iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Mic Wright @brokenbottleboy.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

This was the hardest one of these so far. Nine books is simply not enough.

The 9 books I'll never forget
A selection by Mic Wright

ARTHUR NERSESIAN
The Fuck-UP

DONNA TARTT
The Secret History

PATRICK SÜSKIND
Perfume: The Story of a
Murderer

FYODOR DOSTOYEYSKY
The Idiot

MURIEL SPARK
The Ballad of Peckham Rye

PETER GODFREY-SMITH
Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness

HUNTER S. THOMPSON
Fear & Loathing In Las Vegas

WILLIE DONALDSON
Brewer's Rogues, Villains &
Eccentrics

EDNA O’BRIEN
The Country Girls Trilogy

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Mic Wright @brokenbottleboy.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

Suella Braverman selling 106 copies of her book after all that publicity is so delicious.

Crack 'em while you can, though, because Suella's star might just be on the skids. Despite plugging her book on Question Time, on Tim Shipman's Spectator podcast, in serialised excerpts in the Daily Mail, and in a fawning interview with Allison Pearson in the Telegraph, in its opening weekend, Patriot sold precisely 106 copies.

— from Ian Winwood’s New World piece.

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Mic Wright @brokenbottleboy.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

I put my feet up on the radiator and…

Bród, a white scruffy lurcher, sticks his head up under my leg and pokes it through. Looks ridiculous.

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Mic Wright @brokenbottleboy.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

A spectacularly correct YouTube comment beneath a video of The Fall playing New Big Prinz.

@stevenpeiper5538 • 2 yr ago
I don't think it's too grandiose to say what we have here is the summit of human cultural development and everything since has been an inexorable decline and descent into the abyss.

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Mic Wright @brokenbottleboy.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears.”

JULIET SAMUEL
Kemi Badenoch invites excellence back to the party
• NEW
Unapologetic embrace of dynamism and distinction shows the Tory leader is serious about moving on from mediocrity
Juliet Samuel
Wednesday October 07 2026, 6.50pm, The Times

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Mic Wright @brokenbottleboy.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

The 9 games that made me, for I am old.

The Curse of Monkey Island
Day of the Tentacle
Prince of Persia
MDK
SUPER MARIO BROS.
Street Fighter Il: Champion Edition
Sam & Max Hit the Road
Privateer
Syndicate
#My9Games

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Mic Wright @brokenbottleboy.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

The New York Times has *four* people bylined on this piece — its chief UK correspondent, national security correspondent, another international correspondent based in London, and a ‘global security’ reporter based in London — and… it’s a soufflé of speculation puffed up through hyperventilating.

An Iranian Threat, 3 Vans and a Phone Call: Behind the Mystery at a U.K. Air Base
A mysterious call last Sunday near a military base used by the U.S. set in motion a huge counterterrorism response and days of uncertainty in Britain.

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Mic Wright @brokenbottleboy.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

I hate this. Replies and quotes are disabled because the poster knows it’s crap. Musk is shit. Sagan didn’t say that. But he *did* write: “There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate… Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.”

A post from someone with the text: “I’m with Carl Sagan on this.” then an image of Elon Musk with the text: “"Mars is the
ultimate lifeboat for human
consciousness.
Expanding our footprint across the stars is an
absolute biological imperative to outlive the inevitable decay of earth."
ELON MUSK” alongside an image of Carl Sagan with the text: “"Abandoning a dying planet instead of
healing it is the ultimate hubris.
Escaping to the stars is just a
billionaire's fantasy to avoid cleaning up the mess left behind."
CARL
SAGAN”

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Mic Wright @brokenbottleboy.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Matthew Syed writes that there “should be more bouts of unemployment” in his latest column. Maybe the Sunday Times and Radio 4 can shitcan him to put that theory to the test.

There is nothing neoliberal about our culture of debt and bailouts
Andy Burnham’s analysis of the country is completely wrong. We should be waking capitalism from its coma

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Mic Wright @brokenbottleboy.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Right, I keep seeing this on here because it’s so deliciously memeable but… who says? Well, the ‘research’ that came up with this number was commissioned by Compare The Market. Yes, it’s slander of British seagulls by foreign meerkats.

UK NEWS
Britons lose £171
million worth of food a year to seagulls

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Mic Wright @brokenbottleboy.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

If you need labels in your ‘satirical’ cartoon, it is shit.

A weird image from the Tories’ Bayeux Tapestry parody showing John Healy as an archer shooting arrows a person labelled taxpayer.

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Mic Wright @brokenbottleboy.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Read this in the voice of a mob boss.

Melanie McDonagh
Leave Winnie the Pooh in his grave

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Mic Wright @brokenbottleboy.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

So, bunch of lads in vans with a fake version of the logo of a fuel company on them, caught with fuel but…

Fears of an imminent terrorist attack were downgraded when experts found fuel, not explosives, in the three vans the men were driving. Sources dismissed online speculation that they were fuel thieves.

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Mic Wright @brokenbottleboy.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

And you’re *sure* they’re patsy proxies for Iran and not, you know, fuel thieves.

Laurence Taylor, the national head of counterterrorism, said on Tuesday night: “Those vehicles have been subject to extensive examination, with the support of military assets and forensic experts, and we can confirm that no improvised explosive devices were found. However, a quantity of petrol was recovered.”

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Mic Wright @brokenbottleboy.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Choices are interesting. He was never going to say Gail’s, was he?

"We don't let people sell food that damages health"
•••
Um, someone needs to take him to a Greggs.

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Mic Wright @brokenbottleboy.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

God, yeah, whatever could lead you to speculate that they might be fuel thieves?

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Mic Wright @brokenbottleboy.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

This is a small thing but it illustrates just how little these flapping jaws care or know about the details. COBRA stands for Cabinet Office Briefing Room A.

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Mic Wright @brokenbottleboy.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

There’s really no such thing as an “ex-spy”.

Thursday 24 September 2026
I ran the CIA in Berlin. The Russians are about to make a big mistake
Ex-spy Joseph Wippl says the far-right AfD party's success may open an intelligence sharing 'can of worms', but thinks Putin's hybrid war will backfire.

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Mic Wright @brokenbottleboy.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Here’s that moment should you think I’m making it up:

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Mic Wright @brokenbottleboy.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

“Winning Time? Oh, kind of a new show. Very - very nice, Mic. A sly declaration of new classic status slipping into a list of old, safe ones. Very pussy!”

THE 100 BEST TV SHOWS OF THE 21st CENTURY
My Top Shows

Mad Men

Winning
Time: The Rise of the Lakers
Dynasty

GLOW

Peep Show

The Thick of It

This Is
England '86

Arrested
Development

The Wire

Succession

Adventure
Time

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Mic Wright @brokenbottleboy.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Now, imagine the response to a column asking why a Premier League team has a Jewish supporters group.

Michael Deacon
Why do Man Utd have a Muslim supporters’ group?
Sir Jim Ratcliffe must go, declares an organisation for the team’s Islamic fans. There’s just one thing puzzling

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Mic Wright @brokenbottleboy.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Cool. Any place that does one of these stunts gets a large fence built around it the very next day.

Brexit for Barnham? Second village weighs up ‘independence’ vote
Anger over plans to host asylum seekers in a nearby military site could drive Suffolk residents to follow Piddington in staging a symbolic referendum

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Mic Wright @brokenbottleboy.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Oh, that’s what it does, is it? Because I’m pretty sure it’s a dark money funded Petri dish for all those shitty little scrunched face commentators that keep flowing into the discourse.

William Yarwood, campaigns director at the Taxpayers’ Alliance, which advocates for lower taxes and government spending, said dependency on the benefit had become “endemic” in some parts of Britain.

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Mic Wright @brokenbottleboy.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

The fact that many of the people on UC are also working is not mentioned until way, way down in this Times story. Same for the detail that lots of previous benefits have been phased out and rolled into UC. But above all, the TPA is a pressure group funded by people who avoid and evade tax.

One in five adults are on universal credit
More than seven million people are claiming the UK's main benefit, including a million people in their twenties, Taxpayers' Alliance research says
• NEW
Daisy Eastlake, Political Reporter
Monday September 21 2026, 7.00pm, The Times

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Mic Wright @brokenbottleboy.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

BBC News using the term ‘snowflakes’ in a story that isn’t about weather conditions is a problem.

BBC News

Health
Young people aren't snowflakes - mental distress is rising, says head of official review

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Mic Wright @brokenbottleboy.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

The people of Cromer should chase her out with flaming torches and pitchforks.

Tucked away in the back of the bunker, you fight to catch the attention of the waiters. But for Cromer, I can see this is a new frontier - even on a Wednesday night, it is packed.

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Mic Wright @brokenbottleboy.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

She writes about Cromer — a place 143 miles from London — as though she had to yomp through mysterious jungles to reach it.

Fino review: A Wednesday in Norfolk and it was packed'
'This is a people-pleasing place with a people-pleasing menu, making all the right noises.

By

Camilla Long

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Mic Wright @brokenbottleboy.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Huge respect for whoever designed this ad for Springer’s open access journals.

discover_journals
• Expand story
•••
X
Normal and Abnormal
Scrotum
Mohamed A. Baky Fahmy
Editor
Springer
MOREMEDIA
PSYCHOLOGY'S
QUIET
CONSERVATISM
How a
Supposedly
Woke Science
Promotes Capitalism and Protects
Privilege
BRIAN M. HUGHES
Tolkien,
Race, and Racism in Middle-earth
Robert Stuart

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Mic Wright @brokenbottleboy.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

My gran knew my grandad for 78 years. It could have been longer if she’d ever gone to the other side of the town before then.

A sepia photo of my grandparents on their honeymoon to the Isle of Wight.

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Mic Wright @brokenbottleboy.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

The husband earns a massive salary. The wife stays at home.

A typical weekly menu in the Rousseau household includes toast, porridge with frozen berries and banana pancakes for breakfast and lunches of cheese quesadillas, cod fishcakes with pea puree, roast chicken wraps, cheese and Marmite pinwheels, cheese toasties and tomato soup. Dinners include spaghetti bolognaise, broccoli mac and cheese, vegetarian chilli with rice, Thai green curry, tuna pasta bake and butternut squash risotto.

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Mic Wright @brokenbottleboy.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

My retirement plan of crawling into a ditch and expiring is looking right on track.

We must start weaning the nation off the state pension
The triple lock is unsustainable and we all know it. Why not pay out at birth rather than in retirement? That’s the sort of bold move we need

Johanna Noble, Money Editor
Thursday September 17 2026, 6.00am, The Sunday Times

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Mic Wright @brokenbottleboy.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Logs generated by computer programmes are not thoughts. My list of people who would make excellent marks for a Three Card Monte scam grows longer by the day.

Will Stancil @whstancil.bsky.social • 1d
Yes, Als think. You can read their thoughts as they have them. Al companies hide the Al's thoughts because other Al companies might read them and use those thoughts to train their own Als. This is all very strange and astonishing science fiction territory but it's real.

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Mic Wright @brokenbottleboy.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

I used to be quite the snappy dresser.

A picture from the 1980s, a garden with flowers. In the foreground, a man in his fifties with blonde grey hair, in a green and cream jumper and khaki slacks kneels beside a small blonde boy wearing a white jumper, red braces, and blue trousers. They are holding a red flower between them. They are both smiling.

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Mic Wright @brokenbottleboy.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Still, this is one of the most laughable magazine covers ever created.

A black and white photo of Tom Cruise on the cover of GQ. He has one arm up clutching his hair, the other arm is holding the waistband of his jeans. He wears a black shirt open to show his chest and stomach and a pair of light blue jeans. He looks fucking ludicrous.

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Mic Wright @brokenbottleboy.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Michael just wanted to write about Sydney Sweeney‘s tits, didn’t he? The Left made him do it.

Michael Deacon
Sydney Sweeney's nude advert exposes the hypocrisy of the woke
Left
How come the 'my body, my choice' mantra doesn't apply if the woman looks like this?

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Mic Wright @brokenbottleboy.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Yes, LinkedIn, I certainly know of Allister Heath.

More people you may know
Jack Blackburn
Diary Editor at The Times
• 5 mutual connections
Connect
Allister Heath
Editor, The Sunday Telegraph at...
• 34 mutual connections
Connect

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Mic Wright @brokenbottleboy.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Usually, I use the newspaper archive to research things for my work. Today, I was wondering about the time I won a giant Toblerone in a supermarket competition and we had to smash it up with a hammer so I could share it out at school. That didn’t make the paper. But this did about two years before

Big treat
• NATASHA and Jonny Crusky of Dickleburgh won a giant 9.9lb Toblerone in a free Christmas draw organised by the Diss Mereside Ford forecourt manager Patrick Saunders. The chocolate treat was equivalent to 123 individual bars of Toblerone

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Mic Wright @brokenbottleboy.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Bród wishes you a speedy recovery.

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Mic Wright @brokenbottleboy.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Billy Domineau’s spec Seinfeld 9/11 script is one of history’s great cultural objects. randomnerds.com/wp-content/u...

ELAINE
Jeeze, can you believe how quickly they got this place cleaned up? This entire block was covered in dust!
JERRY
I know, it's immaculate! It's like they made a blood sacrifice to Mr.
Clean. Hey, by the way, I am so, so sorry about that guy you were seeing.
ELAINE
Brian? Meh.
JERRY
Meh? What do you mean, meh? He was murdered by terrorists.
ELAINE
I was gonna break up with him anyway.
JERRY
I thought you liked him.
ELAINE
He was nice, but in conversations he was just so... animated. It was like I was dating a radio sound effects guy.
Anyway, saved me an awkward dinner.
JERRY
Well as long as it worked out for you.
KRAMER ENTERS AND RUSHES TO THE TABLE, SITTING NEXT TO JERRY.

KRAMER
You remember my crazy friend Mo Atta?
ELAINE
The guy you fish-sit for when he goes to Florida? What about him?
KRAMER
Look at this!
KRAMER HANDS ELAINE A NEWSPAPER. SHE READS.
ELAINE
"The leader of the hijackers has been identified as Egyptian-national
MOHAMED ATTA." GET - OUT!
ELAINE SHOVES KRAMER FROM ACROSS THE TABLE.
KRAMER
You know he was always talking about how evil America was? Eventually I told him, "Why don't you do something about it?" I thought he'd write to his Congressman!
JERRY
Kramer, he just crashed a plane into the World Trade Center! He slit the pilots' throats with a box-cutter!
KRAMER
Not "a" box-cutter - MY box-cutter. He borrowed it last week!

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Mic Wright @brokenbottleboy.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Have you ever wondered what playing a PlayStation 2 game about 9/11 might be like? The Daily Mail has got you covered.

An image from the Daily Mail’s ghoulish reconstruction of 9/11. It shows a grey computer generated plane hitting a blocky reconstruction of the World Trade Center.

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Mic Wright @brokenbottleboy.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

God, it must have been so hard for you sitting there for those five years collecting all that lovely money and increasing your profile, Amol.

On Today, for years I’ve been screaming inside, wanting to say: ‘Guys! We are about to get a century of change in a decade. Our country has been stagnant for 20 years. The post-1945 order has collapsed. AI offers thrilling promise, and peril. Get real!’ Now that I’m on YouTube, I guess I can say it, and will.

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Mic Wright @brokenbottleboy.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

‘Can I just shock you? I’m actually very right-wing.’

Now I’ve left Today, I can finally say what I really think…
AMOL RAJAN

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Mic Wright @brokenbottleboy.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

A detail missing from The Times story… the woman who took the photo shared it to a Facebook group called ‘South east patriots’.

Facebook post showing the photo of three white women on a train with a group of black-clad, masked men being shared to a group called ‘South east patriots’

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Mic Wright @brokenbottleboy.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

The Sun hit Burnham with this picture from 2010 on its front page when he refused them an interview during the 2015 Labour leadership campaign.

Andy Burnham with his head sticking out of a red Sun branded taxi.

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Mic Wright @brokenbottleboy.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

I love this Ursula K. Le Guin passage and not just for the drive-by on journalists.

Teachers trying to get kids to write understandably, textbooks of style with their notion of transparent' style, journalists with their weird rules and superstitions, and bang-pow thriller writers - they've all helped to fill a lot of heads with the notion that the only good sentence is a short sentence.
A convicted criminal might agree. I don't.

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Mic Wright @brokenbottleboy.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

Compare and contrast these two answers from Marina Hyde’s Q+A in The Guardian today.

Clearly, politicians are worse than useless.
Who would you pick as prime minister?
Eric, Newton Abbot, Devon
JK Rowling.

Celebrity culture and AI promise a world where some people are valued and others deemed worthless. What human qualities do you most value?
Sean, Swinford, County Mayo
Compassion, tolerance, wisdom, kindness, bravery, strength of character. And GSOH.

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