Send your brilliance my way! 🫶

as you get older one thing never gets less weird and that’s how credulous reporters can be about words from powerful men you’d think a career spent watching dudes with impressive job titles try to wishcast impossibilities into existence would leave you as cynical as a guy living in a barrel but no

einhver hér á bláskjá, man ekki hver því miður, deildi þessu ljóði og ég vissi strax að ég þyrfti að lesa meira, og nú hef ég eignast Dag íslenskrar Flúngu og skemmti mér konunglega við lesturinn

I couldn’t have asked for a better word

fyrir 9 árum síðan var ég stressaður niðri í Gröndalshúsi yfir því hvort einhverjir kæmu á ljóðalestur klukkan 10 á nýársmorgni, en ég nöldraði það í gegn að tengja maraþonljóðalestur skálda við sólarganginn 1 gestur mætti áður en fyrsta skáldið, ég, steig á svið gaman að geta mætt nú sem gestur

mitt innra eintal, þegar ég horfi á flugelda: búmm búmm búmm víííííí! vúúússssjjj… pimmpimmpimmPAMMMMMMmmmm jess! dróniháttáhimniskínhelrauðuroggrææææænn tikkatikkatikkatikk!tikk!tikk!tikk! úúúúú ssóóóóólll pokka Pokka PoKKa POKKA búkk búkk búkk jibbí! fruhfruhfruhfruh BÚMMMMMMMmmmmmmmm…… vááááááá…

10 ára sonur minn að horfa á fréttaannál ársins: Bíddu, er Bogi hættur? Ég: Já. 10 ára sonur minn: Neeeeeiiiiiii!!!

this is my favorite new year‘s song, so I listen to it every New Year’s Eve, Next Year’s Gotta Be Better Than This One by @joshmillard.bsky.social happy new year to you all, and no matter how good or bad this passing year has been to you, may this coming year be better

How I am walking into 2026.

‘Collage is used at every scale: a book is a collage of sequences; each sequence is a collage of epigraphs, lyrics and quotations. The quotations come from literature, letters, diaries, from facsimile editions and concordances.’ Ange Mlinko on Susan Howe: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

I was waiting in line at a bar and everybody ahead of me took forever to decide. When it was finally my turn the bartender started to serve a guy behind me. The guy said that I'd arrived first and the bartender served me my beer. When I turned around to thank the polite guy it was Forest Whitaker.

Þú neyðist til að vinna í sömu vinnu og aðalpersóna síðustu bókar sem þú last. Hvert er starfið? Ef það er síðasta bók sem ég kláraði: Afgreiða í nýaldar-heilsuvörubúð. Ef það er bókin sem ég er að lesa núna: Siðgæðislögga.

Will be interesting to see who lionizes the five times convicted for inciting racial hatred Bardot. But hey, she loved animals. www.lemonde.fr/en/obituarie...

it's funny, in a year where I've mostly been going back to old indie rock and hip hop albums, some of whom I hadn't listened to in a decade or more, I thought I wouldn't really have a record of the year that's from this year, but I have two: Jennifer Walton's Daughters

The way people have started to speak about infidelity as a crime akin to physical or sexual abuse is wild. You can’t send the whole of France to jail.

Reykjavík með augun barnsins *ring ring* Halló Hæ! Hvar eruð þið stödd? Í Eymundsson Hvaða Eymundsson? Eymundsson hjá jólakettinum

Yay! Literatureandhistory.com got a write up in the New York Times! www.nytimes.com/2025/12/27/a...

I was just thinking of C. L. Moore for an entirely random reason, but if you’ve never read her, you should. Yes, you, I mean you, personally.

Ef ég tryði á biblíuna, og jólaguðspjallið sérstaklega, þá myndi ég sennilega hafa þá kenningu að öll gistiheimilin í Betlehem hafi verið full af tímaflökkurum sem vildu vera viðstaddir fæðinguna.

I posted to MetaFilter about the football match supposedly played on Christmas Day 1914 between opposing sides of World War One. The best examination of the evidence for it happening was on the It Was What It Was podcast.

if you've never played Disco Elysium before, and have the Epic Games store, it's being offered for free as a holiday special

Merry Christmas – let’s talk about Faerie & Die Hard 2 The boundaries of fantasy as a genre are unclear but that is appropriate as the boundaries and whole geography of faerie is unclear. I shan't say that is by design as the denizens of faerie are also ambiguous by intent. We can (and will) take…

Thread of 2025

oh, here's a better one, straight from the internet archive archive.org/details/60mi... this one is *not* an iphone recording

stundum er íslenska wíkipedía svo stórkostlega íslensk

jæja datt út úr nennageddon, takk sjónvarp sem var bara í gangi, tók ekki eftir að Helgi Björns var á sviði er enn lifandi í whamageddon, ótrúlegt en satt

Grateful to @publisherswkly.bsky.social for this lovely review! www.publishersweekly.com/9781644453735 @graywolfpress.bsky.social

á skötudegi les ég ætíð í heilagri ritningu, Þorláksmessusálmi Guðna Elíssonar „Þorláksmessa er ekki aðeins síðasti dagurinn fyrir jól. Á messudegi Þorláks helga minnast Íslendingar gjarnan dýrlings síns með því að sjóða þann fisk sem helst mætti ætla að dreginn hafi verið úr náhvalsrassi.“ o.s.frv

It’s beginning to look a lot like Life Day

Just to remind you that the livestream of the solstice sunrise from Newgrange starts 12 hours from now. heritageireland.ie/visit/newgra...

Did not have my glasses on when I took this with the zoom, and I thought, "its probably just a big dove" but no. what is it? Do you know?

það þarf að leggja niður útlendingastofnun

If I feel psychological safety because you give me a makeover and tell me I’m an interesting monster but I learn it is just a ruse to blow me up with dynamite, I will try to pound you into a pancake of gray fur. But, yes, I can be stopped if I realize the horror of being perceived.

Er það bara eitthvað caching issue hjá mér eða hefur engin ný frétt dottið inn vef RÚV síðan rúmlega kl 20 í gærkvöldi?

If you want to feel old today, check out this zoomer on @askhistorians.bsky.social trying to figure out how you can logically trace a path from 9/11 to invading Iraq. www.reddit.com/r/AskHistori...

@patrickod.com introduced me to this and it is very important to me that you all see it youtu.be/Xc87M4NzEsg?...

The #1 movie when you were 10 years old is how your 2026 is going to go.

I see that jólabókaflóðið, a.k.a. the Icelandic Holiday Book Flood is being talked about again. Many years ago I wrote an article explaining what all that is about, and it’s held up pretty well, and so have the jokes, mostly.

I wrote about Louisiana's traveling electric chair for the Historic New Orleans Collection's First Draft! hnoc.org/publishing/f...

Congratulations to all of the 2026 PEN America Literary Awards nominees! With a list that includes biography, poetry, translation, science writing, and more, this year’s longlist has something for every reader. Join us in celebrating this year’s nominees, see here: pen.org/announcing-t...

A surprisingly profound essay about the world’s greatest snooker player, Ronnie O’Sullivan, and what his feats tell us about how the brain works, and if a computer can simulate it.

The Lord of the Grinches: The Fellowship of the Grinch

As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found out he was a bug and not a feature.

I've been reading TPM every day for a long time (I think in the 200x range) and been a member since 2018, apparently. This silly merch post got me to upgrade -- they do good reporting and deserve more of my support. Join Us In This Super Fun Thing! talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/join-...

Brilliant version of the Coventry Carol by Alison Moyet. Understated, sinister - and as horrendously topical as ever.... www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcrY...

PSA: Our roadmap for 2026:

Krakkarnir í íslenskum móðurmálstímum hjá mér bjuggu til 13 nýja jólasveina

Aside from all the other brilliant stuff Rob Reiner did, he was a wonderful performer, e.g. he improvised this perfect scene as Marty Dibergi in The Return of Spïnal Tap, a 1992 concert film. There are lines in this that I think about often and they always crack me up.

What is this thing that was inside a Christmas cracker? It's like a tiny plastic bucket the size of a large thimble with holes in the bottom, accompanied by a small rubber band.