This 13-minute animated short film Forevergreen is delightful food for the soul. The filmmakers released this digital book on the art that made up the film. The porcupines are my favorite.
Tags: #animation #short-film #art
I got a 3D printer for fun and making stuff and now it’s my whole personality. (More on this soon.) It is also an outlet for dealing with my rage and heartbreak about the horrific murders and actions by ICE, Border Patrol, and federal agents here in the U.S. I’ve been printing and distributing community protection whistles in bulk with this incredible crew. Need whistles for your community? Request them here.
Tags: #3d-printing #protest
The most common piece of personal finance advice out there is to “know your net worth”—the number that represents your assets minus your liabilities. As a money nerd supporting a family in an expensive city, for years I viewed that number as a measure of how well we were doing.
It’s easy to make a number more important than it is. When the number went up, I felt good. When it went down, I felt bad. Eventually, I realized: this game is meaningless. It’s putting points on the most boring scoreboard in the world. That’s why my favorite idea in Bill Perkins’ book Die with Zero is prioritizing net fulfillment over net worth.
I’d rather spend my time and energy trying to live the most fulfilling life I can than to accumulate a sum of money. Money itself doesn’t build relationships, create memories, bring you closer to your loved ones, or express who you are to the world. It’s how you spend money that can make those things easier.
When you optimize for net fulfillment over net worth, it’s a whole different game. It shifted my “save to make number go up” mindset to a different frame: “spend what we are able to on the things that matter most.”
So what are the things that matter most? This is a personal question, and you will have your own answers. Three years ago, I added a “Net Fulfillment” tab in front of the “Net Worth” tab in my personal finance spreadsheet. I use it to jot down the things I got the most fulfillment from, whether they cost money or not. Filling in and looking over the list each month is my favorite part of managing our money. Things that require discretionary money often make the list—like travel, home improvement projects, gifts, and going to shows. Things that don’t cost money also make appearances—like time with friends and family, enjoying nature, moving my body, learning and making things, and time to myself.
Once I started looking at our finances through the lens of net fulfillment, I wanted to cut every low-fulfillment expense. Again this list will be different for everyone. For me, it includes “stuff” that clutters our space but doesn’t bring enough value to justify it. Subscriptions that aren’t worth it. Tools I fight with or don’t enjoy using. Items that don’t look good or elevate the space they take up in my life aesthetically. Activities and social obligations that I do because I’m supposed to, not because I want to. Mindless purchases I make because I’m looking for a dopamine hit; things I need because I didn’t plan or think ahead; buying things to prove myself to others, or manage appearances. These kinds of purchases will always happen because I’m human, but an honest inventory helps me be more aware of it going forward.
The ability to save money is an important life skill, and so is the ability to spend it well. When I look at everything my family spends our money on, my goal isn’t to spend the least possible so we can save the most anymore. Instead, it is to spend as much money, time, and effort as we are able to on the things that bring the most joy, meaning, connection, and satisfaction.
Tags: #money #fulfillment
I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won’t have to die.
The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren’t even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they’re doing it.
— Anne Lamott in Bird by Bird, one of my favorite books about writing.
January 1st may be an arbitrary Gregorian boundary condition, but I love an annual moment to take stock and plan change. This year I’m focusing less on resolutions to achieve ambitious goals—write a book, run a marathon, drop 40 pounds—and more on intentions to improve my daily habits in small ways. Things like: plug my phone in another room before I go to bed, start my day with morning pages, eat a hearty breakfast to fuel the day, stop snacking after a lighter dinner, add one more workout per week.
I’m only fifteen days in here, but so far, so good. The first week I had to train my attention on these changes and work to make them. This week, they are feeling a bit easier and more automatic. If I keep at it, at some point these changes will be no-brainers, and it’ll be time to make new tweaks and improvements. Wish me luck. What changes are you making in 2026?
Tags: #achievers #habits #writing #new-year
Happy New Year! My favorite January tradition is treating myself to a fresh new notebook. A friend asked our group what our best notebooks are, and that question was a gift because I have thoughts.
Here’s what I said.
How do you use your notebook and what do you need from it? When my notebook is my daily driver, I am really hard on it. I take it with me everywhere and fill it cover to cover. I don’t want to worry about damaging it or be precious about losing it or caring for it. I want it to be easy and feel great to write in every time I have something to get out of my head. Like all great tools, the best notebook makes me want to use it.
My ideal notebook must: lay flat while open, stay closed while bouncing around my bag, have a wayfinder to my current page, not be too big or too small, look great, and feel good in my hands. The pages have to be thick enough to handle my favorite pen and not bleed or press through ink. A notebook gets bonus points if it has perforated pages to tear out, a folder inside the cover to store bits of paper, and if its pages are numbered. I like a generous header, footer, and margin on the pages, too.
When I’m in fulltime pen-and-paper mode, I grind through several $10-$30 notebooks a year, and re-buy the ones I want to use again. Here are a few notebooks I’ve enjoyed filling in recent years. (No sponsors or affiliate links here—just notebooks I’ve loved.)
I just received a Hokusai: The Great Wave Artisan Art Notebook as a holiday gift. The soft vegan leather cover is etched with one of my favorite pieces of art in the world, and feels great to hold. The wave on the page edges really got me, too. This is a notebook I do want to take care of, so it mostly stays at home and I’m using it for morning pages.
MOO’s hardcover notebooks come with a hard case and I beat the heck out of mine on my daily NYC commute and they took no damage. I kept the cover in my bag and slid it in when I was heading out the door. I don’t know how they made the binding, but this is the only hardcover notebook I’ve used that actually lays flat when open.
Poppin’s medium softcovers feel nice in hand and have fun solid colors. The first one I used was a freebie that came with a Poppin office furniture order, and I assumed it would be a low-end throwaway. Turns out I really liked how compact and put together it was, and I wound up buying more to use as my daily work planner and note-taker once I finished the first one. I’ve filled several of these but my commute did do some damage to the edges of the soft covers by the time I got to the last page.
The Mnemosyne A5 is a smart spiral-bound option, which absolutely lays flat. It has nice roomy page header, and subtle thick lines separate the pages into thirds, which helps you draw things like a weekly layout. The pages are also perforated so you can tear them out. This notebook does not come with a bookmark, which I missed very much. I stuck a ribbon in there myself and it worked but it was janky.
When I was full-on bullet-journaling I used several regular non-branded notebooks—which all work, to the credit of the non-proprietary system—but the “official” Leuchtturm 1917 bullet journal saved me the time of numbering pages and building the index and yearly view pages.
There are a lot of beautiful, high-end notebook systems online and I’m tempted by them all. Then I’ll be standing in the school supplies aisle at my local drugstore and remember that when you love the feeling of pen on paper, a $6 marble composition book will call to you, too.
Happy New Year!
Tags: #tools #writing #note-taking #new-year
What do you like, and why do you like it? Personally, I have to practice answering this question. I get influenced by what others like. I have an internal judge telling me what I should and shouldn’t like. When I do know I like a thing, it’s not easy to quantify why I enjoyed feeling whatever it made me feel.
This past year, to practice figuring out what I like and why I like it, I rated and wrote a couple sentences about every single thing I watched, read, or listened to all year. As of today (late December), I’ve written 115 reviews of the movies, television shows, theater productions, books, albums, and podcasts I consumed in 2025. Whew! Here are the ones I enjoyed the most.
FilmSometimes even as a grown-ass adult you unabashedly love the most popular kids movie of the year. KPop Demon Hunters brought me the most joy by far this year. The art, the characters, the story, the songs all hit just right.
Rental Family was unexpectedly beautiful and had my heart in its hands in the first ten minutes.
Several documentaries left their mark on me this year. I sunk my teeth into The Quilters (on craft and purpose), The Speed Cubers (on friendship and competition and autism), Come See Me in the Good Light (on loving life), and Pangolin: Kulu’s Journey (on rehabilitating an amazing creature).
TelevisionHands down my favorite TV series released in 2025 was Dying for Sex, a story about two things relevant to my interests: devoted friendship and squeezing every last drop out of the days you have left on this planet.
I also fangirled hard over the new seasons of Hacks (Deborah and Ava 4eva) and Severance (just gets weirder in the best ways).
Honorary mentions: Adolescence rocked me. Families Like Ours stuck to my ribs. The Bear’s new season kept up its whole vibe. Operation Space Station inspired awe. The Last of Us left me a smoldering pile of ashes. Couples Therapy fed my inner voyeur. A Man on the Inside got me to laugh-cry both seasons.
TheaterIn 2025 I let my inner theater kid loose and saw more Broadway shows than I had in years.
Sarah Snook blew my mind playing all 26 characters in The Picture of Dorian Gray. I laughed my butt off with friends at Death Becomes Her. My tiny heart grew several sizes seeing Real Women Have Curves with my mom and my sister. The Come From Away live stage film on Apple TV+ cracked me open as much as it did when I saw the show at the theater.
I also loved Oh, Mary!, Beetlejuice, taking my preteen to see Wicked on Broadway, and the Merrily We Roll Along live stage film.
BooksI didn’t read nearly as much as I hoped to in 2025, but the most absorbing and affecting novel I could not put down was Sally Rooney’s Intermezzo. Elizabeth Gilbert’s memoir All the Way to the River got stuck in my craw, and seeing her on tour connected me to the depth of her story even more. I also loved Kaliane Bradley’s The Ministry of Time and Martha Beck’s The Way of Integrity.
Music & PodcastsMy favorite album to rage-bop to this year was Lily Allen’s West End Girl. Olivia Dean’s The Art of Loving was the perfect chaser. Thanks to the movies and the show, all three Wicked soundtracks got a ton of playtime in our household as well.
I didn’t do much podcast-listening this year, but We Can Do Hard Things continues to speak to my heart, and I admire what Ramit Sethi is doing in the personal finance space at Money for Couples.
Writing things down helps me understand them more, and compiling this list helped me see two things. First, I consumed a lot of mediocre stuff this year as a matter of habit or convenience or FOMO. Second, I found almost all the things I enjoyed most via human versus algorithmic recommendations.
As I look at other best-of-2025 lists publishing this month, I also see how much stuff I never got to this year. There will always be more to enjoy than time to enjoy it. How do you pick what you give your time and attention to? Tell me your secret.
Digital tech has flattened our experience of the world to text under a glass touchscreen, writes Amelia Wattenberger in a beautifully-illustrated essay. We should build more computer interfaces that serve the way humans experience the world—through their five senses.
I think about this idea in terms of how my kid sees me get stuff done. When I was growing up and observing my parents manage our family life, I watched them jot plans on a paper calendar hanging in our kitchen, write checks and stuff stamped envelopes to pay the bills every week, scribble weekly grocery shopping lists, plan a month of family dinners on index cards, keep an address book of names and phone numbers, call their friends on the phone, and spend Saturdays going to the bank, the butcher, and the post office. Today, my kid observes me doing all those different things but has no indicator of what I’m actually doing unless I show her and tell her, because it all just looks like me tapping on a phone screen or typing on my laptop.
Netflix released 142 gorgeous pages of digital art and behind-the-scenes stories about the making of KPop Demon Hunters, its most-watched film of all time. Writer/director Maggie Kang: “I knew I wanted to see female superheroes who were a lot more relatable, who like to eat and make silly faces….not just being pretty, sexy and cool, but with real insecurities.” This one’s a true visual feast — for the fans!
Be bored. Be by yourself. Let your mind wander. Let your imagination breathe and watch what comes. Watch what comes and have the courage and the audacity to just try. Try it out. Whatever comes into your head, try it out.
— Rosie Perez’s advice to young people in this NYT Magazine feature on Gen X, “the last generation that wasn’t online until adulthood.”
I can’t get this lovely second-half story out of my head: Paul Lundy, a man in his mid-50s, left his lucrative and unfulfilling corporate career behind to repair typewriters. There’s just something irresistible about fixing things with your own two hands.
Tags: #second-half #hardware #diy
Last weekend’s Black Friday deals lured me to my local computer superstore, where I picked up a bunch of parts, went home, unboxed them all, plugged them into one another, pressed the power button, and crossed my fingers. Beep! My new server booted up, in all its redundant storage glory. Now I have enough room to store and search all my photos and videos and files, without relying on Google or Apple or Amazon to do it for me.
It’s been about six years since I’ve built any sort of computing device. The last one was an adorable and simple Raspberry Pi that cost under $80 at the time, and is still blocking ads on our home network like a champ. In the meantime, I’ve been buying myself shiny, sealed Apple computers that are all set up for you out of the box. There’s joy in that, for sure—I love my MacBook. But when you build a computer yourself, it just hits different.
You research, spec out, and price your enclosure, hard drives, and RAM. You leave room to expand, and make sure you can easily swap a drive in and out later if it ever fails. When you power it on the first time there’s the wonder of seeing it actually boot up. There’s the ouch of damn-let-me-fix it when you see the RAM you added hasn’t been recognized yet—gotta reseat it. There’s that feeling of snapping it into place and knowing you got it this time. There’s the anguish of realizing that SSD drive you bought it turns out isn’t compatible with this model despite all your research, and having to do a second trip to the computer superstore to exchange it. (First rule of building a computer: It always involves a second trip to the store.) There’s the meditative work of formatting the drives, installing the software, and setting things up just how you want them. Then there’s the satisfaction of seeing the device lights flickering and thinking, “Hey, I built that.”
I love my shiny sealed computers that just work when I turn them on, but they never feel quite as mine as the ones I snapped together with my own hands.
It’s the easiest it’s ever been to make software–especially simple apps, single-serving websites, and scripts. This year I’ve been having a blast programming again and I’ve really embraced the idea:
Software is useful even if it has just one user.
This year I put together a few small apps for a single user: myself. They’re not scalable or secure or written to run on public servers or pushed to GitHub or tested beyond my own use case or ready in any way for other users or other programmers. They are all comically simple but help me get something done. They are home-cooked apps, and you’ll just have to believe me when I say they’re delicious.
In the spirit of showing my work—and to remember how and why I made them—here are a few of the things I built just for me in 2025.
I’ve added these to my Projects page, in the hope that others can take the ideas and methods and adapt and expand on them for their own purposes.
Did you make anything small and simple just for you this year? Tell me about it.
Tags: #just-for-me #project
High achievers are perhaps the most insecure people among us. Competitive people behave the way they do because without those daily victories they struggle to accept themselves. They need constant reminders, promotions, or media attention to feel good about who they are.
Despite how much public praise they receive, for many, achievement is a way to mask self-loathing, depression, anxiety or shame. Perfectionism and ambition can be coping mechanisms, with the unusual bonus that other people reward them for coping in this way.
— Scott Berkun is writing a new book about rules to live by, and this one is about aiming for stories versus perfection.
Tags: #achievers
Search and read Jeffrey Epstein’s email as if you were logged into his Google account with Jmail. Luke Igel and Riley Walz converted the House Oversight release PDFs to structured text using an LLM, and made the message threads available in this convincing Gmail clone. Be sure to check out starred messages, and click on the contact list in the sidebar to filter threads by person.
Tags: #data-visualization #llms
Brian Moore’s Busy Simulator makes repeating app sounds that make you seem incredibly busy. Fun exercise: observe how your body feels when you hear these sounds. I have different reactions to different apps.
Tags: #productivity-detox #art
Tai Ericson is using donated Harry Potter books to make portraits of transgender people who have been murdered, including Sam Nordquist and Ra’Lasia Wright. “The author [of Harry Potter] has contributed purposefully and relentlessly to a culture that vilifies and endangers trans people around the world. The portrait destroys her work, replacing it with a memorial to someone that lost their life to the culture fostered by the author.”
Artist Isabel Fish created a dozen animated horses using “unconventional methods” with her computer, including with smudges on her screen, Excel, Google Maps, and desktop icons. Inspect the website to see horse frames in the HTML comments.
Tags: #art
Like everyone else on the internet, I’m completely obsessed with Lily Allen’s newest album, West End Girl. Allen wrote and recorded all 14 devastating and detailed songs about her marriage’s breakdown in just 10 days. (Listen to them start to finish, with closed captioning on.)
“It was hard to make this record,” Allen said. “It was incredibly manic, and it was emotionally traumatic. But nothing felt forced. It just sort of fell out of me. That’s what happens when you’re writing from a place of truth, and without an agenda. This record was purely for me, and it was a way of processing things that I was going through in my private life.”
Tags: #music #creative-release
