This NYT-Connections-alike is very upsetting thomaswc.com/2025.html

Bit rude to put a picture of Eve Babitz on the cover of a Joan Didion book, surely? Although I can't tell if it's *more* rude to Babitz or to Didion.

searching to see if there was a recent evil coup at the Dr Seuss company to explain why there's SO much Grinch stuff this year and wow there is a whole lot of online coverage of licensing news, and a Licensing Hall of Fame for "the most esteemed global licensing executives of the last three decades"

Actually, went through everything I read this year to see if I could remember why I read it. Stats:

Ah super interesting to see not just a “this is what I read” list but one that also gets into WHY each book got picked, what the process of coming across a book and thinking about it and then deciding to read was like - I might try keeping track of this for my own reading next year

incredible that the song that lasted from that Sia Christmas album was the one about the logistical difficulties of dating a literal snowman

I think London is the only city where how I feel about it depends so entirely on whether I’m standing in sunlight right this minute or not. For the record: right now I am and I feel so lucky to live here

Reading on a bus, and a man who’d clearly been reading over my shoulder for at least a couple of pages asked as I was getting off what it was, which is a fun way to recommend a book to someone anyway but it did feel particularly appropriate that it was @qntm.org’s “There Is No Antimemetics Division”

15 Dec 2020 was "Exploration" - Miriam Oudin on No Man's Sky newrules.website/2020/12/15/m... - Ariane Parry on Zelda newrules.website/2020/12/15/a... - @thesaintoftous.bsky.social on Garden Song newrules.website/2020/12/15/t... - Matt Turner + Steph Watts on travel newrules.website/2021/01/27/m...

Gosh - just realised it's five years since New Rules came out. It was a project I put together in the second half of 2020 to publish little essays and articles and poems about different experiences of play and games during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic newrules.website

I've said this here before but the twice-yearly pack of weird postcards that the PDR sends out to its supporters is the best post I get all year

no thank you

bit late to finally cancel Spotify, obviously, but looking through my emails I see I joined in literally November 2008, so I guess I had quite a lot of inertia going on

Reread "Cold Comfort Farm" this week and huh, I still maybe... 60%? love it, but it is so much more mean-spirited than I realised when I was 15 and didn't really know any English people

about a month ago I started working from a little office in a big building of shared offices and mostly I love it, but I will say the game of "keep track of when the recycling bins are emptied so you can run down with your box of paper etc before they refill 1.5 hours later" is uhhh intense

what an extravagantly perfect post from @jpbrammer.bsky.social on the pantone colour of the year thing johnpaulbrammer.substack.com/p/cloud-danc...

for some reason I'm genuinely enjoying how discoursey games bluesky has been lately. SHOULD games ever be hard? Great question! Should people make money for work sometimes? Worth thinking about!

Weirdly I've still not had any of the "I run a series of book clubs who hang on my every word, would you like me to recommend your book to them, in due course I will mention that you need to pay me, they're definitely all real btw" spam all the other writers here seem to get

well I dropped my kindle and the screen cracked and now I have a kobo! Which seems like an excellent ereader, but it's very weird to look through the long list of books I bought and never read and whose heft kept me on kindle for so long

Aaaaa new local bookshop over on Wood Street. AND it’s the sort that does a mix of new and second-hand, my absolute favourite sort of shop

Was just told about the German term “grusel schmusel” which apparently means “scary smooching”? If so, incredible, surely English-language publishing should adopt this instead of continuing to try to get “horromance” off the ground

New from the makers of KIDS & CARS: EGGS

Lovely time at @smallpublishers.bsky.social yesterday, definitely ended up with more books than I intended (but many fewer than I wanted)

this is indeed an incredibly weird story

look has anyone I know in London read the Helen Garner diaries and if so do you want to get a coffee and compare Opinions because I am having real trouble figuring out what mine are

Oh this is really charmingly done (via @dayofthemutants.bsky.social ) - little popup explanations of a bunch of the proverbs in Bruegel's big painting-of-proverbs bruegel.analog.is

this week's newsletter is mostly just some leftover things that happened in Vienna, me grumbling about finally getting covid (after FIVE AND A HALF YEARS, so cross!), and some links buttondown.com/holly/archiv...

the cats have settled into autumn

did a big post on the Piranesi larp I did last month blog.vbuckenham.com/i-was-a-chil... - my first ever big larp, and i thought people might want to have a sense what it's like to do something like this!

PSA: The Draknek New Voices Puzzle Grant application deadline is this Sunday at 23:59 PST. The team and I may not be available over the weekend to answer any last minute questions, so please check out the FAQ and if there's any doubt - apply anyway! grants.draknek.org

Okay I wrote up my trip to the WORLD TRAMDRIVER CHAMPIONSHIPS buttondown.com/holly/archiv... cannot stress enough how much this newsletter issue is just a list of things that happened at the world tramdriver championships, please use your own judgement regarding whether that is of interest to you

There's a WEEK left to sign up to mentor for @artsemergency.bsky.social - potentially get paired with a young person (16-18) who wants to work in the arts/creative industries, but who might not have the contacts or context to help them understand how to do that www.arts-emergency.org/get-involved...

oh yeah that makes sense, thx

This seems needlessly complicated

We are at the World Tram Driving Championships

Had such a nice time on a panel with @tomfaber91.bsky.social @jon.inkle.co @jmechner.bsky.social at the Financial Times festival, did find it very funny to walk in and be immediately faced with this tent

I didn't realise E. Nesbit (of "Five Children and It", "The Railway Children" etc) also wrote a bunch of adult books! I found this recent reissue of "The Lark" (1922) in a second-hand shop the other day and it's pretty charming, maybe a little forgettable

I don't think of myself as listening to podcasts much but I found out about @eightdaysofdiana.bsky.social - which is basically @emilytesh.net and @rebeccafraimow.bsky.social talking about every Diana Wynne Jones book in turn, for an hour or sometimes two - a fortnight ago when it won a Hugo

The £30 I spend to be a "friend" of the @publicdomainrev.bsky.social is, in terms of purely selfish pleasure, the best £30 I spend a year, because every six months - just when I've forgotten it's going to happen again - they send me a pack of weird little postcards publicdomainreview.org/support/

I didn't even think it was possible to *have* a favourite page of a freezer manual…

very good wikipedia page en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-l...

Every place I've ever bought socks is all "oh noooo please fill in this form to tell us what we did to anger you :-(" when I unsubscribe from their Daily Sock newsletter but there's never a form for the newsletters where I want to explain at great length what really annoying thing they just did

some nice animal illustrations from 1658 pdimagearchive.org/galleries/so... Lots of earnest attempts at animals that turned out not to exist but I think my favourite is the bear (gorgeous) or the beaver (startled)

The @societyofauthors.bsky.social wills and inheritance guidance is great - informative but with occasional tiny moments of fond mockery of, like, the entire concept of writers: * "Authors seem to love the idea of having literary executors" " "If you are sufficiently eminent..."

Enjoyed this little article on harlequin ladybirds www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/why... via the Today Things newsletter (todaythings.substack.com), which correctly identifies the best single sentence in it, re whether humans are at risk from a ladybird STD:

Haven't posted enough cat videos recently, so here's one from this morning, in which they saw a BIRD

Incredible article about a bunch of children - now in their 50s and 60s - who were taught to read using a doomed alternate alphabet invented by a Tory MP www.theguardian.com/education/20...

Books on the Wall in Chester is LOVELY, great books, really solid board game selection to play in the shop, and also: ONE POUND for a chocolate brownie (!!)

@stfj.net I mean I get why bongo doesn't give its "not a weird wordgame word" points for swears but I will say this particular arrangement of bonus squares and letter availability is really rubbing it in

I made a new game zine! 👀 Colour match TINY KAMI ("little spirits") with objects in your surroundings to find them all! 🩷⭐🔷🟢🟪 heyitshelen.itch.io/tiny-kami ❄️ Created for Sticky Institute's Winter Zine Game Jam. ✨ Physical copies available at Sticky Institute for a limited time.