“…so help me Bob.”

I'm trying to get a sense of how many (other) people were invited and then disinvited from US campuses last year. If you have a story to share, please dm. I will keep it confidential – just trying to figure out the scale of this.

Why is it always ‘Who’s the best frontman of all-time’ when no vocalist has ever - nor ever shall - elevate a band as much as Sandy Denny did Fairport and Fotheringay?

Just making sure that 2025 is definitely over

Gingerbread 2025 Dumpster 🔥

My sincere year-end thought isn’t an original one, but its importance has been underscored to me repeatedly over the last 12 months: be free with telling the people you love that you love them, casually, and at every chance. Great love, small love, every type of love.

Truly cheering —

Excited to announce GOLLUM, an app that helps you focus on your most precious possession!

This is essentially the plot of The Sound of Music.

"Did you see what Mark Cuban posted? Oh did you see the clapb—" You shake yourself awake in the cold North Atlantic water. You are not online. It is July of 1858. You are a baleen whale, and you have changed your mind. The future most not come to pass. The telegraph cable must break.

Read this and cheer! 😊

When decimalisation occurred in 1966, the Australian government compiled an 81 page file on dangers of using decimal coins in Christmas puddings. There was a media campaign warning people not to use the new coins in their cooking. The file is now digitised. recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetri...

This is a very good piece on the policy changes at the BBC Written Archives at Caversham, which have closed off most of the archive even to established researchers. It may seem a small thing, but it’s indicative of the wider assault on public institutions. Do read & sign the petition.

The Dunning-Kruger Effect and the Streisand Effect, when merged, become the Bari Weiss Effect

Seconded. Hurrah for @saltpublishing.com!

You will love again the stranger who was your self. Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart to itself, to the stranger who has loved you all your life, whom you ignored for another, who knows you by heart. Derek Walcott

Congrats again to everyone for pretending the far right authoritarian party’s assault on higher education was really about fighting antisemitism

This is perfect, and heart wrenching, and also will make you smile. Merry Christmas. A hard and joyous time.

I don’t know how anyone can still talk about “the AI revolution” with a straight face. Reuters story about a railroad company that has sunk $300,000 into “developing AI products” and appears to have made…a chatbot that doesn’t work? archive.is/2025.12.17-0...

The Ronald McDonald and the Hulk Hogan and the Kenny G and the Donald J. Trump and the John F Kennedy Memorial Center for Show Tunes and Hits of the Eighties and Nineties

A gentle reminder if you've received an invoice from a Freelancer/Self employed person which is due before Christmas. Be a love, and pay it today.

Every time there's a breaking story about a celeb's treatment of women, everyone in the book world asks, "Is it finally Walliams?" Well, it finally is.

A fine, fine piece of cineaste critique by the great @mattzollerseitz.bsky.social

This is a really lovely piece.

New Illustration: "We Beat 'Em Before..." Taken from a British WW2 poster, the original features a WW1 German soldier at the top. I just swapped it for the Nazi soldier it had at the bottom.

Just, jeez, man

Stuff like this doing the rounds. A very personal-seeming email. Beware beware.

i am once again so aggrieved that we are going through all of this stupid fucking bullshit. what the fuck

REMINDER - there is a fully funded bursary place available for my Six Month Writing Course in association with @gladlib.bsky.social The Deadline is 7th January. www.gladstoneslibrary.org/event/the-si...

And now I find out that The Salt Path wasn't even published by a real penguin.

This is my cyclical reminder that there's really only one consistently reliable source of info in the public record that isn't owned by right wing billionaires, who really want to put an end to it. Please give at least the $2.75 minimum they request if you can. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

"I will promise never to think again that my grief is inadmissible. That denial of emotion, of fellow-feeling, is what leads, no kidding, to slaughter. The world changes one small step at a time. Even in the darkest times we must put our candle in the window." @ericawgnr.bsky.social bit.ly/3KKstKJ

Grateful to be able to write this for @theobserveruk.bsky.social — however sad I feel.

I wrote this, because I didn't know what else to do. observer.co.uk/news/opinion...

Terrific story about Rob Reiner being as much of a mensch in real life as he seemed.

🧵

today’s affirmation: I am within the acceptable range of deviation. I am a perfectly roasted quail. if I was a car the mechanics would find nothing weird or rodent related in my air filter. I am upright. There are no stones or excess debris in my shoes. I still have all my bones.

A damp winter wander enlivened by good conversation and tea in the revitalised Brockwell Hall —

In M&S buying jeans and wondering when they stopped selling old people clothes and started selling clothes for young hip people like myself

“Winding”, “episodically” and “wandered” doing some heavy lifting here, NYT…

... one of the replies to @sathnam.bsky.social was certain — and I understand the wishful thinking — that this was a fake Home Office account. But it's not. In case you were in any doubt. (And for what it's worth: no me, either.)

In case you haven't seen @richove.bsky.social

Unsolicited writing advice, no. 209: Not all writing needs to “lead somewhere.” Joy is a valid end in itself. So is practice: everything you write makes you better writer.

The Four Seasons Total Landscaping Peace Prize.

I live in Wales and today received my Join Us letter from Reform UK, complete with SAE which I posted back to them, immediately, empty. If every other person in Wales did this, Reform would spend over £1.5 million on postage. Not sorry. Join me Cymru.

Elon Musk is a global enemy to democracy.

Yes, no notes

I'm so proud to be on this fabulous list: amazing writers (ahem) and beautifully-designed books. What more could a reader want?

An excellent piece by Yasmin Khan in @theguardian.com – and I’m very relieved the preposterous case against her has been dropped. www.theguardian.com/food/comment...

“Cutting ordinary people out of the judicial system, weakening the scope of jury trials, and leaning even more upon magistrates and judges, will reinforce a more technocratic system and only deepen public mistrust.” My @theobserveruk.bsky.social column: observer.co.uk/news/columni...