iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

How I arrived on Bluesky

Hercule Poirot, played by Peter Ustinov in Evil Under The Sun, opens his silk robe on a sunny beach, revealing his old style monogrammed one piece bathing suit.

If we want reviews, read reviewers who engage with the art, the stories and the ideas. Who minimize the language of ego, and of consumerism.

From the first year that websites with scores and comments, and later socials, became the place to discuss art they were immediately captured by industries and marketing.

At college in the mid 90s, alt-rock and Brit pop were everywhere, but the best guitar bands were Fugazi, Bikini Kill and Huggy Bear: none of whom did mainstream interviews, made vids or appeared on talk shows.

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As an 80s teen, Carpenter's The Thing was a life changing piece of art for me in so many ways, and is now widely accepted to be a masterwork. At the time it flopped, was mostly ignored or derided.

Andy Best @andybest.bsky.social · 23h

We should avoid choosing what to read or watch based on popular consensus, or star ratings/scores. How many viral reaction videos is YouTube pushing to your homepage for Gregg Araki's Mysterious Skin, or Claire Denis' Beau Travail?

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I am not sure how this general view fits with what happened with Corbyn and Momentum. When they made the get into power choices and Corbyn pulled the biggest post-war swing and looked set to win power next time GE, the establishment came down with a big veto.

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Andy Best @andybest.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

In the Thomas Covenant books he enters 'the land' after being hit by a car and leaves it ambiguous for a whole book, to make a thematic point about dreams and belief. But later, in my memory, there are in-world POVs that confirm it's real. It's 100% a riff on portal fantasy.

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Reposted by Andy Best

Death & Milk @deathandmilk.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

I can’t believe how much we have progressed as a species and we still have to dedicate most of our lives to our jobs. One life and most of it is spent generating wealth for other people. WHAT

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Reposted by Andy Best

Gabe @cwgabriel.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

There is no such thing as AI art.

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Cycling around the West Bund riverside development in Shanghai, by the Gate M Mall.

A futuristic plaza under a blue sky. Part of the West Bund riverside by the Gate M Mall. Shanghai.

Old concrete posts in the river, the remains of an industrial dock. Part of the West Bund riverside by the Gate M Mall. Shanghai.

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In the mid-80s I watched A Nightmare On Elm Street on VHS, when I was turning 13, just me and my brother in a darkened living room at night, no other distractions. I was 110% sure I was old enough to not be freaked out by movies. Lol, no.

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Lanterns stuck the landing and brought its themes and ideas to bear in a genuinely thoughtful way. No notes.

Andy Best @andybest.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

It's fully justified. The JKR thing is way over the art-artist line. She's alive and directly, currently, using the money to fund a terror campaign against a vulnerable minority.

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Joyce Carol Oates is wrong, but we left the old place to avoid QP dunking, dogpile, rabbit holes of rage and grievance. Her post in inconsequential, we all just got baited into ruining our own day, and all our mutuals' too.

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Andy Best @andybest.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

website/hosting companies charging extra for you to point it at your own domain name is wild

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Andy Best @andybest.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Exploring Wordpress (dot) com and wtf it is actually way worse a platform than when I was doing blogs during Web 2.0. Platform collapse is real.

Feel it. Although I'm not on a professional deadline, I have to get a novel draft done before Zero Parades For Dead Spies: Director's Cut comes out, or the progress will go down a hole.

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Random weird thought: Kriss Kross should have done a project with Kid n Play, and they would have had a four-Chris band.

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This is unhinged. UK Publishers hitting record high 7.4bn in annual revenue. UK authors' median income hitting record low of *half of the govs projected minimum livable wage* Very normal world.

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3 years into funding and defending genocide: I don't know, maybe this is too much genocide. 3 seconds later: no, let's mobilize national resources to go after student protestors and ruin their lives instead. [Nobel committee heads slow-turn]

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Super double long, long egg tart.

A row of 60 CM long egg tarts at the bakery, the name is funny if you can read Chinese: Chao chang chang chang chang chang dan ta

Andy Best @andybest.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

When the most powerful people in the world all think Curtis Yarvin is the smartest boy.

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Andy Best @andybest.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

The lyrics are covered under the published song's copyright and would need permission. Putting the title and the line together makes it 100%. Reviews get fair use of certain sized excerpts, but I'm not sure about in for-profit fiction.

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Andy Best @andybest.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Colorful directions under the Yan'an Road West Station viaduct in Shanghai. Morning walk past Tianshan Park.

Brightly painted area under the viaduct leaving Yan'an Road West station in Shanghai. Large colorful letters direct us towards the park or art museum nearby.

Andy Best @andybest.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Spaceships. Also support indie books, reposts are free.

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Andy Best @andybest.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

It should be obvious that any LLM use instantly destroys the contract between writer and reader, if you think writing is art. Conversely, if you write primarily to siphon money from capitalism, then it can help you slop bomb e-commerce. Choose one.

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Reposted by Andy Best

Weyodi OldBear- The Root and The Seed is available. @weyodi.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

There are many good things about writing your first draft out long hand. It reinforces engagement and connection with the work, helps focus, but also you will have proof positive that it's the work of a human, not AI. The biggest issue for me is where to put all the damn spiral notebooks.

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Andy Best @andybest.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

these are so good, check out the examples in the thread, I love the one for Isle of Dread, which I played with friends in my teens as part of the Expert boxed set.

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Trying to limit news-posting here. Also I present as an average Gen X bloke, so in case you've surfed in or seen my book, here is the regular reminder of where I stand on things.

A cute, pink backdrop with a lovely rabbit, and text over that says: Don't let anyone say fascist shit.

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You're literally an award winning author, all the doubters can get in the sea.

Re-reading Adorno's Dialectics of Enlightenment in my middle age to become a parody of myself.

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Paperback Paradise @paperbackparadise.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

[100+ people have said this elsewhere before me] Lanterns is a great, intelligent show that has been released in a time of horrific media illiteracy, shredded attention and bad faith take-havers.

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Reposted by Andy Best

reading a book is a great way to hang out with someone who is both dead and famous

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The Anthropic IPO is further evidence that capitalism has become the boogeyman version of 'Communism' that it warned against in the cold war. A tiny elite at the top centrally planning everything regardless of if it's profitable or practical, with a huge bureaucracy padding it just below.

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I'll take anything that is not EA

Capitalism has essentially become the boogeyman version of 'Communism' that it warned against in the cold war. A tiny elite at the top centrally planning everything regardless of if it's profitable or practical, with a huge bureaucracy padding it just below.

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(by thumbnails) Comedy Czar Comedy Jonestown Comedy Cataclysm

The second two are masterpieces and also pure horror