I think it's been long enough now that we can admit "Your Highness" was a very good name for a stoner medieval fantasy movie, and we should have acknowledged this at the time.

Hate it when someone finds themselves between, say, two people called Greg, and they describe it as a "Greg sandwich". If you're in the middle then it's a YOU sandwich, on Greg bread. You idiot. You fucking moron.

I, for one, believe him.

Stunned onlookers were overheard asking “Did we die? Is this Hell?"

🎁

Since I'm a famed sappy dad, the Observer asked me to interrogate the John Lewis Christmas Ad Industrial Complex. On this oddest of cultural lodestars being stripped to its bare wires; a confusing, crass, and effective bit of emotional weaponry. observer.co.uk/news/opinion...

I think we fall into the trap of thinking they have to think of their money in percentages, as if it's just our money but in larger amounts. It's not. Jeff Bezos could buy every single player in the premier league, and then buy every single club, and still be richer than the richest man in the UK.

Are none of them attracted to the completely available option of being, say, the one guy who spent 90 billion on tackling climate change, and becoming, forever after, the most beloved man on planet earth, all while still retaining more money than he could spend in a thousand lifetimes?

Maybe I'm a big dumb dingus but I've never understood why, even for purely selfish reasons, none of these mega-billionaires spend the gigantic sums of money they spaff on space shit or AI on world hunger. Surely, even for an amoral cunt, being the guy who did that would trump building some rockets.

we can chalk it up to youth and inexperience but the biggest mistake the mamdani campaign made was winning by 8.8% and not 1.5%, which is the margin needed for the media to say it’s a total mandate

Zohran says you’re trans now

uk labour lost **half** their coalition playing to racist fears & attacking trans people us dems just won big without any of that

A great day for the golden rule of political analysis: when the right wins it is a resounding ideological victory that humiliates the left and when the left wins it is a precarious fluke that will surely end up humiliating the left. Conservatives are power’s landlords and the left merely tenants

So much of the centrist approach to politics has devolved into "How do we trick people into supporting us like the right has done?" where talking sincerely about policies that might help ordinary people's lives is for naïve schmucks who don't understand the glorious theatre of it all

The flip side of this is the male author who was asked about his writing routine, and who talked about how much he loved the feeling that he could close his door and then “the day is completely yours” to focus on writing. He had, at the time, two young children… and, of course, a wife

Since I'm a famed sappy dad, the Observer asked me to interrogate the John Lewis Christmas Ad Industrial Complex. On this oddest of cultural lodestars being stripped to its bare wires; a confusing, crass, and effective bit of emotional weaponry. observer.co.uk/news/opinion...

I just watched a mayor-elect in my state defy an authoritarian at the height of his institutional power—with Congress and the court behind him. I watched him deliver a full-throated defense of transgender Americans and immigrants and declare in no uncertain terms that he is a democratic socialist.

Rewatching Edge of Darkness. Doesn’t get any better than this, does it? Ferociously strange but utterly rooted.

Being a professional full-time "opinion columnist" is akin to a career as a Victorian hat maker. It doesn't matter how stable, thoughtful, and intelligent you are at the outset; the working conditions will inevitably turn you into a dribbling, incoherent lunatic.

VP Cheney will be honoured with a 21 gun salute accidentally aimed directly at 21 of his friends

Christ, he is supernaturally good at this.

on the topic of dick cheney, one thing i’ve always said is that you shouldn’t kill a million people

Remember that time Dick Cheney shot a guy in the face and then the guy had to go on TV and apologise for how being shot in the face made Dick Cheny look bad?

I mention my great aunt Maggie, who has been covered in the press before - when she took the occasion of her 106th birthday to call out the Queen. As always, my auntie Patricia told her stories best, as in the tale of her son's trip to hospital when he was in his eighties.

For my mother's anniversary this year, my family and I journeyed back to our parents' Fermanagh homeland. On memory, storytelling, and a letter than left us stunned. observer.co.uk/news/columni...

Now that Roisin Agnew's doc "The Ban" is up on The New Yorker's website, here's a piece I wrote about it, and the broadcasting ban itself, on the 30th anniversary of its lifting last year, and which involved me quizzing Chris Morris about *that* sketch. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024...

If anyone lost a bag of books from LRB Bookshop on the Metropolitan Line between Baker St- Watford, I handed it to a cleaner when the train terminated at Watford tube station. And if you have far more followers than me, please share this status. LRB bookshop is not cheap!

Now that Roisin Agnew's doc "The Ban" is up on The New Yorker's website, here's a piece I wrote about it, and the broadcasting ban itself, on the 30th anniversary of its lifting last year, and which involved me quizzing Chris Morris about *that* sketch. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024...

Centrism is the belief that society achieved perfection around the same time as you became a homeowner

16 years ago today we opened the doors to Dublin's newest bookshop.That @gutterbookshop.bsky.social continues to thrive today brings me so much joy. We created something that brought people together & celebrated books & reading. I feel like I added something good to the world & I'm so proud of that.

On the other site, an 18-year-old Zohran canvasser described the legendary Wallace Shawn as "the actor who plays Dr. Sturgis on Young Sheldon" which is honestly adorable

'Member all the Irish wankers bemoaning "political violence" when Charlie Kirk was murdered - has anyone seen if they have anything to say about the attempted murder of women and children in the Drogheda IPAS centre? No? Funny, that.

For those keeping count, Simon Harris "took to social media" to decry the shooting of Charlie Kirk the following day. He's gone cycling today, apparently.

If a PBP TD said that there were too many foxhunters in Ireland and then there was a arson attack on a hunting lodge that night, you can be damn sure that Simon Harris could join the dots. He really should resign.

Nailing this on the door of the Dublin Airport Family Zone like it's the Ninety-Five Theses

On the consoles in the Family Zone at Dublin Airport if anyone wants their ass handed to them at Garfield Kart.

So it wasn't fireworks. It was a calculated and deliberate attempt at the mass murder of men, women and children. www.thetimes.com/article/0887...

I am going to lose my fucking mind! One more time: THE REASON THERE WERE A LOT OF SPOILED VOTES IS BECAUSE THERE WAS A CONCERTED ORGANISED CAMPAIGN BY BAD ACTORS TO PERSUADE PEOPLE TO… (YOU GUESSED IT!) SPOIL THEIR FUCKING VOTES It wasn’t organic! Now shut up and stop being enragingly thick

Wed: “Our migration numbers are too high”-Simon Harris Thurs: “Taoiseach and Donohoe back Tánaiste’s remarks that numbers migrating to Ireland are ‘too high’” Fri: ”migration numbers too high outside of international protection…as well”-Simon Harris *Arson attack on infants in IPAS centre.*

Jesus Christ. We go mad about one bloke we wrongly released, yet hear next to nothing about this horror? www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

We're looking for a candidate with 4+ years experience with Ploop, Shrit, and Tord. Experience with Fard is a plus.

For my mother's anniversary this year, my family and I journeyed back to our parents' Fermanagh homeland. On memory, storytelling, and a letter than left us stunned. observer.co.uk/news/columni...

Andrew is a sort of non-prince now, a… well, I’m sure there’s some sort of portmanteau word that would describe him well.

Imagine being such a family of melts that a national paper issues a guide to dealing with you where the advice is similar to that of if you encounter a bear while hiking.

The centrist podcasters that I for some reason subject myself to seem oblivious to one key source of Starmer's unpopularity, attributing it instead to some desire to tear down the system, or a growing distrust in politicians generally. He got our vote by lying and then told us to leave the party

I will happily watch three seasons of a popular sitcom about the two Chicago popes.

A real treat, and possibly my favourite Irish indie Nazi vampire comic of all time! A must for any discerning reader.

For those who don't know this story, which I first shared six years ago today.... This one time I got my days wrong at work and ended up alone in a room with my boss and the President of Ireland while I was on ketamine. 🧵