iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Pete Birkinshaw @binaryape.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

A serious work email vs my brain's reaction

Text saying: "Action: adopt SBOMs and dependency controls, and strength network resiliency" SBOMs are Software Bill of Materials, a list of the software used inside, or by, your software.

Tom Jones on an old Sony CRT TV singing "Sex Bomb"

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Pete Birkinshaw @binaryape.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Evri are testing delivery robots in Barnsley

A photo (I assume) of a two-legged, wheeled robot with a blue box on top heading towards a suburban house

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Pete Birkinshaw @binaryape.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

MAN VS TOFU 2: In this shockingly graphic sequel to the original hit video (8 likes) I molest some Chinese supermarket firm tofu to show how it differs from big chain supermarkets' firm tofu. It wobbles! You can cook things other than stir fries with this. Warning: Explicit thumbing

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Pete Birkinshaw @binaryape.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

*wiggles eyebrows conspiratorially*

BBC story about the RAF Fairford arrests is right next to one about Trump's diesel export ban, which mentions diesel prices rising in the UK.

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Pete Birkinshaw @binaryape.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Graffiti is social media and this one is quite Bluesky-ish

Street art mural of a woman with long black curly hair, looking up, framed by either a frilly orange and yellow curtain, the aurora borealis or something abstract. Two people have written on it...

Someone has used a black marker pen to write "Jesus wasn't white LOL!" on the mural...

To which someone else has replied "It's not Jesus..."

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Pete Birkinshaw @binaryape.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Matcha, mochi and red beans as a selling point made up 50% of my purchasing decision

A Japanese frozen dessert that looks like a green cat's paw, on a small white plate

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Pete Birkinshaw @binaryape.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

MAN VS TOFU / Old Man Shouts At Tofu I've grumbled here before about how UK supermarket brands of firm tofu have been getting firmer and firmer over the years and are now becoming unpleasantly dense, so to support my complaints here's a video of me trying to crush a block. #ToughTofu

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Pete Birkinshaw @binaryape.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Oh I've collected one of these too

A Sankey diagram with added droopiness: it shows the protein calories going into meat from plants, and the human-consumed calories coming out of meat production. Beef only converts 3% of input into output

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Pete Birkinshaw @binaryape.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

My other Korean cheesey actor favourite is Ahn Suk Hwan

Ahn Suk Hwan, an older man rocking a goatee and waxed moustache and 70s jacked says "I'm the team's sugar daddy"

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Pete Birkinshaw @binaryape.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

I didn't expect Apple to be be able to enshittify their autocorrect/suggestions any more but they've managed it

Apple's shitty "AI" says something stupid by not understanding what I meant, although to be fair my grammar is a bit casual and loose, as this is social media.

Apple's shitty grammar "AI" tries to replace a Korean surname, even though it has an initial capital letter, because after all what is the non-American world if not an error to be corrected, eh?

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Pete Birkinshaw @binaryape.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Me, watching episode 1 of a a K-drama: "Should I continue watching this?" * Kim Won Hae appears * Me: "I will watch this"

A photo of Kim Won Hae, South Korean actor. A middle aged man with a cheeky smile. A character actor good at comedy.

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Pete Birkinshaw @binaryape.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Post a pic of a TV show that's named after your mental state

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Pete Birkinshaw @binaryape.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Update: They've fixed it, I wonder if other people had complained

Original headline saying that climate change "likely" played a role

New headline: they've deleted the word "likely"

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Pete Birkinshaw @binaryape.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

I think you can actually see the seam here between what the BBC journalist wrote, accurately repeating the statement of the expert, and where the editor watered down the headline

BBC headline is "Climate change likely played role in Nepal-Tibet flood, study finds" - note the "likely"

The first actual paragraph of the story says "There was absolutely no doubt that human-induced climate change played a role here in the preconditioning of the disasteri, said Dr Friederike Otto, a climatologist at Imperial College London who co-authored the study." Note the "absolutely no doubt", which is quite different to the likely in the headline

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Pete Birkinshaw @binaryape.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

That has reminded me of this old graffiti

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Pete Birkinshaw @binaryape.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Philips have this advert for an "intimate razor" in which a woman who appears to be about to shave her armpits winks at someone or something much lower down in the bathroom. Cat? Person in a bath? Someone sitting on the toilet? Anyway it's a little odd

A young woman with bare arms by a bathroom mirror winks at someone on the bathroom floor before turning to the mirror

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Pete Birkinshaw @binaryape.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

I can't read "unlimited tourist tax" without picturing this

Darth Sidious or Emperor Palpatine or whatever in one of the Star Wars prequels is doing his electricity from the fingers trick and shouting "Unlimited Power!" but I've written "Unlimited tourism tax" instead.

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Pete Birkinshaw @binaryape.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the Sam Altman?

Paragraph from an article about actor saying that a film about The Peasant's Revolt has a message for today's billionaires. An American pastor was looking forward to it, but now thinks it sounds like "socialist garbage". Presumably he thought the peasants were libertarians

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Pete Birkinshaw @binaryape.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

The Times: Activists who brought Dover to a halt on Saturday were ‘very polite’, say fellow travellers

A photo of Oswald Moseley in his 1930s science fiction fascist uniform phase. I've very roughly pasted an image of the three women who were taking gleeful selfies with a bunch of modern fascist thugs on a train

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Pete Birkinshaw @binaryape.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

"You're reading a post online that says that you don't always need to reply. You feel a strange urge to reply and disagree, by inventing a moral high ground for yourself, and you do so."

The Voight-Kampff test in Bladerunner, intended to detect synthetic humans

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Pete Birkinshaw @binaryape.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Mentions of Andy Burnham in a pub will always make me think of this Fast Show character

Indecisive Dave from the Fast Show - a man in a pub, t-shirt and leather jacket, who will say one thing then immediately change his mind when challenged

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Pete Birkinshaw @binaryape.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

English ghosts are usually something like “A gray lady walks from this room to that room, then looks out of the window. If you see her you get quite a shock”. Indian ghosts are like:

Hemmalati
When seven pregnant she-buffaloes AND seven pregnant human women all die at exactly the same moment, a Balishtamar called Hemmalati comes into existence.* This spirit takes the shape of a human woman with a single breast. She lives in dense jungles.
If a man should happen to encounter a Hemmalati in the forest, the Hemmalati will ask him for some betel-leaf and betel-nut to chew. When the man hands it to her, she pretends to accidentally drop it to the forest floor. As the man bends to retrieve it for her, she removes her huge breast from her blouse and flops it onto his head. At this moment the traveler gets struck with a frightful panic. He runs back home as fast as he can, but once he gets there, he is stricken with fever. At night he dreams horrifying nightmares, and soon he begins vomiting blood.
The intervention of a spiritual healer may save the afflicted person from a quick death. But it is said that no one who meets the Hemmalati will survive longer than three years, even with the best efforts of the most skilled doctor

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Pete Birkinshaw @binaryape.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Just registering my I Told You So that Milo Yiannopoulos would be writing in The Spectator as soon as he got back to the UK.

Two Bluesky posts I made last week saying Milo would end up writing in The Spectator

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Pete Birkinshaw @binaryape.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

This makes me wonder whether any of the LoTR games had elaborate cooking mini games

A screenshot of a Lara Croft game where she is looking up potato soup recipes on a phone while in ancient dangerous ruins or somewhere like that, but I've pasted Sam from Lord Of The Rings over the top. He is saying Pot eight ohs.

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Pete Birkinshaw @binaryape.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

I can't skip the opening title sequence of '1670' because it shows this magnificent horse.

An anachronistic (for 1670) medieval illumination image showing a horse seen from the front. It's very badly drawn and looks like an embarrassed egg with spider legs. The horse's rider has collapsed on the ground, and another knight, mounted on a horse drawn elegantly from the side, is pointing a lance.

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Pete Birkinshaw @binaryape.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

I was hoping that 1Password would admit to making a mistake and change course, but sadly no. Backing a notorious racist's project was deliberate, it's official policy.

Hello Pete,
Thank you for reaching out and sharing your questions and concerns about our decision to become a corporate patron of the Omacom Foundation. We value the relationship we have with you, and we want to respond thoughtfully and openly about the purpose of this commitment and how we're approaching it at 1Password.
At 1Password, we support developer and open-source communities because they're an important part of the ecosystem our customers rely on. We have a long history of supporting open source projects, including the Linux, Rails, and Rust Foundations. We chose to support Omarchy because it is a growing Linux environment that developers use and value, and because 1Password already had a meaningful presence in that community.
Contributing to the Omacom Foundation is intended to support hosting infrastructure and provides stable, long-term funding for the upstream open-source projects and maintainers on which Omarchy depends.
We recognize that Omarchy is closely associated with its founder, and that raises questions about what our support means. Our contribution is made to the Omacom Foundation, not to an individual, and is not an endorsement of any individual's personal or political views. 1Password does not endorse hateful, dehumanizing, or exclusionary views.
The patronage is also separate from product decisions. It includes no requirements or guarantees related to product placement, exclusivity, endorsement, or roadmap influence.
We understand that this explanation may not change how you feel about our decision. We take all feedback seriously and share it with the appropriate teams.
Our commitment to the security and privacy of our customers remains unchanged.
We're grateful for the trust you place in 1Password.
Hugues Mackay
Director, Customer Support

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Pete Birkinshaw @binaryape.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

Hah, I had this chat message from a friend earlier today

An image of Liara T'Soni from Mass Effect on WhatsApp, with the message "Your space girlfriend", I reply "Space WIFE please"

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Pete Birkinshaw @binaryape.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

The original post now shows as blocked. The fact remains that Roman Catholic cardinals sometimes dress up as bubble gum machines.

A red bubble machine, which looks like a cardinal

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Pete Birkinshaw @binaryape.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

I really like those big round courgettes

Batman, the best version, is running around trying to throw away a bomb. The bomb has had a big round courgette pasted over the top by me.

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Pete Birkinshaw @binaryape.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

I did work experience for 3 weeks in Argos at Christmas in 1996. Still the hardest I've ever worked. The experience got me my first job. Absolutely well worth it. I was taught a lot.

The white haired, long bearded prisoner chained up on the prison wall in Monty Python's Life of Brian

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Pete Birkinshaw @binaryape.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

Tim Curry was the obvious main inspiration for Ivankov (ahem) in One Piece (who is now voiced by the same actor who played Kaneda in Akira, trivia fans)

Ivankov in One Piece, wearing a leotard and fishnets, a crown, a fishnet cape, purple hair and a huge head. Makeup and smile is all very Tim Curry in Rocky Horror

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Pete Birkinshaw @binaryape.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

If you have a shop full of tasty food why not take a photo of the actual food? I know food photography is surprisingly difficult but it's still easy to take a better photo than whatever sort of slop this is

"AI" slop of a sandwich containing what looks like colourful boba and maybe chilli crisp sauce? The bread has a disturbing alien crumb, maybe like a thin, impossibly sliced croissant. This sandwich has never existed.

An actual sandwich from the same shop, taken home and heated up in a microwave. It's leaking oil. It's deepfried, so may be a different sort of sandwich to the one that's illustrated by the impossible "AI" sandwich. There's a blob of sweet aubergine pickle. I spent 3 seconds taking a photo with a low-end phone and still looks better than the "AI" slop.

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Pete Birkinshaw @binaryape.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

A regular reminder that Rowling is not a unique titan of young adult fiction sales, or even just of sales figures.

A section of a wikipedia table showing that One Piece is about to pass Harry Potter in sales (and is already much more popular)

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Pete Birkinshaw @binaryape.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

Oda is still writing and sales are increasing

A wikipedia table showing fiction authors be estimated sales: Shakespear, Agatha Christie, Barbara Cartland, Danielle Steel, Haron Robbins, George Simeon, JK Rowling, Eichiro Oda (the One Piece writer), Enid Blyton at number 9, and so on. Oda and Rowling have roughly the same sales (600 million for Oda, 600-650 million for Rowling)

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Pete Birkinshaw @binaryape.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

I woke up talking about a dream in which I was looking for an underworld killer, a woman in a suit, called Kingfisher, and then an hour later read a review of a new K-drama about a female hitman called The Kingfisher.

Korean actor Kong Hyo-jin playing Kingfisher in 'A Bona Fide Killer'. She's wearing a suit jacket and pointing a gun

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Pete Birkinshaw @binaryape.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

Naanchos (tikki poori are the tortilla chips)

A metal plate of tikki poori (crispy fried pastry, a little like tortilla chips, Indian) with pickles and creamy blobs. I have not added the tamarind sauce. It's mimicking nachos and I think some Mexican spice mixes are involved

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Pete Birkinshaw @binaryape.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

I was part-way through using Kagi Translate to look up the Japanese for liar (relevant to my next post) and... I don't think this is correct

Kagi Translate, with both sides set to English - one generic, one UK, says that "liar" in UK English is "wanker"

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Pete Birkinshaw @binaryape.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

South Korean media is promoting unrealistic beauty standards

A news item about a Korean actress on top of a news item about slimming drugs - photo of the face of the actress Ha Young is above a stock photo of a woman injecting a weight loss drug (only stomach and chest shown) so it looks a bit like a huge head on a small body, maybe. I don't know.

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Pete Birkinshaw @binaryape.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

Here's one to convert. 1.8 litres of soju for 5900 won, but it's also available in 3.6L bottles. (I've found all my photos from last year)

A shelf in a South Korean grocers with huge bottles of cheap booze. Not bad stuff either.

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Pete Birkinshaw @binaryape.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

And here it is - I screen-grabbed it so I could translate it "Due to the recent dry weather, the risk of wildfires is very high. Even if you start a wildfire by accident, you can face up to 3 years in prison or a fine of up to 30 million won. [Seoul Metropolitan Government]"

An alert on an Apple Watch, in Korean. "최근 건조한 날씨로 산불 위험 이 매우 높습니다. 실수로 산 불을 내더라도 3년 이하 징역 또는 3천만원 이하 처벌을 받 을 수 있습니다.[서울특별시]" - Due to the recent dry weather, the risk of wildfires is very high. Even if you start a wildfire by accident, you can face up to 3 years in prison or a fine of up to 30 million won. [Seoul Metropolitan Government]

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Pete Birkinshaw @binaryape.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

Squinting at the second one, I can just about make out the words "Ash nazg durbatulûk, ash nazg gimbatul, ash nazg thrakatulûk, agh burzum-ishi krimpatul"

The writing on The One Ring, from The Lord of The Rings, in some language Tolkien made up, and very fancy, as Sauron was keen on maintaining his calligraphy skills back then

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Pete Birkinshaw @binaryape.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

On impulse I bought a packet of 4 frozen kakiage, not realising they were meant to be deep fried or air-fried but managed to cook them in 1cm of oil in a little saucepan. Then made burgers with them.

Two kakiage (sort of vegetable tempura burgers) somehow both soggy and burned, in oven bottom buns with mayo and kimchi on the top.

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Pete Birkinshaw @binaryape.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

We were watching an NHK travel programme about Lyon today, and after a market stall vendor cut open a loaf of bread to show it was mostly hidden sausage, A. shouted out "Like maultaschen? You are hiding your sausage from God!" at the TV.

Three small tin-baked loaves of white bread. Or so it seems

A loaf has been cut in half, revealing that it's mostly a big sausage inside

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Pete Birkinshaw @binaryape.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

I recently took photos of all the food in my kitchen before some rearranging (and after a rather neglected year) Salt, MSG, vinegar, mirin, etc, Korean and Japanese and baking things are elsewhere, and something horrible had happened to the garlic). There are bigger bags of most in a cupboard

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Pete Birkinshaw @binaryape.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

All I can think of is financial stuff: *very* fast connections to stock markets and things. In the UK in the past we tended to build smaller, older-style data centres in big cities because only cities had good network infrastructure, but for big companies like Amazon that's not an issue now

Amazon data centres are in Didcot, Bracknell and Swindon

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