak philologist Syme in 1984: "You don't grasp the beauty of the destruction of words. Do you know that Newspeak is the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year?"

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The Author, Séamas O'Reilly @seamas.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

I've thought about it any time I've heard a boring story since, and weighed up in my mind just what a nuclear option it would be to use. I'm also not *absolutely* certain it was Jeffrey Archer - if it wasn't, I'm sure he'd appreciate any tribute that involved the spreading of provable falsehoods.

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The Author, Séamas O'Reilly @seamas.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Jeffrey Archer's death reminds me of the time he told a really boring story while a guest on Dame Edna's show. "Marvellous" said Edna after it petered out to its conclusion, "and I'm sure that'll make a wonderful anecdote someday".

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The Author, Séamas O'Reilly @seamas.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

⚽️🫠

The true workout for my heart preceded all that, however, when the refs organised the teams. These were two kind and affable young coaches who work at the sports centre. Their true youth was not apparent to me until some idle football chat on the touchline revealed that neither of them – both Arsenal fans – were alive when Arsenal won the title in 2004. As my weary bones turned to dust beneath my skin, I realised they were considerably closer in age to my son than they were to me.

This might therefore lend forgiveness to their team selection policy, which could only have been devised by an amoral child, and which unfolded in precisely the way it did when I was a kid; namely, two boys selected to pick players one by one from the group until two, ostensibly equal, teams are populated. The issue with this, quite obviously, is that it institutes a ranking system for every child on the pitch, kicking off a fun day’s football with a soul-destroying popularity contest for no reason whatsoever.

Yes, my son was one of the last picked, which made rational sense given he’d never played a football match before. And yes, my son didn’t appear to mind this at all, so I am likely overthinking the effects of this ruthless system and making it all about my own feelings. I am, doubtless, a soft, modern, overprotective dad, bringing his own childhood traumas to bear on something my son doesn’t care that much about. So, I’ll just say that the sight of him hopping on the spot, hands outstretched, pleading to be picked while being passed over time and again, made me want to shoot someone with a harpoon, and I’ll leave it at that.

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Malcolm Wilson @malcolmwilson01.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

I hated being picked last for every team at school. So, when I became a teacher, I insisted on picking teams myself, as randomly as possible, and ruthlessly suppressed any “Yes!” or groans when my selections were announced. I also created a ‘Sorting Hat’ macro-enabled spreadsheet for picking teams.

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Reposted by The Author, Séamas O'Reilly

Goldstein (still not a pseudonym) @goldstein.latinsky.app · 03/10/2026

How many local models do you run?

Pope Leo XIV
@Pontif... 17h
X
In this era of artificial intelligence, it is becoming urgent to distinguish human art from what machines produce. There is an ontological difference, even before an aesthetic one, between art and what a machine can generate through statistical calculation based on millions of images created by others. Algorithms lack th Show more
3.3K 162K 316K l 15M
Spectro
@Spectromachina
X.com
ث
Pope, would you please shut the fuck up about matters you do not understand? You're not an Ai influencer, no one elected you, and you have absolutely no weight in this debate and you're being used as a mouthpiece to sway public opinion. how many local models do you run?

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Gef the Toking Mongoose @geftokingmongoose.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

God this shit was cool as fuck

Still from the movie Jurassic Park showing a raptor with genetic code projected onto it

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The Author, Séamas O'Reilly @seamas.bsky.social · 14/01/2025

By far the funniest part of this insane post is that even the maniacs who believe this stuff are so media-pilled they refer to it as a 'leaked photo'. As if God, CEO of Heaven Studios, had included it in a press kit for awards season, but embargoed it til January 27th.

Tweet by Nandi showing a bizarre snowy(?!) fantasy city under a dark, cosmic sky, along with the text;

"Leaked photo of heaven is going viral on social media. No wonder Christians are so determined to get there.

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David Timoney @fromarsetoelbow.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

The term British originated in the concept of empire (initially with the subjection of Ireland). It survived both in the fiction of the British Commonwealth and the postwar "British Subject" (as distinct from the Citizen of the UK). It has long functioned as a way of avoiding ethnonationalism.

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Phil McDuff @mcduff.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

It's incoherent because it's a backfill. They haven't sat and worked this out from first principles. It's just: the conclusion I want to reach is "it's ok for me to be racist," so what chain of reasoning do I need to put in front of it to get there?

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The Author, Séamas O'Reilly @seamas.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

And, as I wrote over a year ago, this kind of ethnographical skull-measuring will always lead to outright racism and - in the attempt - utter absurdity. www.irishexaminer.com/lifestyle-co...

When, this week, the Telegraph printed a rabidly scaremongering report that “White British people will be a minority in 40 years”, they clarified this cohort as “the white British share of the population — defined as people who do not have an immigrant parent”.

Leaving aside how garbled that formulation is — there are millions of non-white Brits who meet that definition perfectly — it carried with it a parallel consequence. I myself do not have an immigrant parent.

In fact, every single pale and freckled ancestor of mine since 1800, Irish farmers to a soul, was born and raised in something called the United Kingdom. This is true for a large number of Irish people in the North. And since the late Prince Philip was himself a Greek immigrant, it gives me great pleasure to point out that they’d settled on a definition of ‘White British’ which includes Gerry Adams but excludes King Charles III.

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The Author, Séamas O'Reilly @seamas.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

And, as I wrote over a year ago, this kind of ethnographical skull-measuring will always lead to outright racism and - in the attempt - utter absurdity. www.irishexaminer.com/lifestyle-co...

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The Author, Séamas O'Reilly @seamas.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

It's particularly obvious when you try to port this worldview onto any national category which doesn't have an arbitrary, secondary catch-all. What would the Irish equivalent of this even mean? "You're not Irish, of course, but we'll let you call yourself Hibernian if you like"?

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The Author, Séamas O'Reilly @seamas.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

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The Author, Séamas O'Reilly @seamas.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Aside from everything else, all this "non-whites can be British but not English" stuff is very obviously just...moving words around? It only sounds like a distinction because "English" just happens to have the more nebulous word "British" nearby, but both are very obviously racially neutral terms??

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Chris Addison @mrchrisaddison.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Decades ago, I needed to change a bulb in one of the lights on my first car. In the index of the manual I had no luck looking under 'b' for 'bulb', nor 'l' for 'light'. In the end, I was reduced to reading through the entire thing until I found it under 'h' for 'how to change the bulbs'.

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The Author, Séamas O'Reilly @seamas.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

There was also loads of AI! Lots of posters with that inimitable slop house style, and a video in which a doctor and a nurse - both AI generated - advertise the NHS app. Quite dispiriting.

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The Author, Séamas O'Reilly @seamas.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

If you're in my GP's office any time soon, prepare yourself for what many are calling the greatest mnemonic of all time. Come for E and P, but sit down and clap for I.

A screen in my GP's office advertising a mnemonic of signs to spot SEPSIS.

S slurred speech of confusion
E extreme shivering or muscle pain
P passing no urine all day
S severe breathlessness
I ot feels like you are going to die
S skin mottled or discoloured

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Nick Pettigrew @nick-pettigrew.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

In a script you'd get this back with a red line through it asking you to tone it down.

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The Author, Séamas O'Reilly @seamas.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Yeah, I think of something like the increasingly clanking "subtext is for cowards" satire of The Boys, which was so heavy handed it made it basically unwatchable for me, and then stuff like this makes that look like Jonathan Swift.

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Reposted by The Author, Séamas O'Reilly

Colin Harvey @cjharvey1.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Anyone in public life who does not understand what the Garvaghy Road means to every strand of the nationalist/republican community in the North does not deserve to be taken seriously.

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The Author, Séamas O'Reilly @seamas.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

It was proven, without doubt and to massive global fanfare, that even the best chess player who ever lived could not beat a machine. Totemic, worldwide news! And then everyone immediately realised it was about as meaningful as realising no one could beat a wall at tennis, shrugged, and moved on.

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The Author, Séamas O'Reilly @seamas.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

The gold standard for AI Art would be making the artistic equivalent of DeepBlue; a victory that forever changed chess, one so famous everyone still remembers the machine's name 30 years later. Aaaand then never watched Deepblue play again, while human chess is more popular than it has ever been.

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The Author, Séamas O'Reilly @seamas.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Not at all, I can see how you inferred that - happy to clarify!

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The Author, Séamas O'Reilly @seamas.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Those arguing for mass-adoption of AI art always seem intent on proving the wrong thing; that AI tech will change beyond all recognition. They seem less inclined to prove their argument's much wilder claim; that human nature, and all previous modes of taste, emotion and investment, will change too.

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The Author, Séamas O'Reilly @seamas.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

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The Author, Séamas O'Reilly @seamas.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Yes, I'm making that point. eSports is MASSSSIVE even though every single tournament **could** have been two computers playing against each other at a "higher level of play" than with human players involved. But no one would watch that. No one would even suggest it. It's asinine.

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The Author, Séamas O'Reilly @seamas.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

It's easy - and correct! - to focus on just how ghoulish and profane this view of human creativity is. But even if you're the most cynical capitalist on earth, the evidence that people would enjoy entirely dehumanised content, at anything like a scale that would justify this hype, is extremely thin!

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The Author, Séamas O'Reilly @seamas.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

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The Author, Séamas O'Reilly @seamas.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

We've had the ability to watch, say, Counterstrike marathons, Street Fighter tournaments, or chess matches between computers since the 90s. Spectacles which, by their very definition, would be at a "higher standard" than human play. And nobody wants it. It's entirely meaningless. It has no appeal.

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The Author, Séamas O'Reilly @seamas.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

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The Author, Séamas O'Reilly @seamas.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Every time a discourse kicks off over whether AI music, literature or art will be "as good as" the real thing, I'm always amazed more people don't cite that **there already are** creative pursuits where human-free spectacles have been available for decades, and nobody has ever wanted to watch them.

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The Author, Séamas O'Reilly @seamas.bsky.social · 15/03/2026

The formatting of this Beckett quote does still represent resilience and determination, just of a very different sort.

A neon light art piece of Samuel Beckett's famous quote "I can't go on. I'll go on" but spaced - it would seem inadvertently- so that it reads "I can't goon. I'll goon".

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The Author, Séamas O'Reilly @seamas.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

If Anthropic would like to give me $12.6 billion in order to receive $4.6 billion back, I'd like to make it known that I have a gap in my schedule that could work well for both of us.

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The Author, Séamas O'Reilly @seamas.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

It led to a minor diplomatic when Bill visited Yorkshire and was denied snakebite by a barman who mistakenly believed it to be illegal. (It *is* illegal to serve in Scotland - both parts must be poured separately and the customer charged with mixing them). www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/7107410...

thenorthernecho.co.uk

Good morning Mr President

BAR staff were ready to admonish a cheeky customer for banging on the door ten minutes before opening time yesterday lunchtime.

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The Author, Séamas O'Reilly @seamas.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Looked into the drinking habits of US presidents recently (mostly because I find it odd, and oddly unmentioned, that Obama remains this century's only only non-teetotal US president). Anyway, from that I learned that Bill Clinton drinks only rarely, and that the only drink he enjoys is... snakebite.

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John Allison @badmachinery.com · 28/09/2026

The same glass I had to do some research on the origins of "snakebite and black" for this comic, and find out when it emerged. Wikipedia said it was popularised in the 1980s but like power-ups in video games, every time I thought I'd found the earliest instance, I then found an earlier one.

badmachinery.com

The same glass

I had to do some research on the origins of "snakebite and black" for this comic, and find out when it emerged. Wikipedia said it was popularised in the 1980s but like power-ups in video games, every time I thought I'd found the earliest instance, I then found an earlier one.

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The Author, Séamas O'Reilly @seamas.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Was regularly said about both GWB and Clinton, one a recovering alcoholic who hasn't drunk since 1986, the other so sensitive to alcohol he rarely drinks at all (barring snakebite!). Trump's teetotality is fairly famous, I think? Less so the fact that Biden has never had a drink in his entire life.

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The Author, Séamas O'Reilly @seamas.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

thenorthernecho.co.uk

Good morning Mr President

BAR staff were ready to admonish a cheeky customer for banging on the door ten minutes before opening time yesterday lunchtime.

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The Author, Séamas O'Reilly @seamas.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

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Circ @tinyicecat.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

This news is important because all the fucks out there actively attempting to wreck the world want you to think that the work is hopeless and just mitigating the worst case scenario. It's not. Fucking keep going.

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