🍄 Jaguars rising, chimps on the gargle, dogs saved from the fire, and mushrooms still lifting spirits five years on… aye, it’s Good News Friday! From Ig Nobel oddities 🤪 to an AI oracle of maladies 🤖, the week wasn’t all doom and gloom. 👉 Read the full round-up below

Here's part of an article about one of my favourite writers, Samuel Beckett. It seems to have hit a chord where I've published it, so here's the intro. Link below

The age of derangement is upon us: 🕵️ ICE buys despots’ spyware 🍽️ Tech barons grovel at Trump’s table 💀 ChatGPT whispers murder & suicide 🔥 MAGA declares holy war on Big Tech link below

It’s Good News Friday newsletter day Highlights: 🐘freedom for Duma, 🐆first cub at Chester Zoo, 🥚eggs redeemed, 📚McCarthy’s 20k book stash, 🎧post rock and anti folk. Link ⤵️

Out later today: China, Russia, Tesla, Kennedy; All Busy Pulling Tricks Behind The Curtain While America Counts Trump's Bruises

Not quite an official launch... But since my tech/politics articles are bringing in new subs to Medium/Substack...and they're quite a different audience to my usual philosophy/spirituality audience, I've set up a parallel Substack. Link below.

What's the craic then? Has himself popped his clogs?

Good News Friday is here. Proof the world’s not all doom and gloom. ✨ 🌞 Beaming power from space 🧪 New blood test catches ovarian cancer early 🥦 Diet cuts cancer risk by 25% 📸 Wildlife Photographer of the Year previews 🐝 Bee colonies boosted 15-fold with new superfood Link below:

Today, I've mostly been pondering why tourists post photos in FB groups of the towns they've visited to be seen only by the people who already live there. Would they also go to a vegetable shop and show the shopkeeper their bad photos of feckin' cauliflower?

Today's newsletter will be making its way to you soon.

A wee bit from today's newsletter:

A short section of today's article about Philip K. Dick. Links in bio

I mean, you want to be empathetic and compassionate but Jaysus lads, people are fuckin stupid.

The older I get the more convinced I am that old Phil was correct about everything.

Work, work, work

A man climbs a sacred mountain on a dying planet in search of truth. What he finds is far stranger: enlightenment and the horrifying beauty of being fuel for a system that feeds on belief. The Pilgrim of Gliese-27c is live. Myth meets machine. And the light is watching. Link in next comment

Donald Trump’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein aren’t just scandalous, they echo the ancient collapse of empires. From Nero to Nixon to Mobutu, history warns us what happens when tyrants trust fixers with too many secrets, and someone starts pressing play. Today's Newsletter is below

Friday means it’s time for my Good News Friday newsletter… and this week’s batch is a belter: 🦻 Deaf children hear for the first time 🐦 A magpie saves her human 🏴‍☠️ Lost pirate treasure found off Madagascar 🧠 Parkinson’s symptoms reversed in mice 🐢 Turtles might help us cure cancer Link below ⬇️⬇️

I'll have something out today about the Washington ghouls trying to bury truth and justice

Good News Friday is here. From Mexico banning dolphin shows to menstrual pads detecting cancer, humanity might not be entirely doomed. 🌿 Bees fighting superbugs 🎭 Denmark takes on deepfakes 🐔 Sweden frees the hens 🏢 Buildings that breathe 💉 Cervical screening without the speculum

1/ The American Dream has been eaten by a hedge fund and puked back up as a crypto-sponsored livestream. Somewhere, Hunter S. Thompson is watching it all burn, chain-smoking Dunhills on a cloud, muttering: "I told you so, you dumb, dumb bastards."

He has a job, a house, a family. No diagnosis, no disaster. And still, he sits in therapy and says, “I should be okay, but I’m not.” This isn’t neurosis. It’s a philosophical emergency. You’re not broken. You’re starving for meaning. My latest, and free, article is below ⬇️

Working on an article... How's this for an opening? The American Dream has been eaten by a hedge fund and regurgitated into a crypto-sponsored political livestream. Somewhere, Hunter S. Thompson is chain-smoking on a cloud, whiskey in hand, and muttering, 'I told you so, you dumb, dumb bastards.'

Every Friday I put out a free Good News Friday newsletter This week: 🐋 Iceland saves 60 whales with bare hands & grit 🌳 Chimps get help from a tree-loving search engine ⚔️ A 1,000-year-old sword pulled from Dutch muck ♻️ Mumbai plastic becomes school benches

Today’s free newsletter is about the gospels according to President Thomas Jefferson. He cut the miracles, tossed the resurrection, and left only Jesus’ teachings. What I found was harder than faith: practice. Link below ⬇️⬇️

Trump, Putin, Musk & Thiel. What do they all have in common? Bad fathers, terrible one. Be a good dad fellas, be a good dad.

Friday means it's time for the Good News newsletter: This week, we have rainbow stairs, ancient pyramids, a baboon conga line, and a blind dog in a sci-fi vest. Plus, cancer gets clocked, Everest gets a defib, and the ocean gets (some) protection. Small wins, big vibes. Read it below, for free.

Today’s newsletter is about confidence and why you’re not actually lazy, you’ve just been trained to wait. You can analyze your problems forever, pick them apart with perfect insight... and still feel stuck. The real shift happens when you start rebuilding self-trust. Read it below ⬇️

You don’t have to wait until you’ve “fixed” everything to start living. Confidence doesn’t arrive when the pain ends, it grows when you stop letting the pain run the show. Begin messy. Begin afraid. Begin here.

There’s a myth that confidence means being certain. It doesn’t. Actual confidence is stepping forward despite uncertainty. It’s making peace with the unknown, showing up with your scars, and saying: I may not have all the answers, but I’ll keep choosing myself anyway.

The voice of self-doubt isn’t proof of failure. It’s proof of awareness. You don’t need to silence it, just stop letting it lead.

We think we’re rational creatures. But really, we’re just emotional primates in trousers, writing spreadsheets to justify our feelings. Here’s a piece about logic, Nietzsche, trauma, and crying in Lidl. (link below)

I end the week with my Good News Friday newsletter This week: fake blood in Japan, a ceasefire from the PKK, NASA’s top snaps, and some bees that aren’t dying (for once). Sharp, strange, and slightly suspicious of optimism. Link below

Every Thursday, I put out a fiction piece. Today’s is Jarin Sol’s Syphar 9 Sacrifice, a cosmic horror short about a lone crewman, a lifeless planet, and the ancient beings buried beneath both. Read it below if you like your sci-fi bleak, beautiful, and a little bit cursed.

Today’s newsletter is a reckoning with the question that haunts us all: Who am I? From MBTI codes to mystical silence, from childhood wounds to Taoist paradoxes, we’re stripping back the labels to touch something raw, something real. Not an answer. A presence. Link ⬇️

The Stoics gave thanks every night. Not for riches, but for chances to act justly, to think clearly, to live again. You don’t need much. Only awareness.

In today’s newsletter, gratitude gets the side-eye. I’m pulling apart the cult of thankfulness, from calligraphy journals to spiritual LinkedIn vibes. What if real gratitude isn’t cozy or curated, but chaotic, ego-killing, & utterly unmarketable? Read it below, if you dare to drop the performance.

Most people follow me for articles/posts. But some of you are quietly suffering. You’ve read the posts, but you’re still stuck. I work with a few people 1-on-1. I help them break through the emotional patterns that reading alone can't fix. If you’re ready to start healing, reach out.

Thursday = short story day. This week: A silent object appears in Earth’s sky. No threat, no contact, just a voice offering peace, on the conditions: Disarm & unite. 0 Erik Smithson, ex-war reporter, documents the unraveling. 14 days of fear, hope, and the mirror we didn’t ask for. Read it below

Your softness is not weakness. It’s a refusal to let cruelty win. When you forgive someone who doesn’t deserve it, when you care without being asked, you’re defying despair with grace. That’s what saves us.

The world won’t be saved by TED Talks and wellness apps. It’ll be saved, if it’s saved at all, by people who still bring each other cups of tea when the sky is falling.

Cynicism is fear in a clever hat.

Today’s newsletter is a bruised love letter to the people who keep showing up. Not the polished, perfect ones, but the ones making soup in the middle of their grief. Kindness as resistance. Faith, despite everything. Link below ⬇️

Today’s newsletter is for anyone who’s ever shouted affirmations at the mirror and still felt like a fraud. It’s about the myth that confidence has to be loud, the quiet wisdom of Taoism, and why true self-worth doesn’t strut, it flows. Link ⬇️

You don’t need more knowledge. You need to let your silence speak. That’s where wisdom lives, beneath the static.

A wise person does not hurry for clarity. They sit with uncertainty until it teaches them something true.

There's a thing Franz Kafka once said that I often find meself wondering about: