iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Ben Litherland @benlitherland.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Crisis in reviewing etc etc, but you can't ask for a 10 day turn around for a peer review on the first day of freshers week, let's be serious now.

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Ben Litherland @benlitherland.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

I find it funny that despite the England team being a genuinely cosmopolitan group of footballers, with sophisticated training, and playing around the world, there is still a deep part of their souls screaming "Johnny Foreigner don't like it up 'em, get it in the fucking mixer".

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Ben Litherland @benlitherland.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

It's a real head fuck how badly r/UKPolitics has become a far right space. I see popular views expressed on there you'd have only seen on StormFront twenty years ago.

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Ben Litherland @benlitherland.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

The best era of streaming is when they gave you a free one month membership and didn't care when you signed up again from the same IP address with a new email every month. Every new feature has been downhill since then.

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Ben Litherland @benlitherland.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Of all the things that have changed in the material organisation of universities, I do have to pinch myself sometimes that like senate used to be like an actual, honest to god, democratic structure that could hold VCs responsible or ask for them to step down or stuff.

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Ben Litherland @benlitherland.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

I can't remember which British wrestlers, which British light entertainers, and which 00s pop punk/emo/indie bands were sex pests or not.

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Alex Says Stuff @alexsaysstuff.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

The operative word in "Protect our women!" is not "women" but "our".

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Ben Litherland @benlitherland.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Is substack the one run by Nazis? Is there one that everyone is using that isn't run by Nazis?

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Ben Litherland @benlitherland.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Dropped my jacket potato with beans and cheese (classic, sophisticated, autumnal, mature) on the floor so had to air fry some oven chips with beans and cheese (unsophisticated, immature).

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Ben Litherland @benlitherland.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Reading + Leeds lineup and vibe this year confirms, once again, that Daphne and Celeste won.

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Ben Litherland @benlitherland.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

Closest thing we get to peak Twitter Cameron fucking a pig is collective finger wagging about national alerts about BBQs.

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Ben Litherland @benlitherland.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

Vaguely related point, but I oversaw someone on a train Google search "how frequent are trains running from Bristol to Bath on a weekday" or some other very long winded way of asking the question, and then only looking at the AI returns. Click your train app and see when the next one is, please.

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Ben Litherland @benlitherland.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

It always amazes me during an academic scandal how little people understand about qual work and its role in knowledge production, but how loudly they criticize it.

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Ben Litherland @benlitherland.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

I fear we judged Trump too harshly for looking directly at the eclipse.

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Ben Litherland @benlitherland.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

The really fucking dystopian end of days type climate change news got here quicker than I was expecting, to be quite honest.

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Ben Litherland @benlitherland.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

While we are investigating academics promoted with very little quality or impact in their research, can someone tell me how Stock reached professor at Sussex with their pre-transphobia scholarship?!

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Ben Litherland @benlitherland.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

This whole Arday mess feels as much, if anything, as the logical endpoint of the academic ⭐superstar⭐ system. It's never been good or healthy for anyone.

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Amanda Mull @amandamull.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

They’re calling it the most theater kid story of all time

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Tom Roberts @tpgroberts.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

No, I don't think I will.

Trending

1. Eric Adams
2. Israel Politics
3. Rod Liddle

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Ben Litherland @benlitherland.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

Maybe businesses need to start actually paying to train their own workers rather than decrying the fucking fact that students don't know exactly how to do the job you're hiring them for.

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Ben Litherland @benlitherland.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

I might start dressing exclusively like a mid- to late-20th century masked professional wrestler because every look fucking rocks.

Tiger Mask in leopard print shirt and flared jeans.

Mil Máscaras in patterned shirt and white jeans.

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Ben Litherland @benlitherland.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

@amosmurphy.bsky.social I've never shouted at a football podcast so much as me shouting that you've got to be having soybeans for the tofu.

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Ben Litherland @benlitherland.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

I've also been surprised by how little appetite there has been for anything resembling a liberal arts model, not just top down but from colleagues as well.

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Ben Litherland @benlitherland.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

If they hadn't completely destroyed British cultural studies, there would be whole conferences dedicated to vaping cultures in just completely unhinged ways. None of these white papers on the culture industries (but not how Adorno meant it).

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Ben Litherland @benlitherland.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

It's very good having a one year old because she finds everything I do funny. I danced to the coffee machine noises, huge reaction, comedy genius. I assume this state of affairs continues forever.

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Ben Litherland @benlitherland.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

In a world of AI slop, it's kind of refreshing to see the type of take that could emerge from the id of some of the world's most unhinged people promulgated in the dying embers of conservative print news.

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Ben Litherland @benlitherland.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

What would it say about the psyche* of someone who claimed to believe they were about to birth an era of universal abundance who took a detour to cut global aid in the present.

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Ben Litherland @benlitherland.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

I refuse to believe that independently everyone in the UK just decided to start using "picky bits" like they'd always called food that.

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Ben Litherland @benlitherland.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

Live action Moana is so bad it makes The Rock look like he was miscast for his own role.

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Ben Litherland @benlitherland.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

Andrew Tate isn't wearing those flamboyant clothes because he's secretly queer or because he has no taste, he's working heel and knows that you'll hate him more for wearing them. He's an evil piece of shit, but he understands the game better than most commentators.

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Ben Litherland @benlitherland.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

Burnham is far from perfect, but a huge chunk of sensible reaction to him is that the government is the source of all the country's problems, but that no government could *ever* solve these problems.

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Ben Litherland @benlitherland.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

Messi's late era heel turn about as enjoyable and considered as John Cena's.

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Ben Litherland @benlitherland.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

It's so frustrating how good the sporting product FIFA offers is because everything else is fucking atrocious.

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Ben Litherland @benlitherland.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

I've lived through a decade of club and country having the best ten years either will ever have and it's still pain outweighs pleasure. It's a hobby for fucking sickos.

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Ben Litherland @benlitherland.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

Bit weird to use this as a self-promotion strategy, but Rachel and I wrote about the cultural platform politics of wildfires and this sort of thing.

The Las Vegas skyline from Blade Runner 2049 vs the Toronto skyline from right now.

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Ben Litherland @benlitherland.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

Those moor fires are making the whole of Manchester (the north west) smell terrible. No one warns you that global warming will make everything smell like it's on fire (I think they did actually).

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Ben Litherland @benlitherland.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

I think it's very telling that the more technological sensitivity they add to football (VAR, ball impact readers) the more intensive conspiracy theorizing gets.

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Ben Litherland @benlitherland.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

Says everything you need to know about the OfS that they've been unlawfully hounding universities demanding trans hate speech while literal honest to god defrauding of student fees was happening in plain sight.

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Ben Litherland @benlitherland.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

The "let's not get weird about this, lads (we are going to get weird about this)" anxiety of drawing Germany or Argentina in a semi final.

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Michael @mykl.sparkle.blue · 11/07/2026

Imagine living in a world where this was incomprehensible. “Farage accuses Deep State of assassinating Ann Widdecombe to stop her helping him fight off election challenge from Count Binface in Clacton.”

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Ben Litherland @benlitherland.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

This woman is responsible for covering up the sexual abuse of multiple women in her organisation and very plausibly helped to cover up the murder of a woman. Bizarro world to pretend she is on the side of any survivor.

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Ben Litherland @benlitherland.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

The Lowe handgun stuff is so revealing. It's a direct importing of American obsessions into a political culture that frankly doesn't give a shit. You could send out a thousand journos to a thousand UK high streets to vox pop and not find a single right winger who'd independently raise gun ownership.

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Ben Litherland @benlitherland.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

I've said it before, but some of the Smithsonian DC museums are the best I've ever been to but laughably, from this cynical European eyes, US mythologizing and patriotic. Hilarious for the American right to go after them for not being conservative enough.

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Ben Litherland @benlitherland.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

I don't think there are any easy fixes in politics, but breaking up Amazon, Meta and Microsoft would be a pretty easy win.

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Julie S. Lalonde @julieslalonde.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

Once again : What women on the left already knew before the Epstein files + Platner is that men can imagine a world of class consciousness (Chomsky), a universe more expansive than ever before known (Hawking), a world where you can live forever (Attia) but not a world where women are fully human.

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Ben Litherland @benlitherland.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

Peak millennial hipster behaviour, but I bought a machine that lets you print any picture you want on a Polaroid so I made one of Cactus Jack at the IWA Kawasaki Dream.

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Ben Litherland @benlitherland.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

I normally find the Binface stuff annoying in ways I can never quite put my finger on, but the Farage stuff is admittedly pretty funny.

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Ben Litherland @benlitherland.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

I would like players to stop gesticulating at the crowd.

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