An *armada* of groove. A vast fleet of armed ships, and what they’re armed with is groove.

They've got kids to look after now, I suppose. www.theguardian.com/film/2025/oc...

Lászlóóóóóóóóóóóóóó!

The big question nobody is answering yet is: Is John Tottenham Spurs or Arsenal??

L’intervista: “Nonno Camilleri ormai cieco mi ha dettato l’ultimo libro. Recitava, era teatro” https://www.repubblica.it/cronaca/2025/09/02/news/andrea_camilleri_intervista_nipote_arianna_mortelliti-424821039/?rss

Last of the Famous Blogosphere Playboys

Scam emails warning of scam emails—that's the kind of meta-ruse I can get behind

I honestly can’t think of anything less appealing than this www.theverge.com/openai/64813...

My first book is out on 27 May with @mitpress.bsky.social. It offers a media history of the power to intercept communications in Britain from the foundation of the Post Office to the (near) present, and the changing relationship between law, sovereignty, and media.

The Birthday Boys

Why must they grow the basil used in tinned tomatoes in rubbish tips, plague sites and nuclear dumps?

Nailed it

Here's someting from me that has been a long time in the offing.... A long read on the pernicious effects of social mobility blackspots Thank you to @theleaduk.bsky.social for granting me the space to tell this complex story national.thelead.uk/p/i-left-and...

Still not convinced by Silent Catastrophes's plodding tone, but @briangdillon.bsky.social makes a good point here that I hadn't considered. "[T]his book is full of strange and tender moments when Sebald’s feeling for his subject".

Here's a small, 15-year-old scoop: I found a 2010 guide on how to beat the far right written by Morgan McSweeney. Since he's now Keir Starmer's chief of staff, I used it to assess what Labour is doing to beat the far right in 2025. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4... @lrb.co.uk

Watching Severance back to back with BBC's The Apprentice as a form of embodied critique

For the first time in my life… a coldsore cream actually worked…

RIP to a real one

Gary Indiana on bumping into Janis Joplin during the Sixties

For the @thetls.bsky.social this week, I wrote about the—brilliant! troubled! eccentric! disgraceful! bonkers!—French writer JK Huysmans, author of À Rebours/Against Nature, and the idle pleasures of style in fin de siècle literature. www.the-tls.co.uk/lives/biogra...

For the @thetls.bsky.social this week, I wrote about the—brilliant! troubled! eccentric! disgraceful! bonkers!—French writer JK Huysmans, author of À Rebours/Against Nature, and the idle pleasures of style in fin de siècle literature. www.the-tls.co.uk/lives/biogra...

"If À Rebours is about anything, it is about the transformations taking place in art and literature during the period in which it was written" @huwnesbitt.bsky.social on a new critical life of JK Huysmans in this week's @thetls.bsky.social www.the-tls.co.uk/lives/biogra...

@madeleinewatts.bsky.social on the prescient genius of WG Sebald’s Rings of Saturn.

Perhaps the most overlooked translation last year!!

And lo: here we are, on Bluesky. Pls repost to spread the word!

Saw a bloke in the library with a two-litre Nalgene today, and thought, Why not eh?

Wrote a short review of the new Sebald collection on Austrian literature for the Irish Times this past weekend. Thanks to @martindoyle.bsky.social for the commission. (And thanks to my amazing partner's amazing mum for the photos). www.irishtimes.com/culture/book...

tradition v. modernity

I will NEVER forget this

“now the jingle hop, has begun”

During Covid lockdown, if you had family round on Christmas Day the police could force their way into your home and make them return to their own homes. Does anybody know if this service is still available and, if so, do you have to book it?

Just took 93yr Mum to the news agents, she’s registered blind. In a very loud voice she said, “Which newspaper do I buy to make Sonia Sodha redundant?” A cheer went up from waiting patrons

In solidarity with the striking workers of the Guardian, I will today ONLY be reading the @telegraphnews.bsky.social

Is there anything Americans love more than surgically altering their face to look like the eponymous hero of video game franchise "Max Payne"?

Quite chuffed to have a page in the latest Lit Review with a piece on Andrey Platonov's utopian Soviet satire, Chevengur. literaryreview.co.uk/first-as-tra...

Escaping Elon's HELLSCAPE and joining the #cryptocommunity on Bluesky

Very pleased to be making my debut in the TLS this week with an essay on René Girard, the scallywag of French philosophy

bought some R E V O L T I N G plums

Reflecting on the last few remaining boozers in London and the south of England, concluded that in 10 years time, most of the publicans running these establishments will either be retired or dead, and that with them will end a tradition of simple, uncomplicated inebriation that will be lost forever

Getting into visible mending as an act of melancholic resistance

"Twitter users arriving at Bluesky", Théodore Géricault, 1819

Who is this 'Dingly Dell' fella eh