Daily Log Digest – Week 15, 2026
2026-04-05
Walter Benjamin Biography
Walter Benjamin — Peter E Gordon’s vivid pearl of a biography
“Just to sit once more on the terrace of a café and twiddle my thumbs,” wrote the great German-Jewish critic and philosopher Walter Benjamin to a friend in 1939, “that’s all I wish for.”
Kyla Scanlon
This prelude from Kyla Scanlon's latest newsletter took me completely by surprise. I have often wondered about (and occasionally been envious) how people like and others that I admire can be so prolific. And then you come across the flip side of it
I have to go on an elimination diet because my gut is eating itself and that apparently is also destroying my thyroid because I am not absorbing any nutrients. In order to address this, I have to stop eating wheat, dairy, corn, egg, tomato, peanuts, coffee, soy, cacao, sugar and manyotherthings (this is not like a juice cleanse or something fun, it’s something I have to do to stop my body from attacking itself). I have to write down what I do eat and how I am feeling and then evaluate from there as to what I can eat in the future.
If there was a quick fix - say an injection - I would try to take it. I don’t KNOW what’s happening to me, I just know that I got lots of vials of blood drawn and the miracle of modern science has informed me that some things are not going very well.
But, funnily enough, part of the problem is that I took shortcuts. I traveled 40 out of the 52 weeks last year (a lot for me) and some days, I would just subsist on granola bars and about 14 cups of coffee. I would also run and work a lot and sleep very little because I was totally and completely invincible. After all, I was an optimization machine.
And for a time, I sure was. But then, I wasn’t. Turns out, I wasn’t really optimizing anything, I just was avoiding what I actually should have been doing like sleeping. What I needed was to stop adding things and start figuring out what was making me sick. That's the opposite of what we've been sold.
From: The Ozempicization of Everything - by kyla scanlon #health #overwork
Anyway back to the focus on the newsletter
Naturally, industries have formed to monetize this nihlism through promising solutions. But the solutions never arrive, because the nihilism, the giving up, must persist in order for these products to survive. It’s a version of Ivan Illich’s Limits to Medicine, where he argues that the medical establishment itself produces illness by making people dependent on professional intervention rather than building health. That effect carries across all these optimization tools, creating dependency on the fix rather than addressing the cause. The optimization economy can't deliver control, because the desperation is the market condition, and the pursuit of control through optimization is itself a loss of control.
The shift from railways to peptides is the shift from “we built this for everyone” to “you can buy this for yourself.”
What we have is the Ozempic optimization of everything - Ozempicization, if you will. We have a suite of magic shots now in the form of peptides and everything else that address effort and discomfort and complexity. Everything can be optimized. Everything can be controlled.
It’s revealing that Silicon Valley’s word of the moment is ‘agency’ as it dresses up that desire for control. Optimization is the process, control is the desite, and agency is the branding. It’s not clear what agency means in startup land (similar to other words often used, like taste) but it does hint at someone who will force the universe to bend to their will, one way or another3.
and the article I logged just over a month ago (2 Mar) makes an appearance again! 😊
Cluely is a company that embraced this wholeheartedly, the final boss of the hustler economy. Their original ethos was cheating (they have since pivoted into AI notetaking) and they have raised millions and millions of dollars4. For them, “scamming” was being “agentic” which is indeed the “hottest commodity in Silicon Valley” as Sam Kriss wrote in his piece Child’s Play:
The future will belong to people with a very specific combination of personality traits and psychosexual neuroses. An AI might be able to code faster than you, but there is one advantage that humans still have. It’s called agency, or being highly agentic. The highly agentic are people who just do things.
And they are just doing things, driven by (understandable) fears of the permanent underclass and becoming useless in the age of AI. Apparently, the way that you avoid both of those is by “constantly chasing attention online.”
Then there is a whole section on The Manosphere which is too long to quote, but worth reading in full.
and this bit makes me feel called out 😂 (although tbf I am not monitoring the daily news or vibe-coded dashboards.)
We tend to seek control in every facet of our lives, including information consumption. Amanda Mull wrote a brilliant article about “monitoring the situation” - people (clearly, like me) who get glued to their screens trying to piece things together. And there is a lot to sort through: war, a government partially shut down, erratic fiscal policy, weak labor market, high prices, etc. It’s soothing to go to places like Twitter and read the OSINT feeds and to feel like you’re… informed. As Mull searingly writes:
If you can dial in your feeds’ algorithms just right, maybe you can bear a type of witness so complete it feels like participation, or maybe even control. After all, there’s decent evidence that the people launching the bombs are monitoring some of the same feeds you are.
2026-04-06
Bait - TV series
Just bingewatched this, and loved it! The last time I really liked Riz Ahmed was in The Reluctant Fundamentalist (esp the Urdu monologue in the Last Speech scene). Have been a huge fan since then.
2026-04-07
The Hacker News Tarpit
I like the formulation of sites like HN being a Schelling point problem. The secret sauce is not in the technology or the software at all.
A link aggregator is only as good as its community, and the community is only as good as the people in it, and the people are only there because the other people are there. This is a Schelling point problem; everybody needs to coordinate on the same place, and which place they coordinate on is partly arbitrary, and once they've coordinated it is very expensive to move.
There's a bar in your city where all the interesting people go on Thursday nights. The bar is not special. The drinks are mediocre, the lighting is bad, the bathrooms are questionable. But interesting people go there, which makes it interesting, which makes more interesting people go there. If you open an identical bar across the street with better drinks and better bathrooms, nobody is going to switch, because the interesting people are at the other bar. They all know they're at the other bar. There is no mechanism for coordinated switching.
I think the vibe coding discourse has a hole in it, and the hole is shaped like the question: "what is software for?"
If software is a thing you build, then vibe coding changes everything. Anyone can build. We have democratized building. Congratulations to building.
But software is mostly a thing people use, and getting people to use things is not a building problem. It never was. The reason most software fails is not that it was too hard to code. The reason most software fails is that nobody wanted it, or everybody wanted it but was already using something else, or the right people wanted it but couldn't find it, or they found it but didn't trust it, or they trusted it but couldn't get their team to switch.
Hacker News works because Paul Graham had an audience before he had a product, Y Combinator had a network that seeded the community, and dang has been doing the same moderating job every single day for over a decade with what I can only describe as an unreasonable level of dedication. The whole thing has been accumulating social capital for almost twenty years...
I built a Hacker News clone in six hours. To me, it's perfect and for everyone else it's empty and those two facts are going to remain true forever. If that doesn't tell you something about what software is and isn't, I don't know what will.
The Ten Commandments of Mental Health
10 Commandments of Mental Health - by Josh Zlatkus
with a sidenote that this was published on April 1st.
Give me structure, or give me death!
Rather than diagnosis, accommodation, or medication, give me sleep, movement, and sunlight.
The not-so-curious paradox is that I only seem to change when I must.
Man shall not grow by insight alone.
Everything you experience happens for a reason—usually an evolutionary one.
If at first you don’t succeed, try giving up.
Thou shalt not acquire meaning from comfort.
Know thy self’s insignificance.
I regret that I have but myself and my happiness to live for.
Forgive them, Father: they know not how to live with abundance.
Why Gen Z is taking up boomer hobbies
Why Gen Z is taking up boomer hobbies
Some are taking up knitting or crochet. Others are growing flowers or going fishing. These days, such hobbies are no longer old-fashioned. For Gen Z has decided that the pastimes of pensioners are rather pleasing.
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“Grannycore”—as youngsters call the trend—is not limited to entertainment. Gen Zers respect their elders’ taste in homeware and fashion (think florals and cardigans).
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As one fan of the old-timey trend recently put it: “Grandmas were onto something.”
2026-04-08
Friendship Breakups
Why do friendship breakups hurt so much? | Dazed
Friendship breakups are incredibly common – studies show that around 70 per cent of close friendships end after seven years – and yet there is little guidance available on how to navigate them. It’s a stark contrast to the way breakdowns of romantic relationships are treated in culture; there are innumerable books, films, and TV shows dedicated to unpacking the pain of heartbreak (there’s probably a Sex and the City episode for every flavour of dating turmoil imaginable).
“Romantic relationships have long been a central focus of psychological research, popular culture, counselling, and self-help literature; they are widely recognised as a life transition with established language, rituals – such as break-up conversations – and social norms around grieving and recovery,” Dr Jenny van Hooff, a sociologist at Manchester Metropolitan University, tells Dazed. “By contrast, friendship breakups are often minimised or dismissed in both academic and everyday discourse, which means there is less culturally sanctioned language and fewer models for grieving them. As a result, people may struggle to validate their own pain.”
new word unlocked - amatonormative
Despite our culture being amatonormative – that is, romantic-relationship-centric – our friendships are central to our lives. “Close friends often provide ongoing support, shared history, mutual trust, identity affirmation and a sense of belonging,” says Dr van Hooff. “When a friendship ends, it is not only the loss of contact with another person that hurts, but also the loss of routines, companionship and emotional scaffolding that the relationship provided.”
Capitalism is Obsessed With Death
Is Employment Making You Ugly?
It's a quote of a quote that I found in one of my favorite newsletters.
RELATED: I wanted to fit this quote from Byung-Chul Han’s Capitalism and the Death Drive in my Guardian article on cadaver fat fillers, but I couldn’t, so I’ll just leave it here:
“Capitalism is obsessed with death … Performance zombies, fitness zombies, and Botox zombies: these are manifestations of undead life. The undead lack any vitality … Capitalism’s striving for life without death creates the necropolis — an antiseptic space of death, cleansed of human sounds and smells. [ED NOTE: I would add textures to this list!] Life processes are transformed into mechanical processes. The total adaptation of human life to mere functionality is already a culture of death. As a consequence of the performance principle, the human being ever more closely approximates a machine, and becomes alienated from itself.”
Great Books in 52 Weeks
How to Read the Great Books in 52 Weeks - by Ted Gioia
The original substack containing the program is behind a paywall. At some point I considered subscribing just to unlock that one post. Maybe some day!
A few weeks ago, reader Cheryl Drury reached out to me. She had been inspired by my 52-week humanities program. Not only had she completed the course, but documented her progress on a podcast.
2026-04-09
Did Wokeness Leave Us Worse Off?
Opinion | Did Wokeness Leave Us Worse Off? #linguistics
Spiegelman: “Woke” obviously has had a lot of different transitions as a word, and who uses it and how, and to mean what. And I would say that it seemed like a positive thing to be woke five years ago. And now it doesn’t feel that way anymore. Have you noticed a shift, and where are you noticing it?
Colyar: Yeah, when I’m trying to describe my politics to people, I often say that I have some “anti-woke” sensibilities. And by saying that, I think what I’m often trying to do is distance myself from the woke of five years ago — this way too earnest, super p.c. kind of cringe, resistance-y culture, whose politics I mostly support, but the way that it’s carried out is cringe to me. Yeah, I think “cringe” is the best word.
Spiegelman: What about you, Amina?
Sow: Yeah, “cringe” is a really good word. Thank you to the young people for that one. I do think that language moves very fast. And I think that sometimes, too, when I hear people use certain words, all it does is carbon-date them for me.
So, if somebody says “p.c.,” I’m like, got it. Like, you’re a 1990 and before person. We love that last century, you know? And if you’re a different kind of person and you say “woke,” I’m like, great. You’re a new century person. But do the words mean the same things to us? And that’s not always apparent.
What you were saying about the Biden years, I think the reason it feels like we’re having this kind of backlash to this culture right now is because of the institutionalization of it in our workplaces and on campuses. And I don’t think even good liberal people feel like the antiracist training that they’re doing in their office is helping anyone. Even people who respect people’s pronouns and believe in nonbinary identity or whatever, I don’t think that they think that putting it in their signature is helping anyone, and I think they’re rolling their eyes and laughing about it in private.
And so, when I find this wanton cruelty being the driving force — because, again, everything exists in a context — I think that what I find particularly grating about the “I want to be able to use the R-word, I want to call women [expletive], and I want to call people the N-word,” you know, whatever it is, I’m like, why do you want to do that? Why is it so important to you? What is so important about being able to say that to someone who is telling you they don’t want to hear that?
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Colyar: But I will say, I do think that most people are willing to be polite, but so much of this has gotten so fraught, on the example of pronouns, because people do not allow people to learn. People do not give them the grace to try and figure out how to get these things right. I mean, people are militant about this stuff and will bite your head off, bite their professor’s head off over a misgendering situation, and that makes it really hard to move forward.
This one made me LOL, iykyk 😂
Sow: I want to ban straight people using “partner” when they mean husband or wife. I’m just like, I don’t like this signaling of your politics. I really hate it, because it’s very sinister, actually.
Colyar: They’re hiding. It’s like they’re doing some queer for clout ——
Sow: I’m like, you’re literally participating in the most heteronormative institution a person could participate in. And you don’t get to rebrand it.
I do wanna say though, participation is not necessarily an endorsement.
The Women Who Love the Manosphere
The Women Who Love the Manosphere - WSJ
Love the phrase manosphere-adjacent to describe Huberman (accurate imo)
Then there are others she loves that are better described as manosphere-adjacent: Andrew Huberman, the brawny neuroscientist and podcaster with a cult following, is a source Craig turns to for wellness advice. Following Huberman’s self-described “protocols,” Craig adheres to a rigid sleep schedule and workout routine, and never skips her morning dose of cryotherapy, collagen supplementation and sunlight exposure. She cites his guidance on her TikTok page, where she promotes a disciplinarian approach to physical fitness.
2026-04-10
Barista Judgemental Glare
Brooklyn Coffee Shop Episode 55: Kumail Nanjiani, Barista Training Expert 🪪☕️ - YouTube
I was at a coffee shop in Berlin today and the barista messed up my order by pouring somebody else's order into my reusable cup and handing it to them. When I pointed it out to the barista, he had this look about him as if it was my fault, which reminded me of this episode of Brooklyn Coffee Shop.
The transcript is reproduced in full below.
Hey guys, it's that time of the year again. I'm here for your hipster barista assessment.
No one says hipster anymore.
You've passed the first test. Nobody says the h word anymore.
I'm sorry. Who are you?
How do you not remember me? I'm Kumail Nanjiani, h word barista expert.
Wow, your aura is like completely different this year. I didn't even recognize you.
Yeah, something seems off. You seem very emotionally regulated.
Oh yeah, I've been on a healing journey. I started therapy.
Therapy? I thought it was a requirement for all Brooklyn baristas to be chaotic and unhinged.
I've been avoiding therapy for years for my craft.
Yeah, that's a big update we're doing to 2026. Now, we want all baristas to go through therapy so that your rudeness comes from a place of creativity rather than trauma. As you know, you need a high score to keep operating a coffee shop in Brooklyn. First, let's see your judgmental glare.
Okay, it's a little dead behind the eyes. I need a bit more boredom, a little more disdain. Like, you looked at me and you already know I'm the problem. More like Mhm. Mhm. Judgmental glare 8 out of 10.
Not. Seriously,we're known in Brooklyn for our judgmental glare.
You were there for a moment.
We have at least 10,000 negative Google reviews about it.
You think 10,000's a lot? All right, let's talk about reading. What are we perusing these days?
Only books on Marxism and existential thought.
Marxism is so played out. It's so old. I mean, look at your mayor. My mom is into Marxism. She's got a little Marx bumper sticker on her Subaru. Now all the cool baristas have circled back around to loving capitalism.
But I spent my entire adult life blaming all my problems on capitalism.
I would shift that blame right over to taxes.
As a fourth generation Gatsby, I can do that.
That's right. Rich is cool again, guys.
All right, let's hear your self-sabotage initiatives to keep customers away.
We've been playing with insults. Usually three to four per customer.
Sometimes we post to our Instagram story that we're suddenly closing and then we stay here just so that we can turn people away.
We never have what people order even though it's on the menu.
Oh god.
When we're in a bad mood, we triple our prices and that is often.
You guys are nailing it right there. All right, let's talk about what are your milk options right now.
Oh, so today we have cacti, water, buffalo, avocado seed, and potato milk.
Trick question. We're all post milk now. You haven't heard of milk fatigue?
The milk is getting fatigued?
We are tired of milk.
No milk made in the house.
How can milk get tired? Milk don't be alive. We're now in our post milk era. I always knew this day would come.
Okay, I have tallied up your scores. You're a B+. Dang it.
I promise next year we'll be even more unapproachable.
Yeah, we'll go to therapy so we can weaponize wellness even more.
B+ is actually the highest score you can get.
I knew it.
We do that just to keep people grounded.
All right, you guys can attend my new workshop. It's called Healing for Baristas. How to calm yourself while flustering others. I will save you two spots