iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Matthew Cook @matthew-cook.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

I wonder how airline tickets prices would plot onto that graph, considering how commercial aviation is used as an example of a transformative technology for humanity with a terrible business model

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Matthew Cook @matthew-cook.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Have you ever visited Edward Jenner's Temple of Vaccinia in Berkeley? I can imagine it being up your street

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Matthew Cook @matthew-cook.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

I live in a modern looking neighborhood in Rotterdam built in the 1930s. Most of the flats have been replastered but they were originally reeds with plaster reinforced with horsehair. You see it in skips quite often when people are renovating.

A skip full of building waste in front of a block of modern(ish) looking appartements. The skip itself is full of old plaster and water reeds

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Matthew Cook @matthew-cook.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Sorry to the killer robots company but now they put wheels on it all I see is Preston at the end of Wallace & Gromit A Close Shave

Preston, the killer robot dog at the end of Wallace and Gromit A Close Shave. It's after he is destroyed and rebuilt. He is a metal dog with sharp teeth but he is on a rickety set of wheels and he has a bandage around his head.

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Matthew Cook @matthew-cook.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

1 in 13 drivers were speeding when they put in this mobile speed camera nearby!

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Matthew Cook @matthew-cook.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

It's an amazing system and all too easy to take for granted. Anyway within half an hour of arriving at the station I was another 6km away riding through open country. Couldn't have done that with a car!

A bike path with fields of green grass either side and some cows lying down. A woman is riding a bike along the path

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Matthew Cook @matthew-cook.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

The other afternoon to get to a meeting from Zwolle station I rented an OVfiets for a few hours from NS, the national rail company. The garage was nearly empty. When I came back a few hours later there were almost 400 returned bikes that had all been ridden around the city for the day

Hundreds of identical blue and yellow hire bikes parked in rows in an underground bike park at Zwolle station in the netherlands

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Matthew Cook @matthew-cook.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Wait you want a labour government and want that government to do labour things AND for them to look like they want to do those labour things???

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Matthew Cook @matthew-cook.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Good to see the Dutch police treating the fash with all respect due. I'm also very amused to find out Dutch riot police have wicker shields. The gun is less amusing, the wicker shield is fun though

Dutch riot police about to hit some racist shit over the head with a stick. He has a wicker shield - fun! and a pistol - not fun!

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Matthew Cook @matthew-cook.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

What a day to have wiggled out of a bunch of meetings in Zwolle

Map from NOS showing railway sabotage across the Netherlands. 5 of 6 lines into Zwolle are disrupted

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Matthew Cook @matthew-cook.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

It's doing pretty well in the Netherlands too. The Juf Nienke building in Amsterdam is a good example. I imagine the UK's preference for detached housing vs terraces or flats limits things. Crap planning that only speculative developers can get through can't help either www.barli.nl/projecten

barli.nl

Projecten

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Matthew Cook @matthew-cook.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

In Rotterdam during hot periods they have to hose down one of the bridges over the Schie all day to stop it getting stuck. As its over a major inland waterway they really can't just leave it closed, so just have to give a few guys heatstroke semi regularly

A road and tram bridge in Rotterdam on a sunny day. Two men in shorts are hosing down the deck

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Matthew Cook @matthew-cook.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Speaking of Israeli responses, yesterday's PM on R4 had a typically forceful interview with an Israeli politician where it's so angry and intense that it just sounds quite mad. Any idea why they do this? Like does it actually work on anyone here or does it just feel good back home?

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Matthew Cook @matthew-cook.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

This summer I happened to visit the Longhope lifeboat museum. This station lost 8 men in one night in 1969 during a rescue, including two fathers, both with two sons onboard with them. In a community of just a few hundred this loss is still keenly felt, and the lifeboat service is hugely appreciated

Photo of an old wooden lifeboat at the top of a slipway inside a small shed. The shed is a museum

8 certificates celebrating the bravery of lifeboatmen on their successful rescues, one recognising the gallantly of a lifeboatman who list has life during a rescue

Telegrams from Queen Elizabeth II and the Queen Mother offering their condolences following the longhope lifeboat disaster

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Matthew Cook @matthew-cook.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

The building at the top is still here in Rotterdam. It's part of a city college now. maps.app.goo.gl/8CHgcLSVPrRq...

maps.app.goo.gl

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Matthew Cook @matthew-cook.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Just to add to the Rowling list of wrongs, I grew up near Dursley. JKR used the name for the family in HP because apparently she didn't like the place. When we got a new library they asked if she wanted to open it and she said no. It all seemed oddly mean spirited then, but it feels in character now

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Matthew Cook @matthew-cook.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Prestige TV 🤝 British infrastructure projects Go slow to 'improve' quality and lose all your institutional knowledge

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Matthew Cook @matthew-cook.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

I guess there is a particular tempo of filming where if you fall below it you can't keep a stable production team together and have to set up fresh each time. Once you're doing that the temptation to slow down more and give yourself even more time for pre-production probably gets much bigger

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Matthew Cook @matthew-cook.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

Meanwhile there is a cohort who does volunteer already, but inconsistently: the healthy elderly. Instead of loading the beginning of a career with a bunch of requirements we could look far more at the last job people do!

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Matthew Cook @matthew-cook.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

The solution to unhelpfully high expectations on young people always seems to be to ask even more of them, rather than to simply ease the pressure.

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Matthew Cook @matthew-cook.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

Goed om te weten, dan neem ik mijn ontbijt maar niet mee naar de kelder!

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Matthew Cook @matthew-cook.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

Gooooooooood morning Rotterdaaaaam

Two Apaches flying against a pink dawn sky with a city skyline below

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Matthew Cook @matthew-cook.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

Woken up early by 5 military helicopters flying around the city. Now the question, is something up? Or is it conspicuous training because the military want more support from the population?

Screenshot of flight radar showing 5 helicopters above Rotterdam in a small area

Screenshot of flight radar showing 5 helicopters above Rotterdam, three of them are Apaches and two chinooks

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Matthew Cook @matthew-cook.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

Oh I didn't know they had done this in London too. If you're ever knocking about between Bristol and Gloucester the Purton Ships Graveyard is an interesting visit

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Matthew Cook @matthew-cook.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

Just before I got a diagnosis I stuck out a year doing a boring office job to try and give myself some space. Honestly it was the worst year of my life, I was so miserable! In hindsight I see I was trying to fight the ADHD but jfc I should not have done that

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Matthew Cook @matthew-cook.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

Adult diagnosis is also now being claimed as a sign of over diagnosis (neurologist Suzanne O’Sullivan recently on David Runciman's podcast). It seems to forget 30 years ago diagnosis of your child with ADHD or autism was desperately avoided due to the stigma that you'll just end up in prison etc

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Matthew Cook @matthew-cook.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

Ah I knew I had seen MVRDV's latest design for Rotterdam somewhere before

An architectural render of MVRDV's design for the SHIFT embassy project in Rotterdam. It looks like a collection of mossy boulders piled up on each other

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Matthew Cook @matthew-cook.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

Some structures on Hoy in Orkney

Hackness Martello tower, a four storey stone cylinder with one small window. It was built to protect Scapa Flow from Napoleonic invasion

Dwarfie stane, a stone deposited by a glacier which was turned into a burial cairn, it was carved out by hand

A shed in Rackwick, it has dry stone walls covered in thick lichen and a roof made out of huge flagstones which is sagging alarmingly

Rackwick Bothy, recently reopened after an extensive renovation. It also has a flagstone roof but the roofline is ruler straight

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Matthew Cook @matthew-cook.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

In Twekkelerveld, Enschede there was a Catholic housing corporation and a protestant one, due to sectarian Pillarisation, one happened to use red roof tiles and the other black. The result is you still have a clear view of 1950's religious distribution when you check Google maps today

Google earth view of the post war residential district of Twekkelerveld in Enschede, NL. Some roofs are made with red tiles, other with black

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Matthew Cook @matthew-cook.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

Midweek adventures ten zuid van Zwolle

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Matthew Cook @matthew-cook.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

Regarding Miliband, as leader of the opposition he would have gained experience and I believe he personally has good transatlantic links? I don't think it's a stretch to say his actions stopped a Libya-style involvement in Syria by the US/UK

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Matthew Cook @matthew-cook.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

Walking the dog earlier I saw my 10 year old Dutch neighbour yelling a song from his front window, the lyrics were pretty much just 'fuck Lionel Messi', repeated many times. I cheered him as I walked by

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Matthew Cook @matthew-cook.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

Oh I completely understood why they feel like that, I just don't think I have ever seen such a universal and radical reaction to anything like that from an entire country. It made me wonder what it must be like to live in a country truly wronged (i.e. bombed) by the US

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Matthew Cook @matthew-cook.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

I visited some friends and their families in Toronto in May last year, the anger was so clear. One friend's family had cancelled a trip to America over it, all American products had labels in the shops, 'american' chains like burger king had posters up saying the franchise was 100% Canadian

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Reposted by Matthew Cook

Neil Goodrich @ngoodrichhsg.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

This is a good thread and a reminder of how the thinking, and delivery, of social housing has moved. The stigmatism and residualisation of social housing came in the 80s alongside wholesale changes to funding and building mechanisms.

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Matthew Cook @matthew-cook.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

Speaking of, and maybe I'm making this up, but I'm sure about 20 years ago I walked past a burger restaurant in Birmingham city centre near the NIA that had been opened by John Gummer.

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Matthew Cook @matthew-cook.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

I can't give blood or donate organs in the Netherlands because as someone who lived in the UK during the 90's I might be riddled with latent vCJD

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Reposted by Matthew Cook

Municipal Dreams @municipaldreams.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

I'm in Amsterdam - a couple of pics of Amsterdam School doorways in Hendrik Petrus Berlage’s Plan Zuid worker's housing scheme of the 1920s.

Recessed green painted and glazed doorway in brick entrance with flat numbers either side

Recessed doorway in brick entrance with flat numbers either side and window to right

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Matthew Cook @matthew-cook.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

It's like someone explained to the strategists the maths of 'these votes count 2x', they decided that meant half the effort, and then they aggressively stopped thinking forever

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Matthew Cook @matthew-cook.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

Anyway now I'm in the refund zone, I hope whoever is on the tracks in front of us gets home safe

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Matthew Cook @matthew-cook.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

The 5-10 minute window of being stuck on a not-moving train, hoping the delay continues just a couple more minutes until you are into the refund zone

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Matthew Cook @matthew-cook.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

My dad worked for a company that made software for Teletext in the 90s. A colleague of his took voluntary redundancy a few years back and took the obsolete software with him. Guess which ceefax loving, bin wearing, political figure he ended up working with.

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Matthew Cook @matthew-cook.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

Very fair, the alt text with the expanded credit was noted!

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Matthew Cook @matthew-cook.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

Those Diderot plates too, amazing

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Matthew Cook @matthew-cook.bsky.social · 04/07/2026

Rotterdam is going completely nuts this evening

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