Look, I don't know what I was expecting but only three of these films aren't remakes, adaptations or franchise sequels, and of those three one is based on the life of John Bishop www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Reminded once again that pigs in blankets contains in one phrase a rare brutal truth and, far too late, the wooliest possible euphemism. A phrase that realises halfway through that it's absolutely fucked it

8-year-old interrogating partner and me about contents of his presents. He's got us in separate rooms and and has told me that she's confessed

Honestly, no-one out there doing it quite like David Keenan. The way that man does voice, it's a channelling, it's possession.

It's been a busy day because life is like that so I'm only now reading up on the victims of yesterday's attack, and fucking hell, man, what kind of world is this

FYI

Too much fucking perspective. Fucking hell. RIP to a legend. Far, far too soon.

Maybe no single greater exemplification of the contemporary lapsed Jewish experience than discovering it's the first night of Hanukkah through news coverage of an active terrorist attack

Putting this on record early, mostly out of vanity, but in the coming months you're going to hear a lot of great things about Attention-Seeking Behaviour by @aeavvw.bsky.social, and you should believe every one.

[Following protocol, testing a stroke victim who's just correctly identified a series of B and C list reindeers] But do you recall the most famous reindeer of all?

Not sure how I'd like to be remembered but while I'm alive I'd like to be thought of as famously litigious.

Parenting observation: the Beano is much better at chasing lapsed subscriptions than the LRB

British columnists on Labour antisemitism: Who could even imagine having such horrifically hateful views in the 21st century?! British columnists on Reform antisemitism: Come on, we all graffitied swastikas on our Jewish classmates' lockers at school, didn't we?

When my first book, Ostrich, came out lots of people commented that it was a sensitive portrait of autism. This amused me as the narrator wasn't autistic. I didn't say anything cos intentional fallacy etc. Yesterday the 8-year-old was diagnosed as autistic. I think those readers might've had a point

One of my most staunchly held beliefs is that recipe writers who, around step 5, casually drop a "Meanwhile" should face prison time.

Wrote something for the latest edition of the Blizzard I did, about Peter Gulácsi and the ramifications of speaking out in Orbán’s Hungary

Absolute must read!

Some of my editorial work comes via Reedsy. Over the past year it's become completely overrun by people (I can't call them authors) who are asking for editorial help on manuscripts that have been generated by #AI. Often, what they want is for someone to make the text sound more human.

This essay crystallized so much of the unease I feel—not just about the push for LLMs, but also about how (profit motive + the web) degrades the depth and tenor of how we communicate.

"Language is no longer an arcade claw lowered into our deepest thoughts. It is no longer the water we swim and sometimes drown in." Alright Matt, fuck us upppp.

Parenting hack: to save time throw a cucumber away whole every four days as opposed to portioning it out and throwing it away in increments

No greater authority figure conceivable to the early '00s music video producer than the shopping mall security guard

I've said it once and I'll say it again: one of the internet's best hubs

“Soon it won’t just be birthday greetings and opening gambits on Hinge that people outsource to AI.” @arealmattgreene.bsky.social explains why LLMs are built for a post-meaning world.

I'm very proud of this essay and delighted one of my fave sites is hosting it. On language as the surface of a lake and how the advertiser's dream is to sever it from an ecology of meaning, how we resist this, and why we should absolutely feel okay shaming users of AI. lithub.com/on-the-rise-...

And absolutely thrilled to be included here, in one of my favourite corners of the internet!

Extremely grateful to @chicagorevbooks.bsky.social for including The Definitions in their list of December must-reads. I can only imagine it was similar thrill for Nobel winners Peter Handke and Olga Tokarczuk to scroll down and see the company they were in. chireviewofbooks.com/2025/12/01/1...

If I were a vampire I wouldn't be able to sleep at night.

Spent the morning with the three-year-old looking for "Battersea", a sort of psychogeographical non-space comprised of features from at least four other postcodes, two, possibly three of them imaginary. Deployed lunch at 10:02. A new record.

When you insult someone with the same name as the person you meant to insult, that's an ad homonym attack.

Who is the greatest villain in the history of cinema, and why is it Sy Ableman?

First Annie Hall rewatch since Diane Keaton left for what I can only assume is a better place. I don't have anything clever to say but I must have watched that film forty times and I'll be shocked if I don't watch it forty more.

Three hours making Brio train tracks to the specifications of a poorly slept three-year-old. Very Narrow Road To The Deep North

Mostly I don't regret my choices (two kids, self-employed) and I'm far luckier than most, but I am so, so curious to know what a sick day or a weekend feel like

Just explained the marshmallow test to the eight-year-old. What does it mean if the subject agrees to participate but only if the wait time and the number of additional marshmallows can be negotiated?

Well, that concludes the moderated part of our discussion, I'd now like to hand over to the ten most obnoxious people in the room for questions from the floor.

A rare sincere post. When you're playing 5-a-side football under floodlights on a rain-slicked 3G pitch and, during a break in play, you look up and see the steam lashing off of everyone's heads... not much beats that.

First day at my new job running Hitler's PR. Time to take a big sip of my coffee and check the internet

Teaching Pride and Prejudice and it's so much fun as an introduction to free indirect speech. Austen was such a genius she could put you inside two different characters' heads in the course of a sentence, with an 'etc' or an exclamation mark. Doesn't get the credit. The best to ever do it.

"I refuse to do the emotional labour of explaining this to you" is one phrase I wish I could port from social media to parenting.

Local dog groomers have frosted their windows. A real life example of a paywall

Third consecutive day of the two-year-old requesting porridge without oats for breakfast. Love to wake up into a high stakes paradox

I'll tell you one thing about passing forty, the phrase "long in the tooth" gets non-figurative pretty fucking fast

Not saying there's a clear tonal shift in season 5, when David Chase replaces Josh Brand as showrunner, but in the episode of Northern Exposure I just watched a guest star tried to murder Maurice with a car bomb

We are just a little over a month away from #TheDefinitions by @arealmattgreene.bsky.social hitting shelves! 📖 Don't miss what reviewers are saying of the intimately told story that examines how the human spirit can flourish even under the most oppressive conditions. 💭

The Definitions has been out in the world now for three weeks. I've done most of my plugging on Instagram, so you people've got off lightly. Reviewers have said lovely things ('a masterclass' - Marie Claire) and readers either love or hate it or think that it's okay deadinkbooks.com/product/the-...

Really fucked up. Bought a lottery ticket with the eight-year-old because it was today's least unreasonable request and we got three of the first four numbers. He's buzzing. Planning on reinvesting and applying what he's learned. For a £6 win I've made a lifelong gambler

In a week when I had an event cancelled because the bookshop had sold "around [a non-round number] of tickets" this is quite satisfying.

Yes, parenting is hard, confronting, physically tiring and psychologically gruelling but it is also quite a lot putting something on your head and pretending to sneeze.