Journalism department Christmas lunch (delayed)

A plate features two slices of toasted bread, a dollop of avocado mixture, a small salad with greens, and a streak of red sauce.

Just finished watching Skeleton Crew with the family.

Just the best Star Wars in years. Family-friendly but with enough of an edge of darkness to give it depth for the adults.

More please.


Oh, no. David Lynch is dead.

From now on, sadly, the owls will be exactly what they seem.

🏔️ 🏔️



Rule #1: Never trust Facebook.

It’s been over 20 years. You’d think people would have learned this by now.


People who are trying to escape Meta’s platforms in light of the changes in recent weeks, and Zuckerberg’s latest moves, here’s an unwelcome reminder for you:

WhatsApp is a Meta product, too.


For those playing with Pixelfed, an open standards-based Instagram competitor, I’m there under the usual username.


Sussex Downs, 8.30am, Sunday 12th January 2025

A frosty landscape with long shadows cast by trees during a hazy sunrise.

Duolingo rather over-estimates how much time I spend interacting with owls, bears and elephants, day-to-day.


Just another Friday night in Falmer…

Two people in shiny metallic costumes with large spheres on their heads perform on stage under a sign that says "Welcome to the Stage: Light Fantastic!" while a chalkboard displays similar text.

Telling people they’re doing it wrong is fun. In a webinar for Smartocto yesterday, as part of a panel of trend watchers, I suggested that the industry was thinking about #newsletters in the wrong way.

That prompted more questions than we could answer in the session — so I did so on my blog.


What were the five most read posts of 2024 on One Man & His Blog? They were all about the need for real, genuine audience work, the messy drama around WordPress, and a long-gone lads' mag.

Oh, and you can find out why a gender-critical philosopher irritated me, too.

Enquire within…


I think that today I have comprehensively proven that a man my age should not attempt to understand Skibidi Toilet.

That is all.


Back to some work blogging, with a look back on the posts that caught people’s attention in 2024. The fall of Twitter, Facebook and the big digital news sites, and the rise of AI slop.

And… Shrimp Jesus?


Second-Hand Bookshops in Britain: 2024 Report — not great news, but not as bad as it could be. The secondhand bookshop world is changing.


I spend quite a bit of my life feeling like imposter syndrome on legs.


Too many of us are trapped in a social media-generated bubble of synthetic citizenship, with activism and attention in the digital world substituting for actual civic engagement.


The work I do for NEXT Conference is relentlessly future-looking. But, once a year, we allow ourselves to look backwards. Lots of interest in where AI might go in 10 or 15 years. But also lots of interest in rehumanising tech, and escaping dark patterns.

Lots to explore here.



Winter sun on the beach.

A pebbled beach stretches out to meet the ocean under a dramatic sky filled with colorful clouds during sunset. Worthing pier is visible on the horizon.