iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Michael Taylor @mhtaylor.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

The bots have found this on Twitter/X. But it remains very hard to think of a more stupid thing to say about Britain’s relationship with slavery.

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Michael Taylor @mhtaylor.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

It is a truth universally acknowledged that the best way to lift a bad mood is to listen to REM’s early albums

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Michael Taylor @mhtaylor.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

You know it’s September when it’s simultaneously the end of the cricket season and of Manchester United’s chances for silverware

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Michael Taylor @mhtaylor.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

My mate who sent me the picture added the caption "My precious", which is fair enough!

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Michael Taylor @mhtaylor.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Nothing in writing is more certain than signing off on the proofs then seeing a colossally stupid mistake the first time you pick up a physical copy of the book

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Michael Taylor @mhtaylor.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Last match of the season at the weekend. This may not have been my first beer.

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Michael Taylor @mhtaylor.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

Unsurprisingly, using AI does not make us smarter!

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Michael Taylor @mhtaylor.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

Currently reading a book that is so badly written that I think I am forgetting how to read

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Michael Taylor @mhtaylor.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

As I have said on the other place: - instructing Carter-Ruck is never, ever a good sign; - just because the people making the allegations of plagiarism are obnoxious, it doesn’t mean they are wrong

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Michael Taylor @mhtaylor.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

I Believe, Fall on Me, Cuyahoga … even Superman!

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Michael Taylor @mhtaylor.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

Even better than South Park’s Mecha-Streisand-defeating Robert Smith?

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Michael Taylor @mhtaylor.bsky.social · 18/07/2026

I am not terribly active here, but if you have recently seen me posting enthusiastically about dodgy gambling websites, crypto, Trump, and what appears to be erotic fan fiction ... I was hacked 😂

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Michael Taylor @mhtaylor.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

The current cover art for the US edition of the coming book. I think I like the chaos.

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Michael Taylor @mhtaylor.bsky.social · 01/06/2026

Finalising the plate section of the book and I am including images of both the execution of Louis XVI and Beyoncé’s performance at the Super Bowl, which seems about right …

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Michael Taylor @mhtaylor.bsky.social · 16/05/2026

The very worst part of writing any book is getting permissions for plate images, and I will not hear any dissent on the matter

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Michael Taylor @mhtaylor.bsky.social · 01/05/2026

6 years, 6 books (sort of) = very tired me

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Michael Taylor @mhtaylor.bsky.social · 30/03/2026

You also have to pick subjects that appeal to a wide audience and that haven’t been done in the last 3-4 years … pretty tricky

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Michael Taylor @mhtaylor.bsky.social · 30/03/2026

Makes it quite difficult to choose given that you’re forbidden from picking anything related to professional activity

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Michael Taylor @mhtaylor.bsky.social · 23/03/2026

You just need enabling provisions in primary legislation … “Henry VIII powers”. Of course, consequent policy decisions would be open to judicial review, which would annoy Reform immensely.

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Michael Taylor @mhtaylor.bsky.social · 22/03/2026

Oh, it’s apparently selling like hotcakes through Amazon (because the “publishers” don’t actually exist)

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Michael Taylor @mhtaylor.bsky.social · 22/03/2026

Yep - same guys doing the digging!

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Michael Taylor @mhtaylor.bsky.social · 22/03/2026

I am very keen to find out if he could

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Michael Taylor @mhtaylor.bsky.social · 21/03/2026

Hi, @dorianlynskey.bsky.social @iandunt.bsky.social ... I've just finished writing a history of the Illuminati and the conspiracy theories that came afterwards, and much enjoyed your episode on the topic ... if either of you would be interested in reading a copy, could you let me know?

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Michael Taylor @mhtaylor.bsky.social · 21/03/2026

Good questions ... Germany/HRE in 1776, specifically

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Michael Taylor @mhtaylor.bsky.social · 21/03/2026

Any really good repositories of historical maps that anyone could recommend?

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Reposted by Michael Taylor

Caroline Dodds Pennock @carolinepennock.bsky.social · 18/03/2026

Chris has brightened my day enormously by revealing that Nigel Biggar, of Uncritical Colonialism fame, seems to have been awarded a well-deserved third in his undergraduate History degree.

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Michael Taylor @mhtaylor.bsky.social · 16/03/2026

The "Britain spent 1.8% of GDP on suppressing slavery" claim is mostly nonsense Even the academic article which first made the claim - which *cites itself* and provides no other evidence - states that the actual cost was only 0.14% The remainder? Estimated opportunity costs

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Michael Taylor @mhtaylor.bsky.social · 11/03/2026

There is something dreadfully dystopian about all of this

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Reposted by Michael Taylor

Peter Mandler @petermandler.bsky.social · 10/02/2026

Third lecture now online - www.history.ox.ac.uk/james-ford-l... - on the New Psychology and ideas of the self. (1/2)

history.ox.ac.uk

The James Ford Lectures in British History

The Language of Social Science in Everyday Life - Peter Mandler (Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge)

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Michael Taylor @mhtaylor.bsky.social · 03/02/2026

Came close a while back to writing a book about the “nearly men” of professional sport - the guys who worked away but didn’t quite make it, and had little to show for it. This is much better than anything I’d have written.

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Reposted by Michael Taylor

Chris Manias @chrismanias.bsky.social · 21/10/2025

Impressive guy guarding National Museums Kenya

A large statue of a knobbly bipedal dinosaur, standing in a museum garden, with many trees and bushes around

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Michael Taylor @mhtaylor.bsky.social · 20/10/2025

I’m not sure that Deliveroo has yet had a profitable year, but Viscount Ridley’s pronouncement of doom has not materialised

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Michael Taylor @mhtaylor.bsky.social · 20/10/2025

Amazon and Uber, to name but two, took years and years to turn a profit

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Michael Taylor @mhtaylor.bsky.social · 11/10/2025

This is a cat who does not care about the wreckage of fur on the sheets, or the fact that I cannot reach the book without risking terrible injury

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Reposted by Michael Taylor

ouinne @ouinne.bsky.social · 08/10/2025

The only correct take on a fundamentally anti-human technology.

Screenshot of David Simon interview
SHAPIRO: OK, so you've spent your career creating television without Al, and I could imagine today you thinking, boy, I wish I had had that tool to solve those thorny problems...
SIMON: What?
SHAPIRO: ...Or saying...
SIMON: You imagine that?
SHAPIRO: ...Boy, if that had existed, it would have screwed me over.
SIMON: I don't think Al can remotely challenge what writers do at a fundamentally creative level.
SHAPIRO: But if you're trying to transition from scene five to scene six, and you're stuck with that transition, you could imagine plugging that portion of the script into an Al and say, give me 10 ideas for how to transition this.
SIMON: I'd rather put a gun in my mouth.

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Michael Taylor @mhtaylor.bsky.social · 19/09/2025

How does an Allen Lane paperback by a Wolfson Prize winner get the name of a prime minister wrong?

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Michael Taylor @mhtaylor.bsky.social · 17/08/2025

Plotting the chapters for the final section of the book I'm writing and, out of context, it looks like I've finally cracked:

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Michael Taylor @mhtaylor.bsky.social · 15/08/2025

After the Know-Nothings in the 1850s and the Union Party in 1860, the biggest third-party delegation in U.S. congressional history (25 reps) was the Anti-Masonic Party in the 1830s. They believed that the Illuminati and the masons were corrupting the world. Plus ca change.

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Michael Taylor @mhtaylor.bsky.social · 12/08/2025

The Spectator in 1921: "Mrs. Webster shows what a bad influence certain sections of the Jews of Central and Eastern Europe have played in fomenting revolution ... Our own strong impression is that [she] is getting on the right track in connecting the Protocols and llluminism"

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