iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Liam Connell @liamconnell.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

The French Revolution, 1789-1794, taking care to set up minor characters like Julien Raymond and Louis-Felicite Sonthonax who'll kick off the Haiti spinoff. Draw from A Place of Greater Safety, and really link into having new lead characters every season, only some of whom die horribly.

031 3

Liam Connell @liamconnell.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

Learning to walk, and/or still breastfeeding. Surely even for this site this question skews old?

000 0

Liam Connell @liamconnell.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

Not enough non-Kiwis are aware of Sam Neill's first role as a leading man in 1977's Sleeping Dogs, a landmark in NZ cinema. What if a US-backed dictator took power in New Zealand during the Cold War? Neill plays an ordinary man caught up in the emerging insurgency, and he's already soemthing else.

A black and white still of a young Sam Neill as a political dissident in a dystopian New Zealand, standing in a paddock and pointing a handgun off screen.

020 2

Liam Connell @liamconnell.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

This has something of the bleakness of something like 'The Screwfly Solution,' but there's a terrible humanism underneath as well. It's a tremendous work of fiction, and it has made me pour a whiskey and stare at the wall.

162 6

Liam Connell @liamconnell.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

National: I grew up on a farm in Canterbury Labour: Norman Kirk rang my grandfather on the night he won the election to thank granddad for his crucial support. Greens: I come from a multicultural, multiracial family. ACT: I trained at Hayek's school. NZ First: I have drunk at the Green Parrot.

020 2

Liam Connell @liamconnell.bsky.social · 04/06/2026

My supervisor Antony Best used to drum into me that whether you were looking at interwar Japanese fascists, British imperial legates, Stalinist diplomats, or anyone else: Before trying to 'explain' their agenda it was almost always worth considering that maybe they just believed what they said.

080 8

Liam Connell @liamconnell.bsky.social · 02/06/2026

I'm alone in an Otago cabin on a writing project, and I occasionally burst into song. I knew I had a bad voice - my sister's the one who's the professional star of musical theatre - but I didn't know I had "border collie comes bursting through the house in a panic to check if I'm okay bad voice"

020 2

Liam Connell @liamconnell.bsky.social · 26/04/2026

Many political partisans, in practice, believe in their party structures more than they do in any abstract set of philosophical principles, and that this is correlated neither with the left/right axis nor educational attainment.

000 0

Liam Connell @liamconnell.bsky.social · 23/02/2026

Doc is quite right. It’s particularly ridiculous because British/Imperial racism has been intertwined with the American variety and vocabulary for centuries. It’s not just about TV or social media- the Australian public had sadly strong opinions about American race relations in the 19th century!

050 5

Liam Connell @liamconnell.bsky.social · 09/02/2026

As a young man, I found myself at a reception at New Zealand House in London. While returning with a round of drinks, I tripped over myself (I wasn't even drunk, just very clumsy) and proceeded to pour half a pint down the back of someone who turned out to be Prime Minister Bill English.

020 2

Liam Connell @liamconnell.bsky.social · 26/01/2026

Young people today no longer read Redwall, proving that the modern generation doesn't love small animals or vegetarianism.

49214 92

Liam Connell @liamconnell.bsky.social · 07/01/2026

I was privileged to work at NZ’s Royal Commission into Abuse in Care, and it meant dealing with many, many horrific files. We had training and mandatory therapy. It still messes you up. Do not traumatise yourself out of a misguided sense of political obligation.

091 9

Liam Connell @liamconnell.bsky.social · 03/01/2026

This is a modern Jameson Raid. Its short term success will not change the day that it has revealed the inherent lawlessness of its perpetrators. It is an action of imperial weakness, not strength.

030 3

Liam Connell @liamconnell.bsky.social · 07/12/2025

-- I tell the tale that I heard told. Mithridates, he died old.

030 3

Liam Connell @liamconnell.bsky.social · 30/11/2025

This unrelated thread gets to the heart of why Stoppard's plays are so delightful; they are clever and humanist and densely intellectual, but they can also be joyful and funny and farcical and strange. 'R&G are Dead', 'Real Inspector Hound,' 'Travesties' are all great art that leaves you delighted.

130 3

Liam Connell @liamconnell.bsky.social · 14/10/2025

People get really, performatively weird about the difficulty of Ulysses. It's not that inaccessible, particularly if you listen to it; it demands attention and mental effort, but it's not some literary shibboleth or an emperor with no clothes.

020 2

Liam Connell @liamconnell.bsky.social · 01/10/2025

American sports, or Yugoslavia in 1942, who can say.

000 0

Liam Connell @liamconnell.bsky.social · 01/09/2025

My undergrad lecturer, the late and much lamented Chris Jones once succinctly taught a lesson through three 16thC portraits: which of these three men is most confident in his power? It’s remarkable that Charles looks more like a merchant or lawyer than the most powerful man in the Atlantic world.

King Francis I de Valois of France, painted by Jean Clouet. Francis is in a rich doublet, covered in gold braid and wearing a heavy gold chain and fine fur hat.

King Henry VIII Tudor of England, painted after Holbein. The King is extravagantly dressed in elaborate court garments, heavy and expensive fabrics, and much jewellery.

Emperor Charles V Hapsburg, of Spain, the Holy Roman Empire, et cetera. Painted by Titian. He is seated in a chair as if fatigued, and dressed entirely in sober black. He has a sword, but the scabbard is unadorned. The only visible jewellery is a discreet necklace. The materials of his clothing are clearly very high quality, but utterly unadorned.

172 7

Liam Connell @liamconnell.bsky.social · 01/09/2025

Stephen is quite wrong about the Craig era being a total disaster, but quite right that people sleep on the Tosca scene in QoS: it's a perfectly absurd Bond set piece, overdramatic, mildly comic, and the right amount of camp. Pity about the rest of the film mind.

010 1

Liam Connell @liamconnell.bsky.social · 30/08/2025

Remember when Scorsese - quite rightly - pointed out that Marvel movies were the simply rollercoasters and was decried on twitter? A varied media diet matters, which means you can enjoy the trite or trashy or childish. In fact, some children's art is profound. But you need the other stuff!

000 0

Liam Connell @liamconnell.bsky.social · 27/08/2025

Sensible historical critique this, and I don't understand the medievalists quibbling. As a late Victorian historian, I can confirm that medieval people wore dirt and all early modern people wore silly wigs and ruffs. I hope this helps clear up the distinction for any lay people.

010 1

Liam Connell @liamconnell.bsky.social · 18/08/2025

A good essay on a series I have a lot of residual fondness for. A lot of ink has been spilled on 'YA fiction' that's actually written for and read by adults; the Wheel of Time is a great example of 'adult' literature whose ideal audience is a bookish eleven year old.

072 7

Liam Connell @liamconnell.bsky.social · 17/08/2025

I think the CANZUK delusion is more widespread than people think. Story time: At the graduation drinks for my masters, I spoke to a fellow student who was very excited about the job he was going to at an exciting new campaign: Brexit.

110 1

Liam Connell @liamconnell.bsky.social · 09/08/2025

Evelyn Waugh and Graham Greene, for starters.

120 2

Liam Connell @liamconnell.bsky.social · 09/08/2025

The bizarre thing about Starfield is that it has one (1) really good idea, a genuinely innovative advance in not just the studio's formula but the entire genre of the western RPG... and it's locked behind completing the main quest, which the studio's players never, ever, do.

110 1

Liam Connell @liamconnell.bsky.social · 03/08/2025

I'm recovering from surgery so I can't join the #marchforhumanity in Sydney today. I'm so glad to see so many people rallying against starvation and ethnic cleansing. Solidarity!

0131 13

Liam Connell @liamconnell.bsky.social · 28/07/2025

Frustratingly, most of the Tom Lehrer clips on youtube cut out his extremely witty intros. This man was a comedy titan; my family loved him since the 60s. My extremely Catholic grandfather loved the Vatican Rag; my mum hummed 'The Masochism Tango.' But as a history nerd, this was my favourite:

youtu.be

Tom Lehrer - Who's Next - with intro

YouTube video by The Tom Lehrer Wisdom Channel

010 1

Liam Connell @liamconnell.bsky.social · 26/07/2025

I'm sorry, but for a list of Australian Songs, the top 100 is picking the wrong Crowded House numbers. 'Four Seasons in One Day' is one of the great songs about Melbourne, and is the band's great Australian song. 'Don't Dream it Over' is a New Zealand song, that's settled fact. #hottest100

070 7

Liam Connell @liamconnell.bsky.social · 18/07/2025

Yep. The other point, is that just like today, people in the past could say the same word and mean different things. And those people might not realise that the people they were talking to meant different things! (traumatised phd flashbacks.) There's no shortcut or ai summary to historical truth.

000 0

Liam Connell @liamconnell.bsky.social · 04/07/2025

This sounds like a dream project and a great example of what the humanities can be: it's fun, it'll open up understandings of post war Europe, it engages with mass culture, it works across disciplines... some young scholar deserves a great experience working on this.

010 1

Liam Connell @liamconnell.bsky.social · 01/06/2025

I thought a lot about this doing my doctorate, and I landed on 1: 'it's a good tool for forcing you to think about why what happened happened, but it has no predictive value, nor can it be used to prove things.' History can't really be wargamed, nor can you change variables in an experiment. 1/7

2306 30

Liam Connell @liamconnell.bsky.social · 25/05/2025

This is a pun worthy of Asterix

020 2

Reposted by Liam Connell

Owen Michael @owenwmichael.bsky.social · 24/05/2025

A weird consequence of the discrediting of fascism in WW2 meaning that subsequent movements occupying the similar political ground run away from the label is people act as if the concept is itself fictional. But the bad guys in WW2 were in fact real.

3225 22

Liam Connell @liamconnell.bsky.social · 20/05/2025

I’ve never before seen rats drill a hole in the side of the ship before they leave.

000 0

Liam Connell @liamconnell.bsky.social · 14/05/2025

I'm very pleased to be published in the excellent Liberal Currents, writing about how Trump's foreign policy is actually not a return to colonial imperialism. It's much stranger and more stupid, and it presents quite the challenge to what remains of worldwide liberal democracy.

35912 59

Liam Connell @liamconnell.bsky.social · 03/05/2025

I can’t reply but yes - a non human working with a Jedi and another group of aliens. In the old canon, they’re all absent from the imperial campaigns we see in the films - and suddenly appear to be demonised as alien traitors, dark Jedi, and Vader cultists once the Kenobi/Skywalker clique wins.

020 2

Liam Connell @liamconnell.bsky.social · 26/04/2025

It was aid of Louis XVI that he was like a pillow - the last to sit on it leaves the impression

050 5

Liam Connell @liamconnell.bsky.social · 16/04/2025

And the voices of trans women were entirely excluded from the case. Shameful stuff.

042 4

Liam Connell @liamconnell.bsky.social · 23/03/2025

'De l'audace, encore de l'audace, et toujours de l'audace!'

000 0

Liam Connell @liamconnell.bsky.social · 22/03/2025

I mean, there's a lot that's baffling and repulsive about this line of thought, but he's suggesting that the Christian course of action was to join in on the side carrying out the Armenian Genocide.

011 1

Liam Connell @liamconnell.bsky.social · 19/02/2025

An interesting comparison, but of course the point about Leopold II is that he engaged in an elaborate and successful pretence that he wasn’t in the Congo to make money. The striking thing about Trumpian imperialism is that there’s no pretence at a casus belli - the knives are sharpened openly.

010 1

Liam Connell @liamconnell.bsky.social · 09/01/2025

Studying the laboratory of democracy that was 1890s Australasia should teach you some intellectual humility on this; you nod smugly along as you read about female suffrage, workers' rights, republicanism, the secret ballot... but genocide, white Australasia, and eugenics are all in the same program.

261 6

Liam Connell @liamconnell.bsky.social · 02/01/2025

I would be in an audience of dozens, but I’d love to see someone reboot the IP as a Mad Men /Halt and Catch Fire 1980s corporate tech drama where the enterprise just happens to be about single-handedly creating a new tech revolution just so you can compete with Disneyworld.

010 1

Liam Connell @liamconnell.bsky.social · 25/11/2024

I'm not proud of this, but when I watched Gladiator II and the enemy champion rides into the arena on a giant rhinoceros, I actually thought 'Ha! He's using stirrups in AD 200, what a goof!'

160 6

Liam Connell @liamconnell.bsky.social · 24/11/2024

Having watched Gladiator II my objection aren't so much historical (what's the point? In comparison, the first is a documentary) as they are dramaturgical. The storytelling is muddied. At one point, two scenes repeat the same plot point beat for beat and back to back. Still, Denzel is good fun.

120 2

Liam Connell @liamconnell.bsky.social · 23/11/2024

In my first year as a student, my lecturer Geoffrey Rice diverted from our medieval survey course to tell us the story of Marc Bloch. He spent his last breaths comforting a frightened boy before the Nazi firing squad. A great scholar, a brave man, and a model of resistance. Long may we honour him.

140 4

Reposted by Liam Connell

Xerea 💙☕ VTuber @xerea.bsky.social · 20/11/2024

Today is Transgender Day of Remembrance. Remember those who have been killed, injured, abused, tortured for being who they are. Remember those who have taken their own lives because they could not live in a world where they could not be themselves. Remember them. And make the world remember them.

Light blue, pink, and white candles on a black background, arranged in the order of the Transgender Pride flag. Beneath, the text "TRANSGENDER DAY OF REMEMBRANCE NOVEMBER 20" is displayed.

145192689408 19.3K

Liam Connell @liamconnell.bsky.social · 11/11/2024

New intro time: I’m a historian of 1890s/1900s Australasia, looking at how these new societies saw their place in the wider Pacific - and who was included or excluded in that vision. Hopefully I can pitch it as a book. Other interests include foreign policy, and boring people about Terry Pratchett.

040 4

Liam Connell @liamconnell.bsky.social · 11/11/2024

I picked up a stick to throw to a dog, don’t realise it was black thorn, and smashed the back of my head and right ear open.

000 0