Art Featured Taskmaster task outfits: ranked (Series 21 Update) The following is the definitive ranking of Taskmaster task outfits. I placed each outfit on a whim and stand by absolutely none of it, so do not come at me, I will fold immediately. I'll be honest, I thought this was going to be a quick and easy
Art Featured How and why do you make an art This week we're all het up about this dipshit, who thinks that because making music is hard, everyone will be delighted to use the ecologically disastrous plagiarism machine to do it. To me, this is an example of something I think about all the time: people think artistic
Featured How do we keep getting out of bed in the morning Fascism is ascendant and we have run out of butter. It seemed for a while that things were maybe going to start getting a little bit better, maybe, just a little, not enough and with a great pile of caveats, but it seemed, for a bit, that we were going
What weird shit have you watched recently: part four Times is hard, times is angsty, the collective horrors continue, as do the personal circumstances (I will be job hunting for eternity, oh this is the bad place, etc) but still and always, there is weird shit to watch. So here is some weird shit I've been watching
Complaints Faces and fascism The thing about me is that I love a face. I love to see a face and think good god, that's a face. A face that gives the world assurance of a face, do you know what I mean? But another thing about me is that I'
Complaints A political coms strategy for anyone who wants it, or; imagine if Labour had their shit together CAVEAT: I'm just some idiot. The UK has yet another new Prime Minister who is once again promising basically they same shit they all have, in a slightly different font. There are jokes akimbo* and speculation galore about why exactly we keep doing this and here's
Art Poetic faith In the spirit of being vast and containing multitudes, I'm starting to develop a really defensive reflex around snobbery regarding people's artistic tastes. It's wildly hypocritical of me, because I'm still driven mad on the regs by people thinking something is good
Paid-members only Film Who gets to have an opinion, professionally? A grand time for the discourse this week after Emily Wilson, the first woman ever to translate The Odyssey into English threw eloquent shade at Christopher Nolan for his adaptation in the LRB. I very much enjoyed reading it, particularly the fact that she ends by expressing gratitude for the
Paid-members only Film Why are they marketing the Johnny Depp (gross) Christmas Carol like this? Johnny Depp (gross) is in a new adaptation of A Christmas Carol. This is gross, but whatever. We've long since learned that there's no such think as cancellation, we have only to be disappointed in that fact over and over again. But something else is going
Paid-members only Film An ode to the partial musical I feel like it's been a while but remember when every tv show had to have a musical episode? Was Riverdale the last one? Who knows, who knows, but for a quite a lot of years they were apparently essential, despite the fact that the only one that
Paid-members only Horror vs. Romance and the lessons Hollywood takes from success There are two film genres that are having two very different booms currently. Both of them have vast, voracious audiences. Both of them are flush with tropes and with subversions of those tropes. Both of them have had the kind of success that has led to studios and executives falling
Paid-members only Books Not my union, not my monkeys, BUT The Authors Guild, an American union, has published a study pointing to libraries as a major contributor to the decline in income for writers, and everyone's mad about it because libraries are great. They point to digital lending as a major driver of this as via Libby, which
Paid-members only Complaints I have to be honest: I don't really want pockets in my clothes Sometimes we have to be brave and admit our true feelings and one of my brave and true feelings is that I really don't want pockets in my clothes all that much. Not useful pockets, anyway. I simply do not yearn to carry things on my person in
Paid-members only Complaints What the fuck do we do about all the propaganda Genuinely, what the fuck do we do? The UK has a mind-numbing propaganda problem and I don't think we can get anywhere without solving it. The two most striking examples are the sustained campaigns agains trans people and immigrants. Immigrants have always been a punching bag for
Paid-members only Books There's no such thing as the best books of all time It happens every so often. Once a year, maybe once every two. Some newspaper or magazine or humble website posts a list of the best books of all time. It might be the top one hundred, maybe the top fifty. It might be the collected opinions of a selection of
Politics I'm not hard to please as a voter I'm really not that hard to please as a voter. All I want is political leaders who believe in things. All I want is a government who wants to make things better. I'm not that hard to please. All I want is a party who won&
Paid-members only Personal Lunch I'm pretty lazy about lunch. I love food but I don't like cooking and I can never be bothered thinking too hard about what food to make for myself and lunch is the meal for which this manifests most of the time. Breakfast is easy; I
Paid-members only Television ER and, Oh God, Won't Someone Think of the Artists I don't think I'm alone in this but I've been rewatching ER now that it's on Netflix. It's a fun exercise in being baffled by your own memory – genuinely did not remember that Corday and Greene were a thing? Had
Paid-members only Art In defence of bad art Every so often some dipshit writes an essay about how artists need to embrace AI. I'm not linking to this week's, I'm not linking to any of them, because they're all trash for losers, but I am going to respond to one
Just some book recommendations! Sometimes all we have a book recommendations. Books are great! Read books! All of these will have affiliate links, because baby's got to eat. The Red Notebook, Antoine Laurain My aunt, who is a librarian and illustrator and who reads everything, sent me this for my birthday in
Paid-members only Art In which I attempt to solve: education At one time the point of going to university was simply to get an education. To acquire a broad understanding of history, philosophy, literature; to simply steep yourself in learning for a few years in order to become a well-rounded gentleman. Because you were a gentleman, if you were
Paid-members only Film What weird shit have you watched recently: part three Posts about weird shit will continue until morale improves. Morale will not improve whilst the horrors continue. Sometimes all you can do in the face of a world descending ever further into chaos and strife is watch someone's fucked up art. So here we are again. More weird
Paid-members only Complaints Addicted to potential Because I like to spend my leisure time making myself mad, I've been reading More Everything Forever by Adam Becker (affiliate link) and getting all het up about effective altruism and long termism. The logic of effective altruism follows this path: you should do what is in your
Paid-members only Sports Everything is broken: Olympics edition I've decided it's time to nationalise sport. A wild stance for me to take, really – me! an avowed theatre kid! For most of my life I've been made furious by the prioritisation of sports over the arts, in school, on the news, really almost
Film I must insist you watch: Listers: A Glimpse Into Extreme Birdwatching (free on YouTube) About a month ago I declared that One Battle After Another was the best film of 2025 and it wasn't even close. I now know that assessment to be flawed. Because now I've watched Listers: A Glimpse Into Extreme Birdwatching (free on YouTube). I must insist
