Hello!
Happy inter-Christmas/NYE period where it feels like nothing is really meant to happen but it all just sort of blurs into one sense of nothingness.
And for when you’re sat in front of the fire, with what feels like your eighth cup of tea and you’ve searching through the Quality Street tub trying to find literally anything apart from the Strawberry and Orange Cremes… here’s some (mostly) shit posting to doomscroll through, and plenty of links for distraction.
1. Cool Web Things
I miss when people made cool, silly things on the internet.
This is one of my recent favourites.
Things like this are one of the reasons I made this website after all. The internet was meant to be a series of personal websites, with each one being able to hyperlink to other ones as a ringing endorsement of the content there. Over time, the most popular ones would get the most hyperlinks and they’d float to the top of the internet.
Of course, MySpace and Facebook changed all that in the 2000s, and shifted the internet from a world of “pick your own websites and go find what you want to see” to a world of “log into your Facebook account and let your newsfeed put things that we think you want to see in front of you”.
All the more reason for people to go make their own websites and claim back a bit more of their own “digital sovereignty” I say. If you want to hear more, this is a
good podcast with Tim Berners-Lee, father of the world-wide-web, talking about just that.
2. The Cinema
My recent love-affair with the cinema has not been a secret. In the end, I didn’t decide to buy an annual cinema pass, as the Vue by my house has £4.99 tickets (and they don’t do a subscription). Plus, it doesn’t lock you down to one cinema, which is nice, especially if you want to watch slightly more indie things at places like the Picturehouse.
I’ve just come back from watching The Housemaid, which was incredible - the
trailer gets you in fantastically but on reflection doesn’t actually give you very much about what the film is about, which lets the film really take you on a journey. If you’ve got a spare couple of hours between now and New Years, go watch it - it’s fantastic.
I also saw
Ella McCay last week, which was similarly promising, but didn’t do the trailer justice. I suspect a big chunk of the film was cut in the final edit, which makes the ending quite dissatisfying. Jimmy Carr’s
Fackham Hall, on the other hand, was silly and funny and a good use of an evening.
I’ve spoken before about all the great films coming out in 2026, but the one I’m looking most forward to is
Giant, about Prince Naseem Hamed - boxing films are always brilliant and I’ve missed them since the last Creed one.
3. 2025 in Review
I would, at some point, quite like to do a Charlie Brooker esque wipe of the year. This is not that, but perhaps we can do one for 2026 - for those who don’t know what I’m talking about,
here’s his last one from 2020 for reference. He stopped doing it after that as the world got a bit too depressing. Watching it back, it was a pretty depressing time, but he did make it pretty funny!
A year is such a long time. So much happens and by the end of it, I’ve often forgotten what happened in January. And so, this is a very quick run through of loads of things that happened this year, that you might have forgotten too. I’ve tried to make the links interesting, although some of the more geopolitical ones are longer reads from good sources.
July - Thai Prime Minister suspended
November - Ex-Bangladesh PM Sheikh Hasina found guilty of crimes against humanity
December - Terrible attack at Bondi Beach leaves 16 dead and 43 injured
And that’s the year! Personally, it’s one I’m looking forward to being over for more reason than one - but I daren’t make any comment on how 2026 might turn out. After all, a year really is such a long time…
Anyway, this is probably it from me for the year!
I wanted to thank you for continuing to read and engage with these. I’ve really enjoyed doing it and having conversations with you all about them. It means a lot and I appreciate it.
I also know it may not be everyone’s cup of tea, so if you’re cleaning through your mailing lists and want to unsubscribe, then please, please, please do just say.
Have a lovely few days and see you in 2026, unless something really mad happens between now and then.
RH
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