Digest — January 2026
Digest is a monthly post where I share what I’m reading. Read along if you like. Articles are linked. Also: Happy New Year (if you believe in that sort of thing).
Books
Dubliners — James Joyce
“I could not call my wandering thoughts together. I had hardly any patience with the serious work of life which, now that it stood between me and my desire, seemed to me child’s play, ugly monotonous child’s play.”
Bird by Bird — Anne Lamott
“I honestly think in order to be a writer, you have to learn to be reverent. If not, why are you writing? Why are you here?"
Blood in the Machine — Brian Merchant
“In the 1800s, automation was not seen as inevitable, or even morally ambiguous. Working people felt it was wrong to use machines to “take another man’s bread,” and so thousands rose up in a forceful, decentralized resistance to smash them.”
Articles
"Everyone is Gambling and No One is Happy" — Kyla Scanlon on Substack
“We ran this big experiment - can people have unlimited and unregulated access to millions of things that can make them lose their mind - and the answer is no, not really, it cooks the population like an egg.”
"Context Widows" — Kevin Baker on Substack
“As we should all know by now, systems can persist in dysfunction indefinitely, and absurdity is not self-correcting.”
"Bringing Sexy Back" — Kate Wagner for Lux Magazine
"Too many of my friends and acquaintances — of varying degrees of “onlineness,” from veteran discourse observers to casual browsers — seem to have internalized the internet’s tendency to reach for the least charitable interpretation of every glancing thought and, as a result, to have pathologized what I would characterize as the normal, internal vagaries of desire."
