iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Mick Fealty @mickfealty.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Apropos of very little, it’s interesting to see the UK and Ireland momentary singing off a similar hymn book on current affairs…

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Mick Fealty @mickfealty.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

The equivocatingJury currently sitting on the question of whether Trump is an uncommon genius or a gifted fool is expected issue a verdict soon…

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Edgar Morgenroth @morgenrothedgar.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

And it shows yet again that the extreme left and extreme right are essentially the same.

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Mick Fealty @mickfealty.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Good if true. The story of C21 media is the epistemic crisis that has followed the hollowing out of PSB standard journalism, which itself comes on foot of political pressure from the private sector whose own business model has suffered a disastrous and catastrophic collapse…

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Mick Fealty @mickfealty.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

1/ How do you build a resilient health system when local politicians are terrified of hard decisions on a complex policy while the local media is only interested in easy to cover, easy to sell culture war stories. That's what undergirds Northern Ireland's health crisis.

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Mick Fealty @mickfealty.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

When someone is bold enough to tell you they will declare themselves a dictator and end Parliamentary democracy and human rights on day one of taking power, believe them…

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Mick Fealty @mickfealty.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

1/ There seems to be two rules in Northern Ireland about political violence, and once seen, it’s hard to unsee it. Honour dead IRA men with a colour party and full military honours and nobody blinks. Fly one loyalist paramilitary flag at a parade and it becomes a hate crime.

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Kurt Andersen @kurtandersen.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

Every quarter @Gallup.com asks people if they’re a Democrat, Republican or Independent, and if Independent which way they lean. First two quarters if this year it was 49% Democrats+leaners vs 39% Republicans+leaners, a 10% margin. The last time either party had a margin larger than 6% was 2008.

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Chris Grey @chrisgrey.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Much talk in Reform circles today about an unfair 'Establishment' stitch-up of a 'newcomer party', but the C4 'sting' is actually remarkably similar to the C4/ Times expose of Labour's Steve 'cab for hire' Byers in 2010 (much to Farage/ UKIP's glee, IIRC): www.theguardian.com/politics/201...

theguardian.com

Stephen Byers claims no rules were broken during lobbying sting

Former minister says he did not break MPs' guidelines after being caught on camera offering political influence for money

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herman mark schwartz @thunen.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

as @70sbachchan.bsky.social likes to say, "we are going to win" - in this case by replacing fossil with renewable electricity. global shift in energy investment, 2015-2026 is pretty dramatic

global shift in energy investment, 2015-2026

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Social Media Lab @socialmedialab.ca · 03/09/2026

"A bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers is pressing the Army to explain why it told a unit based in Europe to stop specializing in drone warfare, an order that comes as the world’s battlefields rapidly evolve & military tactics increasingly rely on uncrewed systems to fight" apnews.com/article/army...

apnews.com

Lawmakers ask Army to explain why it told a military unit to stop specializing in drone warfare

A bipartisan group of lawmakers is pressing the U.S. Army to explain why it told a unit based in Europe to stop specializing in drone warfare.

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Albert Pinto @70sbachchan.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

The New York Times used video clips collected by tourists to reconstruct the glacial collapse that caused the horrific flooding in Nepal and Tibet. Have never seen footage of an ice cap in the world's "third pole" shattering and avalanching down. www.nytimes.com/2026/08/28/w...

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Social Media Lab @socialmedialab.ca · 30/03/2025

Germany still hasn’t fully recovered from expelling and killing so many of its top researchers back in 1933. A lot of brilliant minds were forced to leave—people who went on to do groundbreaking work in other countries, especially the U.S.

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Mick Fealty @mickfealty.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

1/ Robert Putnam spent 25 years documenting how Americans stopped joining things. His new data says it’s a cycle, not an ending — we built a shared “we” once, from an atomized Gilded Age, and could again. The question progressives keep dodging: how? 🧵

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Anna-Sophie Heinze @asheinze.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

📈 Focusing on the 2025 #German federal election and using #GLES data, we find that loneliness is associated with electoral #disengagement: people who report higher levels of loneliness are more likely to abstain from voting. However, we find no evidence that loneliness increases support for the AfD.

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Simon Nixon @nixonsimon.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

Amazing. It seems that plagiarism is only a problem for The Times when black people do it

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Mick Fealty @mickfealty.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

1/ Listening to @mattcooperlastword.bsky.social’s Path to Power on Burnham ruling out a border poll — John Deasy and @lisehand.bsky.social in fine form on the Sinn Féin reaction and Micheál Martin’s cool response. But I think the panel misses why Burnham could say it at all. 🧵

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Shane McKee @shaneir.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

Much as I'd love to see a United Ireland, and vague as the provisions of the Good Friday Agreement are, we're not within a beagle's gowl of it "seeming likely" that a majority in Northern Ireland would vote in favour. Peaceful bijurisdictionality in Ireland will have to do for now, and that's OK.

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Mick Fealty @mickfealty.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

1/ No PM can delete the Good Friday Agreement's referendum provision: true. But Burnham said he won't call a poll. That's a political position, not a repeal of Schedule 1. Refusing to hold a border poll and abolishing the right to one are not the same thing, and this manufactured outrage blurs them.

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Mick Fealty @mickfealty.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

1/3 Europe’s immigration debate is aimed at the wrong target. The real driver isn’t borders — it’s births. EU fertility fell to 1.34 in 2024, miles below the 2.1 replacement rate, and deaths have outnumbered births every year since 2012. Take away migration and the population just shrinks.

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Ryan Goodman @rgoodlaw.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

Extraordinary, powerful and heart-wrenching. Active duty Marine Colonel Zach Schmidt, speaking in his personal capacity, about Khalil, an Afghan national whose family helped U.S. forces in Afghanistan. Khalil was deported by the U.S. on Friday to a conflict zone.

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Mick Fealty @mickfealty.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

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Peter Geoghegan @petergeoghegan.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

In Britain, there is no cap on political donations. As @suehawley.bsky.social puts it, 'We're in an arms race, and we're in an arms race with no guardrails.' democracyforsale.substack.com/p/how-the-su...

democracyforsale.substack.com

How the super-rich are buying UK democracy

Our new video series shows how British politics is bought and sold – and what can be done about it

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Mick Fealty @mickfealty.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

1/4 Agnès Poirier on the new two-parter De Gaulle. It reads less like a review than a meditation on what independence actually means and I couldn’t help reading it with the current (seemingly interminable) and largely unanchoreddebate over constitutional futures in Ireland in mind. Short thread 🧵

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Josh Marshall @joshtpm.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

lol … if we had any missiles left all options would be on the table to attack the spread

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Justin Wolfers @justinwolfers.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

The President has decided that in order to make ground beef cheaper, he will cut tariffs on ground beef. And I'm wondering if he could generalize from this one product to other products, and perhaps concede that tariffs raise prices on American consumers.

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Mick Fealty @mickfealty.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

1/5 My problem with the Jason Arday coverage is not that the details were wrong, rather that the target was never simply the academic. The pre-existing idea in a lot of journalists' heads, that DEI is a fake concept. Arday was just an example that came readily to hand. 🧵

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The Bulwark @thebulwark.com · 20/08/2026

"Across several Republican focus groups this summer, it’s clear that the intraparty sentiment toward Donald Trump isn’t what it used to be. I’ve heard more participants than usual grade Trump at a C or a D." NEW from @sarahlongwell25.bsky.social:

lnk.thebulwark.com

Trump Is Finally Losing Ground Among Republicans

Focus groups show they’re mad about Iran. They’re mad about grocery prices. And they’re starting to wonder what on earth the president is doing.

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Mick Fealty @mickfealty.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

Good challenging questions from @mattcooperlastword.bsky.social on his #PathToPower podcast which sadly did not get the clear responses they deserved from Conor Murphy and @leovaradkar.bsky.social, with the former Taoiseach claiming west Belfast was the most diverse part of the city.

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Irish Literary Times @irishlittimes.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

Two of my great teen idols, who died only 3 days apart in 1977: Groucho on the 19th of August and Elvis on the 16th. “From the moment I picked up your book until I put it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it.” “Who do you sound like?” “I don't sound like nobody,”

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Jan Rosenow @janrosenow.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

Very cool: The world's oldest cheddar-maker heats its wash water with warm milk, straight from the cow. Barber's (Somerset, UK since 1833) runs milk-source heat pumps from UK startup Arkaya. Electricity use halved, payback under two years. Heat pumps work. www.canarymedia.com/articles/hea...

canarymedia.com

World’s oldest cheddar-maker slashes energy bills with novel heat…

Innovative tech from U.K.-based Arkaya Energy cools fresh milk and redirects the resulting heat, saving Barber’s Farmhouse Cheesemakers more than $90,000…

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Mick Fealty @mickfealty.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

Stevepeers.bsky.social is a law professor at Royal Holloway, who offers some useful thoughts on the Arday tragedy. The expansionary takes from generalist media figures who seem to have known very little of his work are still in hot circulation, only now read like an alarming morality tale.

stevepeers.bsky.social

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Mick Fealty @mickfealty.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

1/ Last week Declan Kearney was threatening to bring Stormont crashing down. This week he’s calling on rival nationalist parties to pool their ideas on Irish unity in a single forum. Quite a turnaround.

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Mick Fealty @mickfealty.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

Setting aside the shock of this moment, this is an important point from Nick. It’s not just about social media and the mob but about how people paid inordinately large salaries to inform the public are chasing abstractions to the exclusion of hard facts and just as importantly firm moral judgement…

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Mick Fealty @mickfealty.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

Farage skips count citing a “credible threat” the police say they never flagged. Not showing up is Nigel’s thing. Bottom 8% of MPs for votes, 77 divisions missed in a row, second-worst attendee in the European Parliament. Absence now his personal brand. Unlikely to be his last empty chair this term.

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Cahir O'Kane @cahirokane.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

Last week's Fleadh Cheoil in Belfast was a landmark in normalising the city. Spontaneous traditional music, dancing in the streets, feeling the centre belonged to all. Cross-community participation. 1.6M visitors, many from the South who'd rarely go North. A win all round. And it'll be back in 2027.

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Giles Wilkes @gilesyb.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

Attacking net zero as a religious obsession "is gaslighting of the highest order. The truth is, it requires dedicated ideological belief to argue against the scientific evidence that net zero is needed to stop ever more expensive and destructive warming" giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

giftarticle.ft.com

How to stop global warming

The answer is obvious to all except the real climate change zealots: the anti-net zero movement

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Mick Fealty @mickfealty.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

1/4 For eight days, 1.6 million people wandered a city with no ticket, no gate, no plan, and against expectations it worked. The Belfast Fleadh may be the biggest traditional music festival ever held. My new piece on what it actually taught us 🧵 sluggerotoole.com/2026/08/10/b...

sluggerotoole.com

Ten things we learned from the Belfast Fleadh?

Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann came to Belfast for the first time and drew a crowd that may make it the biggest ever held. It also put Ulster Scots music in front of an all-island audience and got a DUP de...

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Mick Fealty @mickfealty.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

And this conversation from @profgalloway.com and Sam Harris probably digs in the right place: youtube.com/shorts/ggoOc...

youtube.com

The system is rigged

YouTube video by The Prof G Pod – Scott Galloway

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Mick Fealty @mickfealty.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

Pessimism re cost of living shows (perhaps) just how structural the problem is…

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Prof David Farrell, UCD @davidfarrell-ucd.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

An excellent review of the problems with a proposal for a citizens’ assembly on this topic. And I say this as a fan of the potential of citizens assemblies.

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Mick Fealty @mickfealty.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

1/ New from James Bloodworth: “On speaking ill of the dead.” Yes, gloating over a death is bad form—but we’re now asked to go further, to stand in silence while the deceased is sainted. That’s a demand worth resisting. 🧵 www.forthedeskdrawer.com/p/on-speaking-ill-of-the-dead

forthedeskdrawer.com

On speaking ill of the dead

Rod Liddle, civility and the limits of posthumous generosity

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Mick Fealty @mickfealty.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

1/ New column from John Naughton in The Observer asks an important question: why do tech moguls talk such confident nonsense about AI? Worth reading in full — here’s what he argues. 🧵

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Paul Evans @pauliewaulie.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

If we're prepared to grab the opportunity this could be a teachable moment about why MPs should be paid properly and why they shouldn't have outside earnings (or outside earnings that they can keep, anyway).

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