iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Nick S @holgate.permanent.red · 30/09/2026

It is remarkable to me that Tories born in the 80s like my Temu Harry Potter former MP remember 1979 the way people born in the late 1950s remember the Blitz. I remember 1984 on Teesside (the year Clarke was born) and it was fucking miserable.

Simon Clarke

Andy Burnham seems to remember a different 1970s to the rest of us. Britain in 1979 was utterly broken - ravaged by unaccountable trade union power, economically stagnant, the sick man of Europe.

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Nick S @holgate.permanent.red · 28/09/2026

Anyway today was a quiet memorial to the storm by driving up the parkway to where it's cool and breezy and there was a young skinny bear along the way with two still-tiny cubs and the little visitor center with the Stirling engine fans atop the wood stove has a remarkably crappy flag.

The Craggy Gardens visitor center on the Blue Ridge Parkway: a wooden building (toilets out of order because of storm) against a peak. A crappy polyester American flag is flown outside.

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Nick S @holgate.permanent.red · 27/09/2026

More of places that ceased to exist or were changed utterly two years ago. (Nikon L35AF3)

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Nick S @holgate.permanent.red · 27/09/2026

Ooh! I found an L35AF3 for $7 at a thrift store in 2021 and sold it on for a fair bit more than that, but I did get some good shots from it while film-testing. (Mostly from places that were changed forever by Helene.)

A rustic version of an American flag made from a wooden pallet.

A condemned building with a F/E red and white cross sign.

A black and white photo of a couple crossing the street in front of an Art Deco building.

Red flower petals strewn on a grey-green concrete floor.

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Nick S @holgate.permanent.red · 24/09/2026

(One of my dearest friends is from Sonning.) My aunt sends me a calendar every year and this year's is Yorkshire things and September is Brow Moor near Ravenscar and where the heather nearly touches the dark sea is not Deep England.

An autumnal heather moor in northern England, brown-gold and spiky, giving way to green lowlands jutting out into the North Sea, a head making a bay.

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Nick S @holgate.permanent.red · 19/09/2026

Seeing a canva-slop sign for a *craft market* makes me sad. (This church did a huge amount to support its local community after the storm despite being nearly washed away so I can’t be too mad at them.)

A sign for a craft market and music event at a church with all the hallmarks of having been generated with AI.

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Nick S @holgate.permanent.red · 11/09/2026

Article I Article II (and III)

A pencil-drawn horse: the back end is beautifully detailed and shaded; everything else is a crude kiddy sketch.

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Nick S @holgate.permanent.red · 06/09/2026

most of these pencil notes are 35+ years old / sappho 31

A chunk of Eliot's "The Waste Land" with a lot of 90s teenage annotations.

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Nick S @holgate.permanent.red · 04/09/2026

Nailed me on a few obvious dialect words (beck/bairn/nick off) but things like "what do/did you call your grandparents" don't fall into easy regional or class categories because you call them what they want to be called. ("I'm not a goat!")

The results of the NYT UK/Ire dialect quiz highlighting an area from Carlisle to Scarborough.

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Nick S @holgate.permanent.red · 30/08/2026

It's bleakly funny: if you start at, say, Oswego there's a zoom level where "Lake Ontario" flickers on the US side of the border before reappearing on the Canadian side.

Lake Ontario persists in Apple Maps (at least on the Canadian side of the watery border)

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Nick S @holgate.permanent.red · 30/08/2026

Apple appears to be hedging its bets (for now) by putting "Lake Ontario" entirely on the Canadian side but whatever, Google Maps is dead to me and I want the chud exec who signed off on the change hauled in front of Congress next year.

A screencap of Apple Maps (desktop version) that correctly labels Lake Ontario "Lake Ontario" and puts its label on the Canadian side of the border.

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Nick S @holgate.permanent.red · 28/08/2026

The outfit was on display when I visited Dollywood in 2018, along with pages from her itinerary, which I thought was interesting in its own right. [ JO WHILEY (GIRL) ] And the shoes are tiny.

Dolly Parton's Glastonbury outfit alongside others: a white bedazzled bodice and trousers.

Five pages of Dolly Parton's itinerary for her UK trip including . Everything is scheduled, including her interview with Jo Whiley (GIRL).

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Nick S @holgate.permanent.red · 28/08/2026

Thinking about the phenomenon where very small shifts in words across languages make them unintentionally funny.

A headline from NRK in Norway: "Se sending om kongens død" (watch the broadcast about the king's death)

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Nick S @holgate.permanent.red · 28/08/2026

As always a delight, and reminds me of my last trip to Ripon 23(!) years ago.

An old photograph of Ripon Town Hall, a cream-coloured neoclassical building with the motto "Except Ye Lord Keep Ye Cittie Ye Wakeman Waketh in Vain" at the top.

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Nick S @holgate.permanent.red · 21/08/2026

I think this part matters more than the number: ( obvs, and I forgot it was from *2005*, well before Obama even announced his run: kfmonkey.blogspot.com/2005/10/lunc... )

John: Objectively crazy or crazy vis-a-vis my own inertial reference frame for rational behaviour? I mean, are you creating the Theory of Special Crazification or General Crazification?

Tyrone: Hadn't thought about it. Let's split the difference. Half just have worldviews which lead them to disagree with what you consider rationality even though they arrive at their positions through rational means, and the other half are the core of the Crazification -- either genuinely crazy; or so woefully misinformed about how the world works, the bases for their decision making is so flawed they may as well be crazy.

John: You realize this leads to there being over 30 million crazy people in the US?

Tyrone: Does that seem wrong?

John: ... a bit low, actually.

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Nick S @holgate.permanent.red · 09/08/2026

Aldi’s foray into luxury “Frozen Ice Cubes” did not go well, but it did keep me amused this past month.

July 16: Aldi launches it Frozen Ice Cubes at $4.99 for 4.

July 25: the Frozen Ice Cubes are now $2.49. Nobody appears to be buying.

August 8: now $0.49, a few boxes of frozen ice have been sold, but they are still mostly unsold.

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Nick S @holgate.permanent.red · 28/07/2026

Revlon, yes. Came out in 2003, amid shock & awe, and rattled my bones.

The slim Faber paperback of Logue’s All Day Permanent Red, weirdly faded brighter at the spine

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Nick S @holgate.permanent.red · 17/07/2026

Temu Goebbels isn't quite doing it here but is giving the nod to a weird grammatical tic on the right where "the leftist" and "the socialist" etc. are singulars used as plurals and I don't quite know where that came from.

"The talking point email has gone out. The talking point from the leftist is clear. Ignore any and all documents except the one that says Russia, China & Germany are ALL meddling in our elections. Somehow that is a big own. I can’t wait to continue to defeat these people."

"Wakeup democrats now the socialist are threatening you, need to put an end to this!!!"

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Nick S @holgate.permanent.red · 16/07/2026

tfw you open this website and immediately see the inksketch spoors of another patrick healy idiot panel hitting the discourse

Wakko from Animaniacs grimly looking at a screen while gripping a mug, presumably looking at a screencap of an ink-sketch young Republican saying something Median Voter.

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Nick S @holgate.permanent.red · 12/07/2026

Cheers. (First time I’ve ever seen Old P in the US.) 🍺

A can of Old Pecuiler beer and a glass of said beer

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Nick S @holgate.permanent.red · 05/07/2026

In a break from tradition, watching the fireworks from an interstate bridge where there’s a veritable party atmosphere

Dusk in the mountains above an interstate, waiting for fireworks.

Vehicles parked on an interstate bridge waiting for fireworks. One has flags.

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Nick S @holgate.permanent.red · 30/06/2026

The 1788 Constitution’s model of government is actually this, where the horse’s rear is Article I (and arguably Article IV) and the rest of the horse is the other branches.

The “draw a horse” meme where the rear of the horse is beautifully shaded and the rest is a childlike sketch

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Nick S @holgate.permanent.red · 29/06/2026

None of these people exist (at least not as journalists):

"The Editorial's team spans correspondents in Washington D.C., London, and New York, with contributors and sources across four continents. We are led by Founder and Managing Director Enok Nordberg, alongside Senior Political Correspondent Elena Marchetti, World Affairs Editor James Okonkwo, Economics Correspondent Sara Lindqvist, and Technology Reporter David Chen." [none of these people appear to exist]

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Nick S @holgate.permanent.red · 24/06/2026

I think communities should be able to elect people who represent what makes them distinctive as a community and that this has no bearing on what other communities do

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Nick S @holgate.permanent.red · 14/06/2026

In summary: Buc-ee’s is absurd, Sevierville and Gatlinburg continue to suck, the GSMNP (elk!) and BRP remain great, and Waterrock Knob is as lovely as ever.