iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Ouch. Send me a few quid for gas and I'll drive it down!

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And it always looks like it was printed on copier paper!

Ashmolean Museum, Oxford @ashmoleanmuseum.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

Reposted by Steve Bowbrick

This atmospheric woodblock print was made by Hiroshige in 1857. This artwork was greatly admired by Western artists in the late 1800s and was even being copied in oils by Vincent van Gogh in 1887. ☔️ Sudden shower at Ōhashi Bridge, Atake, Hiroshige Utagawa, I (1797 - 1858), 1857. EAX.4740

A woodblock print of Sudden shower at Ōhashi Bridge by Hiroshige Utagawa I.

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I love these stories but there's always something that came earlier. Innovation is a ragged edge, right? I've seen at least half a dozen other candidates for 'first filmed dialogue', including one from the 1910s!

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By the way, if you'd like the Koolhaas, £20 to you! :-)

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This killer's killer sweater has killer cuffs!

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Ha, but how about Killers killers? I mean Ava Gardner in The Killers? (look at those ultra-wide cuffs!)

Ava Gardner lies on a bed reading a newspaper in 1946 film noir The Killers

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He was unaccountably included in the recommended accounts list WAY BACK and accumulated millions of followers as a result. I don't know if I can plausibly connect that with his current status but you never know!

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Yes, that one. He was a BBC 5 Live presenter at the time..

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I'm still on Twitter. Honestly still quite useful, especially these days, now that it's all AI. Lots of interesting voices, not just from the accelerationist/EA loons.

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Do you remember when Richard Bacon was a recommended account for some reason and now he's a Californian media executive?

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I suppose you know that RNA covid vaccines given in the left arm don't work because of the clockwise structure of the molecules (I hope they advised you to stand on your head for ten minutes after the jab).

Certainly plausible. Do you remember that photo-op of Reagan with mujahideen in the Oval Office?

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It's such an innocent read - city as flows of capital, goods, migrants, data, consumers and so on. A market without a single enemy!

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Click the eBay links - some pics from inside. Many photos!

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Steve Bowbrick @bowbrick.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

I don't remember acquiring this album of voodoo trance music but I can tell you that the last time it was borrowed from Swiss Cottage library was 23 April 1986. ebay.io/m/UtjiWG

Cover of album called 'Voodoo trance music ritual drums of Haiti'

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It's a slab of hipster architectural speculation from before the end of history. An implausible Koolhaas Argos catalogue that feels like it could only have come from before 9/11… My Amazon order history tells me I paid £28 for this thing, just after 9/11. So, obviously, £28 to you. ebay.io/m/HalMrt

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Steve Bowbrick @bowbrick.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

Are these the best Elvis Costello singles? Six of them, from Watching the Detectives in 1977 to Peace in Our Time (recorded as The Imposter) in 1983 (all six for £20, btw). ebay.io/m/uk7p48

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Get this: the programme for a 1949 Cambridge Theatre musical revue called Sauce Tartare, which just happens to be one of Audrey Hepburn's earliest theatrical roles - she was in the chorus line and has a credit! ebay.io/m/sjJ2r4

Cover of a 1949 theatre programme for a West End revue called Sauce Tartare

So, hold on, Spizzenergi was the THIRD in the sequence of Spizz band names, coming after Spizz 77 and Spizzoil (also the first proper gig I ever attended, at the Bowes Lyon House in Stevenage). And 'Where's Captain Kirk?' was the band's first hit, reaching No. 1 in the indie chart. ebay.io/m/Woofyq

Bright yellow front cover of 1980 7" single 'Where's Captain Kirk'

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This Simon Linke catalogue is almost 40 years old. I was going to say that in those days he was known as the guy who painted meticulous copies of Art Forum ads but it turns out HE STILL IS. Something of the monomania and circularity of high conceptualism in this if you ask me. ebay.io/m/iur79M

Front cover of a 1989 exhibition catalogue of work by Simon Linke

Printed reproduction of a painting by Simon Linke

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My mother collected this kind of porcelain tableware. It's a set of six Villeroy & Boch art nouveau plate ladies! (and there's more of her china in my eBay listings). ebay.io/m/cjMVyc

Six plates decorated with art nouveau designs

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A comicbook written and illustrated by Studio Ghibli's Hayao Miyazaki himself! Nausicaä, part 1. ebay.io/m/LwnoES

Front cover of Nausicaä, a comicbook by Hayao Miyazaki

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Two novels by Trinidad's great Earl Lovelace, 'The Dragon Can't Dance' & 'Salt'. Lovely Faber paperbacks. ebay.io/m/7hrkJN

Front covers of two novels by Earl Lovelace

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Bagged and sealed in a pink polythene wrapper, a special edition of The Face - the Sex issue - from November 2000, a bit of a golden age, for this and other magazines, in design terms, I think you'll agree. ebay.io/m/AKuH4w

Cover of the Face from November 2000 - the Sex issue

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A commercial Super-8 release of James Whale's extraordinary 1933, pre-code Invisible Man. Silent and only eight minutes long. This is how we used to entertain ourselves in the 1970s. Seriously. ebay.io/m/GyJYTi

Cover of a super-8 release of The Invisible Man

A splendid 1990s remaster of a 1981 Suicide gig - Ghost Riders (including a second disc of early rehearsals that sounds like something from a kind of downtown inferno). ebay.io/m/4hPirI

Front cover of a CD by Suicide called 'Ghost Riders'

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When Kitaj and Bacon were asked to choose their favourite works of art from the National Gallery in London - two lovely 1980s catalogues. ebay.io/m/FOsXI0

Two National Gallery exhibition catalogues

Steve Bowbrick @bowbrick.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Join me on a journey through the shit I'm selling on eBay. 1. 20th Century classical music on vinyl. Seven period LPs - Ligeti, Mahler, Berio, Janáček, Schoenberg, Cage… ebay.io/m/VzBCKR

Grid of classical albums for sale on eBay

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I know what you mean! Feels like it belongs to Napoléon's own period, right?

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Steve Bowbrick @bowbrick.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

To get the set you'll want the 'What would Robespierre do?' mug, with with inscrutable face of Edmond Van Daële as l'incorruptible (in his signature dark glasses): www.redbubble.com/i/mug/Napol%...

Mug featuring the face of Edmond Van Daële as Robespierre in 1927 film Napoléon

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Steve Bowbrick @bowbrick.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Is it possible that the greatest film ever made is almost 100 years old? Acquire for yourself a Napoléon mug, with a red-tinted still of the fabulous Albert Dieudonné as early-career Napoléon. www.redbubble.com/i/mug/Napol%...

Simple white china mug with a design from 1927 film Napoléon

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Reposted by Steve Bowbrick

Moby Dick @mobydickatsea.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

oil is a sliding thing

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Steve Bowbrick @bowbrick.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

It's what local objectors called Stevenage, the first of the UK new towns, begun in 1946. I can sell you a lovely t-shirt: www.redbubble.com/i/t-shirt/Si...

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Steve Bowbrick @bowbrick.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

If we actually get around to building any of the seven proposed new towns in Britain, can we call one of them SILKINGRAD?

Railway station sign put up in Stevenage in 1946 that reads 'SILKINGRAD'

Steve Bowbrick @bowbrick.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

Listen, don't think I don't appreciate this, but did Thelma and Louise strictly FLY AWAY?

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Steve Bowbrick @bowbrick.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

It's this fella's birthday. I mean Napoleon Bonaparte, not beautiful, wistful Albert Dieudonné, who played him in Abel Gance's gorgeous 1927 five-and-a-half-hour epic. Anyway, for the day that's in it, here's one of my favourite essays, about the film: bowbrick.substack.com/p/gross15-19...

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Steve Bowbrick @bowbrick.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

I need you all to understand that A BIRD ECLIPSED OUR ECLIPSE

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Steve Bowbrick @bowbrick.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

Also, it must be pretty good ladder…

Steve Bowbrick @bowbrick.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

The other thing to remember is that this is no longer a British firm - sold to BMW years ago. So this vehicle is a kind of amped-up, hyper-camp Beemer for crypto billionaires.

Internet Archive @archive.org · 01/08/2026

Reposted by Steve Bowbrick

🌐 On World Wide Web Day, we’re celebrating the Wayback Machine’s milestone of archiving more than 1 trillion web pages, preserving decades of the web we’ve built. Explore decades of web history with the #WaybackMachine: web.archive.org #Wayback1T #WorldWideWebDay @mark.bsky.social

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Steve Bowbrick @bowbrick.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

I feel like it's a response to the market. The aristocrats and plutocrats who used to buy them have all moved on (or died). They sell these things by the hundred in China, Gulf states...

Steve Bowbrick @bowbrick.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

@cynderness.bsky.social @olchefdan.bsky.social I just discovered (via the Wikipedia entry for 'movies that feature flying cars' obvs) this implausibly sassy 1906, effects-heavy flying car movie that honestly looks like a pretty direct inspiration for all these movies!