iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Samuel Caveen @caveen.com · 27/08/2026

Will the MAGA culture war industrial complex survive the schism ‘GTA VI’ cop killing discourse is about to unleash?

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👻 Jack Djinn Wail 🧞 @jacktindale.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

As ever, obsessed by the euphemism of “Vertical Drinking”. “How can we make standing up, having a pint with your friends, sound bad?” www.theguardian.com/business/202...

theguardian.com

Council wants pubs in London’s Soho and West End to ban standing

Sadiq Khan criticises Westminster council’s ‘anti-growth policies’ after it recommends stopping ‘vertical drinking’

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Stephen Bush @stephenkb.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

Westminster’s Conservatives have come to the correct conclusion that London has too many boroughs and they’re trying to provoke the government into merging them.

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Samuel Caveen @caveen.com · 31/07/2026

High on his own supply. This should be the end of football’s long international nightmare. Not that it alone would fix the many ills of the modern game (of course), but as this episode shows, Infantino is a singularly odious influence on the sport and there is absolutely no reason to tolerate him.

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Rob Jacques @knutcrosswords.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

UEFA spokesperson Dietmar Fumm said to reporters "This decision effectively signals that Gianni Infantino is an enemy of world football". tl;dr: FIFA "foe" - Fumm

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Samuel Caveen @caveen.com · 30/07/2026

Banger of a statement, tbf. Was afraid they didn’t have it in them, but it’s there.

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Miguel Delaney @migueldelaney.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

Strongest possible statement from UEFA as they threaten boycott if Infantino presses ahead with his plan

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William B. Fuckley @opinionhaver.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

I don't worry at all about terminator stuff, I worry quite a lot about Augmented authoritarianism, and I worry the most of all about a gigantic metastasizing perpetually low-trust neomedieval pile of shit that AI greatly exacerbates and possibly locks in for good.

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ghost malone ergo propter bones @proptermalone.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

I just think it’s neat when we’re all talking about stuff I like

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William B. Fuckley @opinionhaver.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

this shit was always annoying even in cases where it was maybe technically correct, but now with Trump doing lots of unprecedented bad shit the ‘heh, you rube, you fool, politicians have always been corrupt’ gimmick is both wrong on the merits and much more pernicious.

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David Roberts @volts.wtf · 28/07/2026

And given the demands of the attention economy & the dynamics of algorithmic media, those mythologies are now just being continually reinforced, because hearing something that "sounds right" is what causes people to click. No one is learning or following what's actually going on. Just us freaks.

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BeijingPalmer @beijingpalmer.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

Using Grok to make a film of the original and historically accurate version of the Odyssey as a Turkish epic.

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Samuel Caveen @caveen.com · 23/07/2026

The scourge of financebrain is everywhere, unfortunately.

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Sam Freedman @samfr.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

It's driving me insane. The govt spends £1.4 trillion a year. Borrowing estimates are often by tens of billions over a year. But we're supposed to imagine money is budgeted to the last penny.

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Left Outside @leftoutside.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

Not only could they have not done it but the US would instead be enjoying an era-defining boom the likes of which it's not seen since electrification in the 1920s.

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Samuel Caveen @caveen.com · 20/07/2026

PM Burnham’s already putting money in the pockets of regular people.

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lastpositivist.bsky.social @lastpositivist.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

Future utilitarians living in a solar punk utopia having anguished debates about the credit owed to President Trump for supercharging green transition.

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Tom Roberts @tpgroberts.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

I do think comparing the money you didn't disclose to first a lottery win, then as earnings as a result of hard work, and then actually it was to provide security services does show a lack of faith in any individual line to hold.

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Samuel Caveen @caveen.com · 07/07/2026

Currently on the Overground where almost everyone, myself included, has a watch on.

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Samuel Caveen @caveen.com · 07/07/2026

I’d like to have something more sophisticated to say, but he’s just such a pathetically snivelling piece of shit.

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Will Jennings📉🗳️ @drjennings.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

If he's staying, I'm not sure this statement was a good idea...

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Samuel Caveen @caveen.com · 03/07/2026

Could you share which tool this is? Would be interested to have a scroll around.

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Samuel Caveen @caveen.com · 03/07/2026

Exactly, and how can Islington be in North London when London is clearly in the SOUTH?! And how is Alabama a southern state when it's in NORTH America?! Tiresome indeed.

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Samuel Caveen @caveen.com · 03/07/2026

...I grew up just on the Merseyside part of the border where the Wirral feels culturally closer to Liverpool. A century of having a tunnel across the Mersey has helped with that. But it’s all on a continuum of definitely The North™ – palpably different from Wrexham (Wales) or Shrewsbury (Midlands).

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Samuel Caveen @caveen.com · 03/07/2026

You can feel this on the Wirral, where I’m from. Historically a part of Cheshire, most of the peninsula has been conjoined with Liverpool since the 70s creation of Merseyside. My parents are from Chester, so I’ve spent a lot of time between the places, and this feels correct to me...

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Samuel Caveen @caveen.com · 03/07/2026

“Clear and obvious” completely out the window.

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William B. Fuckley @opinionhaver.bsky.social · 29/06/2026

"social media platforms are surveillance capitalism panopticons run by technofasicsts, any efforts to limit their use or societal importance are also fascism" is a depressingly common worldview

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Samuel Caveen @caveen.com · 23/06/2026

For some reason I still have the newspapers from the day of the Brexit vote, 10 years ago today.

Copies of The Guardian and The Times from 23 June 2016, preserved – as if in amber – at the bottom of my bookshelf.

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Samuel Caveen @caveen.com · 22/06/2026

They’ve halved net migration and yet we’ve got race riots and a Lord Haw-Haw tribute act leading in the polls. These people will not take yes for an answer. We need to move the conversation to something else.

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Samuel Caveen @caveen.com · 19/06/2026

It remains to be seen whether Burnham can carry his appeal beyond the North West. But if he can, the result in Makerfield suggests what it will look like: an alliance of red, orange and Green. 14/14

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Samuel Caveen @caveen.com · 19/06/2026

...for a politician not so unpopular that they squander it. The core strategic question of British politics remains: which candidate can better consolidate our now multi-party electorate into the binary choice the two-party system forces them into? 13/14

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Samuel Caveen @caveen.com · 19/06/2026

Clearly Andy Burnham's personal appeal was important here, given Labour's dire national polling. But it is striking that the share of votes cast so closely matches two summers ago – even in constituencies that voted for Brexit, there is an anti-Reform, anti-Tory majority out there... 12/14

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Samuel Caveen @caveen.com · 19/06/2026

The intricacies of those voting pathways aside, the net implication of last night's result is of Labour winning by adding Green and Lib Dem votes to their existing support, rather than a mass reversal of those lost to Reform. 11/n

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Samuel Caveen @caveen.com · 19/06/2026

There will also be non-switchers – by-elections rarely exceed general election turnout, but 2024's was particularly depressed, and so ~5,200 more votes were cast yesterday. Burnham may have won these handily, along with the LD/GRN conversions, to counteract any direct LAB losses to REF. 10/14

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Samuel Caveen @caveen.com · 19/06/2026

The actual patterns here will be more complex, e.g. with Reform gaining voters from the Conservatives *and* Labour, while losing some of their own to Restore; and Labour will have welcomed some anti-Reform Tories into the fold as well. 9/14

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Samuel Caveen @caveen.com · 19/06/2026

The Lib Dems' 6.8% and Greens' 4.4% from the last general election moved almost perfectly to Labour, while the Conservatives' 10.9% collapsed to 2.2%, with the 8.7% difference crossing to Reform and Restore. 8/14

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Samuel Caveen @caveen.com · 19/06/2026

But with a heavy focus from media (and, indeed, gov't comms strategy) on Labour voters turning to Reform, it is very significant that Andy Burnham was able to capture almost the same proportion of the vote as the combined ‘progressive’ (for lack of a better term) parties did in 2024. 7/14

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Samuel Caveen @caveen.com · 19/06/2026

We must caveat that this is just one by-election in one constituency – albeit the most significant by-election for at least a generation, and a Leave-voting constituency deemed demographically tricky for the governing party. 6/14

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Samuel Caveen @caveen.com · 19/06/2026

That the headline vote share between the two groupings is the same – to within a rounding error – after two years, reveals the possibility that, for all the apparent ructions in the electorate, their underlying preferences remain unchanged from those that delivered Labour an historic majority. 5/14

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Samuel Caveen @caveen.com · 19/06/2026

Nonetheless, Labour, Lib Dems and Greens cooperate in several councils across the country, while there has been a flow of defections from Tory to Reform, and Reform to Restore. Were there to be a hung parliament, these would be the putative coalitions competing to form a governing majority. 4/14

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Samuel Caveen @caveen.com · 19/06/2026

Obviously parties and their voters are not completely fungible within these blocs, and some will bristle at being grouped together. 3/14

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Samuel Caveen @caveen.com · 19/06/2026

Polling on the ground will give a better indication of which voters switched to whom exactly, but just comparing the raw vote counts from last night with 2024 shows remarkably stable voter preference for the parties by their broad left–right position. 2/14

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Samuel Caveen @caveen.com · 19/06/2026

Despite all the changes in British politics over the last two years, the Bakerfield by-election produced an almost identical division of votes between ‘left’ and ‘right’ parties as the constituency did in the 2024 general election. 1/14

Chart comparing 2026 Makerfield by-election to the 2024 general election result in the same constituency:

Headline: Votes in the Makerfield by-election were split between left and right in almost identical proportion to 2024

Subheader: Andy Burnham triumphed by adding the Green and Lib Dem vote to Labour’s 2024 tally, while the Conservative vote ebbed further towards Reform and Restore.

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Steve Akehurst @steveakehurst.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

They’re calling it the quote on British politics that ended the need for all other quotes

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Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan @london.gov.uk · 11/06/2026

Complaining about nightlife when you *checks notes* choose to live in Soho is like living in South Kensington and complaining about the museums. Or moving to Hackney and grumbling about creatives. Living in Richmond and hating green space. It's all getting a bit silly, isn't it?

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