iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Martin McGrath @martinmcgrath.bsky.social · 18h

A Celebrity Traitors where there *were* fluffers would be a *very* different show.

Reposted by Martin McGrath

WWN @waterfordwhispers.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

"But Alternative Parade Route Wouldn't Allow Us To Pointlessly Create Tensions" Orange Order Confirm waterfordwhispersnews.com/2026/09/2…

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Martin McGrath @martinmcgrath.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

THEY SHOULD HAVE KILLED ROSS KEMP TO TAKE THE HEAT OFF R.E.G. AND PUT BELLA IN THE FRAME but, also, they just should have killed Ross Kemp

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Martin McGrath @martinmcgrath.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Get in. Sell up. Get out. Hope you can get it all done before the bubble bursts. Run off to the hills with the cash.

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Martin McGrath @martinmcgrath.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

"Flower of Scotland" is pure 2 o'clock in the morning, come on y'bastards if you think you're hard enough, banger of a sing-a-long national anthem.

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Martin McGrath @martinmcgrath.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Voting reform should be the end of a process of constitutional reform. First, decide the kind of state you want. Then, decide the institutions you need create that state. Then, decide how they should work together. Then, decide how you want to elect people to those institutions.

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Martin McGrath @martinmcgrath.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Perhaps this is how humanity will go extinct...

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Martin McGrath @martinmcgrath.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Beginning to wonder if this Fairford thing a Slow Horses cosplay gone wrong.

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Martin McGrath @martinmcgrath.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Is this a dagger I see before me, Handle towards my...fuck, that's sharp!

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Martin McGrath @martinmcgrath.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

"DAMMIT JIM! I'M A DOCTOR, NOT A PHYSIOTHERAPIST!" Very enterprising BUPA.

A still from a BUPA advert.

Their app shows a physio appointment at 9:00am with Dr Leonard McCoy

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Martin McGrath @martinmcgrath.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

I hadn't realized helicopters required birds to keep them flying (I don't understand helicopter magic) but solidarity with our striking avian comrades If you think I am going to apologize for that, you don't know me at all...

A picture of a Chinook - a large, double-rotor helicopter - sitting in a field of grass with the headline "Chinook helicopter lands in field after bird strike"

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Martin McGrath @martinmcgrath.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

"As guilty as an Emirati-backed sports washing football scam.."

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Martin McGrath @martinmcgrath.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Study finds that some cats spend up to 94.3% of their time doing fuck all and are only active 1% of the time www.newscientist.com/article/2590... this confirms every one of my cat prejudices and deserves a Nobel Prize (delivered in a box)

The most mobile cats were free-roaming pets: in summer, they were active a full 3.9 per cent of the time, though this fell to 2.7 per cent in winter. The indoor and research cats spent even less active time. Littering and scratching took up very little time, less than 1 per cent each. Instead, overall, the cats devoted between 2.4 and 7.8 per cent of their time to eating, 4.6 to 7.9 per cent to grooming, and 9.3 to 15.6 per cent to standing.

If you’ve been keeping track, you already know there’s a whole lot of day left. This the cats reserved for their two primary activities. Sitting occupied them for 20.1 to 41.4 per cent of their time, while a whopping 34.8 to 52.9 per cent went to the really important one: lying.

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Martin McGrath @martinmcgrath.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

A bunch of people living in a society controlled by a load of computers they no longer understand... did Star Trek and Arthur C Clarke really die in vain?

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Martin McGrath @martinmcgrath.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

An alliance of the octopuses and the dolphins? Surely humanity's fate is sealed www.digitalcameraworld.com/photography/...

Three images of an octopus clinging to dorsal fin of a dolphin as it rises out of the water.

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Martin McGrath @martinmcgrath.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Surprised at how I've ended up so "neo-luddite" given I've been an early adopter my whole life - radicalised by AI hype and slop. Also, I think I am more pessimistic than this. But I'm broadly okay with being a northern European social democrat/democratic socialist britmonkey.com/2020s-politi...

Results
72% woke - 28% chud
33% tech bros - 66% neo-luddite
67% hopepilled - 33% doomer
98% Davis - 2% Dubai

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Martin McGrath @martinmcgrath.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

I used to tell this story (less well) to students in my module on campaigning for social change. It's brilliant. As Margaret Mead said: “Never underestimate the power of a small group of committed people to change the world. In fact, it is the only thing that ever has.”

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Martin McGrath @martinmcgrath.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Reports suggest a squadron of Fairy Swordfish were seen in the area around the time of the incident...

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Martin McGrath @martinmcgrath.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Quote this with a picture of the aircraft you'll accept as a bribe.

A twin-engined de Havilland Mosquito - the wooden wonder - in D-Day livery. Photographed in flight, from slightly above and to the pilot's right.

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Martin McGrath @martinmcgrath.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Perfectly hidden from The Predator.

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Martin McGrath @martinmcgrath.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Kevin and Kathleen aren't going to let a minor thing like their hotel burning down get them out of bed. This is how the Silent Generation roll. Take that Boomers and all the rest of you snowflake generations!

Kevin Crawford, 91, and his wife Kathleen, 82, said that they had booked in for a two-week stay at the hotel.

The couple, from London, told the BBC that they were in their room on the sixth floor when they heard a fire alarm.

"We saw the fire but we thought the fire brigade had it under control," Kevin Crawford said.

"We managed to sleep through it. At the time, we didn't realise how bad the fire was."

Hls wife said that they were brought down from their room after waving to people from the window.

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Reposted by Martin McGrath

ianthemouthofmadness.fenrisgames @fenrisgames.com · 18/09/2026

this is a hell of a 🧵

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Martin McGrath @martinmcgrath.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

David Andress defends academic history in History Today: "where a robustly democratic polity can vigorously argue about its collective identity... We can have something like this, or we can have a politics based in exclusionary nostalgia, demanding allegiance as it drifts ever-further from reality"

'It produces a democratic polity that can vigorously argue about its collective identity'

David Andress
Professor of Modern History at the University of Portsmouth

Everything that a society does is grounded in its sense of the past, because without that, nothing about the present makes sense. How a society obtains such a sense of the past, what form it takes, and what kind of reflections on the present it prompts, are therefore vital questions. Nobody who has come into direct contact with academic historians could accuse them of addiction to consensus-building and it is certainly not the case (as long-dead gurus such as E.H. Carr and J.H. Plumb once argued) that historical knowledge can chart an unproblematic course to the future.

So what is distinctive about academic history that might make it something other than mere personal or ideological preferences? History as academic scholarship involves a commitment to originality, significance, and rigour. It involves direct contact with surviving documentation, artefacts, and other historical evidence; it requires the building of new analyses, interpretations, and narratives.

... since the 1960s the expanding field of history within universities has demonstrated the enormous capacity for deepening our collective understanding that has come from supporting scholarship in such institutions. This answer could be filled simply with a roll-call of the entirely new fields opened up in the last half-century, and made part of history, through such work. And by being part of history, they are also part of the present, and the future-one where a robustly democratic polity can vigorously argue about its collective identity, grounded nonetheless in recognition of the vast array of experiences that make up such an identity.

We can have something like this, or we can have a politics based in exclusionary nostalgia, demanding allegiance as it drifts ever-further from reality. This is a real choice we now face.

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Martin McGrath @martinmcgrath.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Join us tonight at 10:30 when we ask a government minister whether they respect the legitimate concerns of these protestors.

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Martin McGrath @martinmcgrath.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

"I got a dog but didn't want work at my relationship with it so I bodged together a tech solution that lacks any human interaction but turns its natural bodily functions into a scare moment" is pretty pure distillation of everything horrible in tech bros world That's going to be a fucked up dog

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Martin McGrath @martinmcgrath.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Two points about the Principality of Piddington... 1. Did they appoint a prince? Can anyone apply for the job? 2. If, hypothetically, I identified a small independent European territory outside NATO that I thought might be nice to rule, would anyone join my army? Or contributing to the Go Fund Me?

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Martin McGrath @martinmcgrath.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

I'm sure China Mieville's The Rouse is every bit the tour de force The Guardian review insists but I'm not going to lie: the discovery that it has a 100 page prologue before a 1000 page novel (or perhaps a 1000 page epilogue to a 100 page novel...) may have made my heart sink & dimmed my enthusiasm

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Martin McGrath @martinmcgrath.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Netanyahu at home brushing up on the lyrics to "My Way" "At last... This is my moment!"

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Martin McGrath @martinmcgrath.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

It's only a matter of time before any self-respecting Galway Girl refuses to be sung about too

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Martin McGrath @martinmcgrath.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

"Mel Stride" is a pollsters control question that got out of hand and nearly became sentient.

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Martin McGrath @martinmcgrath.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

I lost my da back in the summer and have been good for very little ever since. I can't imagine trying to carry that and run a country. Whatever his merits as a politician, I wish him well in what can only be a very difficult time. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

theguardian.com

Andy Burnham cancels engagements as his father’s death is announced

UK prime minister had been due to speak at the TUC conference in Brighton

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Martin McGrath @martinmcgrath.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

If I can't dance I don't want to be part of your space revolution...

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Martin McGrath @martinmcgrath.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

I had a sudden pang of nostalgia for my old PalmPilot. The slide into senescence accelerates.

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Martin McGrath @martinmcgrath.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Starting a petition to make it law that anyone kicking Bruno Fernandes is awarded a Victoria Cross not a red card.

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Martin McGrath @martinmcgrath.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Reform is not a political party. It's a privately owned investment platform for those who think they can get rich selling the UK Government to tech bros and oligarchs.

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Martin McGrath @martinmcgrath.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Turns out none of those funeral companies constantly advertising on TV offer the option of a passage burial in your own mound with a summer solstice alignment. Useless.

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Martin McGrath @martinmcgrath.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

The end of The Last Night of the Proms is always like the end of one of those quiz shows where the English get to open the boxes of the great prizes they could have won (Land of Hope and Glory, Jerusalem) before being presented with the booby-prize they've actually chosen (God Save thzzzzzz...)

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Martin McGrath @martinmcgrath.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

As the British Army rolls through Skibbereen, Trump declares reunification complete and says that the remains of the Republic on the Aran Islands, Inishbofin and Great Blasket is the "biggest and greatest Ireland in history" and that Andy Burnham is desperate to do a deal.

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Martin McGrath @martinmcgrath.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Is now the time to make my case for massive investment in political infrastructure in every constituency, local authority and the state funding of political parties?

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Martin McGrath @martinmcgrath.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

How many World Cup/Balloon d'Or winning players have had the privilege of running out on the hallowed turf of Dagenham & Redbridge's Victoria Road stadium?

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Martin McGrath @martinmcgrath.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

And for the first time in my life I wonder whether it's such a good idea...

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Martin McGrath @martinmcgrath.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

It's not their baby, they just invited a three-year-old to their house and said "Lovely to meet you. Please come in" simultaneously. (What a peculiar sentence.)

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Martin McGrath @martinmcgrath.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

The good old days are back... woohoo.

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Martin McGrath @martinmcgrath.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

There's no perfect legal or ethical position here but the status quo permits real suffering to go on because of fears about potential abuse in the future that could have been regulated/rebalanced. That seems wrong. www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cq... MPs vote against fresh move to legalise assisted dying

bbc.co.uk

MPs vote against fresh move to legalise assisted dying in England and Wales - follow live

The bill would have allowed adults with fewer than six months to live to apply to be given help to end their own life, subject to certain safeguards.

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Martin McGrath @martinmcgrath.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Coming soon: the $5000 dollar note with that AI image of Trump resurrecting Epstein on one side and a giant eagle shitting on the rest of the planet on the other. Each one printed on an A1 sheet of paper. Very classy. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

bbc.co.uk

Trump says every adult American would get $5,000 if Republicans win midterms

Speaking at a party convention, the US president gave no details on how the plan would work or where the money would come from.

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Martin McGrath @martinmcgrath.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

In the background Keir Starmer skips away giggling...

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Martin McGrath @martinmcgrath.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Not going to say I told you Andy Burnham is a triangulating coward, but I did. In three months you'll all be longing for the, comparative, decisiveness of Starmer (and I do not say this as a defence of Starmer).

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Martin McGrath @martinmcgrath.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

She's a phenomenon. It's mind-blowing to think she's ended her career in front of 80,000 people. In Croke Park. As a three-time undisputed champion.

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Martin McGrath @martinmcgrath.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

I'm going to give you the "bread of heaven" one, and maybe "Abide With Me" (as long as it's on the deck of The Titanic) but after that, what exactly are the "great hymns" of Britain. English religious music is grim and drab and has all the spiritual uplift of a serious chat with an actuary.

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