iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

The Jeremy hardy line on 1970s teachers “the younger ones were all acid casualties from the 60s and the older ones were shell shocked from the war” comes to mind.

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Adam @adamcobb.bsky.social · 13h

The change since the 2010s is that Twitter was the sort of anteroom that drove a lot of mainstream media discussion that the masses engaged with. It’s now totally detached from the way most people engage with news and that’s part of why it’s cooking the brains of a lot of ’elites’.

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Adam @adamcobb.bsky.social · 23h

PIP is an example of this. The claims process is a bizarre mix of patronising, frightening and bureaucratic and it’s very difficult not to conclude that it was designed this way to save money. There will be people claiming now who didn’t before because AI and Reddit advice enable it.

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Adam @adamcobb.bsky.social · 23h

This is a really good post especially because it doesn’t just fall into the ‘AI is bad‘ trap (while correctly hitting on a lot of the problems) but points out that a combo of AI, Reddit and Martin Lewis has basically broken demand management via friction.

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Adam @adamcobb.bsky.social · 23h

This site isn’t as immune from stories that confirm people‘s priors going massively viral as people think. The same with that chart of Yandex bot traffic which does not show what everyone claimed it did.

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Adam @adamcobb.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

Yeah I don’t think that was ever going to fly (and it shouldn’t, as much as I hated the outcome).

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Adam @adamcobb.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

Two of which are in motorway service areas in Northern Ireland. Because of course!

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Adam @adamcobb.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

One of the biggest problems with Rowling is that the general public’s belief is that she’s said a couple of slightly mean things on Twitter. If this documentary casts light on what she’s actually been doing (a big if I admit), then it could be very useful.

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Adam @adamcobb.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

The mass importing (not just to the UK but several other places too) that you could legal your way to the good outcome without having to really bother with political lobbying and education has been a disaster.

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Adam @adamcobb.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

Close school friend of mine has gone deeply down the far right rabbit hole (to the extent of sharing Rupert Lowe stuff on LinkedIn…). Our residual friend group tried for a while but eventually just let him drift off. He moved to Denmark (using the last gasp of FoM 🙄) which made it easier

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Adam @adamcobb.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

The mad king stuff has also protected us from some of the worst excesses of the movement though because he doesn’t follow through on a lot of things and has the ‘does this violent immigration crackdown make me look fat?’ thing that others in the movement don’t.

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Adam @adamcobb.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

Would be an improvement! Last time it was sold for €1

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Adam @adamcobb.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

The ’upside’ is that things are moving at a rate where I think they’re far less likely to keep the ball in the air through late 2028 than I did 6 months ago.

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Adam @adamcobb.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

The only way to return to ‘normal’ is to put a lot of people in jail and ban others from holding office. Stability cannot return if every 4 years we have to pray that the Americans don’t elect someone insane and dangerous.

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Adam @adamcobb.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

My doom scenario is basically Trump somehow gets away with it through late 2028, the Dems sweep everything and then the bill comes due, they become enormously unpopular through no real fault of their own and we get this but worse In 2032.

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Adam @adamcobb.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

If the brief is ‘do everything you can to find out the answer to that question’ then they’re doing a great job!

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Adam @adamcobb.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

Discovering that following a good diet, drinking less and going to the gym have made me healthier and happier has been weirdly depressing. I WANT there to be one weird trick that doctors don’t want me to know!

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Adam @adamcobb.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

Trump likes strongmen and wants to be one of them hence the love for Putin, Xi, MBS, Kim Jong Un etc. The only through line there is the absolute power, not any political philosophy.

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Adam @adamcobb.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

I think I recall that column and it was even worse because said person had just come up to him because he loved the columns in general, hadn’t seen the nasty one and so the first he knew of it was the mumbled, staring at his shoes apology.

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Adam @adamcobb.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

It is, but a lot of people in similar positions fail to clock that it has happened and become ridiculous as a result.

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Adam @adamcobb.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

The thing that interests me with this is Hyde has (completely understandably and I admire her for it) always kept her personal life very much off limits in her columns and Guardian output. That gets harder to do in this type of space where you are very much the product.

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Adam @adamcobb.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

Yup. I think he was also just very clear that his angry Guardian/Screenwipe persona just looked increasingly ludicrous as he climbed that ladder and he had to get off. It was also just a very 2000s thing, in terms of where the tech inflection was as much as anything else.

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Adam @adamcobb.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

You see I don’t mind the podcast much because I find the technical explanations of why stuff happens in the industry interesting and that’s what I go in looking for. Osman is clearly a man who has never seen a fence he won’t sit on but he’s aware of they and doesn’t promise anything else.

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Adam @adamcobb.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

Agree on Hyde though. She can be a phenomenal writer but the quality definitely declined a bit the last few years having been excellent during Brexit and COVID. Lost in showbiz worked better.

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Adam @adamcobb.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

Even the Kermode and Mayo spinoff has been less good than it was at 5 Live. There was something about the need for it to live in the bubble of a wider radio station that made it better

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Adam @adamcobb.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

The fact that we are where we are. Trump is giving needless concessions to Russia and inventing ceasefires and there is no word of a congressional attempt to impeach is just complete breakdown of the system level failure.

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Adam @adamcobb.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Absolutely nothing personal about her but being a black, female, Muslim, hijab wearing MP who came to the UK as a Somali refugee Is not a route to being low profile in the UK of 2026 (again, this is not her fault and is a stain on this country’s failure to contain racist bigots)

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Adam @adamcobb.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

This is the loss really and I don’t know how you get it back. Part of the joy of Radio 4 is (although in my case, increasingly ‘was’) hearing a documentary or show about something you’d never ever have clicked on. Will never forget one about barbed wire of all things I heard about 15 years ago.

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Adam @adamcobb.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

There’s also the side factor that there are a lot of flows there that would look like London-Paris because the person didn’t book a through ticket but the flight they would have taken instead would’ve been MAN-CDG or BHX-CDG etc.

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Adam @adamcobb.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Big question is are you leaving the Schengen? If not, you can probably make it from the centre. If you are, be at the airport at least 2 hours in advance, so you will absolutely want to be at the airport.

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Adam @adamcobb.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Again, for someone who sees herself as so strong and realistic, her approach to foreign relations just refuses to engage with the world that exists. i still don’t understand what our approach to China would be under the Tories and that’s a real problem.

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Adam @adamcobb.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

I could be wrong but I think the UK is a bit of an outlier in Europe in so much of our package delivery still being to the door? Finland is basically all to your nearest supermarket (either a locker or counter pickup) now

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Adam @adamcobb.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Honestly both she and Starmer are endlessly fascinating as answers to the question ‘why did we get this sort of politician in the early 2020s?’ Conversely, Burnham, for all the ‘Flip flop’ allegations has landed on exactly what I’d expect a politician of that background in 2026 to be like.

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Adam @adamcobb.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

She isn’t bothered by coming unstuck like this, which is what I find the weirdest bit. I have occasionally busked things that I shouldn’t have but tend to panic and overcorrect when I’m found out (and hence, do it way less now). It doesn’t seem to impact her at all.

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Adam @adamcobb.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Eddie Mair was supremely good at this and we are poorer for him having retired.

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Adam @adamcobb.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Finally convinced my dad to chuck the CPC 464 plus (none of that fancy floppy disk nonsense for him) when he moved in 2023.

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Adam @adamcobb.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Me with my Bluesky mutuals.

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Adam @adamcobb.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

As someone planning to make a 50 minute connection at Copenhagen airport tomorrow that involves crossing the Schengen border, I’m feeling this right now.

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Adam @adamcobb.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

A part of the ‘Singapore on Thames’ stuff which always seemed underplayed to me was the ‘on Thames’ bit. Yes, I can see why that model works for London but, while it very much wasn’t its choice, part of the reason Singapore works is that it doesn’t have a Malaysia attached to it anymore.

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Adam @adamcobb.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

It is just the symptom of the era. The job was to get through the referendum, even at the price of making it impossible to actually do anything with the result.

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Adam @adamcobb.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

There are serious people who think that Britain’s vulnerability to drone/missile attack is an issue, and it’s not completely mad, look at the ‘dark fleet’ Russia likes sailing around the Channel and North Eea. The problem is I’m not convinced from this announcement they’ve taken any of that onboard.

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Adam @adamcobb.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Glee. The first season (maybe just the first half of the first season) was sharp, fun and genuinely different (and as a gay teenager at the time, important). Then it absolutely bought its own hype and became very ‘message of the week’ and the writing fell off a cliff.

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Adam @adamcobb.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

These are all great points Kemi. Have you considered adjusting your approach to fit them in any way whatsoever?

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Adam @adamcobb.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

I try not to go too far into ‘if Labour did this‘ posting territory because it’s very ‘water is wet’. But this is absolutely true. If Burnham flatly contradicted his own press release and there were experts saying his cost estimate was out by a factor of 8, he’d be in real trouble.

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Adam @adamcobb.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

*an American with British food takes* and *any British person*

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Adam @adamcobb.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

It just feels a bit stopped clock. They happen to have an offer that appeals to a group they should want to win, but they’re still unwilling to engage with who these people actually are. bsky.app/profile/adam...

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Adam @adamcobb.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

I just really struggle to take her seriously when she does things like this. The combination of belligerence. and not being on top of the detail just disqualifies her from the job she is seeking.

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Adam @adamcobb.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Kemi’s level of busking it has ascended to ‘not reading the press release she’s on the broadcast round to discuss’

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Adam @adamcobb.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

I go back and forward on Whiplash. I love it, but I’m very aware that it is a movie that needs to keep barrelling along at 500mph to stop the audience going ‘wait a second, none of these motivations make sense?’

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Adam @adamcobb.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Keeping the triple lock and seriously upping defence spending and cutting taxes on business and high earners and paying for it with welfare cuts and efficiencies just feels like incredibly wishful thinking. They may win an election but it’d be Starmer/Reeves 2024-26 all over again surely?

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