iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Peter Zombory-Moldovan @peterzm.bsky.social · 15/07/2025

If by "ethnic identity" he means an identity that he, or anyone else other than the person to whom it is applied, gets to decide, then yes, it's racism - definitionally so. "Ethnicity" (whatever that actually connotes) belongs to the individual. It is not something to which the individual belongs.

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Peter Zombory-Moldovan @peterzm.bsky.social · 17/06/2025

"Ethnicity data"? Based on/defined as what, exactly? Self-identification? Nationality of >2 grandparents? Colour charts? And who decides the categories? We've been down this road before, and it's called 'scientific racism'. It was wicked nonsense. Rebranding it as 'ethnicity' makes it no better.

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Peter Zombory-Moldovan @peterzm.bsky.social · 29/05/2025

The problem is not so much the Brexiters' predictable howls of betrayal at every move to normalise the relationship. It's the BBC's belief that it's doing 'impartiality' by letting them set the terms of the story at each such point, and ventriloquising the Daily Mail as a way of framing the debate.

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Peter Zombory-Moldovan @peterzm.bsky.social · 13/05/2025

Professional bodies (BSB, SRA) need to crack down on this sort of thing, and hard. It's plainly a serious breach of duty to the court to file submissions on the law which you have zero reasonable grounds to believe are true, because you've had AI do it for you.

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Peter Zombory-Moldovan @peterzm.bsky.social · 10/05/2025

Yep. You catch it at it, tell it to stop making shit up, it apologises nicely and assures you it won't do it again, then immediately does it again. The first-blush plausibility makes it a real pain. AI has all the academic rigour and honesty of a six-month-old puppy. It can't help itself.

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Peter Zombory-Moldovan @peterzm.bsky.social · 16/12/2024

Laissez-faire + protectionism = Imperial Preference. Except this time with the UK as a colony within Trump's autarkic imperium. Not sure they're going to enjoy the experience, and the rest of us certainly aren't.

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Peter Zombory-Moldovan @peterzm.bsky.social · 06/12/2024

I saw one of these last week and it was like a chasm opened. But also a sense that, however long it might take, hidden institutional cruelty will eventually be called to account. Too late for many, many victims, and probably inadequate, but it's something. Don't do bad things. History remembers.

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Peter Zombory-Moldovan @peterzm.bsky.social · 06/12/2024

A handy guide to "apologies": ❌"I apologise if I have caused offence" ❌"I apologise for any offence I may have caused" ❌any apology ending with "it was not my intent to cause offence" These, and other such weaselly formulations, are not apologies. ✔️"I apologise for my offensive conduct/remarks"

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Peter Zombory-Moldovan @peterzm.bsky.social · 29/11/2024

No doubt he would have opposed the abolition of capital punishment and the legalisation of abortion and homosexuality on equally bizarre grounds. It's one thing to be a reactionary, but it takes a special gift to pollute every argument of principle and morality with nationalist poison.

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Peter Zombory-Moldovan @peterzm.bsky.social · 29/11/2024

Would be interesting to see how that split compares to those for the Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Act 1965, the Abortion Act 1967 and the Sexual Offences Act 1967.

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Peter Zombory-Moldovan @peterzm.bsky.social · 29/11/2024

Nor, in fact, are they sorry. See also: "with the greatest respect"

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Peter Zombory-Moldovan @peterzm.bsky.social · 18/11/2024

Maybe hedge with a chunky position in tulip bulbs?

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Peter Zombory-Moldovan @peterzm.bsky.social · 18/11/2024

The fantasy of autarky seems to be a deeply atavistic instinct. It's the national equivalent of the paranoid survivalist hunkered down in his damp, miserable cabin in the woods. Until he runs out of coffee and matches and has to rediscover the miracle of trade.

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Peter Zombory-Moldovan @peterzm.bsky.social · 18/11/2024

Preserving that deep collective muscle-memory of constitutionalism, the rule of law and and what a decent society looks like is absolutely critical. Despite everything, it was still there in post-1945 (W) Germany and Austria. It wasn't in post-1991 Russia. Once gone, it's usually gone for good.

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Peter Zombory-Moldovan @peterzm.bsky.social · 18/11/2024

It's central to all ethno-nationalisms everywhere and old as the hills. Reactionary nostalgia for feudal order > fear of disruptive modernity > hostility to the 'alien' > the idea of the (true/pure) 'folk'. It's deeply coded into western culture, and especially prominent on the Right.

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Peter Zombory-Moldovan @peterzm.bsky.social · 15/11/2024

Can't wait to hear what government department Hannibal Lector gets nominated to head up.

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Peter Zombory-Moldovan @peterzm.bsky.social · 14/11/2024

The BBC seems to have decided that people who own more than £3million-worth of agricultural land and resent their heirs having to pay IHT on anything above that at half the rate everyone else does are the new excluded silent majority with legitimate concerns who really need to be heard.

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Peter Zombory-Moldovan @peterzm.bsky.social · 14/11/2024

Governor of the Bank of England: Brexit has reduced economic growth. The World Tonight: We need to get John Redwood on to say no it hasn't. Depressing to see that's still the BBC's standard editorial template.

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Peter Zombory-Moldovan @peterzm.bsky.social · 14/11/2024

If you've written something elsewhere (esp not behind a paywall) that you're proud of, do post a link to it here. That's a public service and it's appreciated. But if you endlessly plug your latest book or paywalled blog, then however good your other posts, I unfollow. Sorry, but it's tedious.

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Peter Zombory-Moldovan @peterzm.bsky.social · 14/11/2024

Soviet intelligence used to label such people "shit-eaters". I bet the term is still very much in use.

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Peter Zombory-Moldovan @peterzm.bsky.social · 14/11/2024

If it hadn't been listed, I suspect it would by now be long gone. A possible model for its sympathetic restoration might be Trellick Tower and Golden Lane Estate in London: cool apartments for the design-conscious. c20society.org.uk/building-of-...

c20society.org.uk

Domestic and Trades College, Manchester – The Twentieth Century Society

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Peter Zombory-Moldovan @peterzm.bsky.social · 14/11/2024

I'm glad it's still there and has admirers, at least. It may not be a masterpiece of postwar modernism, but it's a highly distinctive rarity and speaks eloquently of a period of optimism in British culture.

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Peter Zombory-Moldovan @peterzm.bsky.social · 14/11/2024

Always looked out for this building as a child in the early 60s, when it was brand new: a thrilling vision of the future, like an alien spaceship from an advanced civilisation landed among Manchester's drab, soot-stained Victoriana.

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Peter Zombory-Moldovan @peterzm.bsky.social · 13/11/2024

The same is true, I find, of those who invoke Martin Niemöller or describe something as "Kafkaesque".

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Peter Zombory-Moldovan @peterzm.bsky.social · 13/11/2024

Precisely. Putin's model isn't Peter the Great, it's Stalin at Yalta. His geopolitical world view is based on the postwar USSR's (achieved) aim of security and heft through control of a deep cordon sanitaire of nominally sovereign Eastern/Central European client states. He's not an original thinker.

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Peter Zombory-Moldovan @peterzm.bsky.social · 13/11/2024

I also wonder if the fading of the deep institutional memory of WW2 and what led up to it (a longer-term memory than that in the popular mind, where it has long since been replaced by postwar cultural cliches) plays a very significant part.

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Peter Zombory-Moldovan @peterzm.bsky.social · 13/11/2024

The very grimness of the UK's situation now presents a rare opportunity - if Starmer is bold and skilful enough to seize it - for a decisive realignment towards Europe. The more alarming Trump 2.0 becomes, the more receptive UK public opinion may be for such a reset.

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Peter Zombory-Moldovan @peterzm.bsky.social · 13/11/2024

I assume that, by "Kafkaesque", she doesn't mean that on waking from a troubled sleep she found that she'd been transformed into something extremely unpleasant.

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Peter Zombory-Moldovan @peterzm.bsky.social · 13/11/2024

Caveat emptor -- especially if emptor enjoyed a windfall gain in asset value when the IHT exemption was introduced.

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Peter Zombory-Moldovan @peterzm.bsky.social · 13/11/2024

I don't get this. Absent any IHT-avoidance premium and prospective planning gain, why value agricultural land any differently from other income-generating assets (businesses, houses or bonds), ie based on yield and risk to capital? Sure, speculate - but don't complain if no greater fool shows up.

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Peter Zombory-Moldovan @peterzm.bsky.social · 13/11/2024

Tufte: 🤦‍♂️ Neurath: 🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️

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Peter Zombory-Moldovan @peterzm.bsky.social · 12/11/2024

All good stuff. The great failing among many progressive activists is their tendency to value the approval, and police the purity, of other progressive activists. "The Left looks for traitors; the Right looks for converts" remains depressingly true. Emulate the Abolitionists, not the Jacobins.

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Peter Zombory-Moldovan @peterzm.bsky.social · 12/11/2024

See, this is why they pay them the big bucks. These blinding insights. Part of you wants to say "gee, ya think?", and the more helpful part wants to say "uh-huh, keep going..."

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Peter Zombory-Moldovan @peterzm.bsky.social · 12/11/2024

Millions glaze over at the word 'policies'. They mostly vote (if they vote at all) based on gut feeling, vibes, personal charisma, tribal instinct, a sense of grievance or as an act of defiance. One can despair at that as 'stupid', but - unless you plan to disenfranchise them - it gets you nowhere.

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Peter Zombory-Moldovan @peterzm.bsky.social · 11/11/2024

How is this not, among other things, an egregious breach of professional duty as the Government's principal legal advisor? A KC instructed to advise a company who, at the behest of the chair, trimmed/withheld his advice from its board of directors would face disbarment.

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