iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

I totally agree that one needs to be in contention with enough voters to win under FPTP: but I think the party leadership are over-focusing on one group that we need, at the expense of appealing to other groups that are also critical for us to win and at the expense of us having most impact.

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A lot of people, but not enough percentage-wise to win as a sole target. Look at most of the well heeled London-surround seats we're winning now: in one of the last few elections there'll be a double-digit drop in the Labour vote as we consolidated on the left first to be in contention at all.

It's also a cart before the horse thing: our end goal as a party isn't to win seats, it's to make a more free, more equal, more community-focused society free of poverty, ignorance and enforced conformity, and we win seats to accomplish that. We're not a vehicle seeking space to park itself.

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The thing is there aren't actually very many of those voters: they're over-represented among the sorts of people who write for the media and under-represented in the real electorate. There's basically no seat you can win solely from those voters (we win by getting a few of them + squeezing left).

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The upcoming New Zealand election looks likely to get their pro land tax party into parliament for the first time ever, so there may be rumblings of that beginning...

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There's a lot we could be doing: a liberal offer economically where we really go in on pushing for land/wealth taxation, cooperatives, environmentalism esp now both Labour and the Greens are weak on it, outflanking Burnham to hold him to EU and PR promises. But then Ed's... pushing random tax cuts?

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Even I had some idea and I'm halfway across Europe and haven't been involved in Federal LD stuff in years. And CM was on the frontbench... if he managed to not let on that he had any concerns until now then we should make use of that skill, retire him and get him playing poker to fund the party.

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The worst thing, for those who want a medium term future for Ed's leadership, would be brushing this off & not recalibrating. If Ed's capable of leading the LDs forwards, he has to show he's capable of getting people back on board. Some statements from Ed backers seem to be attempting the opposite.

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James Baillie @jubalbarca.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Regarding Charlie Maynard's attempt to push out Ed Davey - I don't think it's helpful for Ed's backers to throw out statements about how "furious" they are. Support for Ed is tepid both at the grassroots and parliamentary level. Smart Ed backers should listen and understand why this is happening.

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The current leadership is obsessed with an increasingly imaginary remnant of 'liberal one nation Tory' voters whilst making sub-zero effort to actually capture any votes to our left, so a change of leader certainly wouldn't be likely to hinder any attempt to capitalise on the Greens' problems.

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James Baillie @jubalbarca.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Having certain aspects of the 2005 Liberal Democrats back would be pretty nice about now in British politics (sadly the leadership of the 2026 Liberal Democrats do not agree with me on this point).

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James Baillie @jubalbarca.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Pebbles!? When I were a lad, we had to chew directly on t'mountainside, none of this having food cut up into pebbles like it's some modern convenience...

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Woodrow Hartzog @hartzog.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Silicon Valley for some time has been trying to sell us an impoverished vision for humanity.

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April Neander 🏳️‍🌈 @aineander.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Today our paper introducing Megacauda is published in Nature! Which means I can finally share my illustration! Meet this beautifully preserved Jurassic, semi-aquatic swimmer #sciart #paleontology

An illustration of a furry mammaliaform with a long, flattened, scaly tail floating in the greenish water. A salamander looks up from the bottom.

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Hannah Alexander Artwork @hannahartwork.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Moth 🔦 first picture in my October series!

A digital illustration of a giant moth fae with glowing yellow eyes clinging to a lighthouse. At it's base, a lighthouse keeper emerges from his house to investigate.

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James Baillie @jubalbarca.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

If my Latin was good enough to work out how to render the phrase "shocked pikachu face" then that in translation is what I would have put here

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Jeremy Ghooooost Shipp @jeremycshipp.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

To celebrate Anti-Prime Day, why not consider supporting artists, writers, creators? Buy a book, purchase an indie video game, commission an art piece, gift someone a Patreon. Your support means everything.

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James Baillie @jubalbarca.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Agree with this. I think politics right across Europe is horribly geared for the sort of business that produces innovation in these areas too - small cultural/creative sector stuff keeps getting absolutely hammered by badly written laws bc if it's not a car factory the politicians aren't interested.

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James Baillie @jubalbarca.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

I wrote a thing for @midagesmodgames.bsky.social on using serendipity to explore historical sources in game design, and it's here if you'd like to read it :) #medieval #gameDev

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James Baillie @jubalbarca.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

The @midagesmodgames.bsky.social conference 2026 is starting! It's a public, text-based conference with blogpost papers and comments. Everyone is welcome to join in, ask questions, etc. If you're interested in games, medievalism, or both, follow us & find the posts at: middleagesinmoderngames.net

middleagesinmoderngames.net

The Middle Ages in Modern Games – Exploring medievalisms in modern gaming contexts

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James Baillie @jubalbarca.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

I sadly doubt Trump has enough knowledge of geography or population left (if he ever had it at all) to make any use of those things even if someone did tell him. :/

James Baillie @jubalbarca.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Re the Green Party motion on Palestine today A thing I've not seen discussed much: the "unitary state" which is now becoming an article of faith on the left actually polls at like 10% among actual Palestinians if that. Feels... weird to have the western left telling them what they should want?

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James Baillie @jubalbarca.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

I should really switch to using LibreOffice for more of my work. It doesn't really help (as it doesn't change anything financially), but anything free of LLM powered bloat feels like a breath of fresh air at this point.

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Oh that was you! Thank you, that was a really lovely review to get :) And looking forward to seeing anything you come up with!

(This did remind me to check in on the game side and I've just seen that my last game which I released a couple years ago got its 25th Steam review, so that's nice at least!)

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Yes, that's very true! I guess when I'm developing games I can sort of at least run them myself and see if *I* enjoy them, whereas I don't get the same thing out of reading my own written text:) But I agree it's very similar and games take much longer to make and hold that through than writings!

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Draculosity Jones: Ghost Skeleton @brainmage.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

The feeling of writing things in an attention war with a mix of slicker professionals and infinite nonsense machines gets to me at times. I've no idea if my stuff gets read, but feeling like it's piling up gathering dust makes it harder to push myself through the barrier of writing the next thing.

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Real "one always tells the truth, the other always lies" vibes, and yet both would say "I have never once been fed". Much to consider.

Two daft black cats stand either side fo an open door

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James Baillie @jubalbarca.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Now made even worse by the 'dead internet' element - it's difficult for the media or anyone else to tell if some of the views they're getting are even people or if they're agents and crawler bots (but the majority of web traffic is often the latter). So they don't even know what they're aiming at!

What are you reading? (Non-fiction edition!)

A nonfiction reading update, I read The Medieval Persian Gulf by @brianjulrich.bsky.social. It's very good, I learned a lot though as a non-Islamicist with a tired brain I might want a second read to revise some of the religious divisions. Would thoroughly recommend! exilian.co.uk/forum/index....

exilian.co.uk

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To be fair, looking at the general history and track record of crusades of any kind, this possibly shouldn't be an enormous surprise.

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Reflections on the International Congress of Byzantine Studies 2026

I wrote up some reflection thoughts on the International Congress of Byzantine Studies 2026, and some of the challenges facing us as a field (some of which we're facing up to better than others): exilian.co.uk/forum/index.... #History #Byzantium #Byzantine #Medieval

exilian.co.uk

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James Baillie @jubalbarca.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

It's a really bad look for us to have these sorts of headlines coming out. It's one thing if there's a genuine selection contest over local issues that's actually coming from the grassroots or a real discussion of where we're headed: but this whiff of orchestration by the higher ups looks very grim.

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I wrote a thing! It's about warlock patrons, and the ways that the #D&D concept of being contractually bound for magical power could appeal to alternative beings to the patrons in the main game - or even work in other ways entirely. Link below, thoughts very welcome :) #DungeonsAndDragons #TTRPGs

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Layla Moran MP 🔶🕊️ @laylamoran.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

It is disappointing that the Government have broken their pledge to seek legal advice towards recognising a genocide of Uyghur Muslims in China. I urge the Government to honour this commitment and waste no time in raising concerns over human rights abuses. www.politicshome.com/news/article...

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"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux @bretdevereaux.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

The thing about actual Roman damnationes memoriarum is that they didn't really obliterate all memory of a bad emperor. None of our sources are afraid to talk about these figures. It wasn't truly about forgetting the guy, but about abolishing his (positive) public commemoration.

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James Baillie @jubalbarca.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

We're very happy to cover new members' projects so if you're seeing this and you'd like us to tell people about any sort of #GameDev, art, writing, crafts, or similar that you're doing (as long as it doesn't use LLM generation), please head over and post about it soon! #Gaming #Indiedev

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James Baillie @jubalbarca.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

It is once again That Time, I need to write the @exilianofficial.bsky.social news in the next week ish, which means it's a very good time to post about your projects on the exilian.co.uk/forum/index.... webforums. #WritingCommunity #Artists #Music

exilian.co.uk

Exilian - Index

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Alisdair Calder McGregor @acmcgregor.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Well fair play, Ed Davey has come out in support of the trans community over Labour's unworkable bathroom ban #ShareGoodNewsToo www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/202...

telegraph.co.uk

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James Baillie @jubalbarca.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

So I don't really think we should adopt stronger policy because I think it's the only route to more seats: I think we should adopt it because it's a route to having more impact on the national political conversation. Ed can win battles - he's done less impressively on making use of those wins.

James Baillie @jubalbarca.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

The operational doctrine of Ed's LDs has been to build a specific leafy southern wedge and hold it until it becomes arithmetically necessary. But our current outlook gives us few options for a next wave of expansion & leaves us hostage to other parties' numbers. It's not a strong theory for change.

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James Baillie @jubalbarca.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

I think this is probably correct if one thinks the primary function of the party is to take a solid, low-risk approach to maximising MP numbers. The issue, for people like me, is that I think our function requires a wider theory of political change towards liberalism: I'm unsure this achieves that.

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James Baillie @jubalbarca.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

20 year old me... eh, I've not changed much. Perhaps disappointed that I've not hit various life milestones, but would almost certainly accept "I was tired, also people are difficult and there was a global pandemic" as a valid defence for me not hitting them. And I got some of what we planned done.

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James Baillie @jubalbarca.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

I think you're right about historical scholarship by volume, depending a bit on where you draw the lines. That production is in my experience heavily focused on certain periods, approaches and places, though (more so even than in unis), weighted by resources & the shape of existing public interest.