iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

John Bate @jflb96.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

I’ve got nothing against that, I’m just saying that it’s not the only way to getting your manifesto put into practice

John Bate @jflb96.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Only if they want to actually have hold of the levers of power. You can get a lot of your manifesto done by being a known place for people to spend a protest vote; look at the many iterations of the Farage Party.

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John Bate @jflb96.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

I Am The Law by Michael Molcher is a very good book listing the many examples of the Home Secretary and/or Met apparently taking direct inspiration from Mega-City One. Would recommend if you’re into that sort of thing.

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John Bate @jflb96.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Probably would be better to go direct to 2000AD for that sort of thing, yeah

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John Bate @jflb96.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

The trick is it’s just the relevant power of five, shunted backwards until it looks right

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John Bate @jflb96.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Who’s saying that Palestine should be an ethnostate?

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John Bate @jflb96.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Nobby Nobbs has just started furtively donning our side’s uniform. Regardless of anything else, that’s at least a sign that things are swinging-ish in our direction.

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John Bate @jflb96.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Sounds like he’s saying that the left have managed to push Labour enough to at least agree with them in words, which hopefully is a sign that further pushing can get Labour to follow through with what they’re now saying

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John Bate @jflb96.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Yeah, and I guess there‘s sort of an argument for bot v. bot chess as a ‘How would you unscrew this?’ demonstrator from which to try to reverse-engineer strategies for mid- and late-game. Not something that draws the crowds, though.

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John Bate @jflb96.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

‘Now I’m just glad that I got here before Mr. Vimes’

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John Bate @jflb96.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

That’s why people still go to see live music even though we have the perfected studio recordings readily available: the variations are the point

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John Bate @jflb96.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

When were Wales and Ireland united the first time?

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John Bate @jflb96.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Almost exactly the opposite, unless I’ve misunderstood dumpster diving

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John Bate @jflb96.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Guess where I got that pronunciation from

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John Bate @jflb96.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Like a masculinised otter?

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John Bate @jflb96.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

The pure metal that’s in alum had a few names when people were refining it, including alumium, but AFAIK ‘aluminum’ got picked in the USA by someone who wanted to sell it as sounding like platinum

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John Bate @jflb96.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

How is ‘taco’ meant to be pronounced?

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John Bate @jflb96.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

The ‘y’ in ‘yourself’ is a consonant, the ‘y’ in ‘by’ is a vowel

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John Bate @jflb96.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

What are the different ways of pronouncing it?

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John Bate @jflb96.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Can’t just say that, or you’ll end up with people calling it Waygu

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John Bate @jflb96.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Apparently you don’t even need that; I’ve heard of people making it past all the big signs saying TATE MODERN and halfway round the gallery before they thought to ask a tour guide where to find the pre-Raphaelites

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John Bate @jflb96.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Right, and the alternative that was offered was ‘US companies move in and take everything that’s not nailed down’

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John Bate @jflb96.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

There were people in the US embassy in Moscow in the early nineties desperately writing home to say ‘We are doing this exactly wrong to get these people to believe in liberal democracy, please can we change tack,’ but sure, Russians are just incapable

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John Bate @jflb96.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

That’s part of why the Antarctic geographic features chosen to be named after her and Erebus were two volcanoes

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John Bate @jflb96.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Well, she was meant to be a mortar ship for fighting Napoleon, but she was finished in 1814, so she basically spent fifteen years hanging around doing nothing until someone said ‘Hang about, these ships with really strong bows so their vertical cannon don’t go through could be used as icebreakers’

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John Bate @jflb96.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Basically a cake of pulled jerky mixed with lard, or corned beef if you’re interwar teenagers cosplaying in the Lake District

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John Bate @jflb96.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

I mean, there’s still ten months for me to not be a man at 30, but experience with all the other times I’ve found out that an interest of mine means I’m definitely an egg suggests a likely result

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John Bate @jflb96.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

What’s the difference between Paris and Dublin that makes it funny to say ‘Ah, good to be back in civilisation!’ when you come home from the one and Very Not when you come home from the other? Don’t worry about it!

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John Bate @jflb96.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

I think it’s one of those ones where we’ve been told that it‘s funny if it’s obvious that you don’t really mean it and the Implications have been brushed under the carpet somewhat

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John Bate @jflb96.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Wave-Parliament duality is somewhere around dog‘s pavlova in the pun sphere, good job

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John Bate @jflb96.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

I mean, to take it in a ‘policeman = polis-man = man of the city’ sense, what’s better than a servant of civilisation? Actual, healed thigh bones-type civilisation, that is, not just We Have Cities And Flags, Do You? civilisation.

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John Bate @jflb96.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

The only way to make a pocket watch worse, make it a *smart* pocket watch

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John Bate @jflb96.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

It goes like this, The fourth, the fifth, The minor fall, the major lift

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John Bate @jflb96.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

But I thought that the UK had always been heavily supportive of Israel ever since the Balfour Declaration, and not starting as a convenient place whence to do a Suez Crisis

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John Bate @jflb96.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Sure, in the same way that the UK in 1900 was a two party system and voting for anyone other than the Whigs or Tories was a wasted vote - especially that newfangled upstart Labour!

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John Bate @jflb96.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

I made up the hypothetical to find out if you’d stick to your ‘vote for the second worst’ guns, and, as with everyone else in your position, you opted instead for complaining that we’re not allowed to talk about things other than the 2024 US election. Answer the question. Darth Vader or Sauron?

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John Bate @jflb96.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

I guess I can see the argument for someone centre-right enough to ask ‘Are we sure a free market wouldn’t help?’ and decent enough to shut up when it’s shown to be ‘No,’ but other than that it seems, ironically, to be inclusion for the sake of inclusion

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John Bate @jflb96.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Sonomatopoeia or nonomatopoeia seem like worthy candidates

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John Bate @jflb96.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Also, no Christianity means one fewer bone of contention between the Anglo-Saxons and whatever Norse do show up, and also between the Franks and Saxony; I don’t know if that bodes well for any monotheists sticking their heads above the Pyrenees

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John Bate @jflb96.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

If Rome’s biffed off on schedule but Christianity has failed to spread, England might even have an easier time getting off the ground without the remote outposts full of rich pacifists to lure in Norse raiders looking for an easy win with lots of loot and thralls to be had

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John Bate @jflb96.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

My understanding is that English and Englishness developed as the Saxons moved over and integrated with the late/post-Roman British, with England being Wessex’ project to make a kingdom for everyone who speaks English and no bloody Vikings

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John Bate @jflb96.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

I think you’re getting a Latin-British-North Sea pidgin in the general populace of south Britain whether the elites are actually Roman or just Catholic, unless someone awakens a kraken in Doggerland around the fourth century CE

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John Bate @jflb96.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

All I want for Christmas is his notes on the new timeline so that I can see whether or not I’ll drop out halfway through like when Rotherweird said that astrology works because the planets’ gravity rearranges the DNA

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John Bate @jflb96.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

From what I’ve heard, the main difference there is that Christianity never really got going, which somehow prevented England uniting and directly caused the Caliphate to swallow mainland Europe, and the whole thing’s in standard English with some tinkering with the idioms anyhow

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John Bate @jflb96.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

If we’re going back to the roots, surely there’s an argument for Pyramus and Thisbe to get a look in. Probably wouldn’t say no to a feature-length production à la the Rude Mechanicals, thinking about it.

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John Bate @jflb96.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Doesn’t he refer to the coasts of Bohemia at one point as well?

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John Bate @jflb96.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

AFAIK, there is a purple part of the spectrum, for ultraviolet to be ultra to. Pink, though, is just negative green.

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