iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Tanja Bueltmann @tanjabueltmann.net · 10/08/2026

I would genuinely like to know why they think there’s still a fight—there 100% is not. X is gone and it will never come back. Nobody can win against a deliberate algorithm that’s designed to make X a megaphone for the far right. One can literally watch people being manipulated by it in real time.

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Tanja Bueltmann @tanjabueltmann.net · 08/08/2026

Wider fallout from this is very concerning and my solidarity is with POC / ethnic minority scholars. The case for DEI has never been stronger because the underpinning racism here is structural: it should never have gotten to this point. That said, I hope ppl won’t forget wellbeing of individual. 2/2

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Tanja Bueltmann @tanjabueltmann.net · 08/08/2026

I used to have a role one might best summarise as compliance-related; it incl things like staff matters / policies / processes. Even just on that v basic measure of my experince, there appears to be a degree of failure here I’ve never seen before. Goes for publisher of the memoir too probably. 1/2

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PS: Yes, of course: some media know exactly what they're doing - apols, I might have made that clearer. I'm talking overall here and there I think 2) is a clear and urgent need, especially for the BBC.

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To stop it, we need 1) leaders to make better choices; 2) the media to recognise their enabling role in normalising this escalation cycle and stop doing so 3) a significant civil society effort in support of 1) and 2). In my view, we are failing on all three currently. /end

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... recent far right riots, are not a random occurrence: they are the continuation of the trajectory the UK has been on for the last decade. And the trajectory continues to arrive on schedule, with ever more extreme positions and developments. This process will not simply stop on its own.

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... as proof of momentum for more. This is very obvious on immigration: feed it the EU citizens (through Brexit) and it asks for the asylum seekers. Feed it the asylum seekers and it asks for a further narrowing of who can settle. Read this way, the arrival of Reform and now Restore, as well as ...

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... it was serious years ago and so it was also years ago when this should have ended. This is not to say there are no options now, but they are more limited / difficult to achieve. Far right agendas are a mechanism that requires escalation, and every concession is taken not as a settlement but ...

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Tanja Bueltmann @tanjabueltmann.net · 04/08/2026

The far right agenda is not a grievance that can ever be settled. That is why we are where we are now, a place where there is a live conversation about who is a 'white Briton' as per below. I am not clear what it will take for people to understand the seriousness of the situation because ...

Restore Britain's Rupert Lowe declines to say whether King is a 'white Briton'

Restore Britain leader Rupert Lowe has declined to say, when asked, whether he thinks the King is a “white Briton”.

It comes after Lowe said “white Britons will become a minority by 2063” in a video in which he offered to work with Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.

The BBC’s Nick Robinson asked Lowe about the issue on the Today programme on Thursday, noting that the forecast he referred to defines a white Briton as someone whose parents were both born in the UK.

Robinson told the Restore Britain leader that “because Prince Philip was born in Greece, King Charles is not, under your definition, treated as a white Briton”.

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I last lived in NZ nearly 2 decades ago; even then there were many questions about Peters. So in my view the real question is how a man as toxic as Peters has always been can still be in any public position at a all. There should have been a reckoning a long time ago. (As with Farage in the UK).

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Tanja Bueltmann @tanjabueltmann.net · 03/08/2026

PS: I explore how Brexit helped getting us to that point here - it's a long read but I get to the wider consequences, incl the point I make above, towards the end. Search for 'a politics of blame was ratified at national scale' to get to where that part starts. brexit.migravox.org/first-person...

brexit.migravox.org

10 Years On - BLEA

This is a First Person Long Read – the first, one liberty I am taking as the creator of the Brexit Lived Experience Archive (BLEA). The Long Read positions BLEA but also looks at the bigger picture of...

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Tanja Bueltmann @tanjabueltmann.net · 03/08/2026

It's also almost as though the far right agenda is simply not a grievance that can ever be settled. .... Which is also why it will never work our well for other 'centrist' or 'centre-right' parties when they pander to it.

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Tanja Bueltmann @tanjabueltmann.net · 02/08/2026

To cast doubt, however inadvertently, is a key first mechanism to open the door for questioning of science more broadly. This simply isn’t just a case of different views. On that basis alone the discussion advanced is deeply irresponsible. /endh

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Tanja Bueltmann @tanjabueltmann.net · 02/08/2026

I won’t repeat what others have already said about this horrendous take. But what I do want to add is: *when* the next pandemic comes, we’ll have people who helped normalise anti-science positions to thank for the disaster that will unfold. Takes like this too help that normalisation.

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Tanja Bueltmann @tanjabueltmann.net · 02/08/2026

Oh my gosh I kind of half wish I hadn’t checked what this is about… JFC.

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I am so sorry, Lee. I know it really isn’t the same but I felt like that when all the Brexit shitshow started. And for that reason I also have a sense about what it feels like when so many just don’t get it — to their own detriment as it never stops with one community. This will ever be in my name.

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That wouldn’t even work within “the North”. Cheers from a former long term resident of the Toon ;)

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Conflate them, aye. Germans do too to be fair. But if someone lives in devolved nations it’s really quite insulting that this sort of thing is just a given to a lot of people. I don’t mean to sound arsy about it, but the UK’s current set-up is really just not sustainable and this is just one eg.

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I lived in Newcastle for over a decade. Fully appreciate the nuances etc. But it really riles me now that it’s all about England. Maybe it shouldn’t, but I think most folk in England really don’t get, for example, how much of our daily news actually don’t mean a thing to folk in devolved nations.

As someone who lives in Scotland that is not my view. What I am really saying is: the UK is already a piece of fiction. What’s going on in England does not matter much in my daily life in many ways. If the UK is to have proper meaning again, it has to go from Cornwall to Shetland.

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Everyone in England maybe. All it’s saying is: the UK is already a work of fiction. Which it really is in my view. Only the constitutional arrangement hasn’t caught up yet.

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Aww thank you Musa, that’s lovely! I hope we get to meet one day. And I’ve been meaning to say to you: I’m really so sorry about German politics too … but then I haven’t, as of this year, lived there in 20 years, so not entirely sure how much I still have to say about all that.

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My point is: for a map, or a PM of the UK, population density is not a relevant measure for determining “the north” or “the centre”. For other questions it may well be, but generally it simply represents a conflation of England with UK and it most unhelpful in my view.

Tanja Bueltmann @tanjabueltmann.net · 28/07/2026

I am sure this is very common. I give or make 'pints' very regularly ... so I suppose here I can be glad I was not making 'pints' in 'underpants' at least!

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Tanja Bueltmann @tanjabueltmann.net · 28/07/2026

OMG that could have been quite something, thanks for sharing that one!

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Tanja Bueltmann @tanjabueltmann.net · 26/07/2026

… for years at what point people will say it’s enough. We can now see that, for many, there is no such point. They simply stay no matter what happens; no matter how much more extremist Musk becomes. That says *a lot* about how far Musk et all have already succeeded in normalising their agenda. 3/3

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Tanja Bueltmann @tanjabueltmann.net · 26/07/2026

Yet most journalists, politicians and Govts are choosing to stay. It’s directly impacting how they see the world—one can watch in real time how their thinking is shaped by it. Meanwhile, the owner is basically supporting civil war in the UK and other extremist positions. I’ve been asking …2/3

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Tanja Bueltmann @tanjabueltmann.net · 26/07/2026

What migration? There is failure here because most people chose to stay—and continue that even though X is a megaphone for fascism now. When follower numbers are more important than democracy, there’s not much else to say. X could me made irrelevant within a minute if people actually migrated. 1/3

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Tanja Bueltmann @tanjabueltmann.net · 22/07/2026

I think it’s good to see conversation about this but I find the inclusion of the constituency checker very problematic given the data source is polling. It’s just not really possible to show what this might look like if people could vote purely on policy. This might put some people off PR.

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Tanja Bueltmann @tanjabueltmann.net · 20/07/2026

Unless this “honesty” involves the recognition that immigrants are *not* the root cause of the UK’s problems *but* actually a part of the solution to them, this will be completely pointless. I cannot stress this enough. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

theguardian.com

Burnham to say UK must be honest about its challenges as he prepares to become PM

Labour leader will visit king to accept role on Monday and will start making cabinet appointments that afternoon

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Well yes, obvs. It’s all England—that’s my point and the problem. A PM of the UK is not the PM of England.

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That’s prob the funniest part. But in all seriousness: the UK has always been terrible for concentrating everything in London. This whole Manchester / the (not) north spiel doesn’t actually help and is quite insulting to a good number of people and I think many journalists really don’t get that.

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I will accept that to a degree in terms of population density BUT when it comes to introductions of the new *UK* PM it really couldn’t be poorer if one tried. I don’t know if journalists really do not ge this but I find it profoundly irritating. None of it even remotely reflects the UK.

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Population would matter in many ways, for sure. But I don’t think it’s the right way to look at it for this conversation: it’s about the UK’s new PM. He can’t just speak to the densely populated parts of the UK.

Indeed. Having lived in Newcastle for over a decade I’d say that it doesn’t even work across England’s north.

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Obviously not disputing that. But I don’t think that’s the point: this is about a new PM of the UK; and the UK’s north is simply not in Manchester. He can’t just work for England. Or yes, he can do that. But then let Scotland have another say about the constitutional arrangement.

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But that’s not what this should be about for a PM of the UK. Of course it’s all about England but even then it doesn’t work well in my view (I say that having lived in Newcastle for over a decade).

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Of course. And I used to live in Newcastle for over a decade, and this know habit doesn’t even work *across* England’s north, really. It’s just fundamentally tiring. If this UK thing is meant to have any meaning at all going forward, which to UK PMs I assume it should, then this can’t continue.

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I do know the explanation for why this is the case. But that doesn’t mean it’s actually appropriate. Moreover, the UK had any meaning as a union of equals, it should matter where Manchester is relative to Scotland.

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That’s fine with me. But while that is not the case Scotland obvs is included and I really do find it insulting now to read piece after piece where journalists say how Burnham will change things for “the North” when “the North” is hundreds of miles away from Manchester.

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AI is a manufactured bubble completely unsustainable for environmental reasons alone. It’s now eating its own slop while stealing our human made knowledge. It’s also literally rewriting our human history as I type this. What did you think would happen in response to this? Genuine question.

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