2026

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Hello from out here on the Thames Delta. It’s turned cold and rainy here, and I’m cooking ever more elaborate evening meals to stave off the chill. I’m actually chewing on a fresh piece of porchetta crackling as I write this. I hope you survived the winter holidays in fine shape, and that the news isn’t doing your head in.

I’m moving slow, myself, this year. That easily-distracted thing that means I didn’t get enough downtime and my brain is still a bit empty and tapped out. When it’s 4pm and you realise all you did was write half a dozen lines, played Freecell and watched four old tv show episodes.

It’s not like I don’t have a shitload to do, because I really really do. I just haven’t gotten to any of it yet. So please consider this opening note of 2026 a warm up: just me dropping you a line to wish you a happy new year and show you a few things I found.

ORBITAL

hither and yon

Odd little documentary from 1971 about Surrealism (and Dada).

I remember the original SHARKKNIFE book from, what, twenty years ago, fondly.

Talking of things I remember fondly, I always think of Joe Casey and Tom Scioli’s GODLAND with pleasure, a thoroughly peculiar book. Scioli draws like Jack Kirby if Jack Kirby had been an outsider artist drawing cassette tape covers for Daniel Johnson albums in the 90s. Which is intended as a compliment - Scioli has a weird, febrile approach to the Kirby line that shivers with madness. This week I went to see what Scioli is currently doing - he’s a guy I would have loved to try and write for one day - and found:

The Twilight Zone!

For people interested in different perspectives on AI, author Robin Sloan is doing a popup newsletter of essays this year:

If you understood that last phrase, then this is probably for you.

A message from our supporters this week:

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CONSTRAINT:

These are the collaborations between myself and painter AJ Brady. Sometimes she sends me an image and I respond to it in text, sometimes I send her a piece of text and she responds with an image. Find her work at brady-pictures.com and her Instagram.

This week, the great Hungarian filmmaker Bela Tarr died. If you’re not familiar with his work. and you don’t have a great tolerance for very long films, you might start with his final film, THE TURIN HORSE. This was his final film because it was such a total distillation of his style, approach and aims. But then go to THE WERCKMEISTER HARMONIES, which is utterly revelatory and rich, and then clear a day for the transformative, horrifying and seven hour long SATANTANGO. If you’ve heard of “slow cinema” then understand that Tarr and his team were its masters.

I first heard about him from a film professor in Dundee. The guy told me about this film, WERCKMEISTER, that was two and a half hours long and only had 39 shots. I had to know what that was like, so I ordered it on DVD when I got home and was transfixed. I tried to collect them all, but a few were out of my reach until Curzon released a box set in 2024.

Tarr’s frequent collaborator was the novelist Laszlo Krasznahorkai, whom long time readers will know I love, and who finally received the Nobel for literature last year. I like to think that it’s nice that Tarr lived long enough to see that happen.

OPS

ALSO ON DECK

I got gifted these two records by Such Sweet Records just before Xmas.

SUCH SWEET THUNDER is very much a chill-out record, improvised electroacoustic ambient. There’s quite a range in the three pieces on here, a collection of soundscapes that transition cleverly. I’m reminded of a few other people – there’s a flash of guitar work that made me think of Windy and Carl – but it’s very much its own thing.

FRUTIGER AERO is a shorter piece – I have to say, I’m usually allergic to saxophone, that most abused of instruments, the skronk criminal and soundtrack to every shit thriller from the eighties and nineties. But here it is pleasingly textural and carefully applied. I’m very pleased with both of these and very grateful to Such Sweet.

‘My informant naturally looks forward to the reconstruction of an independent Ukrainian state and was anxious to know how such a state would be received abroad, and if it could expect to receive any financial or other support. I pointed out to him that no power would intervene against Russia now, and that the Russians en masse would never permit the Ukraine to separate itself entirely from Russia.’ This report was written not in February 2022 but February 1922, exactly one hundred years before. When it comes to Western intelligence, Ukraine, and Russia, what’s old is new again.

SPIES is a big book I saved for winter - and then I had to reach for it as research material for a new project that entered development last month. It’s very good so far, witty and informative.

The British and Americans were woefully unprepared after 1945, effectively coming to the ensuing gunfight with the Soviet Union armed with a toy bow and arrow.

SPIES: THE EPIC INTELLIGENCE WAR BETWEEN EAST AND WEST, Calder Walton (UK) (US)

The US Congress has more members who are experts in powdered milk than intelligence.

GOT MORE TIME?

LTD

I keep a digital writer’s notebook and you’re invited to read over my shoulder.

Morning Computer: a few useful things first thing in my day

Nine Bells: evening notes

A Care Package From Zoharum (January 2026)

EDIBLE AND MEDICINAL WILD PLANTS OF BRITAIN AND IRELAND, Robin Harford

Snowsky Retro Nano DAC

While I’m here, I’m also going to draw your attention to my usual daily post on the site, Status, a short example of which is here.

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Slowly warming up here. Stick with me. There’s stuff coming. Look after yourself. See you next week.

W