iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Ben Van der Velde

JoelTaylorhack @joeltaylorhack.bsky.social · 15h

I think the BBC should close its television news channel to save money It’s so poor now anyway Fund proper journalism, make decent news programmes, maintain Radio 4 Rolling news is awful too

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Ed Morrish @edmorrish.com · 19/07/2025

another good way of thinking about what cracking value radio 4 is that it makes twenty hours of programming a day - news, drama, comedy, documentaries, a soap opera, arts - for about £90m/yr, while spotify pay joe rogan about £60m/year to listen gullibly to liars for about nine hours per week

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Ben Van der Velde @vanderlaugh.bsky.social · 15h

I cannot conceive of the size of the yes man bubble the BBC DG must live in to think this is a good idea. It's so demonstrably shite.

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Rachel Parris @rachelparris.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Here’s the dates!

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Ben Van der Velde @vanderlaugh.bsky.social · 18h

Adding my tiny voice to wave of people telling you to go an see Rachel, for the love of God. She'll make you smarter, kinder and happier. What's not to love?

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Ben Van der Velde @vanderlaugh.bsky.social · 18h

Bloody hell. Only just seen this mate. Right there in the trenches with you - we're having our toughest ever year at the West Norwood Festival, BUT delighted to say that's not the case for you. Cosy wee room has been sold out for weeks. See you Tuesday. X

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cara giaimo @cjgiaimo.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

i was fortunate enough to profile Margaret Hamilton in 2019. A really kind and curious person. This was my favorite story she told me:

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Yair Wallach @yairwallach.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Disgraceful pandering to conspiracy theories. We know the names and numbers of those killed from friendly fire on 7 Oct 7. 22 people. That's 2% of the victims of that day. Out of these 22, 17 were potentially killed by "Hannibal"-style orders (not so clear).

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George Monbiot @georgemonbiot.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Some people here don't seem to have understood the purpose of a political party. It's not the same as a protest movement. It is a vehicle designed to get into government, to change legislation and make a material difference to the lives of people at home and abroad.

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George Monbiot @georgemonbiot.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Let me try this once more. It was a choice. EITHER the Greens adopted a slogan. OR they could have joined the next govt, where they could push for an end to arms sales, sanctions, support for the arrest warrants etc. It was never going to be both. Which one makes a material difference? #GazaGenocide

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Dr Dean Burnett @drdeanburnett.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

"By using AI, tasks like essays that used to take hours can be completed in minutes!" Sure, like how if I arrive at the gym and immediately go for a shower, my workout is done in record time. And if I throw my sandwiches straight in the bin, I can finish my lunch in under 10 seconds.

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Ben Van der Velde @vanderlaugh.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

I still can't believe that man was ever allowed on the BBC or at the How the Light Gets In festival, as though he was actually a public intellectually of any note whatsoever.

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Ben Van der Velde @vanderlaugh.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Yeah, I saw that. Astonishingly unself-aware behaviour from some of our fellow clowns. A world-class not good look.

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Ben Van der Velde @vanderlaugh.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Dwarved by his final two albums perhaps? But the run from hours...to the Reality live album is so good. Not quite peak 70s standard, but full of terrific gear

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Ben Van der Velde @vanderlaugh.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Tremendous to see Heathen in there. Such a great later era Bowie album.

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Tilt Araiza @tiltaraiza.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Myself and @andrewhickey.500songs.com have worked out a system of replacing oxygen with helium for those who wish to end their life painlessly, but without dignity.

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Ben Van der Velde @vanderlaugh.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

"Poked a badger with a spoon" and her deadpan cow are top of my list.

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Ben Van der Velde @vanderlaugh.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Yep. Given how he's been lauded these last 48 hours as really getting how to do politics in the 21st century, seemed a mad mis-step. Just stfu and let the Premier League clear up their own mess.

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Roland Smith @rolandmcs.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

'Which taxes do you want to raise instead?' should be the default question to anyone who calls for reductions in immigration.

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Ben Van der Velde @vanderlaugh.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Fuck me, the CV of this guy. What a body of work.

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John Oxley @joxley.jmoxley.co.uk · 25/09/2026

Think it shows both the confused position of the govt and the relative powers of new/old media that the PM won't speak to The Sun but still uses the CSAM & disinformation app owned by the guy who advocates for the overthrow of the government.

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Ben Van der Velde @vanderlaugh.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

You are correct to demand your challah, the king of breads!

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Dave Rudden's off to Fantasycon! @daveruddenwrites.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

My five year old has the soul of Orson Welles. We were outside school and he 'put a kiss in my pocket for later.' Extremely touched by this, I gave him two back. He dug out the second one, THEATRICALLY CRUSHED IT IN HIS FIST and said 'one is enough.'

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Ben Van der Velde @vanderlaugh.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Precisely what my brain did as well.

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Dr. Jonathan Foley @globalecoguy.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Did you know that producing one pound of beef is 25-50x worse for climate change than burning a pound of coal? In fact, it’s one of the most polluting things we can consume. And grass-fed beef is usually *even worse* — thanks to its much higher land use and methane emissions.

Bar chart showing greenhouse gas emissions for different food items. Beef is the worst, by far.

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Richy Craven @richycraven.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Picturing Erling Haaland being sold at police auction like a drug lord's speedboat.

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🌬Breeze @cool-summer-breeze.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

This is the Stolen Neighbors Quilt. Each of the 11,000 squares represents a person taken by ICE in Minnesota.

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Brian Jay Jones @brianjayjones.com · 24/09/2026

Jim Henson would have been 90 (yup, you read that right: NINETY) years old today. You can celebrate his life by celebrating creativity, diversity, peace, imagination, and silliness.

A tuxedoed Jim Henson sits in a sea of Muppets.

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Bart⚓️ @bartgonnissen.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

The Facial Expressions of Tethys by artist Julius von Bismarck. A suspended high-sea buoy that moves in real time. Sensors on a twin buoy out in the Atlantic Ocean send live satellite data to motors inside the museum. This makes the indoor buoy copy the exact, real-time movements of the ocean waves.

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Jay Zedbee @jayzedbee.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

i genuinely think about this every time theres any mention of narnia. one of the funniest things that have ever happened

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Ben Van der Velde @vanderlaugh.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Or even, focusing on the actual problems facing the entertainment and arts sector that are way beyond this garish window-dressing.

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Dorian Lynskey @dorianlynskey.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Great thread. Most racists are "genuinely concerned" because they are genuinely prejudiced. Their sincerity is not the issue

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Ian Dunt @iandunt.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

The promise of Israel is somewhere that Jews can be safe, no matter what else happens in the world. The mobs and death threats against the filmakers and their families suggest that, under Netanyahu, this only applies to Jews who support the government and armed forces.

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Ben Van der Velde @vanderlaugh.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Final scene of Paddington 2 always has me in bits. Perfectly deployed emotion bomb

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Ben Van der Velde @vanderlaugh.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Shares this everywhere. Put it on billboards. Have schoolchildren recite it every day before class.

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Sarah McAnulty, Ph.D. @sarahmackattack.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Really good chicken helmet. Best chicken helmet I’ve ever seen maybe.

A knight’s helmet with, inexplicably, a chicken face coming out the front

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Lucy Prebble @lucyprebblish.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Not so smug about the believability of them continuing to build Jurassic Parks now are we

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The Amityville Jordan (1979) @jackal27.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

it’s easier to just say “whole planet’s doomed”. it takes away any agency or responsibility you have to fight for a better future, or even to just accept one you can’t imagine or won’t recognize. it’s suicidal ideation.

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The Amityville Jordan (1979) @jackal27.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

i try to brighten my friends’ days by sharing good news whenever i see it, but this now being the third time i’ve seen very positive climate news lately, i’m gonna get a lil mean: climate doomerism is misinformation and spreading it, even just in jest, is antithetical to the values you espouse.

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Claire Oliphant @claireoliphant.com · 10/09/2026

It's easy to succumb to doomerism, but it's a lie. If we were able to get to the moon in <10 years, we can do this too. Hope is a verb.

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

The majority of Israeli PMs were secular Jews including David Ben-Gurion and Golda Meir. *Netanyahu* is known to eat non-kosher meals. It's beyond absurd.

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Stephen Bush @stephenkb.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

For a sign of how absurd this is, *Theodor Herzl* did not observe dietary laws particularly closely, did not keep Shabbat, and was not in any way religious!

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Charles Fourier @charlesfourier.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Bill Bryson’s words seem appropriate to post right now

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Robert Hutton @roberthutton.co.uk · 08/09/2026

On Andy Burnham's sudden bout of shyness. thecritic.co.uk/sanc...

The close of his statement was an appeal to our better natures. If we were going to ask Israelis and Palestinians to live side-by-side, he said, Britain also had to be a place where “people of all faiths and none have a right to live without prejudice or fear.” Listening to him was Andy Burnham, who has been strangely absent from our public debate for the last few days. In August, we couldn’t move for social media clips from the prime minister, standing on a ladder to discuss his first job, or sitting in a pub to rate bar snacks. But faced with masked thugs trying to shut down British ports over the weekend, Burnham seems to have lost the password for his phone. For a decade now, Britain has had a series of leaders apparently paralysed by the fear that if they say that racism is bad, they’ll be voted out. It would be nice to get one who had a slightly higher opinion of us.

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Ben Van der Velde @vanderlaugh.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

It seems like the easiest open goal for a PM apparently trying to win back the centre-left - come down hard on these nasty thugs with a criminal background. I've written to my MP. As a journalist, what's your impression of where the other useful pressure points are to make the government act?

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Jonathan H. Liu @jonathanhliu.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Got to see Coyote vs ACME yesterday and it was fantastic. Here's my Etch-a-Sketch tribute!

Etch-a-Sketch drawing of Wile E. coyote, frowning, holding up a sign, which is a pocket Etch-a-Sketch drawing that says "It's a limited number of signs"

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Ben Van der Velde @vanderlaugh.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

The Dr Moreau intervention we're all hoping for.

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Bethany Black @bethanyblack.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

What is consciousness? What is sentience? These are philosophical question that have been asked since the dawn of time. How lucky we are to live in a time where 7 people in Northern California realised the answer is “being able to predict the most statistically significant next word in a sentence”

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Ben Van der Velde @vanderlaugh.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Bloody hell that's enormous. It's a floating block of flats.

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