iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Dr Tom May

The other day I talked to an aunt who has truly seen everything, and she couldn’t overstate how much more racist England now feels. When a working-class black woman in her mid-seventies tells you it’s bad, then it’s really bad.

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Nelly Probin @lillmagill.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

Come on Andy, you did say you would end neoliberalism. Put your money where your mouth is.

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CarolineJMolloy @carolinejmolloy.bsky.social · 18h

yes these are exactly the sort of people you want running NHS data, very sensible, practical & convincing

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Scuzzy Mortspider 🕷️ 🎃 @jussienorthside.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

AI: Creatively bankrupt *and* weirdo graverobber.

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Alan Sepinwall @sepinwall.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

For The New York Times, I wrote about how Rod Serling create The Twilight Zone in part because it was the only way in the 1950 and 60s for him to comment on the subjects he cared about most, and how that's a good blueprint for contemporary media to deal with our surreal current moment:

nytimes.com

Opinion | ‘The Twilight Zone’ Created a Blueprint for Surviving Our Surreal Moment (Gift Article)

With “The Twilight Zone,” Rod Serling created a durable blueprint for understanding our surreal reality.

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John Kell @johnkell.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Had no idea there was new Ellie & Natasia in the works - tremendous news!

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Xim123 @xim123.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Does nobody at the BBC realise what their USP is? Why are they trying to copy the streaming model which feels like it's about to collapse

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Tim Clare @timclare.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Telling that Wes Streeting considers someone diagnosed with ADHD has been 'written off'. Also telling that the government commissioned a review in the face of independent reviews finding there is no overdiagnosis, just increased awareness & historic underdiagnosis of girls & women.

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Ian Greaves @greavesian.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

See also the closing off of access to BBC Written Archives Centre, which has been widely challenged and brought negative publicity but cannot amount to much in the way of savings.

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Jonathan Coe @jonathancoe.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

You’d have to be in thrall to the narrowest, most blinkered model of economics to believe that axeing Free Thinking and Thinking Allowed made sense. The amount of goodwill programmes like this earn from the BBC’s core supporters is way out of proportion to the pennies they cost to make.

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Justin Lewis @whenisbirths.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

What’s taken over is this thirst for ‘breezy’. God forbid there’s anything with depth for five minutes. Everything seems to have this awful grin on its face (even the news, *especially* the news), but it can’t even do wit, it’s this kind of empty bantz.

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Dr Tom May @dreamcargoes.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Enlisting a standard corporate manager most known for working for Google UK as DG rather than someone with journalistic or programme making experience does not seem to have been a wise decision in terms of defending the better side of BBC radio & TV now.

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Dr Tom May @dreamcargoes.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Bad news. A very good programme.

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nicola @gleanniucha.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

🤦‍♀️ If do not want this level of messaging in the uk Engage in politics - and use your vote wisely

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Josh Shepperd @joshshepperd.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

“Sitting around and reading books and talking about them.” Sounds quaint, but it was the best practice for the first 2300 years of education, it’s only really changed recently.

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Lance Parkin @lanceparkin.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

AI people are divided between the ones who think it'll kill us by becoming infinitely cunning, and those who think it'll kill us by being infinitely mindless. It'll kill us, if it does, because some human noblord will believe some AI generated slop.

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Farrukh @implausibleblog.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Krishnan Guru-Murthy, "How long do you think its going to take for people to forget you ran the country for 14 years?" Helen Whateley, "Kemi has published an essay called The Right Way, really thinking about what's gone wrong with the country" 14 years of Tory austerity 🤷‍♀️

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Andrew Orton @andreworton.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

It’s so nihilistic: they wander about that town, accursed with boredom and loneliness. Holmfirth is covered in 70s soot and the beautiful village nestled in the Holme Valley looks like hell. The librarian has the most chaste of erotic affairs. Nora Batty looks like she has a diet of lemons and coal.

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Ian Greaves @greavesian.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

These really are exceptionally well put together.

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John Hodson @mgcroadster.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

"The Tories; A Warning From History..."

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Mark Thompson @markreckons.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

He literally set off a bomb in a UK street. If this had been the IRA Pierce would calling for them to be hung, drawn and quartered. This is domestic terrorism pure and simple. A bomb set off to terrorise with the aim of getting a government to change its policy. Literally a textbook definition.

Andrew Pierce

@andrewpierceexc

Follow

A retired engineer who destroyed @SadiqKhan ULEZ camera jailed for 15 years. A ridiculous sentence. No wonder our orisons are overcrowded

Readers added context they thought people might want to know

Kevin Rees was sentenced to 15 years for causing an explosion likely to endanger life after using a homemade bomb to destroy a ULEZ camera in a Sidcup residential street, damaging cars and property up to 100m away with shrapnel near a child's bedroom.

bbc.co.uk/news/articles/...

news.met.police.uk/news/man-jaile...

cps.gov.uk/national-news/...

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Dale Smith @dalesmithonline.com · 05/10/2026

So. #PendasFen - part of the BBC #PlayForToday. There's a game we like to play in Britain when something's as openly queer as this: we pretend it's incomprehensible. Even Alan Clarke - the director - has said he doesn't understand it all, on which I immediately call BS.

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Albert Pinto @70sbachchan.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Excellent on Agroindustry's power in Brazil: "The Brazilian savanna was transformed into an enormous soya plantation, to the detriment of its biodiversity...cropland frontier encroached on the Amazon rainforest, already threatened by...incursion of cattle ranching." newleftreview.org/sidecar/post...

newleftreview.org

Fernando Rugitsky, Battleground Brazil — Sidecar

On the presidential elections.

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Chris7ben @chris7ben.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

For ‘environmental health’ read ‘the future of the planet’.

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Dr Tom May @dreamcargoes.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Well, worrying, but surely going to a second round, & potentially the FB lead may end up 47.5-44 if the current trend continues. Almost a reverse of 2022 which was Lula up by five? Not good times for the Amazon & the environment, or people who oppose attempted coups #BrazilPresidentialElection

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Andrew Fisher @fisherandrew79.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Another deeply unpopular Starmer policy binned. This is a victory for justice, and thanks to campaigning of @thecriminalbar.bsky.social, Karl Turner MP and many other Labour MPs www.bbc.co.uk/news/article... www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

bbc.co.uk

Burnham scraps controversial plans to curb jury trials

The key policy idea announced by David Lammy when he was justice secretary will no longer go ahead.

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Abilu Tangwa. @abilutangwa.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

The Amazon isn't just "the lungs of the earth." It’s a complex, living system that regulates our rainfall, houses 10% of known species, and is home to millions of people. When we burn it, we aren't just losing trees. We are dismantling the life support system of the planet. Protect biodiversity.

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Pól Micheál O'Slatraigh @pmoslatraigh.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

If your definition of Englishness excludes a man like him, it is your definition that needs challenging.

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Mike D London @mikedlondon.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Years of extremist media using phrases like 'Sadiq Khan's hated ULEZ cameras' in their headlines surely contributes to people like this becoming radicalised to commit terrorist acts?

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Dr Tom May @dreamcargoes.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

1986 TV drama end titles banger with extensive vocoder and orchestra hit action. #DeadHead #RichardHartley #HowardBrenton youtu.be/wSc4EJMnmSY?...

youtu.be

dead head theme - richard hartley

YouTube video by andrew buchanan

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Tom Hunter @onelifestand87.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

The fact an MP openly supporting terrorism is seen as a non story tells you how desperate they are for the far right to win

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Musa Okwonga @okwonga.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

This can't be talked about enough. "President Donald Trump's move to cut most of the US funding towards foreign humanitarian aid could cause more than 14 million additional deaths by 2030, according to research published in The Lancet medical journal." www.bbc.com/news/article...

bbc.com

Trump's aid cut risks causing 14 million deaths, report finds

The figure from the Lancet, a leading medical journal, includes 700,000 child deaths globally a year.

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Dr Tom May @dreamcargoes.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Absolutely! Or the Welsh Valleys, Tyneside, Wearside or Clydeside, indeed.

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Dr Tom May @dreamcargoes.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

The idea that "the rest of us" is practically everybody & that it is desirable to have *ONE* simple narrative about the 1970s signifies Mr Clarke's utter lack of self-awareness and intellectual aptitude.

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Dr Tom May @dreamcargoes.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Christine Geraghty argued very persuasively on this last point in a journal article arguing for serious evaluation of television texts. Too many people are entirely enamoured of, or entirely dismissive of, whole art forms/genres etc. We should be able to pick out good Corrie & bad Corrie &c.

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Dr Tom May @dreamcargoes.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Excellent blog piece, that, I recall reading it! I think we can follow Raymond Williams's view that culture is ordinary, & overall mediums or practices shouldn't be dismissed. But also that you can discriminate between, say, good & bad soap opera practices, just as much as with opera or ballet.

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Dr Tom May @dreamcargoes.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Each to their own, of course! I really cannot stand toffee apples either. Yet, I did very much like certain fairground-style rides, like that at the Dracula Experience in Whitby.

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Dr Tom May @dreamcargoes.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Aye, an ultra-Hoggartist against 'the candy floss* world', but I imagine without even any affinity for the older urban working class culture which at least Hoggart experienced. *Admittedly, candy floss itself is a bizarrely awful thing IMO, but it shouldn't be applied to other *unlike* phenomena!

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Dr Tom May @dreamcargoes.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

The menace of 'The Menace of Beatlism'. That's really an utterly absurd & unintelligent argument that The Beatles simply equated to an endorsement of materialism, whereas they were gurus in all sorts of ways. It clearly influenced Sandbrook's limited reading of their importance to UK exports.

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Dr Tom May @dreamcargoes.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Watching Michael Apted's Up series cumulatively does indeed challenge it too, for anyone able to connect the socio-political dots. And it does it in a profoundly human way.

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Dr Tom May @dreamcargoes.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Of course, academics have long challenged this simple narrative, but the work of Colin Hay, Lawrence Black, Pat Thane & Hugh Pemberton has not been permitted to cross over into mainstream consciousness. Andy Beckett has got closest to this, I suppose. manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9780719088148/

manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk

Manchester University Press - Reassessing 1970s Britain

Reassessing 1970s Britain - Browse and buy the Hardcover edition of Reassessing 1970s Britain by Lawrence Black

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Dr Tom May @dreamcargoes.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Too few people - inc. senior Labour politicians at the time - fought this turgid, repetitive & blinkered propaganda. They seemed exhausted by 1979, simply wanting a quiet life & acceptance into the establishment (Benn obviously an exception). It all became the media's standard received "wisdom".

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Dr Tom May @dreamcargoes.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

And influenced most long term by Christopher Booker's 1980 book of collected newspaper columns, among others.

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Duncan Deeznuts @parasocialista.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

"Some orgs have refused to switch to Palantir FDP, seeing it as a downgrade. Leeds Teaching Hospitals would ‘lose functionality’ if adopted. One source who uses Palantir FDP told us they had to wait 20 minutes for a dashboard to load only for the system to crash." www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

m.youtube.com

Palantir and the NHS: How a Silicon Valley Firm Took Over Britain's Health Data

YouTube video by London Review of Books (LRB)

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Chris Smith @ledredman.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

I remember the 1970's as a wonderful time because of course I was young and the world was my oyster. I remember the horrible lies the Tories told in the 1979 General Election about how they would reduce unemployment, when they knew their policies would triple it.

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folukeifejola @folukeifejola.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

"the “celebration” of BHM in UKHE can be accurately described as a pseudo-celebration that only nods vaguely & imperceptibly at something considered nebulously to be “Black culture”. But this is not backed up by an entrenched study of African history or engagement with African-produced knowledges."

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DJ Punctum @djpunctum.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

If I remember Esther Rantzen it's primarily for things like this, one of the greatest moments on British television. R.I.P.: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oqqb...

youtube.com

Holocaust hero Sir Nicholas Winton (That's Life - 1988)

YouTube video by Tops of the top

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Daniel Trilling @trillingual.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Some news... 1. If We Tolerate This sold just shy of 5,000 copies in its first two months. Thanks to everyone who has read, responded to or shared the book so far. 2. If you haven't yet, it's only 99p on kindle for the whole of October. Get involved! www.amazon.co.uk/If-We-Tolera...

The cover of "If We Tolerate This: How the British Establishment Made the Far Right Respectable", which features the title plus an illustration of a frog in boiling water.

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