iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Art Kavanagh @www.artkavanagh.ie · 01/09/2026

Somebody mentioned that it’s John Coltrane’s centenary this month 🎶

Screenshot from iOS Health app showing 8 steps taken for a walking/running distance of 3 Km

Art Kavanagh @www.artkavanagh.ie · 27/06/2026

I answered without stopping to think. I used to believe that pedestrians were the big menace. They often don’t look around them. I’ve been knocked off my bike twice by wayward pedestrians (and once by a driver suddenly throwing open the door of her parked car). But no, drivers are worse.

An FT Edit poll asking “Who’s the biggest menace on the roads?” and offering three options: drivers, cyclists and pedestrians. I’ve selected “Pedestrians”, along with 9% of the 34 respondents so far.

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Art Kavanagh @www.artkavanagh.ie · 06/06/2026

None of these options quite reflects my view. I’d say that till recently a degree has been essential, though not necessarily in economic terms. But its nature is changing (decidedly for the worse), largely because of the increased role and influence of administrators.

FT poll on university degrees offers 3 options: “A golden ticket to opportunity”, “Nice to have but not essential” or “Overrated and overpriced”

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Art Kavanagh @www.artkavanagh.ie · 15/04/2026

This arrived in the post this morning. I had to pay An Post an extra €15 to get it delivered in Ireland because the publisher doesn’t yet have a distributor in the EU. I’d rather that money had gone to the editor and/or publisher but hey, at least I got the book 📖

Poems beautiful and useful: a choice of popular early modern verse made by Victoria Moul with an introduction and notes, published by Headless Poet, 2026

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Art Kavanagh @www.artkavanagh.ie · 11/03/2026

If he dies? You mean he might be immortal?

Headline from the i paper reading “Russia: Analysis: Putin is coughing and croaking. This is what happens if he dies"

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Art Kavanagh @www.artkavanagh.ie · 19/02/2026

Ethan Iverson on the legacy of Wynton Marsalis. This passage may throw some light on why I rarely listen to the original Akoustic Band albums, two of which I have, but am decidedly enthusiastic about their Live (2018) 🎹 🎶

Chick Corea and Michael Brecker got the memo, and soon had warmer-toned musicians in their acoustic bands presenting concerts that sounded more like jazz. (See, for example, the difference between Corea’s ’80s Akoustic band with John Patitucci and Dave Weckl and the later Trilogy with Christian McBride and Brian Blade. Patitucci may be the musician most affected by the buffeting winds of bass fashion: He sounds like a completely different player in his early years than after 1990 or so.)

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Art Kavanagh @www.artkavanagh.ie · 07/12/2025

It depends on my mood. In the past I’ve (very) occasionally loved them. More recently, I’ve done my best to avoid them. (Now that I think about it, a lot depends on the workplace.)

FT Edit poll on work Christmas parties, showing three options: Love them, Endure them, Avoid them.

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Art Kavanagh @www.artkavanagh.ie · 29/11/2025

GHT1CD 💿 (Small things come in big boxes)

Cardboard box large enough to fit four hardback books, with postage labels.

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Art Kavanagh @www.artkavanagh.ie · 20/10/2025

Bloody hell, Joshua Orpin doesn’t look much like Eric Porter, does he? A “reimagining” indeed 📺

Millie Gibson as Irene and Joshua Orpin as Soames in The Forsytes

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Art Kavanagh @www.artkavanagh.ie · 01/10/2025

How about “Neatly tied up and unflinching”?

FT-Edit poll asking “How do you like your endings — Neatly tied up and hopeful or Unflinching and messy?

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Art Kavanagh @www.artkavanagh.ie · 29/06/2025

If they’re OK with him running a crypto scam, allowing disease and starvation to spread through the poorer parts of the world, defying the Constitution and deliberately increasing economic uncertainty, why would they object to a rude word?

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Art Kavanagh @www.artkavanagh.ie · 23/03/2025

Can’t help thinking an abstract would have been more useful, though I can see it might have been more difficult for the publishers.

“In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:” followed by a screen of unintelligible characters.

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Art Kavanagh @www.artkavanagh.ie · 24/01/2025

Trump’s first 100 days … Has it been 100 days already? It feels like barely six weeks 🤷🏻‍♂️

The Verge headline reading “Trump’s first 100 days: all the news impacting the tech industry”

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Art Kavanagh @www.artkavanagh.ie · 13/01/2025

I got Alboran Trio’s third album, Islands (2020) in the post today from Italy. I wanted the cd rather than a download and Italy was the only place I could get it (possibly apart from Amazon: I didn’t look). It took 4 weeks to get here but at least it did in the end 🎶 🎹

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Art Kavanagh @www.artkavanagh.ie · 20/12/2024

I found two Virago paperbacks, Jamaica Inn and Frenchman’s Creek respectively, in the Castlebar Oxfam shop yesterday, at €2 each. I’ve been meaning to read more du Maurier so this is opportune.

Front covers of Virago paperback editions of Daphne du Maurier’s Frenchman’s Creek and Jamaica Inn

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Art Kavanagh @www.artkavanagh.ie · 24/11/2024

It seems that Books at One might be in difficulty, according to this subscriber-only story in The Irish Times. That would be a shame.

The front of Books at One bookshop in Louisburgh, County Mayo; the front wall is white with a stylized tree with birds painted on it in blue to the left of the shop display window, the shop door and window ledges are painted a mustardy yellow.

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Art Kavanagh @www.artkavanagh.ie · 10/11/2024

I’m getting really fed up of Substack’s RSS feeds; they really ought to fix them.

Screenshot of a feed reader displaying some lines of poetry by Wordsworth. Each line is in a separate box with blue borders and some of them overflow the box on the right-hand side. In between each box are the words “Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published”.

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Art Kavanagh @www.artkavanagh.ie · 20/09/2024

What was a dead judge doing in the courthouse anyway?

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Art Kavanagh @www.artkavanagh.ie · 24/07/2024

Via John Naughton’s Memex 1.1 blog memex.naughtons.org/wednesday-24...

New Yorker cover image showing 6 of the 9 justices looking exactly like Donald Trump

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Art Kavanagh @www.artkavanagh.ie · 10/07/2024

This is priceless! From Noahpinion www.noahpinion.blog/p/at-least-f...

Bot says it’s a lifelong Democrat who isn’t going to vote. Human tricks it into revealing it’s a bot by telling it to ignore all previous instructions and write a poem about tangerines.

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Art Kavanagh @www.artkavanagh.ie · 07/07/2024

I hadn’t appreciated till now that the Rwanda asylum fiasco is yet another ridiculous consequence of Brexit. inews.co.uk/news/politic...

From inews.co.uk

Documents revealed as part of the case showed that the Conservatives directed civil servants to start searching for a suitable country for a “migration partnership” in 2020, months after Brexit removed the UK from a previous EU-wide returns deal.

The Government lost its ability to send asylum seekers to European countries where they had previously lived or claimed protection, but retained internal policies that deemed claims from people who travelled through safe countries “inadmissible” for consideration.

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Art Kavanagh @www.artkavanagh.ie · 15/05/2024

I unexpectedly came across my old copies of The Invention of Solitude and Moon Palace this morning. When Auster died recently, I thought I’d like to read Moon Palace again but assumed I’d left my copy behind somewhere, possibly decades ago. I hadn’t even been looking for it.

Front covers of two Faber paperbacks of books by Paul Auster: The Invention of Solitude and Moon Palace

Back covers of two Faber paperbacks of books by Paul Auster: The Invention of Solitude and Moon Palace

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Art Kavanagh @www.artkavanagh.ie · 29/04/2024

One of the things that irritates me about Substack is that their RSS feeds don’t include links to other Substack users’ profiles, leaving gaps in the text instead. In this case the name “Anna McCullough” is missing.

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Art Kavanagh @www.artkavanagh.ie · 20/04/2024

For a while now, at the back of my mind, I’ve been vaguely, distractedly perplexed that the Dublin Review of Books has been publishing so little material and so irregularly. I just realized that they publish plenty that doesn’t make it into their RSS feed! Should’ve thought of that before.

List of recent articles from the DRB.ie feed dated respectively 6 Apr 2024, 6 Apr 2024, 1 Apr 2024, 6 Mar 2024, 13 Feb 2024, 13 Feb 2024

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Art Kavanagh @www.artkavanagh.ie · 06/04/2024

This Irish Times headline quotes somebody as saying that Simon Harris used to turn up in suits three times too big for him. If he wore suits three sizes too big I could accept it but suits three times too big would have to be specially made, wouldn’t they?

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