BRING THIS BACK

I see this quite a bit. People posting photos of old tech, old gear, things from the 90s, colorful iMacs – “bring this back.”

Yes, do it. You don’t need permission. You don’t need the OK. Just fucking do it.

Write in cursive, buy a Polaroid camera, make a mix tape, burn a CD, buy a VCR from the thrift store, get a skateboard, collect old magazines.

No app, no platform, no techbro is gonna deliver this to you on a plate, so make the retro tech 90 worship life that you’re craving.

READING MORE IN 2026

I finally have a “books I wanna read list” finally (below), and also built a little tracker in Notion to so I retain more of what I do read in a given year.

So it worked out nicely that Josh Spector just shared an easy way to read more in the new year:

When you go to watch YouTube videos or scroll your social feed, pick up a book and read for 5 minutes first. Connecting a thing you want to do more of to a thing you already do too much of is a great way to build a new (and improved) habit.

On my list for 2026:

  • Darth Plagueis Star Wars
  • Revenge of the Sith Star Wars: Episode III
  • Attack of the Clones Star Wars Episode II
  • Star Wars Inquisitor: Rise of the Red Blade.
  • Supremacy by Parmy Olson
  • Empire of AI by Karen Hao
  • Careless People by Sarah Wynne-Williams
  • Irresistible by Adam Alter
  • Enshitification by Cory Doctorow
  • Mood Machine by Liz Peli

Favorites I read in 2025:

  • Unreasonable Hospitality
  • Four Thousand Weeks
  • Your attention is sacred—except on social media by Amelia Hruby, PhD

DOWNLOAD, BACK UP

On the first of the month I’m reminded to download my photos from my iPhone. I do this so I don’t have to keep paying Apple a monthly fee that just keeps going up, and I just like having my photos right where I can see them, in folders.

For December I have 215 photos, 54 screen shots, and 18 videos. I’ll keep that saved locally on my MacBook Pro (just 3.5GB), and start a new folder for January where I’ll dump the photos from my Nikon throughout the month.

Then, in February, I’ll move this January folder to my external hard drive.

My folders goes all the way back to 2002, but it’s not nearly as organized. The total is about 57,000 photos, which takes up 207GB on my 2TB drive, backed up regularly to BackBlaze.

Yeah, I miss the search functionality (finding all the photos of bikes, or cats would be great), but I love only paying .99 cents per month for iCloud instead of $120 a year.

EVERY BOOK IS A LOTTERY TICKET

From Cory Doctorow

“I have one piece of advice: if you read a book you love, tell other people about it. Tell them face-to-face. In your groupchat. On social media. Even on Goodreads. Every book is a lottery ticket, but the bezzlers are buying their tickets by the case: every time you tell someone about a book you loved (and even better, why you loved it), you buy a writer another ticket.”