scraps
january 2026
"
What do you still enjoy about New York?That everyone is from somewhere else. That the optimism never quits. That it's forever regenerating itself in ways you love or that drive you mad. That you can discover beauty and inspiration in the smallest moments and least-expected places, like the hawk that often sits atop a church spire outside my window. That in its soul it’s a giant small-town.What gets you feeling nostalgic?Anything digital inevitably makes me pause and think what a gift it was, at least in regards to building a creative mind, to come of age in a world that was largely analog and certainly less hyper.
🗣️ Excerpts from an interview, Perennials: Michael Hainey, by Drake's, 7 Jan 2026
The Gunslinger
Latest read, now that I've finished the Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy. I'd tried it before but gave up fairly quick. I'm trying to push through this time.
🔍 Found on an overground station's community books shelf 📆 Published 10 Jun 1982 📖 224 pages
Merienda
Defer an early dinner and gobble up a light meal when you finish work. Pace out your evening.
🍽️ Today: Gordal olives, oat cakes, celery, hummus
Fountain pens
Ballpoint is a waste. This is so much more enjoyable. And craft over the slopitalism race to the bottom any day.
📸 LAMY safari 💰 £22.50 🇩🇪 Made in Germany 🖋️ I might go for a Kaweco Sport next to try something different
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“If they passed a law saying I needed to draw with Procreate, I would quit art, convinced I could not draw.” Cartoonist Vanessa Davis on why pencils are everything. (Our tools matter! I switched from my Lamy Safari fountain pen back to my beloved Pilot Brush Pen earlier this week, and I immediately started drawing more in my diary.)
🗣️ Austin Kleon, It doesn't take much, 16 Jan 2026
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And now we're back at work and we're working on those numbers
They're getting us in our sleep, we're having nightmares in our slumber
🎵 The Smith Street Band, When I Was a Boy I Thought I Was a Fish
Borbs
Presumably a portmanteau of bird and orb, I find there is a very pure and simple delight in looking at tiny little birds that are practically spherical.
🔗 Found on Reddit 📸 Credit to u/Mattski1984
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The modern makers’ machine does not want you to create heavy things. It runs on the internet – powered by social media, fueled by mass appeal, and addicted to speed. It thrives on spikes, scrolls, and screenshots. It resists weight and avoids friction. It does not care for patience, deliberation, or anything but production....It’s not that most people can’t make heavy things. It’s that they don’t notice they aren’t. Lightness has its virtues – it pulls us in, subtly, innocently, whispering, ‘Just do things.’ The machine rewards movement, so we keep going, collecting badges. One day, we look up and realize we’ve been running in place.
🗣️ Anu Atluru, Make Something Heavy., Working Theorys, 8 Mar 2025 – via Dense Discovery
Yard Sale Pizza
Say what you will, it IS a very good London delivery pizza. While I do think their base menu overindexes on spice, they do enough funky limited za's to make it worth coming back a few times a year at least. Plus, they do 18 inchers and some decent dips too. Above is my latest foray into their collabs. Hot honey changed the game for pizza, I swear.
🔗 Website 🍕 The Sausage Sting (white base, pumpkin, sausage, hot honey) 💰 £31.50 🧠 Don't forget that 1x 18" pizza is more than 2x 12" pizzas
TOYO Cantilever Toolbox ST-350
I'm not a handyman. I'm what some online comments sections may refer to as "soft hands" (I don't know whether one is this or has this, but you get the point). Still, I have a few tools and related loose bits hanging around in cupboards and drawers. And I want to solve that sprawl in a manner that is both aesthetically pleasing to me and supports a business that cares about craft rather than the race to the bottom. This is my choice for that.
🔗 Product page 📐 W350xD160xH215mm (outer), W348xD158xH103mm (inner) 🌈 Antique Green (+10 more colours) 🧱 Steel ⚖️ 2.6kg 🇯🇵 Made in Japan 💰 £109
Victorinox Fibrox Chef's Knife
My old chef's knife was some random cheapo I bought too many years ago to remember. I've given it a few half-arsed attempts at sharpening over the years but as you'd expect, it's quite blunt. So I battled my way through the online corporate garbage "recommendations" set up by SEOs and advertisers to land on this exact knife as the apparent go-to starter for home cooks looking for a decent all-rounder.
🔗 Product page 📐 20cm blade length 🇨🇭 Swiss-made (these are the Swiss army knife folks) 💰 £43
Pop-up Frames
Now here is a great idea. Firstly, I love art and think it should be made as accessible as possible to the masses – and I think this does that on both a cost front and logistics front for those who want to frame and hang art at home. But independent of the art angle, I think this is just a great piece of product design work.
🔗 Website 📐 Sizes from 15-50cm 💰 £7 for small, £10 for medium (multi-packs available) 🌈 10 colours
Making zines
It's a fun alternative to just leaving all your photos unstructured in your phone's camera roll.
📖 14 pages 📸 18 photos 💾 13.7 MB 🚀 Published Jan 2026 🔗 View zine
Highlands tartan scarf
Just picked up one of these. Quite happy. Could be a bit more protective if it were wider and had more material to bundle up, but this width does allow it to more comfortable fit underneath coat collars and hoods. Trade offs, hey?
🛍️ Soho Scarves 🧵 100% merino wool 🔍 190cm length x 25cm width 🇬🇧 Made in UK 💰 £27 (on sale from £39)
3 Body Problem
As I start to make my way through the third and final book of this trilogy (Death's End), I have decided to finally crack into the 2024 Netflix TV adaptation. It's a classic example of "book better" but after two or three eps, I'm interested enough to keep watching for now.
⏳ 1 season, 8 episodes, ~1h each 📊 7.5 on IMDB 🔗 Watch on Netflix
marmite + cheese bun
These delightful little flaky parcels that buns from home are putting out are comprised of croissant dough rolled with Marmite, cheese, Marmite-roasted kataifi and spring onions. Undoubtedly my favourite thing they make, and reasserts my belief that Marmite is better suited as a cooking ingredient, while Vegemite is better suited to spreading on toast.
🔗 Website 🙅 Don't come at me, Marmite stans
Baba Is You
An adorable little puzzle game with quite a funky core mechanic that lets you rewrite logic, in a sense. It is making me realise how dumb I am, though.
💰 £11.39 🔗 Buy on Steam
Protect privacy and security
If you're European and care about human rights, email your people.
🔗 Website 🗣️ Shout out Czech Republic, Italy, Netherlands, and Poland for standing up (at the time of writing) to unsafe, disproportionate measures
Sweet Mouthful Mixes
Absolutely diabolical. I better not remember this on a low-willpower day...
🇬🇧 UK-based 🔗 Website
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One billion dollars is such a huge amount of money, that there has recently emerged a whole sub-genre of images specifically designed to help us get our heads around how huge it is. If you, for instance, had earned a million a year, every year since the Battle of Hastings (that’s 1066, for non-Brits), and not spent any of it, you still wouldn’t (interest notwithstanding) be a billionaire. If you earned an annual salary of $43,000, you might eventually become a billionaire (again, not accounting for expenses or accumulated interest) — if you waited over 23,000 years.
🗣️ Tom Whyman, The worship of billionaires has become our shittiest religion, The Outline, 5 Nov 2019
Make winter mornings groovy
Already loved the original by Curtis Mayfield, but this version slows things down and makes for a calm yet delightful background track to getting started for the day.
🎵
Black coffee, orange juice
Every perfect morning is ushered in by these simple delights of the earth.
☕️ Current bean: (Unsure). Up next: Hermanos (something fruity). 🍊 Juice courtesy of Aldi
Yikes
That's cold.
🥶
A stream-free evening
Skipping this borderline-default contemporary evening behaviour is refreshing, even if you're left with a(n admittedly perverse) nagging feeling that you wasted an opportunity. Pop on some tunes, do some bits, read a magazine, and chill.
😌
Weekend breakfast at home
• 1x pan con tomate
• 1x smashed avo
• 1x black coffee
• 2x glasses of water
☕️
The Ballad of Wallis Island
Found this on a 'best films of 2025' list. I remembered seeing a trailer for this once, perhaps in cinemas, and thought it looked quirky enough to warrant a watch. Being in the mood for anything except Slopflix™, I whacked this on and thoroughly enjoyed the over-the-top British comedic awkwardness that hits in the very first scene and relentless stays with you for the entire ride. By the end of it, though, there's also a touching sweetness that's explored, even if it is a little sad to behold. It's also not a thousand hours long, which is a relieving change of pace from other "good" films.
⏳ 1h 39m 📊 7.4 on IMDB
F1 the Movie
Now here's one that surprised me. I'm not an F1 guy – at all. I'm not even the slightest bit a car guy. But I saw someone's comment online about how they were surprised by how much they enjoyed the F1 movie, so I thought why not see if I'm the same. And I am. I really rate it. It's a great underdog story, and is particularly satisfying in how said underdogs think different from the others, rather than simply push harder than them, to try their attempt at an advantage they sorely need.
⏳ 2h 35m 📊 7.7 on IMDB 🔗 Watch on AppleTV+
Objects that last
I don't know whether it's an age thing or a late-stage capitalism thing (though I suspect it's both), but I find myself increasingly craving objects that are few, crafted with care, and made to last. Disposability no longer just irritates me; it gnaws at the back of my mind, chewing away at my sanity. Two products of this nature that have clicked with me so far are the safety razor and the fountain pen. They're both more finicky to use than the modern disposables that have "superseded" them, but they are vastly more delightful to use once you get the hang of them. And I genuinely hope and look forward to using the exact ones I have now for decades to come.
🪒 Zero Waste Club 🖋️ LAMY safari 🪡 I also like visibly mending clothes with sashiko stitching
Cream on things
I usually don't like it. Whether it's as-is, from-a-can, or whipped-fresh, my palate generally tends to class cream as an invader of whatever I'm eating (or drinking). HOWEVER! There is a divine and golden exception to this that I have discovered – the cream they offer to pop on top of your gelato at Italian ice cream shops. I don't know how they're making that stuff, but that texture is something else. That is undoubtedly cream of enhancement; not cream of ruin.
🗣️ Shout out to my most recent example: Gelateria La Romana, Valencia
New Year's resolutions
I actually like them. I'm still pro-"you don't need to wait until Jan 1st, you can just start now", but there is a palpable psychological freshness and freedom that comes with the first of the first, and I say – why not take advantage of it? This year I've returned to tangible goal-setting, with a specific shortlist of 19 goals. Lots of people would tell me that I'd achieve more by setting fewer goals, but still I choose otherwise. I think all of these deserve my return attention, day to day, week to week, month to month.
💡 "20202020": A shorthand I won't explain the background of here, but my fave methodology to set yearly goals. Timebox 20 minutes and draft out at least 20 goal ideas. Don't get caught up in perfection. Edit later.
december 2025
5 fave coffee shops in Valencia
1) Fav Coffee – Has it all. Indoor and outdoor seating, simple food menu (pastries/cakes AND toast), fresh orange juice, and filter.2) East Crema (C. de Roger de Llòria) – Nice interior seating, and filter on hand.3) Coffee and Bikes – Filter and a super lovely barista.4) Cafeinomanos – Funky filter options and situated down a peaceful little side street.5) Little Blackbird – Filter and some interesting-looking pastries.
🇪🇸
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I recently made a radical change in my grocery shopping: I stopped using the self-checkout scanner... They represent another erosive step in the gradual withering away of public interaction in favour of a world of “frictionless”, machine-guided transactions... The urbanist Greg Lindsay, after stating that Americans now spend an hour and a half more at home (and presumably on screens) than they did in pre-smartphone days, and noting the rise of so-called “ghost kitchens” and “dark stores” – with no footfall, just web traffic – argued that “the physical world has become increasingly vestigial to the digital one”. And in the same way that AI, as studies imply, might impinge upon our cognitive abilities, the technologically mediated urban environment might be weakening our civil muscles: our ability to simply be with other people in public. It sounds like a small thing but I am here to reclaim the joy of a life with social friction. I have made it a New Year’s resolution to always choose engagement.
🗣️ Tom Vanderbilt, The Monocle Minute, Wed 31 Dec 2025
Critics at Large
One of my favourite podcasts of the year – one that I keep coming back to. Not every episode catches my interest, but these three co-hosts have very enjoyable chemistry together.
📍 Valencia
📍 Valencia
📍 Valencia
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I like it here, this island of time between Christmas and New Year. While it might not be a tropical paradise, it is somewhere that you can regroup, shrug off the excesses of Christmas and prepare for the new year. It’s a good spot for long walks, for reading, for making lists, for setting out your ambitions for the year ahead. (Hold on, aren’t these the same as last year’s?)
🗣️ Andrew Tuck, The Monocle Weekend Edition, Sat 27 Dec 2025
Stranger Things season 5
The first volume – episodes 1 through 4 – hooked me. I went from "sure I'll watch season 5 and finish this thing" to "HELL YEAH, WE BACK". But with the drop of volume 2 (episodes 5-7), I'm feeling a bit of a vibe shift. I can't tell if it's the show or me (or both), but I'm getting a sense of diminishing returns with the episodes now, and I'm glad that it soon comes to a permanent end.
📺 Netflix ⏳ 8 episodes, ~1 hour each 🗣️ Shoutout to my man Delightful Derek
Pluribus
And so season one comes to an end. While I did struggle with the slower pacing of this show at times – with some scenes feeling almost pointlessly, gratuitously granular and drawn out – it feels like a fresh concept and it's executed extremely well. I'll put it this way: it stands out from the slopflix that characterises the current age of media.
📺 Apple TV ⏳ 9 episodes, ~1 hour each
On socks
Once thought of as the ultimate boring, uninspired or downright lazy Christmas gift, there now seems to be a small counter-culture in online commerce writers say "no no no, all you need is the RIGHT sock" – and they're absolutely spot on. The world's been flooded with masses of awful-quality clothing (and let's not even get into the horrible manufacturing conditions here) and we've now hyper-normalised cheap trash, HOWEVER I can confidently make one solid recommendation for sock material and two solid recommendations for sock brands keeping my feet cosy this winter. Treat yourself.
🧵 Merino wool 🛍️ Darn Tough 🛍️ Pantherella
Top Christmas tunes
In no particular order:• All Alone on Christmas, Darlene Love
• Fairytale of New York, The Pogues
• Underneath the Tree, Kelly Clarkson
• Santa Tell Me, Ariana Grande
• I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday, Wizzard
• Run Rudolph Run, Chuck Berry
• Do They Know It's Christmas?, Band Aid
• Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree, Brenda Lee
• What Christmas Means To Me, Stevie Wonder
• Sleigh Ride, The Ronettes
• Wonderful Christmas Time, Kenny Ball & His Jazzmen
• A Holly Jolly Christmas, Burl Ives
📝 Recognising the lyrical content of at least two of these songs are problematic
Elite Active sneakers
This brand has no business creating a cool 70s-esque runner silhouette like this.
🛍️ Lacoste 🧵 Nylon, textured suede, synthetic 💰 150 € / £130
📍 Jardí Botànic de la Universitat de València
📍 Jardí Botànic de la Universitat de València
Valencian oranges
They're the best. So juicy! So sweet!
🍊
Second-hand book stores
The best shops are physical ones, and the best books have already been well-read.(And they gotta be paperback too.)
📍 Todos Contentos Y Yo También, Valencia 📖 Beyond the Door of No Return, by David Diop
Super fruity brews
As a rabid consumer of filter coffees, I've come a recent realisation – the ones I'm enjoying most right now have super bright, super fruity, kinda funky flavours. They're uncommon, but when they do appear – divine.
🗣️ Shoutouts to the most frequent purveyors of juicy sips: Batch Baby and Allpress
📍 Valencia
Café de filtro
La mejor bebida por la mañana. Mi sabor favorito en mi hora del día favorita.
☕️ Little Blackbird 📍 Valencia
Street art of Valencia
Valencia is one of my favourite cities for street art in the world. It's full of an enormous variety of styles, however I always have a soft spot for funky little characters like this.
📍 Valencia
Fideuà
Pasta. Seafood. Large pan. Sunday lunch perfection.
📍 Valencia
Airport technology
In a stark change from the general prevalence of enshittification, I actually have three things to shout out in (some) airport experiences today:1) eGates – and I mean the (relatively) smooth London kind, not the awkward two-stage, print-a-ticket Australian kind2) Bag scanners that don't need you to remove toiletries or electronics3) Luggage labels (for checked bags) that stick together without needing to peel off and reveal an adhesive surface
✈️
Christmas break
The only time of year where a large part of the production side of capitalism says to the consumption side "I'm gonna take a break; you go nuts".In other words, those December deliverables are absolutely fine to become January deliverables now, and for no reason at all it's completely within the bounds of social acceptability to religiously eat cheese and chocolate on the daily.
📅 Sat 20 Dec – Sun 4 Jan
"
We keep looking to shiny, new (privatised) tech for solutions when old tech already works:“What’s kind of confounding about being a bicycle advocate or a transit advocate is people think it’s a step backwards. … Any suggestion that you should use a bicycle or that the solution to congestion in cities is actually a good bus or a good train line is seen as though you’re against progress. But you’re not. If you look at the places that are solving congestion, it’s Japanese bullet trains, bicycle lanes in Amsterdam, or just a good train or tram line in Paris. Those are the places that are solving the problems of the 21st century with 19th-century technology.”The fixation on electric and autonomous vehicles follows this same logic – a fancy tech solution to what’s really a geometry problem. No amount of battery innovation or algorithmic sophistication changes the basic physics of moving large metal boxes through limited urban space. In fact, autonomous cars are likely to increase the amount of trips we take, making traffic even worse.
🗣️ Dense Discovery, issue 369, 16 Dec 2025
The Three-Body Problem
Recently re-read this legendary piece of contemporary sci-fi after starting to watch Apple TV's Pluribus. While I lost steam last time and dropped out during the sequel Dark Forest, this time I want to finish the trilogy.
📚 390 pages 📅 Published in English in 2014 🔗 Wikipedia
Arctic Parka
I personally cannot fathom why this poppy retro style of outdoor wear has been relegated to the past. Almost all the modern gear I see seems positively drab, boring, and frankly un-fun to wear compared to this.
🛍️ Big Rock Candy Mountaineering 💰 US $598
The Oysterman Sweater
It's chunky, it's textured, it's neutral, it's slouchy, AND it has these funky little pockets. Elite jumper design.
The stylistic choosings of Wes Anderson
Cool shoes and animals too.
🎨 Wes Anderson: The Archives 📍 The Design Museum 📅 Until 26 Jul 2026
Japanese magazines
They really know what they're doing with print media.
🔗 BRUTUS 🔗 POPEYE 🔗 magCulture
Christmas episodes
Still December but sick of Christmas movies? Or maybe you're stuck watching bad-bad Christmas movies (like Falling for Christmas with Lindsay Lohan) instead of good-bad Christmas movies (like Our Little Secret with Lindsay Lohan)? Google the Christmas episodes of various sitcoms and TV shows of yore, and zip through those for more variability and smaller chunks of time commitment.
🔗 Friends Christmas episodes 🔗 House Christmas episodes
Stouts
Such a great beer for the colder, darker months. Once you start hopping around a few different ones, you can start to appreciate the nuance in flavours. Creaminess really is the make-or-break factor for me, though (but I won't say no to a bit of rich sweetness every now and then). Recent faves include: Milk Shake milk stout from Wiper and True, Black Milk stout from Jaguarshoes Collective, and the positively insane 11% Gingerbread Latte Imperial Stout from Vault City.
🔗 Wiper and True 🔗 Jaguarshoes Collective 🔗 Vault City
Wake Up Dead Man
The recently-released third film in the Knives Out trilogy offers a pleasing return from the brink of Glass Onion. While an almost-impossible challenge to top the impact of the original, the gothic creepiness of the setting was an excellent choice and makes for a perfect weekend watch in the dark nights of winter.
⏳ 2h 24m 📊 7.6 on IMDB 🔗 Watch on Netflix
The art of Emily Kam Kngwarray
I've seen indigenous Australian art here and there over the years. Hopefully not to generalise too much, but I tend to find the colours (evocative of the land), patterns (it's not uncommon to see a high density of dots) and motifs (representative of the flora and fauna of Australia) deeply pleasing in a way that I find I cannot explain. With Kngwarray’s art, I can certainly say it's what feels like a unique respect of, and connection to, nature that brings me a comforting sense of grounding when viewing it.
💰 £22 (free for members) 📅 Until 11 Jan 2026 📍 Tate Modern 🔗 Exhibition webpage
Breakfast sandwiches
In the myriad forms a sandwich can take, I think breakfast sandos deserve a special kind of recognition. Epitomised to me by the presence of egg and cheese (typically American), they are the perfect companion to a low stakes, weekend morning, urban adventure. My latest delightful discovery on this front is the bacon and egg sando at Flying Horse Coffee. The pretzel roll gives it a unique aesthetic (but is not, as one might fear, too firm) and the sauce is surprisingly but pleasantly a smidge spicy.
💰 £6.50 📍 4b Holywell Ln, London EC2A 3ET 🔗 flyinghorsecoffee.com
Dan's wine bar
An unfussy space, right in the heart of Dalston, just down a little side street. Great selection of funky bottles, exceptionally lovely and helpful staff, and a stocker of a few delightful Aussie snacks (you can never go wrong with a box of BBQ Shapes).
📍 2-4 Tottenham Rd, London N1 4BZ 🔗 dans.wine