I reckon some of you need to see Hobart’s Derwent River, rolling and frothing. It often makes me feel better. Maybe it’ll work for you.

Coming up this year on the @peculiarbookclub.bsky.social live on YouTube! @laminda.bsky.social (Jan 8!), Matthew Gavin Frank, @hallierubenhold.bsky.social, @janeborden.bsky.social, @biologycarly.bsky.social, @damonyoung.com.au, @meganeaves.com, Eliot Stein, @sadieding.bsky.social, 💙📚 🧪 🗃 1/

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When we moved to Tasmania, the first new tree that went into the garden was a silver birch (my fave) that my family bought for my birthday. That was April 2024. The second photo is January '25, the third today. Had to zoom out to accommodate all the growth. Can't wait to see where it's at next year.

One of the Houses of the Holy

If you ever consider getting one of these, you need to a) get off Facebook and b) book your colonoscopy.

Hey, would any of you nerds like these nice paperback editions of the Hornblower series? If you pay for postage, I’ll send them to you. (I have omnibus editions.) Australia only. First in, best dressed. Just reply below.

Pundit: we’re going to remove this uh existential threat to the United States and uh pave a path for democracy in the region and uh walk in partnership with the people of that great nation Trump: we’re taking their oil!!! haha yes

wait wait but

this is what ye have shipped for, men! to chase that white whale on both sides of land, and over all sides of earth

In the lead up to their very stupid and infinitely illegal war with Venezuela it’s shocking how much the American manufacturing consent industry has declined

Very, very keen for mine.

My energy going into 2026.

this guy rules. i love reddit so much

The politics here are reprehensible but also really sad. He was a great scholar once. He had philological skills that no one has anymore. There are very few people who could produce that kind of work today. And to some extent, that's what this is about. He's mad that our field lost its former status

Late stage capitalism at it again. Making the standard offering worse to enable a premium has been documented at other companies so this is absolutely believable. But WOW, the "desperation score". I can't even.

Buy local. Collect your own food. Tip in cash. Fuck the algo.

No one is radicalised enough tbh. This system is evil.

When you give a driver a “desperation score”.

I can’t verify what’s in this confession, but it certainly seems plausible. “I'm a developer for a major food delivery app. The 'Priority Fee' and 'Driver Benefit Fee' go 100% to the company. The driver sees $0 of it.” Loathsome manipulation and exploitation.

I plead cringe, your Honor

Every writing-related job suggested to me these days is not actually about writing - it’s reading AI responses and training the slop machine to produce slightly better slop. I was really struck by this job title, and how it made clear that to the tech industry, this is their new god: inhuman theft.

In the late 1960s, the Dutch Secret Service set up a fake Maoist party to gather intelligence and then kept the party running until the early 1990s.

In 2026, remember that what matters is what you do, not what you think—and this is why the Zionist status quo is doing its best to strangle your ability to do anything, from protesting to speaking out to even how you spend your money or, more accurately, how you refuse to spend your money.

Spotted in the wild today. The 1981 Italian edition of James Crumley’s stunning crime novel, THE LAST GOOD KISS.

I’m back (oh no)

My eldest kid gave me @patmillswriter.bsky.social’s memoir of 2000AD for Christmas and this discussion of UK vs French royalties was a kick in the guts. Comics are one of the great creative crucibles of the 20th century, and the exploitation of writers & artists is appalling (and so destructive).

I’m back here briefly to say that the Guardian’s asking for nominations for your favourite children’s picture book and I’d be thrilled if you’d nominate my debut: MY NANNA IS A NINJA. www.theguardian.com/culture/2025...

I’m back here briefly to say that the Guardian’s asking for nominations for your favourite children’s picture book and I’d be thrilled if you’d nominate my debut: MY NANNA IS A NINJA. www.theguardian.com/culture/2025...

Hey, nerds. I’ll be taking a social media break until next year. There’s nothing wrong, I’ve just had enough! I hope you have a great end of year, folks. Now here’s a cheesy video repeating much of what I’ve just said:

You’re the LEGO underfoot in the dark room.

Being proud of being in the Russell Group is largely just cope for not being in Oxbridge, which is itself largely just cope for not being in the Ivy League, which is itself largely just cope for not being Harvard, which is itself largely just cope for not being Charles Sanders Peirce in particular.

Pump up the Jam is definitely one of my top 5 songs about fruit preservation methods though admittedly, introducing pneumatics contravenes most health and safety protocols.

The answer to 1 is always Alcibiades.

Never buy comics, kids. Just don’t do it. (I will absolutely buy more comics.)

This is the great dilemma. Leuchtturms are *almost* the perfect notebook. Contents page and page numbers, good line width, fine sizes and colours. Even a page ribbon. But the paper’s just okay. Better than Moleskine (which isn’t saying much), but nowhere near Clairefontaine or Midori or the like.

As usual, Muscovy duck is the first to rush over and greet me. By "rush" I mean that he spent about a hundred years walking about four feet to say hello.

Tonight’s storm was insane! A few pics I got

Sometimes on social media, posters make posts that are so characteristic, that there’s pleasure just in the *Platonic Form* of the post (over and above the post itself). This is one of those posts.

"I am an Antichrist I am an anarchist Don't know what I want, but I know how to get it I wanna destroy passersby"

“When I was little, my father was famous. “He was the greatest samurai in the empire, and he was the shōgun's decapitator. “He cut off the heads of a hundred and thirty one lords. “It was a bad time for the empire.”

Reading this as a historian of a period when women regularly wrote farewell letters to their families before giving birth because they knew how dangerous it was, and knowing how grateful they would have been for reliable medical care and medicine, makes me want to scream in frustration

My favoured conspiracy theory is that they actually stopped making chiko rolls in 1991 and we’ve just been working through a massive strategic stockpile ever since

In all seriousness, this is the sort of “deranged” I adore. Not seamless, AI-assisted cloud workflow that requires five monthly subscriptions to cryptofascists. Instead, manic analogue writing combined with homemade coding, tailored to the author’s specific anxieties and eccentricities.

PERIOD URBAN FANTASY JEEVES: