It's Xmas Eve & I'm hitting a bit of a low. Can I ask: what's the best book you've read in terms of one that helped your mental health, made you feel more hopeful, or changed your perspective in a positive way? I need to seek out some kind of stabilising, nourishing, hope-kindling media.

Stressed out? Want a break? Like cheese? Dogs? People being lovely to each other? This is for you. www.tumblr.com/worldheritag...

Why is this advice always aimed at children avoiding their parents, and never at older people belligerently and inevitably regurgitating Facebook opinions so offensive their own kids would rather skip Christmas dinner than endure them?

I've been working on #Decolonising for years; like many #Psychology academics I learned a lot from Henrich et al's concept of WEIRDness (Western, educated, industrialised, rich, democratic). But language moves on & this is a great article on rethinking WEIRD: www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/one-...

I found some of the ideas around better recognizing the myriad impacts that influence our thinking in this piece helpful. Also, the idea of "what am I taking care of here and with whom?" a fascinating way of thinking about the teaching and learning in the AI age. substack.com/home/post/p-...

What does 1 trillion web pages sound like? 🎶 In the latest Future Knowledge #podcast, composer Sam Reider talks about “Quartet for a Trillion,” a new work written to celebrate 1 trillion web pages archived. Performed by Del Sol Quartet. 🎧 Listen: futureknowledge.transistor.fm/episodes/wha...

This is a much more entertaining way to catch up (at least as a reader I enjoyed this recap and it’s probably the most accurate one out there without reading the series). youtu.be/YpJOwUD1oTo?... #WoTSkies

WHAT. (Adds to list for next year)

Antidote to the madness.

Feeling like you need a break and a giggle? @florilegia.bsky.social done you a solid here.

All I want for Christmas is a violent end to algorithmic microvideo.

One of the most fulfilling things I've done the last couple of years is attempt, incompetently, to be a mentor, whatever one of those is. Anyway, my mentee(?) @matt-taylor.bsky.social wrote this about why his kids don't believe in Santa for the Guardian yesterday and it's bloody good

And here’s @andrewayton.bsky.social on Crecy from 2023 www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

This feels the right time to show off what has turned into my favourite gift of all time. Look at all the amazing books I have courtesy of the @biggreenbooks.bsky.social advent calendar!

In important math news: new shape just dropped (the noperthedron) www.quantamagazine.org/first-shape-...

A woodland in watercolour and mixed media. Available now in my Folksy shop. Good news for USA deliveries - Art is exempt from tariffs! folksy.com/find/item/85... #Woodland #Trees #Landscape #OriginalArt #Watercolour #Painting #Artwork #GiftIdeas #ArtShop #ShopIndy #SupportSmallBusiness #bsnm

there is a genre of person who hates AI in *their* field but sees how it could be useful in *other,* less prestigious, fields; ignore them. they are not trying to save the ship. they are just racing you to the lifeboats

Ötzi and a 45,000-year-old Siberian were both infected with a cancer-causing strain of HPV. This is fascinating, and a reminder that we have a vaccine that *prevents cancer* and everyone eligible should get it.

I'm a regular guy, I put my trousers on the same way as everyone else: falling into them through a hole in the ceiling via a contraction operated by my long suffering dog

The point of writing crap is not that you should barf out anything. It's that you should be aware as you are writing it what the flaws are, and you need to get through it the first time, because the act of doing so informs you what is wrong.

Just a thing about this: a common statement in writing is that you can fix crap, but you can't fix a blank page. I have heard AI apologists claim that this is why it's fine to generate a first draft. Now, to be clear, fuck this. But also: an AI draft is a fucking blank page.

Edward Hopper, Christmas card, 1928 whitney.org/collection/w...

Now I am having gift envy, and it is only Christmas Eve!

“would you like an extra pair of hands?” I ask my mother in the kitchen. “Yes, but they need to be attached to my same brain.”

I’m watching Face Off for the first time, and they just…they just take the faces off.

enjoying the quiet but critical work of "former entertainer"

I was writing a finding aid for a collection donated by the daughter (and biographer) of a prominent doctor. It included other biographies written about him which she had heavily annotated - several lines were underlined and marked as "NO" or "This didn't happen".

Happy Christmas Eve! You folks can keep your Love Actually & Holiday, I want to watch While You Were Sleeping. #ChristmasMovie

What's a compliment you'll never forget?

Two little elderly french women on the sleeper train to Paris were chatting with me in french and asked me where I had grown up. When I told them “California”, they told me that they had assumed I was from Paris.

someone once told me “you invite candor” and my sister’s lesbian ceramicist friends liked it so much (“that’s the nicest thing you can say about someone!!!!”) that they made me a cup with “I INVITE CANDOR” stamped on it

Union Santa delivers. 🪶

Map from my copy of an 1832 atlas by educator & cartographer Emma Willard (1787-1870). She argued for equality in women's education, noting women were equally capable of subjects like math & philosophy. In 1821 she opened the first school in the U.S. to offer women's higher education. #WomenInSTEM

oh my god this actually reminded me that someone *said this to me on twitter* during this. like literally, "can you even violate copyright on romance, they're basically all the same" anyway I wish I had not unlocked that memory and also that I didn't have so many similar ones to unlock lolcry

This is easily one of the best things about Christmas. Mark your calendars!

Tomorrow evening it’ll be my annual duty to vaguely shepherd the activity on the #duvetknowitschristmas hashtag and urge people to give small sums to charity. 7.30pm? Something like that?

what is your least favorite piece of writing advice and why? 👀

Last call for this as a) it’s almost full and b) we have to send the list of attendees very early in the year so registration will close either way!

This is so dumb/good youtu.be/1Tev6Q4AvUE?...

First up: HOLY SMOKES, we got a live one, a bonafide treatment for ALS! 🧪 🩺 from @washumedicine.bsky.social source.washu.edu/2025/12/new-...

I was thinking this the other day with a sense of encroaching depression: I have written fictional villains whose inner landscapes are magnitudes more complex and sympathetic than some of the world's richest people. Why, yes, I *am* equating billionaires with villainy. Well spotted.

disney should go back to making movies about how it’s ok to steal from rich people

Possible winner of my Footpath Of The Year award for 2025.

Friendly reminder that the best gift you can give an indie author is a review of their book!

Kendrick Lamar Awarded Nobel Beef Prize

i had to drop what i was doing to make this

Well this is good news! www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

2025: Web pages vanished. Links broke. Public data disappeared. But the Internet Archive kept the receipts. From investigative reports to video features, these stories show why preserving the web became one of the year’s defining information battles. ➡️ blog.archive.org/2025/12/22/t... 🧵

Not now, Hundreds Of Ancient Hobnail Boots Rising From The Deep To Overwhelm The Landlubbers www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...