I would love New York at least 15% more if they hadn't put the demons in the heating pipes here

having some.......layered Gender thoughts about the fact that I not infrequently make myself garlicky pork mince with rice, soy sauce and sesame oil and call it "lunch slop"

coming soon to a rollercoaster park near you: The New York Weather Forecast In March

my entire take on that new Harry Potter series is "I reckon I'll probably stream it from some dodgy illegal link next time I'm stuck at home with a cold for a few days" and I admire anyone who has more than that to say on the topic

jk rowling spends money she makes from harry potter on stripping rights away from me personally. this is not a hypothetical scenario. that's where it goes if you buy wizard crap.

is that good www.ft.com/content/c526...

said something extremely embarrassing at drinks earlier so anyway I ended up rolling up my turtleneck and sitting like this for a while, as penance

he's finally done it — he's achieved a level of fucking lame that i can't even come up with a joke about.

when I tell you this t-shirt I just found in a thrift store was the best six dollars I've ever spent

if you want me to believe in them so fucking badly, YOU convince ME. it hardly inspires confidence that the pitch so far has been ‘you are obligated to use a bunch of shitty and inexplicably mandatory features designed for dumb assholes or else sam altman loses money’

lmao

mistakenly picked up the wrong coffee at Starbucks then put it back down immediately but the guy whose coffee it was demanded that the barista make him a new one as I'd touched it, good afternoon from Good Vibes City, population: not that man

This headline is much more funny to anglophones . . .

This is heartbreaking. Please stop for a moment and consider the children caught up in this. Imagine you're a trans child - already a difficult experience, to put it mildly - and you've found a hobby you enjoy with friends, and now you're being kicked out for being trans. It's cruel.

personally I feel good - I feel great! - about the prospect of flying from a major US airport later this week

have had [Hamilton voice] "I'll post my way out" stuck in my head all day so far, does anyone know of any places doing lobotomies for cheap

when I see a bad take: [this person follows me]: oh man, they must be having a rough time, best to give grace. [this person doesn’t follow me]: what a credulous dipshit, a stupid loser who believes idiotic things

not saying Nantes, a city of half a million people, is quite comically, wonderfully unserious but literally the first line of attack of the opposition during the mayoral election was "they cancelled the plans to build a massive tree with some flying wooden herons in it", god I love my hometown

welcome to the stage Shabana "Don't Threaten Us With A Good Time" Mahmood

boy, I'd read - and indeed, publish - a good piece on this by a Nigerian or even better a Nigerian-British author

terrific intro www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

oh by the way I tried watching Sinners on the flight and had to turn it off after four (4) minutes because I was already too spooked - posting this as future reference for when I ask if something is scary and people start replying "oh no, no adult could possibly find this thing too scary"

Papa! I’m stunting on them, papa! It’s ever so based

did a school exchange in England when I was like 11 and my host family gave me, for lunch, one thin marmalade sandwich and one thin cheddar sandwich, in like basic white sliced bread, and my French classmates all felt so sorry for me that a whip round was organised so I could buy something in town

combining these two and feeling overwhelmed with happiness & goodwill towards my fellow man

some news! after 12 months and 12 sports, my extremely silly column for the Observer is coming to an end happily I went out on a high, namely by turning up to a boxing match hammered after a boozy lunch, and keeping the night going from there: observer.co.uk/news/columni...

some news! after 12 months and 12 sports, my extremely silly column for the Observer is coming to an end happily I went out on a high, namely by turning up to a boxing match hammered after a boozy lunch, and keeping the night going from there: observer.co.uk/news/columni...

🤙

weeeeee the Outsiders Arts Club website has been updated - do have a look if you want to find out about our next date and when the tickets will be on sale, and you can also have a look at some of the pieces we'll have for sale on the night: outsidersartsclub.com

🔥🔥NEW🔥🔥 Ed Davey wants Britain to have its own nukes, Tice’s tax avoidance goes under the radar, and Theroux's Manosphere doc grips the nation. @nndroid.bsky.social, @youngvulgarian.marieleconte.com, @jonnelledge.bsky.social and @jasonhazeley.bsky.social discuss it all ➡️ linktr.ee/ohgodwhatnowpod

in this week's newsletter! I try to explain why I loathed - loathed! - The Bride! (2026): youngvulgarian.substack.com/p/its-a-da-m...

the what problem

This is outstanding by @joxley.jmoxley.co.uk on the weaponisation of irony and the need for radical sincerity open.substack.com/pub/joxleywr...

(btw will disappear from here for a bit soon but back shortly, don't worry)

I'll do it, I'll hire thousands of scientists to build the cigarette that's good for you

so many "I am the joker now" moments, so little time

it's been a really long day and I briefly read this as "flavoured ships" and I was about to have just so many questions

oh no I had a cappuccino ice cream this afternoon and I'm now realising that the place was actually probably poncy enough to pack it with the real thing as opposed to some vague cappuccino-tasting chemicals, it's 9pm and I'm bouncing off the walls still, oh god

Nick Clegg unveiled a portrait of himself at the National Liberal Club yesterday and it's hard to tell which one looks less like Nick Clegg, the portrait of Nick Clegg or the actual Nick Clegg

if you've been even remotely trying to follow news and analysis about the war in Iran this is tremendously obvious, there's simply nothing like the global breadth of users here, and that also filters up to area specialists using the other site more

(the best bit of the story, by the way, is the fact that the group is called Aux Arbres, Citoyens!)

wrote a jolly column on this French charity getting people to pick the fresh produce usually left to rot in private gardens as the owners are often elderly or overwhelmed, then hand it all over to foodbanks so everyone has access to fresh fruit and veg: www.thenewworld.co.uk/marie-le-con...

with apologies to Marc, who didn't ask for any of this - I'll always be a diehard Poor Things defender and would even go as far as arguing that it's more of a female fantasy than a male one; I wrote about it at the time youngvulgarian.substack.com/p/poor-thing... [free]

was going to write about something else entirely for this week's newsletter but actually I'm afraid I do just really need to rant about The Bride! (2026)

How I wept when I learned that the *expenses* alone for one of Joseph Kessel’s stories (the French journo I read as a child who made me wanna do this) ran into the hundreds of Ks. He once had to cross a lake, so he bought a whole boat and left it behind.

just stopped to think about this for a moment and the single best paid book review I've ever done would cover one third of my monthly rent, in London

It’s not a plot hole that Elmo has been 3 years old for 50 years. He was bitten by The Count, willingly. Elmo asked for the Dark Gift

missed out on Rosalía tickets when they came out then started seeing videos from the LUX tour on Instagram yesterday and anyway this morning I found myself a resale Rosalía ticket for the LUX tour in London, which was expensive but it's also, for my money, the best album of the 2020's so far, so