iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Tim Smith-Laing @timsmith-laing.com · 7h

Just got an update from my son's nursery. Was playing with a boat. Then told his teacher, 'When the mutiny starts the blood will run into the sea.' He will be four at the end of this month, and presumably a pirate not long after.

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James Austin @jamesdaustin.bsky.social · 12h

As always the right miss the importance of a functioning state and services to enabling growth and the private sector. A nation with crumbling infrastructure and a sick, ill educated population isnt an attractive proposition for investment

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Tim Smith-Laing @timsmith-laing.com · 14h

Which will, of course, be AI slop. Has to be.

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James Austin @jamesdaustin.bsky.social · 14h

Simple solution: just don't do it. The US desire to find 'clean' ways of killing people is ultimately to try and absolve themselves of what they're doing: killing people. There is no clean and morally pure way of taking a life - and particularly not of someone whose entirely within your power

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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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Phil Tinline @philtinline.bsky.social · 21h

Doctor Who has described the BBC's new AI-generated director general as "pretty good", and suggested that the technology now enabled the creation of content "at the standard of an unimaginative man who spent years working at McKinsey then Google".

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Tim Smith-Laing @timsmith-laing.com · 30/09/2026

Obvs this is horrible, and honestly there are consumers who will eat it up. But what's clearer and clearer to me is the way in which tech bros fundamentally fail to grasp the role of friction and difficulty in cultural pleasure.

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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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Tim Smith-Laing @timsmith-laing.com · 25/09/2026

Not pro-natalist or anything but I think people with kids should be getting an extra weekend every week. Kids themselves should have only one weekend. Or maybe none. Yeah.

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Alex von Tunzelmann @alexvont.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

If only we had a culture secretary, etc

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Tim Smith-Laing @timsmith-laing.com · 24/09/2026

I have thought about this strip - I tell no lie - almost every day since I first saw it. Every time I feel, as a journalist, that I know my topic, it pops into my head.

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Chris Bertram @crookedfootball.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Heard at café: “toi tu es au tele-travail, moi je suis à la tele-retraite.”

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John Harris @johnharris1969.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

1)how to create an illicit fags & booze economy run by spivs that'll deprive the Treasury of tax revenue 2)you don't get people "back to work" by making their lives impossible (note cut of a third to long-term benefits). It makes the problem worse 3)you bastards

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Jay Zedbee @jayzedbee.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

genuinely is shabana mahmood alive? do we have a home secretary? are there laws? is this the purge from the movie the purge? is crime now legal? can we shit on the street? can we ransack an m&s? is this just a fucking free for all?

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Tim Smith-Laing @timsmith-laing.com · 23/09/2026

Personal record of taking two hours to do the 12 minute journey from Norwood Junction to London Bridge.

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Tim Smith-Laing @timsmith-laing.com · 23/09/2026

I speak from personal experience when I say that itv detective shows *really* come into their own when you have a new born baby. Comfort at exactly the right cognitive threshold.

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Tim Smith-Laing @timsmith-laing.com · 23/09/2026

If you're wondering about the state of British trains our driver this morning has used the phrases 'Keep the faith' and 'You can trust me', and 'Come back aboard, you know it makes sense.'

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Tim Smith-Laing @timsmith-laing.com · 23/09/2026

Very flattered to have been invited to judge the Edgar Wind Essay Prize this year in the illustrious company of Martin Kemp and Jennifer Higgie. edgarwindsociety.co.uk

edgarwindsociety.co.uk

Edgar Wind Society

Oxford University Student Art History Society

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Tim Smith-Laing @timsmith-laing.com · 23/09/2026

Don't even mention the Tetons.

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Tim Smith-Laing @timsmith-laing.com · 23/09/2026

Lots of people on here this morning smugly pointing out Shakespeare didn't speak Old English, but thinking Chaucer did. Like telling people the plural of octopus is octopi. *shakes head with infinite sadness*

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Pete Fraser @petefrasermusic.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

I mean, for the millionth time, if the UK home office can proscribe pro Palestine activists for criminal damage, why can it not proscribe this fake cockney guy’s organised street fascism movement? The lack of action looks, at worst, like endorsement.

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Tom Hunter @onelifestand87.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

I’d ask if the Home Secretary was waiting for the murders to start except I’m not convinced even that would make her do the basics of her fucking job

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The Empty City @davidallengreen.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Just as well those committing wrongs against the RNLI are not holding placards supporting a proscribed organisation, else they would really be in trouble.

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James Chalmers @jameschalmers.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

It would be absurd, but entirely fitting with the UK response so far, if Thomas ended up being prosecuted by the French authorities while the UK continues to look on meekly.

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Ursula K. Le Guin Bot @leguinbot.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

The danger in trying to do good is that the mind comes to confuse the intent of goodness with the act of doing things well.

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Caroline Dodds Pennock @carolinepennock.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Ditto 30,000 roles in universities in the past three years.

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Jay Zedbee @jayzedbee.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

i genuinely think about this every time theres any mention of narnia. one of the funniest things that have ever happened

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Helen Barnard @helenbarnard.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

All of this feels totally dissonant with political and media narratives. It feels incredibly difficult to have a serious conversation about resourcing the state, reforming tax etc when so many of the assumptions underpinning current discussions are just not true.

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Smooth Dunk @smoothdunk2.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

when ai leaves u behind

7 panel comic.

Panel 1:
A Red Guy with AI across his chest looks like he’s about to run away. A Yellow Guy stands next to him. Red Guy says “I’m the future, buddy. You comin’?”
Yellow Guy replies “Nah”

Panel 2:
Red Guy is almost out of the panel. He leans in and says “Enjoy getting left behind, pal”
Yellow Guy replies “ok”

Panel 3:
Yellow Guy stands alone.

Panel 4:
Close up on Yellow Guy, there is a quiet “huff-huff-huff” noise coming from behind him

Panel 5:
Yellow Guy turns to look behind him

Panel 6:
Close up on Yellow Guy’s face as if from the point of view of an attacker.
Yellow Guy yells “Jesus Christ”

Panel 7:
AI Red Guy is now chasing the Yellow Guy.
Red Guy: “Use me”
Yellow Guy “No”
Red Guy “USE ME”

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Tom Reagan’s Hat @rufustsuperfly.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

My fave Kubrick anecdote - David Prowse on acting in A Clockwork Orange: 'So you want me to carry Patrick Magee, who weighs 17Olbs, plus the wheelchair, another 30lbs, so 200lbs, down the stairs & then do a dialogue scene?' 'Yeah, you can do it.' 'I know but your name isn't One Take Kubrick, is it?'

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Benjamin Dreyer @bcdreyer.social · 19/09/2026

“I use Claude only to check the grammar” is truly the “just the tip, I promise” of writing.

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REwadent Evil @ewacat.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Ultra-Rich Person Who Needs You To Respect His Special Interest So He Can Play With It More is not a good information resource sorry

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Josh Shepperd @joshshepperd.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

The professors and instructors who turn classrooms back into spaces for reading and discussion, are going to leave the biggest legacies in this world. Everyone one else will disappear into LLM wallpaper proxies and derivatives.

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Thomas I-G @thomasig.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Still can't get over this. Imagine genuinely believing Donald Trump possesses such geopolitical genius, then imagine your job is to keep abreast of current affairs for a national broadcaster *including hosting a podcast about American politics*

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Anya @heyanyahere.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

It always Ukraine who needs to do something, to withdraw somewhere, to give something up, to accept the situation and so on and so on. Russians don't need to do anything. Those damn Ukrainian warmongers, who don't want to die quietly!

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Sarah Murphy @13sarahmurphy.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

All the money in the world won’t make Reform’s moronic policies workable. It won’t make their people less racist or idiotic. It won’t sort out their ridiculous egos or end the investigations. It won’t make the majority of us loathe them any less. In fact, the money may well bury them. Let’s hope so.

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Duncan Weldon @duncanweldon.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Even leaving any politics at all aside: as general rule, no state can allow a group of masked men to be able to close down critical infrastructure. This is basic stuff.

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cones @coneshotline.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

nandy pulled off the scam of the year lol like imagine pleading for your job all ooh you don’t understand i was blocked from doing what i wanted to do and then going back to snoring in a hammock

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Simon Kővesi @kovesi.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Colin Burrow, defining literary criticism, brilliantly, in the LRB: @lrb.co.uk

In the LRB, Colin Burrow writes:

But to return to the point of it all. Literary criticism is primarily about learning to read very complex creations and situations carefully. That requires a willingness to think and rethink, to take a thought and run with it until it either ceases to be viable or (ideally) generates its own internal impetus. It requires accepting that sometimes you get it wrong and that sometimes other people get it wrong. It makes you pull together a whole range of messy human bits and pieces, from autobiography to philology to counting lines and underlining letters and seeing almost invisible patterns, through histories of individuals and of peoples. All of this can go towards understanding the way a poem might cohere or interestingly not cohere. You’ve got to be bold sometimes in pushing a point and sometimes you’ve got to be humble about things you can’t see or haven’t seen. There’s a dash of politics, or more than a dash if you want that, and there could be a dash of religion too, if that’s your thing. But there has to be a great measure of self-awareness, about where you stand or sit or the corners into which you have been pushed by where you come from. Literary criticism is a supremely occasional skill, where you have to be bold enough to operate where there aren’t any clear rules and make up your own, and decide for yourself what you think, and maybe set that beside what other cleverer people have thought. Someone else might come along and see it differently, but if you’ve made them argue with you then you’ve done something worthwhile. If that doesn’t have a point to it, just in itself, then probably living doesn’t have a point to it either, because making ad hoc judgments on the basis of a mosaic of information and misinformation about people and about what you should say on a particular occasion, even a difficult one, is what we all need to do every day. Literary criticism is like the mess of life, an exercise in tact and understanding.

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Rev. Poppy Haze 𓅋 @poppyhaze.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

The Zenith "Space Commander" was the 1st TV remote control and used no batteries. Each button cocked and fired a hammer into 1 of 4 calibrated metal rods of different lengths which generated an ultrasonic tone like a tuning fork. The TV had a microphone to listen for it.

The Zenith Space Commander remote control showing the tall plastic buttons, and the front has a grill to let the sound escape.

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Amanda Wong @amandawtwong.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

No, babe, I NEED the $200 Le Creuset Star Trek shuttlecraft casserole dish for my banana bread.

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ProfAFinlayson @profafinlayson.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Stephen Bush, in the FT today writes that Labour “has now produced two governments whose response to acts of thuggery and intimidation is to reiterate that perhaps the thugs have a point”. A key question of political analysis is why Lab (and/or the British state) can’t/won’t be more decisive (x/?)

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Peter Geoghegan @petergeoghegan.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Andy Burnham seemed to do a social media video at the drop of a hat - so why the silence about the masked mobs on the street?

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