this is one of the factors that made me set up smelt. subscription services only seem to work for specific shows - but general streaming services will always spend your subs money on 'the thing most likely to be popular'. this is your chance to say, "i want this to exist, please"

The thing I want most from social media is smart people with a different frame of reference – often due to race, gender, disability, sexual orientation, country of origin, class, academic training - to tell me what the world looks like to them right now. Bluesky does this. /3

The thing I want most from social media is to be entertained and chat in an asynchronous non-pressured way with interesting people whenever I fucking feel like it. Bluesky does this. /2

who the fuck WANTS their posts to go viral, have you ever had that actually happen? it's like getting a winning pull on a slot machine if wasps started pouring out the bottom instead of quarters

"New Star Trek is bad, new Star Wars is bad, new superhero stuff is bad," Yeah yeah yeah man I get it, I was twelve and had a dad too it's not a perfect system read Faulkner or some shit don't worry so much about this stuff

Oh are we doing that whole bit again where we pretend Brianna Ghey died because of social media rather than because of the people who stabbed her 28 times.

The Smelt store is now open for business: if 5,000 of you are willing to chip in £10 plus fees each, we can make some brilliant things Leadmojo.co.uk/smelt

Brooklyn Beckham: it's time to address the shadowy shape that's difficult to photograph in the room

This Europa League match on Thursday sounds like it’s going to be the friendliest in history.

this is how i wrote the conclusion to 100% of my uni essays

This is probably the most accurate description. Someone in their mid-50s today told me that this is the first time he had thought about or been affected by politics. And that guy is actively guarding buildings and his coworkers from ICE.

Update apropos of absolutely nothing: I haven't been The Thick of It's 'swearing consultant' for 20 years.

Gary Larson: In my cartoon I invented Cow Tools as a cautionary tale Cows: At long last, we have created the Cow Tools from classic newspaper comic Cow Tools

Do we, though?

Monday

COW TOOLS COW TOOLS COW TOOLS

It's really funny how reading contemporaneous interviews with musicians shows that the boundaries between what we think of as genres now were not the same at all as boundaries between social circles.

Sketching in books from seanphillips.bigcartel.com 20% off with code JAN2026 at checkout all month.

Do you all know the joys of the Danish Voice Actor for Starscream in the original Transformers cartoon? I promise you aren't ready for it.

😰

One of the projects you can support on Smelt is a new sitcom by me. It's called The Least Bad Of All Possible Worlds and it's about refugees from parallel universes trying to integrate into society in Morecambe. You can pledge to fund it here: if you fund it, we make it! mirlo.space/leadmojo/rel...

As she says further into the piece, this isn't just about audiences - it's tough for cinemas when they can only fit in, say, three screenings of a long movie as opposed to five of a shorter one, and the ticket price is the same regardless.

One per cent funded already. Who will buy my ripe lovely Tamworth? Come on, comrades. SIX episodes for the price of two of your lovely London pints! mirlo.space/leadmojo/rel...

One of the projects you can support on Smelt is a new sitcom by me. It's called The Least Bad Of All Possible Worlds and it's about refugees from parallel universes trying to integrate into society in Morecambe. You can pledge to fund it here: if you fund it, we make it! mirlo.space/leadmojo/rel...

“Your mad wife burned Thornfield to the ground? Surely you can’t be serious.” “I am. And don’t call me Shirley.” — Jane Eyreplane

What is it about Game of Thrones that makes its creator worry that finishing it won’t make its fans happy ever? Where has he got that idea from?

oh it's going to be a Recession recession

Just watched 28 Years Later. When Fiennes turned up I thought "I hope he's playing this Very Leonard Rossiter" and I was not disappointed.

I've just discovered this is part of a whole season of BBC Ibsen adaptations and they're all on iPlayer.

Whoever wins this, I feel like we've witnessed the birth of a bitter grudge that'll last for DECADES tonight. #afcon

OH MY FUCKING GOD #afcon

Just watching an old ep of “Man About the House”, really enjoying their scrabble board

Just a reminder of how fucking tall Michael Crichton was

God that was awful. #avfc

Friedrich Nietzsche, 1875.

At what point does losing 77 billion dollars impact a business? The global box office for all movies, put together, in total, all movies everywhere in 2025 was 33.5 billion dollars. He lost more than double that on “legs”

Cary Grant's birthday. Here he is in Manchester. St Peter's Square. Chatting to a lady.

Perhaps the most significant cultural exchange between nations is Walt Disney reading Winnie the Pooh and thinking "Yes, this imaginary friend of an English child should sound exactly the patriarch of a Tennessee Williams play."

What I continue to remain shocked by, possibly unduly, is how hard capitalism punished ordinary workers for cutting corners and doing the bare minimum for decades, and now it's totally pivoted to telling us cheating is cool.

I'm in a flat roof pub reading some JG Ballard, hope your Saturday night is going equally well

BEAK> is selling a stash of keyboards, including the Rhodes 73 MkI used on Portishead’s 2013-2015 live tours (incl Glastonbury headline and Latitude headline with Thom Yorke guest appearance)… 1/4

IMPOSING ORDER IS MAN'S VOCATION FOR CHAOS IS HELL

Everything reminds me of him...

I think one of the simplest ways you can express support for Denmark is by buying a Lego set. At least that's what I think, and why I'm browsing the Lego online store right now.

I was just listening to This Train by Sister Rosetta Tharpe and thought I'd look up what she's actually singing when it sounds like she's singing "This train don't pull no wankers". The answer surprised me.

I work from home a lot. Some days, there's not much work to do so I wait for my wife and son to go out and shout "BIG DAY IN THE BIG BOYS BED' and both dogs run upstairs to burrow under the bed covers and we all have a mid-morning nap together. It's the highlight of my week.

FROZEN PICKLE YELLS AT ICE