Lyman Stone on where modern parents are wasting their efforts. Peer effects are very strong and you have decent control over your children’s peers (and your own peers too).
Uri Bram: The gods hate hoarders, said my excellent one-time poetry teacher, and grant creativity only to those who trust them to grant more, and so I ultimately think my previous policy was sacrilegious.
I’m facing the realization there is unlikely to be a 52 things I learned in 2026 this year. I’ve been spending more time building with AI and less time reading / writing and it shows.
60% of all Pokemon cards were printed in the past 5 years. Crémieux.
I was traveling a couple of weeks ago and Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea was in the room. I picked it up and read it in a single setting, something I haven't done in a long time. It was an excellent afternoon read.
Before reading the book, I had the sense that Old Man and the Sea was off peak Hemingway and that perhaps it was a bit self indulgent. It was much more enjoyable than its reputation led me to believe. I had a sense for where it had to be going and I still enjoyed the journey.
Just like The Road is actually a book about parenting, this book is about aging and not going quietly into the night. One's own courage is it's own reward.
A bonus is that it’s short. I finished in about 90 minutes, which makes it much more immersive.
While reading it, I realized that I've unintentionally read more of Hemingway's corpus more intently than any other author. The only other author that potentially comes close is Shakespeare and I've definitely read a smaller percentage of his work... although I hope to get to all of it in time.
Our oldest child started first grade at the local public school earlier this year. Much to her excitement, she’ll be taking the bus now.
The bus picks up and drops off a short walk from our house, 0.2 miles according to Google Maps, with a sidewalk the entire way.
We signed the release for daughter to be able to get off the bus and walk home by herself, thinking we could teach her to walk it and that she might enjoy the freedom.
Signing this form prompted two calls from the district to make sure we understood what we were signing and were truly comfortable with it. I obviously can’t know this for sure, but in one of the calls they gently indicated to us that we were the only parents who allow this for a child so young.
For clarity, I don’t blame the school here. They’re trying to do right by us and our daughter and if we’re making an unusual choice, calling to confirm is a reasonable thing to do. Still… this is a very restrictive default setting. No wonder 50% of 9-11 year olds don’t get to walk down grocery aisles by themselves!
Why isn't your codebase in English? Holden and I had a great time chatting with Kasey Klimes, who is really thinking deeply about how AI changes software development.
Worth your time
A colorized photo of Central Park during the Great Depression, New York (1933) pic.twitter.com/FIWjMvZON6
"Every artifact that can be elongated is, by people who do not read what they produce, for readers who do not read what they receive." Appearing Productive in the Workplace Not so at Good Tokens.
Megan Gafford on Brutalism. Perhaps I'm imagining it, but it seems to me there's something Puritan about the modernist drive to remove ornamentation.
It's moments like these when I wish I was reading books in a book club or an English class so I would be able to complain about them to other people. Instead I have you!
This is the most divided I’ve felt about a book in the past 10 years (since A Little Life).
There is some absolutely intoxicating writing in this book. There are characters and scenes that I will probably never forget. The hint of a mystical evil lurking in the background is so well done.
At the same time, this book is sprawling to the point of distraction. I almost quit this book on multiple occasions because I had grown so interested in parts of the story just to be dropped in another location and time to start over again. To the authors credit, the final portion of the book does make an effort to tie the threads of the story together but so much is left disconnected.
It reminds me of Michelangelo’s Slaves. Obviously the work of a master… and yet unfinished.