Forty years ago the American Right was spouting constant moral panic about youth pop culture: heavy metal, D&D, video games. Now every MAGA troll is “why can’t it be 1985 again where I’m thin and in high school.”

It‘s going to be quite the shock when a Democrat or civilised Republican next gets in and expects things to just snap back to normal as if nothIng had happened. Trust doesn’t work like that.

You will be visited by three spirits

Gruyère, goat’s cheese, Limburger, Brie, Cheddar, Gorgonzola, Camembert, Calvados-washed-rind-cheese……S-s-s-s-s-Stiltonnnnnnnn

Not sure how I'd get through tomorrow without all the op-eds telling me how to speak to my own relatives

Going to go with “no”.

Cornershop

I've got our Christmas Eve film lined up - The Banshees of Inisherin, which we missed in the cinema. "Look," I tell her, "a heartwarming story of the auld sod, it's got all your good lads in it. Why, there's Colin now, with a rainbow over his shoulder!" One hour later, my wife has left the room.

My father in law has done his traditional Christmas Day Facebook post to remind us of the true meaning of the day: Reminding us of the greatest Christmas of all, December 25th, 1989, when they shot that bastard Ceaușescu

“Ackshuerly Chris, killing people is bad, ackshuerly…” The Ghost of Bluesky Present

The Hungarian Embassy responded with a recording of 4’33 by John Cage

New Winter Wonderland just dropped

Correct on floors; mad on temperatures.

It’s like he learned to be human by correspondence course

I always get this mixed up with NORAID and have visions of Santa using a trawler to smuggle Armalites into Donegal

Seeing Christmas in with Armagnac and a good book

In honour of the late Chris Rea here's me performing "Driving Home For Christmas" for the last time at The Andy Kim Christmas show in 2023 RS youtu.be/io38roENXr8?...

Boxing too. No sport where a key outcome is traumatic brain injury has any place in a civilised society. And the argument that it lifts working class people out of poverty is simply an excuse not to create other routes less likely to lead to cognitive impairment and early onset dementia.

Zdrowia, szczęścia, port and Stilton. Wesołych Świąt!

Future generations will ask in wonder about the short period between the release of the Strokes’ first LP and the start of Brexit when this lot looked dangerously close to becoming normal British people rather than some holding pen for rejected Evelyn Waugh characters

It’s not going to happen, because European leaders only take on US administrations in Richard Curtis films, but it would be not entirely unenjoyable to see tit-for-tat EU sanctions against randomly-selected former Trump officials

Maybe they should ask Karol Nawrocki to sort it out; he claims to have a great relationship with the Trump administration.

Nothing is worse for journalism than the idea that it’s necessary to “balance out” an informed expert with a raging moron

It’s not too late to have a copy of “Good Change” couriered to your door as that perfect stocking filler for the loved one who needs 300-odd pages of “nuanced and data-driven analysis” of Polish politics. And if you don’t believe me, you can believe Andrew Moravcsik.

“Would you like a white Christmas that includes the bone-rattling cold but does away with the snow?”

Holding out for the Michael Bay cut where Chicago gets obliterated in terrible CGI

Anyone else see “Florida Catholic bishops” and a bunch of handcuffs and jump to conclusions?

If you are looking for a very good book about extravagantly moustached men in unfeasibly tight shorts, I can strongly recommend this.

Fascinated by the mind that can imagine Americans and their media need any help with the whole “looking silly” thing right now.

Lemon curd + frankly obscene amount of butter = traditional Polish Christmas [eds. please check] lemon tart

My Celly Well

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas

Yet strangely enthusiastic about the unelected, unaccountable, anti-woke elites telling the British people what they should or should not think about immigration - day in, day out, obsessively.

my youngest just now, from the other room, after being subjected to an unwanted YouTube ad: “shut the fuck up, I don’t want to join ICE”

Is that "Because I'm clean out of 800 words on anything else"?

We used to go to my gran's for Christmas - a two-hour drive from Teesside to north Leicestershire. My dad always insisted on going after breakfast on Christmas morning. This never sat right with me as a child. It sits right with me as an adult.

Today in “say what you like about First Past The Post, at least it delivers clear, predictable majorities and facilitates stable government”

Looks like a recently-disgraced televangelist

Pouring one out for Chris Rea.

absolutely staggered to find that Dominique Pelicot was just the tip of the iceberg

Love how the Fulham fans sing lustily along with “I LIVE BY THE RIVER” without stopping to consider what those lines about the impending ice age, crop failure and nuclear holocaust might express about the team’s prospects.

One of my favourite examples of what I shall call nominative indeterminism. The leading British pro-Zionist archaeologist in mandatory Palestine and Israel was called, I kid you not, P.L.O. Guy.

It must be slightly disconcerting for people abroad who remember Chris Rea as a late-80s / early-90s purveyor of gruffly melodic AOR to see all these British social media users commemorating him by talking about cracking an egg into their bath.

This does seem to be something of a recurring theme with the NYT

Not only is this quite tooth-rottingly twee, it displays a lamentable unfamiliarity with Mr Rea’s lyrical oeuvre.

youtu.be/hakXug2FNkc RIP Chris Rea. Thanks to my parents having about three music cassettes between them, I always associate this song with - ironically enough - driving away from home for Christmas, somewhere around Wetherby on the A1(M), on the way to my gran’s house.

And once again I ask what Timothée Chalamet is even for, if not to star in this biopic

I saw this clip of Vance just after reading a chapter from a new biography on John Lewis going on diner sit-ins *as a teenager*, when the cost of “not apologising” was a little more than a couple of disobliging looks across a DC restaurant.

doi.org/10.1093/oxfo... New publication in the excellent Oxford Handbook of Polish Politics

Getting “I don’t have to sell my soul / He’s already in me” played through the speakers at Manchester Cathedral. Nice one Mani. Godspeed.