iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Calliope @calliope5431.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Yes, there have been real, substantial improvements! Acid rain and ozone depletion are distant memories. Renewable energy is now *cheaper* than fossil fuels. Global poverty numbers have collapsed. It really is a much better world.

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Sam Freedman @samfr.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

The difference between the performance of immigrants in England and Western Europe is staggering. (20 pts equals a year of learning.) I looked at this in detail in the post - it can't be explained away by language or relative advantage of different immigrant communities. There is a policy factor.

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Peter Walker @peterwalker99.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

One more time: Inheritance tax *is not unique or even uncommon* in being "double taxation". The coffee I just bought was paid for with wages on which income tax and NI had been levied, but was also subject to VAT. Just stop it.

elen Whately: “One of the problems with inheritance tax is that it's a form of double taxation.

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Stephen Buggy @stephenbuggy.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Makes sense. I could well believe it.

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Stephen Buggy @stephenbuggy.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Bushmills is based in county Antrim where a majority of the population are protestant, so Bushmills. But the Jameson family were protestants, although historically more of their workers would have been Catholic. It's very silly.

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Stephen Buggy @stephenbuggy.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

I think it's mostly stateside. I've never heard much been made of "Protestant whiskey" here in Northern Ireland or from friends in Dublin

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Nicolas Fulghum @nicolasfulghum.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Among the doom and gloom, here's a hopeful development: China's industry is switching from fossil fuels to electricity. The future energy system runs on electricity.

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Jo Wolff @jowolff.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Little Brazilian girl realising that I spoke a different language. Asked her friend, in Portuguese: “Can he understand me when I speak normally?” “No” “Can he see me?”

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lastpositivist.bsky.social @lastpositivist.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Reform being quite genuinely a foreign plot against the nation is one of those amusing ironies that also makes me sad.

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Sam Freedman @samfr.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

One reason England does so well is our second generation immigrants outperform their peers which is not true in most OECD countries. We are also very good at integration. And it's v sad that this is never acknowledge in debates on immigration.

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BeijingPalmer @beijingpalmer.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

a few basic housing facts in China. a) housing prices are wildly out of control in the big cities, far disproportionate to income even compared to the United States. b) the vast of household wealth - 70 percent, double the US share - is in housing

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Stephen Buggy @stephenbuggy.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

A wonderful package. Something I use constantly

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Stephen Buggy @stephenbuggy.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

No one deserves this, but especially now somewhere with sandwiches this delicious

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Stephen Buggy @stephenbuggy.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

Carney is right but hydronym is a silly word

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Sam Freedman @samfr.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

New immigration stats show that the numbers of asylum seekers in hotels is down to 16k - falling 50% in a year. Small boat crossings down 23% in the year to June. Numbers waiting for initial decision down from almost 180k to 40k.

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Ricardo Autobahn @ricardoautobahn.co.uk · 26/08/2026

The best tribute to Dolly Parton is that she regularly and repeatedly refused to have anything to do with Piers Morgan

Piers Morgan

@piersmorgan

Follow

:

RIP Dolly Parton.

Never met her, never interviewed her (despite decades of unrequited requests) but thought she was utterly fabulous in every way.

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lastpositivist.bsky.social @lastpositivist.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

I guess I'll add that Dolly Parton is up there with Fred Rogers in terms of truly achieving what I think a Christian living their faith in public life should be like.

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Eric Stephen @ericstephen.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

people are really getting into a row about spreadsheets. my column:

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Isaiah Bishop @isaiahbishop.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

You know how enraging this stuff is, when you can go back to your old report cards and its like "This kid is smart, he just needs to be organized and apply himself" for 12 years and like i tried! But what worked was stimulants

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BeijingPalmer @beijingpalmer.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

National Commission on Getting The Kids out of the House

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Lizzie Dearden @lizziedearden.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

ChatGPT requests are starting to turn up as evidence in criminal trials and these ones are going to be hard to beat

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Jordan Grimes @cafedujord.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

YIMBYs vs our (leftist, somehow?) opponents

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Mark Watson @watsoncomedian.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

I'm on the train from Montréal to Toronto. There's just been a reminder that it is MANDATORY to use headphones when watching video. I can't believe this guys have resorted to legislation, rather than our system of having 75% of the carriage sit in murderous, futile rage.

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Peter Sloman @pjsloman.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

Fair play to John Healey, who managed to time his 5.5-week break from government to coincide exactly with the World Cup

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Sam Freedman @samfr.bsky.social · 21/06/2026

Labour won by 20 points and net immigration is down by over 80% in two years. But sure write your column again.

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Mom for Ghoulberty👻 @fakegreekgrill.bsky.social · 11/06/2026

White people globally seem to hate immigrants more than they want healthcare.

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The Author, Séamas O'Reilly @seamas.bsky.social · 11/06/2026

Per most recent figures, net migration to NI *over the past 22 years* has been ~62,000 people. Only 3% of Northern Ireland’s population currently belong to an ethnic minority. Pogroms in Belfast (as with Ballymena last year) are just gutter-level "One Is One Too Many" racism, and nothing else.

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Adil Ray @adilray.bsky.social · 11/06/2026

If Muslims or members of the Asian and Black community had set fire to white people’s homes with children running for their lives, do you think we would be discussing legitimate concerns or focussing on who radicalised them and ideological and contributing cultural factors?

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Deny Sullivan @denysullivan.bsky.social · 31/05/2026

Homelessness is a housing issue: -Toronto and Vancouver have the highest rates -Halifax rockets up as the housing market breaks post COVID -Calgary declines as oil bust keeps housing market weak

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Miranda Keeling @mirandakeeling.com · 31/05/2026

Man in Tescos (with what might be considered a surprising amount of urgency): Dolores. Stay with me. I haven’t got a clubcard.

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Tom Ewing @tomewing.bsky.social · 26/05/2026

2026 Me: Hey 1996 me, in 30 years time you'll be furious at everything Tony Blair says and think John Major makes some pretty sensible points 1996 Me: Fuck, so I'm doomed to become more conservative as I get older 2026 Me: Well not exactly

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Stephen Buggy @stephenbuggy.bsky.social · 26/05/2026

The writer Evelyn Waugh's wife was also named Evelyn. Shared Friends referred to them as Evelyn-he and Evelyn-she.

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Sunkissed Peaks @sunkissedpeaks.bsky.social · 25/05/2026

It’s really frightening.

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Michael LaFrance @mlafrance.bsky.social · 25/05/2026

A livestream of a volcano in the Philippines captured a meteor crashing to Earth today. What are the odds? Mayon Volcano, Location: Albay, Luzon, Philippines

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Stephen Buggy @stephenbuggy.bsky.social · 25/05/2026

I'm genuinely relieved how lackluster the enhanced games have been. Drugs don't seem to have mattered much.

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Chris Newfield @cnewf.bsky.social · 25/05/2026

the FT has two pieces on the slow-motion collapse of UK higher ed. 4/5ths of unis are doing voluntary layoffs; 38% are doing compulsory. Meanwhile Britain and its flatlined productivity growth sleepwalks through its unprecedented loss of advanced capabilities www.ft.com/content/8097...

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Stephen Buggy @stephenbuggy.bsky.social · 24/05/2026

It will help but my understanding was that the big difference in deaths between Europe and America was drugs and cars, no?

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Stephen Buggy @stephenbuggy.bsky.social · 24/05/2026

The Slave Compensation act was a ghastly business (the slavers deserved to be given not compensation but the noose) yet the alternative was continued slavery or civil war. It freed multitudes of people and was the beginning of the end for slavery worldwide. It was a pragmatic victory.

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Mike Black @mikeblack114.bsky.social · 23/05/2026

From their own words; the now infamous on here "I'll fight till hell freezes over and then I'll cut the ice and fight on" quote was specifically in response to seeing a slaveowner auctioning off his own barely teenaged daughter

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Alex Elizabeth Byrne McMillan @undeniablyalex.bsky.social · 23/05/2026

YOU’RE LISTENING TO SISYPHUS FM, THE HOME OF NON-STOP ROCK

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Stephen Bush @stephenkb.bsky.social · 22/05/2026

Not sure if this is one of my most rightwing or my most leftwing takes, but if you believe there is such a thing as “excessive profits” in a sector you really should just go ahead and insource the service you’re paying for:

thetimes.com

Social care providers may face caps on ‘excessive’ profits

Steve Reed, the local government secretary, says he will crack down on ‘unreasonable cost escalation’

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Karthik Sankaran @rajakorman.bsky.social · 19/05/2026

Remembered this on the EU vs. US productivity discourse.

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Anton Strezhnev @astrezh.bsky.social · 18/05/2026

I don't want to wade too much into this, but the chart going around from that FT birth rates article raised my "making causal claims from time series data" alarm. Compare the figure in the article with the raw TFR data from 1960 onward.

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BeijingPalmer @beijingpalmer.bsky.social · 18/05/2026

this continues to be the dumbest point, because it's basically 'yes, this is genocide, but what about what people who don't know anything about genocide think genocide has to be?'

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