🗞️ The New World has published a new article exploring the latest findings from the #SmidgeProject, following an in-depth interview with our Scientific Coordinator, Dr. Sara Wilford. Read the full article here: www.thenewworld.co.uk/zoe-grunewal...

Caledonia Screaming in Christmas Eve's The National. The forgotten 1977 punk story

Went to central London to find CHRISTMAS HAS BEEN CANCELLED!!!!!!!!!!!!! 🤬

It doesn’t fix things, but it really does bring me comfort to know how miserable some of the worst people are. Donald Trump tweeting over 200 times on Christmas. Billionaires fighting with strangers online during the holidays. Everything about Elon Musk

Merry Christmas 🎄

One fun thing about the Japanese is we love the FUCK out of Christmas and have only the loosest concept of what is going on

‘As a refugee, I don’t know how I’d have survived without their help’ This year, The Observer’s Christmas appeal is raising funds for the refugee charity Counterpoints Arts, Vanessa Thorpe https://bit.ly/4pLlPD3

I'm not going to look at X in 2026. I don't see how it could get worse than a literal advert for Hitler.

2/ We have now exceeded over 4 million reads of our Powerful Citizen journalism in 2025 and rising. Help us look forward to a brilliant 2026 by supporting citizen voices and becoming a friend of Bylines Network

Well, that's disgusting.

CHRISTMAS SPECIAL 2025: The Mistletoe Bride Featuring an exclusive performance by critically acclaimed folk singer @jackieoates.bsky.social and a rare example of the legend from 1809 Listen free at www.thefolklorepodcast.com/christmas-20... Or watch the YouTube version at youtu.be/t3-By7BH_1I

Ladybird Artists Advent Calendar, window 23 ‘Visits’ Artist: Ronald Lampitt (1951)

Cried at a clip of the new Paddington musical. I can't help being sentimental about a wee bear (or anyone) looking for a home.

Miklós Bánffy's Transylvanian Trilogy is one of the most engrossing novel series of the early 20th century, a saga of Hungarian society before WWI. Jan Morris wrote that "it is gloriously, addictively, compulsively readable.” neglectedbooks.com/?...

One of the world’s most interesting thinkers, the Dutch historian Rutger Bregman, says citizens need to form a modern day protest movement modelled on the 19th century ‘Temperance Crusade’ to bring Big Tech to heel before it’s too late. I couldn’t agree more. My @heraldscotland.bsky.social column

Scottish musicians in open revolt against BBC Scotland bellacaledonia.org.uk/2025/12/17/s...

A smaller secure Israel & a free Palestine with workable borders is the best option. The "clash of civilisations" ethno-state garbage is going to lead to catastrophe. If you need to live in a fortress, you're not safe.

Yuletide felicitations! The 1975 Christmas 'Radio TV Times' magazine is now available! 🎁 Explore 10 days of December 1975’s TV listings across both BBC and ITV. Open the PDF, click on a programme title and start streaming from various platforms. 🤶 visualmutterings.com/1975-christm...

One is reminded, as ever, of the aristocratic exiles dragging their prejudices back into power in 1815, having learned nothing & forgotten nothing, with nothing to offer but resentment for the brief time in which someone else tried to insist they were not the natural rulers of society.

Wapping at Forty: the strike that made the modern media. One-day seminar at the Marx Memorial Library to mark the anniversary of the Murdoch News International dispute. Book now: online/in person. sslh.org.uk/2025/12/17/s...

I think she got her ideas from the IEA (I've seen them seething about her downfall) & they blame the "woke" Bank of England for not wanting to slash welfare (even though old school conservatives believe some welfare is needed for stability).

People may be daft, but scammers are cruel.

We're speed running the bad crazy and chaos of the late 60s, but with an immoral lunatic as president, a huge part of the country absolutely addicted to endless streams of violent outrage, and without the great music.

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Here's Trump saying Rob Reiner is dead because he made people mad with his "Trump Derangement Syndrome." Absolutely insane. It's a real post by the president of the United States, who has the nuclear codes.

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No one who has ever used the term "cultural erasure" has ever meant anything more complicated or less racist than "get rid of the brown people".

Scotland needs an institute that will look after cultural archives that are currently considered quirky, difficult or outsider.

An incredible list. Losing Rob Reiner is a tragedy on so many levels. #RIP

Incredibly sad. He always came across as lovely in his interviews.

The Observer once asked me what I was reading so I replied honestly: a biography about The Krankies. I've never been invited to partake in one of these again. observer.co.uk/culture/book...

The Teds were the U.K.’s first recognizable group dedicated to teen-age rebellion, with their elaborate neo-Edwardian frock coats and drainpipe trousers, and outlandishly styled hair. www.newyorker.com/culture/phot...

The John Birch Society had to walk so TPUSA could run. This is what a many told CBS reporter Eric Sevareid about the JBS in 1961:

Christmas night: "But Santa, you've hardly touched your Zardoz cookies."

A new study of the last 50 years of US pop music shows “a significant increase in stress-related language, alongside declines in positive sentiment and lyrical complexity.”

well my regular gig has set me free right before the holidays - freelance life 🤩✨ good news: my calendar is fully open for work in January! bad news: i still need to pay rent soooo need a Fringe First-winning playwright, dramaturg, producer, marketing manager, or access support? i’m your girl

Margaret Macdonald, The Three Perfumes, 1912, Glasgow School artist who was believed to have influenced Klimt #womensart

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I wondered why nationalists kept babbling about 2050 - it's in a novel from 1973.

"Atsmeawayranoopal". Stanley Baxter, beloved actor, comedian, author, and the man who introduced the Glaswegian turn of phrase to the world through his Parliamo Glasgow sketches, has died at the age of 99.

The wealthiest and most powerful people in the world have deemed left-wing academics and Gaza protestors to be “elites.” The object of their fear is what Lionel Trilling called “imagination and mind.”

Great to see Democracy for Sale and Led By Donkeys cash for access investigation in Westminster in Private Eye. I reckon most hacks following PoliticsUK don’t realise it’s run by an ex Tory MP turned lobbyist and a Conservative staffer! Our story here: democracyforsale.substack.com/p/breaking-o...

It's awful. It's theft. It's diminishing returns & it's against the point of art which is people working through the universal & particular problems of being human in their lifetime.

Letting Glasgow Film Theatre rot is sheer cultural vandalism @heraldscotland.bsky.social

The Scarlet Pimpernel is a great character, but I hate the story with a passion because they murder a poor child to save a Royal child. I think even in its day that was a grotesque choice.

I can't work out what the new Jon Ronson is about! www.penguin.co.uk/books/455289...

Gen Z is being nostalgic about the 2010s wrong lol www.garbageday.email/p/how-dare-l...

This - but also, Saint Denis isn't a terrible place. It's rundown & poor - but the people aren't some multicultural blob that you can't make friends with. It's no different to Ayr or Paisley. But French.

A wonderful thread on the late, great Ken Campbell.

Confessions of a Shopaholic novelist Sophie Kinsella dies aged 55