iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Robert Hanks @roberthanks.bsky.social · 3h

Fair enough. Like finding Picasso was into Jack Vettriano?

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Robert Hanks @roberthanks.bsky.social · 3h

It’s like finding out that Calvino was a member of the Dennis the Menace fan club.

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Robert Hanks @roberthanks.bsky.social · 4h

Britain is an insane country.

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Robert Hanks @roberthanks.bsky.social · 4h

Startled to learn from Radio 3 that Sibelius was the first president of the Granville Bantock Society.

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Robert Hanks @roberthanks.bsky.social · 7h

I heard a chef on Radio 4 only yesterday afternoon recommending we all shift to hake and coley because they’re more sustainable.

Robert Hanks @roberthanks.bsky.social · 18h

Worst BBC journalist of my lifetime. His continued presence brings disgrace on the institution.

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Robert Hanks @roberthanks.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

He's 95! And I have to say, I think he does look younger (my yardstick is my 94-year-old father, but the staff in the home where he now lives, who know a lot more nonagenarians than I do, say he looks good for his age; and Shatner looks better).

Robert Hanks @roberthanks.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

Agnès Varda's Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962) is on BBC4 on Saturday evening – just over 60 years after it was first shown on BBC2 in April 1966. It was shown again in 1968, this time with the boast in Radio Times that the opening colour sequence was actually being shown in colour.

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Robert Hanks @roberthanks.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

🙄 keeping us all on tenterhooks

Robert Hanks @roberthanks.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

Fed up with the shittiness of so much subtitling. Watching the video version of last month's NYT interview with Naomi Klein & Astra Taylor: the subtitles say Klein's The Shock Doctrine is about "the relationship between capitalism and prices". The soundtrack, of course, says "capitalism and crisis".

Beyond my budget, I’m afraid. What I’d really like to see is a Grand-Guignol season at the National Theatre.

Daniel Sugarman @danielsugarman.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Reposted by Robert Hanks

After the Green Party's "Zionism is Racism" vote, the Leader of Haringey Council, controlled by the Greens, wrote to some Synagogues in the borough to "reassure" them. I want to show you Highgate Synagogue's reply. I believe it is worth reading in its entirety. www.jewishnews.co.uk/synagogue-re...

Earlier this year we hosted at Highgate Synagogue a noted Palestinian campaigner Ahmed Fouad AlKhatib who lost more than 30 family members in Gaza. He told a packed synagogue - and it was really packed -- how he as a Gazan and a Palestinian believed that Hamas had brought nothing but disaster on the Palestinian people, and that those keffiyeh wearing sympathizers in the West who cheer for Hamas are doing more harm than good. He was no shill for Israel or its Prime Minister, but he at least acknowledged the attachment of Jews to this land, and the fact that non-Jews in Israel have rights that no-one, certainly not Jews or Christians, let alone Muslims can aspire to anywhere else in the Middle East. So no, we don’t accept your assurances that we are safe under your watch. You may see no connection between the ceaseless vilification of Israel, the blood libels that you and your party regularly trot out, and the hostility to Jews in this country, but we do. If this motion does not mean that Jews in Haringey who have family or friends in Israel, or who attend our synagogue, or who maybe aren’t religious but believe that there is a place for a haven for the tattered remnant of the most persecuted race on earth, are considered by you and your party as racists and by implication fair game for ostracism, intimidation, violence or worse, please explain to us what else it means. And if that is indeed what it means, and we are pretty sure that those who voted for it believe that is precisely what it means, how can we as Jews feel safe when the largest party of the borough we live in, entirely peacefully up to now, publicly align yourself with the most virulent jew-hating racists of all, Hamas and the Nazis. As it is, despite living in one of the most peaceful and crime free parts of the borough, we have had as a synagogue to invest substantial sums in building terrorism-proof fences round our premises, and employ both volunteers and professional security with stab vests to en

So your embarrassment is not enough. If you really want us to feel you do not agree with the racist and genocidal implications of your party’s policy, the least we can expect is for you to publicly resile yourself from that policy and commit yourself and your party colleagues to reverse that policy and to educate themselves about the realities of the Middle East conflict, and about Jewish life, before you pronounce on these matters with such unshakeable certainty again. Yours sincerely,

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They don't recognize that anything they're after strike anyone as remotely wild.

Lord of the Flies is the really dodgy one.

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I only know Fahrenheit 451 in outline, and it seems tenuous, but The Matrix has strong affinities with both 1984 (surveillance, secret conspiracy against government, betrayal) and BNW (population lulled rather than threatened into submission).

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I think you are failing to understand how a Venn diagram works (or, to put it another way, confusing “overlap” and “are the same as”). The intersection only needs to contain one thing that the sets share. In this case, it could be “is a dystopia”, or “life is fundamentally shit”.

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Robert Hanks @roberthanks.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Trump brand rifles, with gold barrels.

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No, not yet. At any rate, able seamen are able to do some things that ordinary seamen can't.

Robert Hanks @roberthanks.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

It's as opposed to an ordinary seaman, if I may pedantically crush your jokes.

Scandifriend @scandifriend.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Reposted by Robert Hanks

Again what exactly does Nandy do all day?

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Robert Hanks @roberthanks.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

BTW, the "Free Trump Knife" seems to be an actual thing. freetrumpknife.com/USA/

freetrumpknife.com

FREE TRUMP KNIFE

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I mean, it’s not my favourite Murdoch, but that’s just crazy talk.

More to the point, where do those fucking Sardinians get off? Like they don’t know who the sheep kings are.

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Wait, "Netflix and chill" had sexual connotations?

Baffling metaphor of the day: just heard, on Radio 4, a Conservative at conference saying "We weren't a broad church, we were a basilica, and the roof fell in."

I once bought a tub of ice cream with an illustration on the lid of the sun shining on people in Edwardian dress as they promenaded along the sea front, while a brass band played in the background, and at the bottom in tiny letters it said "serving suggestion".

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I am. The Guardian has been better about this stuff lately, I think, but had a long phase of just not caring. I'm afraid Araucaria, though a genius, was not a good influence – he would quite often come up with a brilliant idea of a clue, then just shove in random connecting words to make it work.

I remember going round for dinner with friends of my *wife the day I'd agreed to be a judge for the Arthur C. Clarke award, and she said to them, "I can't believe what he's doing," and rolled her eyes, expecting them to sympathize. Instead, they both said "Wow, that's SO COOL." *now ex-

It just makes me think of Keith Vaz, which is something I'd managed not to do for several years.

I think it's a little more complicated than that – for one thing, the term was used quite a lot in primate studies – but it's certainly true that a lot of what's been observed among captive populations doesn't apply in the wild (where it's easy to simply peel off from the pack/herd/troupe).

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It's not just a sexist concept, it's importing a term from zoology that makes no sense at all in the context of human society and is of dubious utility even for animals.

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How in the name of God were those ads ever accepted?

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Very much looking forward to it.

There is if you assume "can't remember" actually means "Reform, but now I'm embarrassed about it."

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Good for them. I haven’t read the Telegraph obit but the headline was all about how entertaining he was. And he was being buttered up on Broadcasting House on R4 on Sunday.

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