iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Because I'd only ever heard his name, never read it, I long thought Joe Manchin was a generic American type "Joe Mansion" a bit like soccer moms or white van men.

The Durban test has "Australia's top order disappoint, but they struggle to a total that turns out to be decent on the surface" written all over it. It feels that had happened an lot in recent years.

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The Palgrave Dictionary of Transnational History

When I was a student, this was recommended to me as a useful text: link.springer.com/referencewor... It amazes me even now To be honest I think university library budgets are under a lot of pressure, and physical copies aren't that useful for teaching big classes, so maybe the system will change

link.springer.com

Written and edited by many of the world's foremost scholars of transnational history, this Dictionary challenges readers to look at the contemporary world in a new light. Contains over 400 entries on ...

The academic publishing market is inscrutable. Rest assured the authors won't be seeing much of it.

Ian Rapley @irapley.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Similar: I watched him nick off in single digits for Warwickshire against Surrey, the summer after he'd made 375.

Ian Rapley @irapley.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

No no, I'm pretty sure you're obliged to continue following me, no matter how annoying/smug my posting is.

Yup. I used to work for one, and he was pretty grounded. Didn't seem to have any interest in influence, just enjoyed running his business.

I got Effective Altruist. I feel dirty.

There were more Kylos born in the UK last year then Ians. Merlin is mainstream now.

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Ian Rapley @irapley.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Aah, I had thought there was a toddler _and_ a cat. I was struggling to make the logistics work in a way that wasn't slightly troubling.

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Nice chart. Also odd to think that there's been a wave of very popular breeds in the UK from the low countries (texel, beltex, Dutch spotted sheep) given how few there seem to be there.

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Ian Rapley @irapley.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

I've been enjoying these novels. The plotting is a little clunky at times, but they're fun. Without giving spoilers, this one in particular could hardly be better suited to a discussion of postwar development and networking of railways etc.

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Ian Rapley @irapley.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Top trivia: what, in the sphere of games/gaming, is the English name for something that I'm other languages is known as the elephant, v the runner, the officer, or the fool/jester?

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Ian Rapley @irapley.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

... Obviously the IPL & Indian TV revenue, but maybe also the County Championship YouTube feeds and Surrey's work from home at The Oval, maybe also the various financial woes of the counties.

Ian Rapley @irapley.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Content to include: Virat Kohli's quote on winning the IPL: "test cricket is five times higher", implied valuations of the UK's August based on Hundred franchise stakes, speculative assets such as Major League Cricket and T10 leagues, rival financial plans in the BBL such as, le sigh, gambling money

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Ian Rapley @irapley.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Convinced the world really needs 3000 words in the @lrb.co.uk on test cricket, the Hundred sale, and the current goings on in Australia with the unfortunately named Big Bash League.

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Ian Rapley @irapley.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Agree. I do something similar with our first year U/Gs: every week going section by section through an article, identifying the key sentences which really explain what's going on. I think it teaches a) how to read, b) some academic writing is good/much is less so, c) a model for their own writing

Ian Rapley @irapley.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

There was a point in time when everyone was going on about The Killing. Haven't heard of that in a while.

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Ian Rapley @irapley.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

I just watched my son tell the barber he wasn't mad keen on how his cut was going, and could he change it. The youth of today, hey, what's going on?

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Ian Rapley @irapley.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

I was vibe coding before AI did coding but even given that, it's a bit weird that PillowBot was down for six months and just decided to spring up again yesterday.

Ian Rapley @irapley.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

It doesn't make you cool, but I definitely think it's worth ignoring most of the hype about the current must have book/film/TV, and operating on about a 2 year lag.

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Ian Rapley @irapley.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Hey! They also look in the bibliography to check you've cited them.

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Ian Rapley @irapley.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Okakura Tenshin is not impressed

Ian Rapley @irapley.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

The lighting is terrible; so is the coffee.

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Ian Rapley @irapley.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

I've never really clicked properly with Montaigne's essays, but the urge to lock myself in a tower and ignore the outside world? Increasingly on board with that.

Ian Rapley @irapley.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

It was an amazing episode. I feel they may end up getting a lot of quite personal emails as a result. It certainly had some profound resonances with my experience of my father's death.

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Ian Rapley @irapley.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Slightly chagrined to discover that my eight year old's best friend is better than me at bop it.

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Ian Rapley @irapley.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

NYT Categories, purple section: Things Sei Shonagon thinks are hateful

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Ian Rapley @irapley.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Actually, it's not lists per se, it's lists with the title Best.

Ian Rapley @irapley.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Don't get sucked into list discourse again. This list is stupid, because all lists are stupid.

edizionicafoscari.unive.it

Like the look of this: edizionicafoscari.unive.it/en/edizioni4... "The Fish Skin Road Mapping Indigenous Knowledge from the Lower Amur River to Sakhalin Island" by Elisa Palomino (& it's open access!)

Edizioni Ca' Foscari

Edizioni Ca' Foscari - Venice University Press

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I thought the same about Glamorgan, then they scored 1100 runs in their last two innings. Funny game.

Ouch. I saw the first couple, but then had to leave.

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You want to take a leaf out of Glamorgan's book against Leicester, and bat so badly that the home team gets its pitch reported.

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We are grateful for the time and effort you put into your application... ... But we couldn't be arsed to read it.

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Maybe also working on incentives to encourage academics to pursue lower volume/higher quality publication strategies.

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But make your peace with the fact that when you get home you'll find you have copies of pages 1-13 and 15-24, but for some inexplicable reason, no copy of page 14 where the real juice is.

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My best tip is do the hard yards: visit the regional archive/historical site, track down the original everyone quotes but no one reads, pin down the timeline properly. Really engage with the sources and you'll find not what you expect, but something.

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Undefeated political commentary.

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