Hi newsletter folks, it’s 2026 Brook. I took time off from work, and this newsletter at the end of last year and I return to you rested and a lot faster on the bike. I almost retired for real, but instead took a new role at another tech company (fortunately remote), and put my Ms. Manager hat back on. I’m three weeks into that new role, and have met my team and started to come to terms with the fact that every job in tech is AI now. I still refuse to say “agentic” just like I refused to say “learnings”. I am, however, trying to incept everyone into saying “learns” instead, as a cursed side-project.

Since I last sent one of these:

• Over on my blog, there’s a list of my favorite media from 2025. I rode my bike a lot last year (658 hours), so I watched fewer films and read fewer books than in past years, but tried to make up for it in quality. So far, 2026 similarly delivers.
• I started a new job (as I mentioned above)
• My forever nesting project meant new lighting from Gantri, whose store is dangerously close to my new office, and some more adult-with-a-job nightstands and standing mirror. I briefly considered new lounge chairs but at the time I was thinking about living completely off savings, so that didn’t go anywhere. Now that I’m gainfully employed again? All bets are off.
• Snorri turns 17 this year!
• I keep losing weight (intentionally and heathily), and am now down to 76kg (167lbs), which contributes to my increasing speed on the bike
• Two of my close friend’s kids are turning one—it’s still wild, as a Texan, to have old friends my age with kids in college, and newer west coast friends with one-year-olds
• Otherwise, things are very steady-state in my life, which at 41 is very preferable considering the state of the world

With updates out of the way, let’s hit the

Links

• My TextEdit is IA Writer, but broadly I agree with Chayka’s assertion in this article that

The best way to reclaim our digital experiences, though, might be to stick with the likes of TextEdit, software that is unable to do anything except follow our commands.

• On the topic of AI, it’s important to recognize where its UX is massively failing a lot of people currently; particularly those who are not programmers. I’m seeing interesting use-cases at work where an LLM can easily solve the drudgery of patching vulnerabilities and making fleet-wide changes to containers, but a lot of people use these things as doctor or therapist or even partner substitutes and that scares the shit out of me. It should scare you too
• If society has a chance of getting any better, I think it’s time to nuke the nuclear family and return to a more community/village-first style of family. I’m lucky that many of my friends understand this and either by virtue of not having children, or intentionally including their community in their kid’s lives they are already working towards expanding kinship.

...we need to start naming and disrupting dominant cultural assumptions about collectivism, expansive kinship, chosen family, and community care. The hard-to-perceive reality is that collectivism is viewed as disreputable in dominant U.S. society – probably lots of other societies, too. And – real talk – the reasons for this have a lot to do with colonialism and racism and homophobia.

• As someone who enjoyed the lockdown/COVID isolation, I’m not the best person to judge the increasing isolation of modern society, though I do very intentionally maintain and cultivate deep friendships. I found the linked article interesting though, and I think it ties-in nicely with the previous link on nuclear family.

The typical female pet owner spends more time actively engaged with her pet than she spends in face-to-face contact with friends of her own species.

There’s a societal isolationism around us that is super dangerous and steadily grows every year. That said, I think spending tons of time with my cat is good and healthy

A real enemy of social interaction is the car, and broadly how we go from box to box, completely separated from other people. I don’t buy that people on their phones are fully antisocial, because a lot of folks like me keep in touch with communities and friends around the world using a messaging app—my phone/device is literally where my family lives. I do think that a glaring failure of Thompson’s analysis is the marked difference in social connection between bottom income quartile and top income—the rich have more time, literally, to hang out and see each other; more money to buy food out and hire help to free them from their childcare responsibilities. Also, his insistence on pretending democrats not understanding the right wing is annoying and wrong. It’s always telling when someone writing for the Atlantic has decided the way to get clicks is trying to convince the middle-class reader they’re morally failing by not acquiescing-to the intolerant, racist, and transphobic neighbors. Where are the articles encouraging the isolated GOP-voter to go out and meet people of other races and creeds? I don’t think someone with an Obama bumper sticker is going to solve this. Regardless of my criticism, it’s still an interesting article, and has made me even more convinced that the chosen-family-building and talking to staff at places I visit like a person will pay off.

• In honor of Milan San Remo (donne and homme) I'll share this weird alcohol fact I learned while watching 8 hours of cycling. The more I learn about the effects of WW1 on the food and culture of Europe the more I feel like my history education seriously let me down.

• Finally, here’s a album for the week: Lala Lala’s Heaven 2

Closing

It feels good to be writing this again, and I will try to keep it up more regularly now that I'm spending my week at a computer again. For those of your who've read this far, and stayed subscribed for the years I've run this newsletter, thank you! I don't keep any metrics on it, and it's always fun when a friend says "oh, hey I read ___ in your newsletter," or mentions they keep up with it. If you have a blog or a newsletter you regularly update (even semi annually), send it my way so I can add it to my RSS feed reeder (I'm trying-out Current lately). I'm off to do some kitchen chores now, after spending most of my day watching cycling while cooking potatoes and kimchi stew—stay hydrated, and stay rad, space cowgirls~