iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Garth 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 @thatgarthguy.bsky.social · 07/02/2026

My bf bought two goddamn cocktail pitchers at Spoons FML, too much

Garth 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 @thatgarthguy.bsky.social · 11/08/2025

This one might be cheating, but Benidorm (80,000) It's mostly like this because it's one of, if not, the largest beach tourism town in the Old World (so all those skyscrapers are actually hotels)

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Garth 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 @thatgarthguy.bsky.social · 25/07/2025

And I double checked by doing it in an icognito tab (so no account, no verification, nothing) And r/lgbt still comes up, the results are more mixed but lgbt content is certainly not being censored for being lgbt

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Garth 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 @thatgarthguy.bsky.social · 25/07/2025

Tbf, I'm using reddit and I don't see this issue yet The law does restrict NSFW content behind a verification, but any non-NSFW LGBT stuff/communities aren't restricted Like, there's valid complaints about this, but this isn't one of them

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Garth 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 @thatgarthguy.bsky.social · 24/07/2025

The "Social Liberal centrist upstart" in question...

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Garth 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 @thatgarthguy.bsky.social · 17/07/2025

Honestly, I find it surprising how flat income tax rates were back in the day Apparently in the 70s, if you earnt less than £5k a year (equivalent to about 55k today), you'd be taxed at 30%, whether you earn 1k or 4.9k, it'd all be taxed at 30% Nowadays, that's two(ish) bands (0% and 20%)

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Garth 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 @thatgarthguy.bsky.social · 17/07/2025

Oh wait no, Reform would basically be able to govern alone, and quite securely at that

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Garth 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 @thatgarthguy.bsky.social · 13/07/2025

This article headline and subheading are both really partisan lmfao It's implying that • The system was changed because Reform won (it's not) • This is a new change, when it's actually a return to the old system • Calling this "European-style" when we're the only country to have ever used it

Screenshot of Telegraph Article, titled "Labour changes mayoral vote system after Reform victories" and sub-titled "Angela Rayner to ditch first-past-the-podt ballots in favour of European-style 'supplemenatary vote' with candidates ranked by preference

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Garth 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 @thatgarthguy.bsky.social · 03/07/2025

I think I've found one that's one upped Xàtiva

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Garth 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 @thatgarthguy.bsky.social · 03/07/2025

Obligatory "not the US" but Albarracín, Teruel, Spain probably is up there There's only a small handful of exclaves, but it's enclaving all these other municipalities

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Garth 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 @thatgarthguy.bsky.social · 03/07/2025

And what does that have to do with what I said? Also, according to this BMJ report (www.bmj.com/content/366/...), *Type 2 Diabetes* incidence rates were roughly the same as before during this time

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Garth 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 @thatgarthguy.bsky.social · 02/07/2025

More proof that the market's perception of a government is just vibes The Chancellor was crying today in PMQs, and just on that we've seen government costs rise and the pound fall

Screenshot of BBC Business article from an hour ago, titled "Borrowing costs jump and pound falls on Chancellor's tears" with an image of the City of London above the headline.

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Garth 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 @thatgarthguy.bsky.social · 23/06/2025

It's 10pm Why on God's green earth is the sky still blue? It's great, but also this is getting stupid now, come on

Blue pre-twilight sky, with a lampost and trees in the bottom of the frame

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Garth 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 @thatgarthguy.bsky.social · 18/06/2025

Also, it's hardly a salient issue here A reminder that when a transphobic party stood candidates, they barely cracked 5% after throwing everything they could at these seats on 25% turnout Hardly a major issue for us, since we've had a Veteran's Affairs party win seats in our country before

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Garth 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 @thatgarthguy.bsky.social · 06/06/2025

Well, it should be a firebrand who can unite parts of the Centre-Left and Centre-Right under their wing and has the ambition to fight off rising left and right populism There's only one woman for the job!

Jo Swinson at the Liberal Democrats party Conference

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Garth 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 @thatgarthguy.bsky.social · 30/05/2025

I mean, they are, but rents are dropping, or at least dropping relative to wages and/or inflation Like yea, housing cost is expensive, and it's not going to be fixed overnight, but by allowing more construction, you can push them in the right direction

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Garth 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 @thatgarthguy.bsky.social · 29/05/2025

Thanks to Wikipedia having the results by District, I've decided to do the 2025 Devon County Council election using Proportional Representation. The results (compared to actual results) are: LDM: 20 (-8) RFM: 17 (-1) CON: 13 (+6) GRN: 4 (-2) LAB: 3 (+3) IND: 3 (+1)* RFM+CON have half the seats

Map of the 2025 Devon County Council election, showing the seats won by each party/list within each District of the County.

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Garth 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 @thatgarthguy.bsky.social · 29/05/2025

Oh how could I forget these local election results?! Labour got the most votes in Exeter, and got *ZERO* seats in the City And in Cornwall, a seat was won on less than 20% of the vote FPTP can't be representative when 80% of voters (or 90%+ of the electorate) have no representation in an area

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Garth 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 @thatgarthguy.bsky.social · 29/05/2025

Yep, until recently we saw the same thing in the UK And we have some abysmal results (as our system is more multi-party now, rather than two-party plus), like this one, where the most voted party gets 3rd in seat terms.

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Garth 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 @thatgarthguy.bsky.social · 27/05/2025

This moment has reminded me that life now is pretty good I'm sitting in a bus travelling for the fun of it And seeing these cows reminded me of the evacuees of WW2, many of whom had never seen a cow in their life before they were moved to the countryside.

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Garth 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 @thatgarthguy.bsky.social · 27/05/2025

It was supposed to be summer 😭 Why tf is it so foggy and rainy?!

Picture of a wet farm with heavy amounts of fog

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Garth 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 @thatgarthguy.bsky.social · 27/05/2025

Alternatively, that menu does feel a bit "busy" since they have a bunch of text on it. So instead, here's one with a more similar structure to the Switch one (where it only shows the text when you hover over it) although it'll show the text at the bottom, not next to the button option

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Garth 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 @thatgarthguy.bsky.social · 27/05/2025

Also yes, I know I've been weirdly going on about Nintendo recently, but hopefully you can deal with one more tweet about all it Honestly, the Switch 2 menu feels a bit...meh, and just the same as the previous one Honestly, they should make something different, like what I've done below

Previously described menu with the grey spaces labelled with a yellow highlight. the Top row is labelled "Recently Played Games" and the bottom two spaces are labelled "Free spaces"

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Garth 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 @thatgarthguy.bsky.social · 24/05/2025

This is gonna be a random post but heyho! Honestly, the Points System for MarioKart World is a bit bad imho, like 2-3 people sharing the same number of points (despite finishing in different positions) seems like a bad idea Something like what I've done below probably would've worked better imho

Chart of a proposed points system with 4 columns, 2 labelled "Position" 2 labelled "Points"
Position 1 has 25 points, Position 2 has 23 points, Position 3 has 21 points, each following position has one fewer point to Position 24, which has 0 points.

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Garth 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 @thatgarthguy.bsky.social · 18/05/2025

Yea, the thing is that American car manufacturers DO know how to make cars for the European market, they just don't make them in American factories Like, in the UK for example, the best selling car is the Ford Puma, a subcompact Crossover And previously, it was the Ford Fiesta (a subcompact)

Picture of a blue Ford Puma, a subcompact Crossover SUV

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Garth 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 @thatgarthguy.bsky.social · 16/05/2025

Spain can be really funny sometimes 2/3 of the population lives in flats AND the densest district of Madrid (Chamberí) has some homes It's a rich area, so it's not TOO unsurprising, but I do find it quite funny how a pretty sparse form of development is in the densest district of the city

Screenshot of google street view, showing large detached homes in the Chamberí district

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Garth 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 @thatgarthguy.bsky.social · 15/05/2025

I decided to create a possible UK zoning system, because yes, I was incredibly bored This is HEAVILY inspired by the Japanese zoning system, albeit with some major changes.

A table titled "Land Use Summary" displays different land use codes, descriptions, and their compatibility with various land classifications. The table has the following columns: Use Code, Land Use Summary, with the following zones: Ind. (Industrial), Low Rural, Med Rural, High Rural, Low Urban, Med Urban, and High Urban. The table uses color coding: Green cells indicate permitted uses. Yellow cells with letters indicate conditional uses, A is for uses under 150m2, B is under 500m2, and C is under 1500m2. Blank cells indicate non-permitted or not applicable uses.

Continuation of the previous table, with zoning restrictions, such as floor to area ratio plot plot occupancy ratios, shown below.

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Garth 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 @thatgarthguy.bsky.social · 08/05/2025

Like, pre-Crossrail and pre-COVID (2019) this is what that list looked like, Liverpool Street has about 50% more passengers (while Waterloo and Victoria are well below the pre-COVID figures), Paddington was 6th, now it's 2nd, also increasing its passenger count by 50%

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Garth 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 @thatgarthguy.bsky.social · 08/05/2025

I know this is really off topic to everything else, but it's kind of insane how much of an impact Crossrail had on the National Rail figures in the UK This is the 10 busiest stations in the UK 2 of these stations are ONLY served by Crossrail, and the 1st-3rd, 4th, 7th and 8th are all on Crossrail

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Garth 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 @thatgarthguy.bsky.social · 07/05/2025

(If you're curious, OG London is a bit worse than Toronto, but better than Vancouver)

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Garth 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 @thatgarthguy.bsky.social · 05/05/2025

If you want to see how insane First Past the Post now is In one of Cornwall's wards, someone won with just 19% of the vote, less than 1 in 5 voters voted for this candidate. Oh, and another example, Labour came first in Exeter (based on votes) but won NONE of the seats that were up for election

Screenshot of results from Cornwall council election result, with the Liberal Democrats winning on 19% of the vote.

Results from the Devon election in the District of Exeter, with Labour coming first in votes, winning none of the 9 seats available.

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Garth 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 @thatgarthguy.bsky.social · 05/05/2025

I feel like if that happens, my prediction is 100% going to happen then Since, well, that'd likely cause a huge hit to investing in the US

Screenshot of a Bluesky post from @thatgarthguy.bsky.social, "With everything that's happened in the US recently, I wouldn't be surprised if London usurps New York as the financial capital of the world before the end of Trump's term...Unless the (UK) Government messes that up, but we'll see"

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Garth 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 @thatgarthguy.bsky.social · 05/05/2025

Honestly, I think a lot of people are underplaying how much influence Reform has just got County Councils run the majority of local government services in those areas, and mostly the services that are arguably quite important Like yea, it's not a lot of councillors, but it's a lot of control

Chart showing what services are ran by what type of Local council.

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Garth 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 @thatgarthguy.bsky.social · 04/05/2025

Yep, same dude labourlist.org/2025/04/hind...

Screenshot of Labour List article, with "I'm not that disappointed if lower migration means some universities go bust" in bold in the middle of the screenshot.

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Garth 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 @thatgarthguy.bsky.social · 03/05/2025

All Richard Tice has done is sent out a memo going "Oh, if you want to build a factory, or a supermarket, or anything in the Cyan area, don't be surprised if it'll have to close for half of the day due to electrical pressures" Which is, ofc, EXACTLY how you get investment

Map showing the control of councils recently up for election in the 2025 UK Local Elections

Map showing the Mayoral victories in the 2025 UK Local Elections

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Garth 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 @thatgarthguy.bsky.social · 02/05/2025

Liberal Democrats GAIN Shropshire Council from No Overall Control! Currently, they're on 38/74 seats, with 10 to go

Shropshire Council results. Counting under way. After 64 of 74 seats declared.
Liberal Democrats, 38 seats, +25.

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Garth 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 @thatgarthguy.bsky.social · 02/05/2025

Oh my God Reform are barrelling towards a majority in Durham Labour held onto power there for decades until 2021, where they lost it to a rainbow coalition And now it looks like there'll be a majority for Reform

Durham Council results. 39 of 98 seats declared

Reform UK, 29 councillors (up 29), Labour, 4 councillors (down 17), Liberal Democrat, 3 councillors (same as before), Green, 2 councillors (up 1), Conservative, 1 councillor (down 7)

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Garth 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 @thatgarthguy.bsky.social · 24/04/2025

Guess they need to bring the Black 0 back Just, this time, not for the budget.

Wolfgang Schäuble standing to the right of a Big black zero.

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Garth 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 @thatgarthguy.bsky.social · 21/04/2025

In a week and a half, the United Kingdom is going to be having its local elections Amongst Mayors for local authorities and combined authorities, there are also a large number of Council elections. Electoral Calculus did a projection of how the councils will look And, yea, BIG change

Map showing the current council compositions of the councils up for election in the 2025 local election cycle.

Map showing the projected control of the councils up in the 2025 cycle, including the councils that have had their elections delayed due to local government restructuring.

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Garth 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 @thatgarthguy.bsky.social · 20/04/2025

This morning I had another talk with the US President, and here is the paper which bears his name and mine. Some of you...I would just like to read it to you: "We regard the agreement signed last night and the Anglo-American Trade Agreement as symbolic of our desire to protect jobs and livelihoods."

Edited version of a photo depicting Neville Chamberlain holding the Munich Agreement. Keir Starmer's head has been edited over Chamberlain's

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Garth 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 @thatgarthguy.bsky.social · 20/04/2025

What cost will that deal be done at though, Andrew? Should we throw away protections for minorities to "get the job done"? Why are we trying to make a deal with these fascist crybabies instead of our neighbours or, idk, the rest of the world instead? www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/poli...

Screenshot of a headline from "the Independent" titled "Starmer told UK must repeal hate speech laws to protect LGBT+ people or lose Trump trade deal"

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