iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Paul O’Donnell @paodonnell.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

This really isn’t complicated… Good people good, bad people bad. If you can’t tell the difference then that’s a you problem.

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Reposted by Paul O’Donnell

Dr Jo Kershaw @mthrjo.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

The RNLI have some of the best people in Britain volunteering for them. They put their lives on the line when they are called on and they will rescue anyone who needs them. Because every life matters, and offering help is the right thing to do. You can donate here: rnli.org

rnli.org

RNLI - Royal National Lifeboat Institution - Saving Lives at Sea

The RNLI is the charity that saves lives at sea. We do this through lifeboat search and rescue, lifeguards, water safety education and international interventions.

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Paul O’Donnell @paodonnell.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

Atmospheric, slightly whimsical, recreation of Michael Faraday’s office at Trinity Buoy Wharf

The exterior of a small wooden hut with a sign inviting Ladies and Gentlemen to step inside and explore Faraday’s genius

A recreation of an early C19 office, featuring period books and curios

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Paul O’Donnell @paodonnell.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

As the new season starts I note that my favourite football podcasts (“Yes, I’m in my late 40s, why do you ask?”) have replaced their (generic) betting adverts with (very good) ones for AI. Genuinely unsure if this represents progress?

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Paul O’Donnell @paodonnell.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

These two things can be true. 1. Robotics and automation are transforming manufacturing and logistics. 2. Every single ‘humanoid’ robot you’ve ever been shown is a marketing gimmick.

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Paul O’Donnell @paodonnell.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

I’m out of work because, while was a docker, I’ve just been blacklisted after the General Strike.

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Paul O’Donnell @paodonnell.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

Once upon a time I used to bake cookies with my daughter. Now she is 16, we’ve just made frozen daiquiris together and she’s showing me Andy Burnham’s stuff on her TikTok.

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Reposted by Paul O’Donnell

👻 Jack Djinn Wail 🧞 @jacktindale.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

Small boys in the park? Juntas for goalposts? Marvellous.

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Paul O’Donnell @paodonnell.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

C’est magnifique, mais ce n’est pas le Football

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Paul O’Donnell @paodonnell.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

Some maritime museums recoil from the ‘ship models in glass cases’ thing. The Museu Marinha in Lisbon is not one of them. It does have some absolute beauties though.

Four ship models in a glass case. All are late C19 naval vessels. Three were built in London, one by Youngs and two by Thames Iron Works.

Model of the Vasco Da Gama, a central battery armoured ‘corvette’ of the Portuguese navy built by Thames Iron Works and launched in 1875

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Paul O’Donnell @paodonnell.bsky.social · 13/05/2026

They’re going to have to do it eventually, so they may as well get ahead of the game, do something right and look decisive

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Paul O’Donnell @paodonnell.bsky.social · 02/05/2026

So Orient’s season ends with a draw against Burton. It’s enough to keep us up because Exeter lost. Yes, there have been injuries but too many under-performers, and not just on the pitch. Club has gone a long way backwards in just 12 months. #lofc

Brisbane Road, Leytonstone Orient just about hanging in against a bad Burton Albion side.

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Paul O’Donnell @paodonnell.bsky.social · 01/05/2026

For Tomorrow - Blur Common People - Pulp Horses - Patti Smith Marquee Moon - Television Love Will Year Us Apart - Joy Division Enjoy the Silence - Depeche Mode Animal Nitrate - Suede Lazarus - Boo Radleys Desire Lines - Lush No Good (Start the Dance) - Prodigy

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Paul O’Donnell @paodonnell.bsky.social · 24/04/2026

Two days at MACH, UK’s biggest manufacturing trade show. Vibe much better than I expected

Machines and stands at the NEC. It was busier than this picture makes it look

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Paul O’Donnell @paodonnell.bsky.social · 22/04/2026

Pick up the nearest book, turn to p. 42, and post the second sentence: “A proposal to march to Glasgow was also turned down.”

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Paul O’Donnell @paodonnell.bsky.social · 07/04/2026

Today in odd genealogical discoveries, my Great x9 Grandmother’s sister married Rembrandt’s great nephew. I still can’t draw though.

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Paul O’Donnell @paodonnell.bsky.social · 03/04/2026

To St Mary’s Wanstead for a choral performance of Stabat Mater, wonderfully sung by local choirs

The East end of a beautiful neoclassical church with choir dressed in black singing. They are overlooked by a memorial to Josiah Childs, the sculpture is as good as he was bad

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Paul O’Donnell @paodonnell.bsky.social · 31/03/2026

At Dulwich Hamlet to see Orient lose 2-1 in the London Senior Cup Good first half performance but it was a bit men v boys in the second. Nice ground, good beer, good souvlaki, decent atmosphere #lofc

A very young Orient XI playing a Dulwich Hamlet at their Champion Hill ground. The main stand is illuminated against a grey sky flecked with light.

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Paul O’Donnell @paodonnell.bsky.social · 13/03/2026

So, my LinkedIn has a worrying number of posts from high-performance pillocks who can’t read maps and don’t understand what a choke point is or how you might go about creating one, but might have played a strategy game where you get kudos for building canals. Good tell on who has cooked their brain.

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Paul O’Donnell @paodonnell.bsky.social · 04/03/2026

In Barrow for research. Some very impressive late C19/early C20 public architecture. Very prosperous for about 35 years and then… not. Economic history written into place.

Barrow Town Hall, a very grand late Victorian (1887) gothic civic building in Red Sandstone. Set against a beautiful spring blue sky.

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Paul O’Donnell @paodonnell.bsky.social · 03/03/2026

This, Battleships, Tariffs… I know he doesn’t read, so has some idiot done a truly awful YouTube vid about the 1890s?

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Paul O’Donnell @paodonnell.bsky.social · 24/02/2026

This was a great cheese tasting meets historical symposium. Not a crackers approach food history

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Paul O’Donnell @paodonnell.bsky.social · 17/02/2026

I think this is a card issued early in WW1 to employees of firms essential to the war effort to stop them being branded cowards given white feathers. But this one appears to have issued to a MISS Wilberforce?

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Paul O’Donnell @paodonnell.bsky.social · 30/12/2025

Ever since I was intrigued, aged 9, by how different it looked to other the football grounds I saw on MoTD, I’ve wanted to visit Kenilworth Road. Yesterday I did, to watch Orient #lofc lose 3-0. Leave your childhood dreams there. #aletterboxwithpolesdownthemiddle

The view from the back of the Away enclosure at Luton Town’s Kenilworth Road ground. It isn’t very good.

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Paul O’Donnell @paodonnell.bsky.social · 28/11/2025

- so many foxes (my garden in London) - dolphins (Tremadoc Bay) - moose (Norway) - a Golden Eagle, I’m almost certain (Scotland) - Black Rhino (Tanzania)

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Colm Murphy @colmpm.bsky.social · 10/11/2025

Breaking the tax pledge is the right call...and politically sulphurous. Reeves must argue, far more forcefully, that taxes are *the* essential downpayment we all pay for a fairer society. Patrick Diamond and I wrote for @renewaljournal.bsky.social. Key points in 🧵 👇 renewal.org.uk/blog/if-labo...

renewal.org.uk

If Labour want a fairer society, they must argue for it

Labour must make the political argument: taxes are the critical downpayment we all pay to live in a fairer society. It now seems all but certain that direct taxes will rise in the forthcoming Budget...

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Paul O’Donnell @paodonnell.bsky.social · 05/11/2025

British Bluesky most of the time: “The British right is worryingly americabrained”. British Bluesky this morning: “OMG, have you seen the precinct level numbers from VA?”

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Paul O’Donnell @paodonnell.bsky.social · 11/10/2025

Has anybody written about this video? It definitely went over my eleven year old head at the time.

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Paul O’Donnell @paodonnell.bsky.social · 05/10/2025

Went to see Gene at the Hammersmith Apollo yesterday. Really fun gig, energetic band but distinctly male pattern mosh pit #nicecuppacocoa

The crowd at a gig by the band Gene, yesterday. (Very) Many of them them are men of a certain age.

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Paul O’Donnell @paodonnell.bsky.social · 29/09/2025

A replica Spanish Galleon. Handily berthed next to the universal unit of measurement.

A replica of a C17 galleon berthed, at Liverpool, next the a double decker bus enabling a speedy size comparison

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Paul O’Donnell @paodonnell.bsky.social · 14/09/2025

15 escaped the attentions of wasps and squirrels this year

A plastic bowl with 15, variably shaped, homegrown pears in it.

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Paul O’Donnell @paodonnell.bsky.social · 27/08/2025

The Bay of Kotor is absurdly beautiful

A perfect blue sea bay, almost enclosed by mountains, with the flag of Montenegro flying in the foreground

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Paul O’Donnell @paodonnell.bsky.social · 01/08/2025

Spent the day with the papers of former Labour Minister A.V. Alexander. For some reason he thought this New Years greeting message was worth keeping for posterity.

A note from Winston Churchill wishing Mr and Mrs Alexander a Happy (and victorious) New Year.
For 1940…

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Paul O’Donnell @paodonnell.bsky.social · 01/08/2025

Restarting football well before the end of the war

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Paul O’Donnell @paodonnell.bsky.social · 08/07/2025

I will shortly attempt cricket. I used to do this most weekends in the summer in relative safety. Since turning 40 ~10% of the times I’ve tried this have ended up in A&E.

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Paul O’Donnell @paodonnell.bsky.social · 29/06/2025

Just fed some photos of rooms in our house into an AI interior design app. Interior designers, your professional livelihoods are very, very, safe for the foreseeable future.

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Paul O’Donnell @paodonnell.bsky.social · 25/05/2025

This picture was taken earlier on when the day was still hopeful for #LOFC but with hindsight the dark clouds were obvious. Still a season to be proud of for the club though.