iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

My hand-wavey view of this is that there is a low, but non-zero, risk of something like the Kessler Syndrome, but for computing

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James Monk @twoev.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

My observation about the triple lock is that the claim that it’s the lowest pension in Europe is not true and extremely annoying and childish. The UK state pension is a safety net - we can argue about the level - but It’s not supposed to be compared to a contributory occupational pension

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James Monk @twoev.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

This is a correct take. I did appreciate his recent interview in which he specifically called out Hinton when he said a few years ago that there will be no need for radiographers by now

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James Monk @twoev.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Seeing all the policy wonks explaining how Burnham is right to pump house prices up and thus make me poorer because developers can‘t make money if property prices fall makes me want to yeet my phone across the room

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James Monk @twoev.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

The freezing of the tax thresholds is exactly the policy to reverse the Osborne tax cuts though. They are literally doing it. The optics of raising the base rate are terrible, and if you raise the upper end it isn’t broad based and makes the problem worse. Freezing is the solution, slowly

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James Monk @twoev.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

I’d unfortunately, and amazingly, have to swap Bohnson and Sunak in this list. Bohnson was the only one who didn’t get fully brain-wormed by migration

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James Monk @twoev.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

When I was a post doc we used to (semi-) jokingly say it would be less work and more transparent if they simply rolled a dice to determine who gets the grant. The monkey paw sure did curl on that one!

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James Monk @twoev.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Pangram is itself a type of AI model, so this is a bit hypocritical at best - if we are to judge people for thoughtlessly using models, that also applies to detection. LLM writing style is IMO quite similar to that of a politician; deliberately bland and making very repetitive arguments

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James Monk @twoev.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Listening to Go! by Public Service Broadcasting and it is interesting how any song can be improved by the simple act of mixing historic NASA CAPCOM audio into it. A few other bands have done this and I know it's kind of PSB's thing

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James Monk @twoev.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

What’s actually wrong in this picture? Too many cars, a pot hole, unkempt front gardens. There are loads of streets in London suburbs still like that and the houses would cost £3-400k. The main takeaway is that cars ruin urban design

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James Monk @twoev.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Sorry no, pumping £25Bn into HTB at a time of weak economic growth is a misallocation of capital. That money could and should have been used to encourage growth. The basic premise of austerity was to put home ownership (low interest rates) ahead of economic growth (needs borrowing)

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James Monk @twoev.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

I am by no means going to support an austerity budget, but there is something sinister about this counter point. There does appear to be a “give us money or we vote for the fash” voter block, and I think the government should, and eventually will have to, stand up against it

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James Monk @twoev.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

This is a correct take, and it also needs to be understood by the people who are making funding decisions about science. The biggest reason to fund research is to develop the people, not the research findings mathandai.org

mathandai.org

Declaration — Math and AI

Read the declaration and add your name.

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James Monk @twoev.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

The Navier Stokes thing. Apart from the main controversy, I think that if you broadly know where a solution lies and then you spend $10M+ to launch 10,000 separate threads to explore the solution space it demonstrates marshalling an impressive amount of compute, but I don’t think it is intelligence

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James Monk @twoev.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Are they going to bomb the Moon again instead of funding science? History really does repeat itself

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James Monk @twoev.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Why is it that if there were a by-election in some reform-y town they would be “legitimate concerns,” for the PM to deal with, but when it’s London then the “left vote” is just an annoyance getting in the way of policy?

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James Monk @twoev.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

This is the dumbest idea I have heard. You are proposing to pay young people £13.5k for a year’s work, and they don’t even receive it as cash. What exactly are they supposed to live on during this year of “volunteering.” “We can solve social care if only people work for free”

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James Monk @twoev.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

Drivers kill ~1200 people a year. They are very dangerous machines and many of the people who drive them are not responsible. We would not tolerate this for any other technology. They also make you poor and unfit. It is intrinsically bad and they are the biggest scam of the 20th century

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James Monk @twoev.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

Went hiking across the Icelandic highlands. 5 days without phone reception or electricity, can recommend it. Took some nice photos. This is on the way down from Bláhnjúkur at Landmannalaugar

A ridgeline of multicoloured volcanic hills in light and shadow

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James Monk @twoev.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

One notable thing here is that Ed Balls is casually wasting a single use plastic bag. I don’t think that would happen today, and that’s actually an improvement

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James Monk @twoev.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

Gone to see the total eclipse and some volcanoes. Feels a bit like a Tintin cartoon

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James Monk @twoev.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

The lockdown discourse makes me so angry. It was obvious from the beginning that every single person on Earth was going to get covid, and that is what happened. The idea that we could prevent that happening was you lot all going mad and pretending you could avoid that fate

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James Monk @twoev.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

There’s an interesting sub-narrative in football that the purpose of financial regs is to benefit the “big 6” - only London and the NW (though somehow not Everton). It mirrors a lot of the political malaise. Newcastle fans in particular are salty that their rich owners can’t just buy the league

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James Monk @twoev.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

A nice use case for AR would be to look at a bus and it overlays the route floating above it. There are valid uses, they just won’t be prioritised

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James Monk @twoev.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

You do occasionally see kingfishers in the Lea Valley, but I would love it if we got otters, that would be amazing. They are incredibly elusive though

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James Monk @twoev.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

The FT wants to nationalise the Tesco clubcard and apply it to everything. We’re through the looking glass people

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Tamsin Edwards @flimsin.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

I've been off socials for 2 years, but have to speak up. Utter madness to defund this flagship institution of UK science + education. International research, UNESCO-level heritage, training physicists (inc. me in 2000), inspiring public w/ visitor centre and bluedot festival. We must #SaveJodrell

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Laura Laker @lauralaker.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

I'd personally love to see tackling annoying exhausts on more political manifestos. It strikes me the only people who would vote against this as a standalone issue are the ones behind the wheel of the annoying vehicles. Everyone is a winner 👌

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James Monk @twoev.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

Don’t want to be the person taking photos at gigs, but these are actually good

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James Monk @twoev.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

The discourse saying that 50k is a house deposit is well out of date. Average FTB deposit in London is well over 100k

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James Monk @twoev.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

The new Mono album - Snowdrop - is pretty good. An actual album you want to listen to whole as a coherent thing like in the old days

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James Monk @twoev.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

FML I actually cannot cope with that proposition "It is necessary to destroy the UK's fundamental research capabilities in order to reverse Thatcher." It's literally the battle of Bến Tre

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James Monk @twoev.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

Sounds bad to me. Politicians can’t and shouldn’t pick what research is interesting, and this completely misses that the main reason to do basic research is to produce trained people, not the research findings themselves

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James Monk @twoev.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

This is reminiscent of the 1990 final

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Stephen Bush @stephenkb.bsky.social · 18/07/2026

The first step to successfully fighting this stuff is - do you understand it is all equally insane, race is not real, and that racially abusing someone because they are French is no more or less insane than any other form of racial abuse?

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James Monk @twoev.bsky.social · 18/07/2026

This is true, and the more revealing question is what is the break even price on this new oil? Will it even make any money?This is just a performative populist policy to own the libs rather than a seriously considered financial proposal. Very bad way to do policy

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James Monk @twoev.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

It's worse than this. Issuing more North Sea licenses is not a serious policy and is not engaging with the world as it actually exists. It is a performative policy to address an imagined world created by lobbyists. If Burnham U turns this, as is reported, it's a strong early signal he'll be a bad PM

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James Monk @twoev.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

This would make an amazing end to the World Cup when one of the teams in the final - inevitably Spain - comes down with this Come to think of it, was this what Rice had before the Norway game?

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James Monk @twoev.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

The core problem was that England’s passing was not good enough to keep the ball. In hindsight, maybe taking Rice off and bringing Bellingham deeper as an outlet from the press would have been the right change, with Watkins to run onto through balls. The passing still was not quick enough though

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James Monk @twoev.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

Spence was played out of his natural position of right back in this game. Also, he doesn’t usually start at RB for Spurs because of Pedro Porro - MOTM in the other semi. BTW Spurs finished 17th last season and barely avoided relegation with these players. Football doesn’t make sense

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James Monk @twoev.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

Don't think France had a shot on target. Spain controlled the game again

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James Monk @twoev.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

The commentator should use his full name, which is Tottenham Hotspur’s Pedro Porro

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James Monk @twoev.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

I don't really understand why cancelling net-zero is considered a right wing position. It's just a position that is paid for by oil and gas lobbyists and doesn't make any intellectual sense. Are they saying that being manipulated by lobbyists is a fundamental part of being right wing?

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James Monk @twoev.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

The correct policy solution to this is that every time someone is killed by a car, we select a car of the same make and model at random off the street and crush it

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James Monk @twoev.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

England V Argentina: This is a grudge match over historical colonialism Spain V Argentina: hold my beer

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James Monk @twoev.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

Everyone is talking as if France already made the final. Spain (mostly) controlled the game against good Portuguese and Belgian sides without too much trouble. It’s quite possible they may do the same to France!

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Sam Joiner @samjoiner.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

Fascinating, beautifully written magazine cover story by @samlearner.bsky.social on how vibe coding is overwhelming the unsung human caretakers who keep the web running. Your weekend must read right here as.ft.com/r/1e761e4c-c...

as.ft.com

Who cleans up after the vibe-coding party?

Our obsession with AI code-writing tools is overwhelming the web’s unsung human caretakers

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