iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Mike McCarthy @mikemccarthy.eurosky.social · 17/08/2026

Articles about Newport County might not set algorithms alight, but Hayden Mullins delivered one of the standout coaching performances of the EFL's opening weekend. How Mullins took his second chance to make a first impression. mikejamesmccarthy.substack.com/p/newport-co...

Imagine the perfect pre-season as a new boss. For a start you'd have been appointed as near to end of the previous season as possible.
You'd have time to assess the state of the squad and steer the club's recruitment. You'd design pre-season. You'd have time to integrate new members of the team and establish your principles. You'd be able to build a relationship with the fans.

Suppose instead you had none of that.

Like the best designers, Mullins made a virtue of a restriction. There being no time to overcomplicate the game, Newport kept it simple. They were aggressive off the ball, and purposeful with it. In pre-season, Roma stars had been asking Newport players why they ran so much. Rochdale swiftly discovered the answer. Pressure forced mistakes, it drew fouls, it earned set pieces.

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Mike McCarthy @mikemccarthy.eurosky.social · 21/06/2026

Oh look! It's the 38th minute Spain attack. Hurry up or we'll have to wait for the 39th minute Spain attack.

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Mike McCarthy @mikemccarthy.eurosky.social · 14/04/2026

"Ah, there's a $1000 'leaving town' tax."

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Mike McCarthy @mikemccarthy.eurosky.social · 26/01/2026

So I’m genuinely quite relaxed about getting home when the EV battery is running low, but even I admit to cutting this a little fine.

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Mike McCarthy @mikemccarthy.eurosky.social · 28/12/2025

In the race against time to eat all the Christmas food before New Year. These bad boys are sensational.

Picture of a packed of ‘Pigs in Blankets’ flavour coated peanuts.

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Mike McCarthy @mikemccarthy.eurosky.social · 13/12/2025

Two of Leicester’s three goals against Ipswich today came from an xG of 0.09.

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Mike McCarthy @mikemccarthy.eurosky.social · 26/11/2025

What is the sense in asking drivers to guess how many miles they'll drive in the year ahead, then reconciling the difference between the estimate and reality a year later? Why not just get an accurate mileage figure each year at an MOT, and levy the tax from that? Am I missing something?

Alongside paying their VED each year, under eVED motorists will estimate their mileage for the year ahead, pay an upfront charge based on their estimate or spread their payment across the year, and then submit their actual mileage at the end of the year to trigger a reconciliation.

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Mike McCarthy @mikemccarthy.eurosky.social · 24/11/2025

My 10-year-old self is going to have an excellent day. Anyone else collecting? #efl #panini

An EFL sticker album with multiple unopened sticker packets.

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Mike McCarthy @mikemccarthy.eurosky.social · 11/11/2025

Experimenting with the Blank Spaces app in an effort to reduce distractions on my phone. Impressed with the early results!

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Mike McCarthy @mikemccarthy.eurosky.social · 01/11/2025

In position at St James Park as the world’s oldest professional club travels to the National League’s newest name. Brackley Town host Notts County in the FA Cup 1st Round. I’m with Alvin Martin for full commentary on TalkSPORT2. Join us from 5.15.

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Mike McCarthy @mikemccarthy.eurosky.social · 23/10/2025

Pondering where I’d need to finish this season to become a Fantasy EFL influencer*…

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Mike McCarthy @mikemccarthy.eurosky.social · 16/09/2025

Why is there no way to dismiss the list of emails in the Mail app on iPadOS 26? Reading newsletters with a third of screen real estate gobbled up like this is rubbish. (And yes, I have some excellent @sheffieldtribune.bsky.social reporting to catch up on.)

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Mike McCarthy @mikemccarthy.eurosky.social · 15/09/2025

Every once in a while I marvel for a moment at this chart for the ages from The Economist. It further defies credibility with each passing year.

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Mike McCarthy @mikemccarthy.eurosky.social · 06/09/2025

In position at Meadow Lane. Notts County and Fleetwood Town have scored in every game so far this season. Find out if I’ve jinxed that on Sky Sports+ from 14.50

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Mike McCarthy @mikemccarthy.eurosky.social · 24/08/2025

There was a triumphant return from an injury setback last year…

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Mike McCarthy @mikemccarthy.eurosky.social · 15/08/2025

Going to see how I get on in FPL season whilst only allowing myself to pick players who’ve made at least one appearance in the EFL. Currently fretting I’ve missed someone really obvious.

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Mike McCarthy @mikemccarthy.eurosky.social · 29/04/2025

NB: All businesses everywhere. If you didn’t hear from me, it was fine.

We have no record of your delivery feedback

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Mike McCarthy @mikemccarthy.eurosky.social · 28/03/2025

An eye-popper from The Economist. A slump in China’s housing market has led to some estate agents resorting to novel techniques to get deals over the line… economist.com/china/2025/0...

In recent months 31 men in the southern city of Huizhou bought flats at the request of their girlfriends, perhaps thinking that they had found “the one”. They then discovered that their girlfriends were estate agents trying to sell those apartments and were not interested in marriage. Authorities launched an investigation, telling local media that 15 women, all at the same firm, were behind the scheme and had used a dating app to find their targets. The incident is probably “just the tip of the iceberg”, warned a newspaper run by China’s housing ministry on March 24th.

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Mike McCarthy @mikemccarthy.eurosky.social · 21/02/2025

Watching Leicester City this evening...

Photo of a depressed man sitting on a coach. The headline reads: Man Who Thought Hed Lost All Hope Loses Last
Additional Bit Of Hope He Didn't Even Know He Still Had

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Mike McCarthy @mikemccarthy.eurosky.social · 20/01/2025

I think this passage from Al Gore’s ‘The Assault on Reason’ (published in 2007) might be the hardest hitting ‘How it started vs How it’s going’ meme of all time.

In fact, the Internet is perhaps the greatest source of hope for reestablishing an open communications environment in which the conversation of democracy can flourish. It has extremely low entry barriers for individuals. The ideas that individuals contribute are dealt with, in the main, according to the rules of a meritocracy of ideas. It is the most interactive medium in history and the one with the greatest potential for connecting individuals to one another and to a universe of knowledge.
An important distinction to make is that the Internet is not just another platform for disseminating the truth. It's a platform for pursuing the truth, and the decentralized creation and distribution of ideas, in the same way that markets are a decentralized mechanism for the creation and distribution of goods and services. It's a platform, in other words, for reason.

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Mike McCarthy @mikemccarthy.eurosky.social · 27/12/2024

Feeling every inch a Zillionaire as I eat my meal deal snack with a wooden spork.

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Mike McCarthy @mikemccarthy.eurosky.social · 22/12/2024

Anyway, if you’ve ever wondered what freelance life does to your sleep patterns. Here’s the answer.

A chart showing wildly fluctuating amounts of sleep per night over the course of a month.

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Mike McCarthy @mikemccarthy.eurosky.social · 12/12/2024

Having a mess about with Apple’s image playground. Not sure what you’re really supposed to do with it, but here I am making my commentary debut on the moon…