Hello friends and enemies, here is a little overview of stuff I enjoyed last year starting with my own writing and moving on to things I watched/read/listened to. I have a bit of backlog for essays I need to write, but I’m shifting gears for 2026 to try and keep up with the evolution of our ongoing bubble and its various frontiers—consider this a newsletter reboot. Nonetheless, thank you always to everyone who has read and subscribed and shared and commented and argued and glazed, I’ve deeply appreciated it all and it’s been more helpful than you know. To start, here is a roundup of some of my writing over the past year on here: Some Stuff I Wrote This (Last) YearTrapped In The Maw of a Stillborn God (January)
The Silicon Valley Consensus & AI Capex Part 1 (March)
AI, Indulgences, and the false promise of salvation (May)
This Silicon Valley Stuff Will Get You Killed (July)
Ride-sharing apps are bad, actually (August)
The Silicon Valley Consensus & The AI Economy (September)
On the Origins of Dune’s Butlerian Jihad (September)
Book reviewers (on Youtube)These three have read far and wide, are familiar with the SFF genre (which is my favorite) and its history and its authors and movements and milieus and intended audiences (as well as other genres), have very very particular taste and are loud about the limits of their interest, their blindspots, what does and doesn’t work for them, as well as when any of these things shift (revisiting work, new interests, outside events in the news, etc.) BookpilledOne of my favorite book reviewers on Youtube right now is Matt via bookpilled, with a separate equally impressive (and inactive) channel on thrifting (Thrift A Life). He does a variety of free content: book hauls, small batch reviews, large group reviews and rankings, book challenges that feature videos honing in on one particular book, as well as videos honing in on certain authors. He’s also got a Patreon featuring longform reviews of every book he reads. A quick slice of his stuff: A reflection on the work of Barry Malzberg, five books he hated reading in 2024, looking over a 98 rare/vintage book haul, and his baffling dislike for Book of the New Sun. Outlaw BooksellerGoing along with bookpilled is Outlaw Bookseller, a Welsh bookseller who has an amazing grasp and familiarity with science-fiction and fantasy. I’ve talked about both of them in previous recommendation posts and like them for similar reasons (they’re both incredibly knowledgeable and well read in the genre)—I will say that Outlaw focuses much more on video essays and most of his videos are tight argumentative pieces or in-depth dives into some aspect of the literature. He’s also got some interviews, something I don’t think Bookpilled has ever dipped into. A quick slice of his stuff: why Science Fiction isn’t fundamentally woke, on the intellectual and historical origins of genre SF, and his own take on Book of the New Sun. Cultural LogicAnd to round out this section, I really have enjoyed Jeet Heer’s Cultural Logic. I’ve been reading Jeet for a long time at The Nation, where he’s got a weekly podcast (The Time of Monsters) and a monthly column (Morbid Symptoms), but this Youtube channel features some of my favorite work of his. Each of the videos are broadly 20 to 30 minute videos building on written work of his, reviews of recently released media, or deep dives into specific individuals, there’s less of it than the two previous writers but that just means you have that much more to look out for in the next year. A quick slice of his stuff: Why you should watch Avatar, reflections on forgotten masters like Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore, fascinating looks at Thomas Pynchon’s V and Gravity’s Rainbow and Vineland, and more. MusicDespite the best efforts of my roommates and the larger Brooklyn community, I did not get much into Geese. I did, however, spend much of the year hopping around from old songs and music videos I last heard eons ago to persistent favorites across the past few years to new discoveries that have become favorites. The Old OnesOne old favorite I rediscovered this year was Panic! at the Disco’s “Build God, Then We’ll Talk” though I can’t really remember when I first saw the video. It’s the final song on the band’s debut album A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out came out in September 2005 but two decades ago videos and singles were released a bit more slowly (or maybe it’s better to say over longer periods of time). “I Write Sins Not Tragedies” is a song I’ve remembered for years and remember watching the video in elementary school (it came out around January 2006) while Build God’s video came out the following year (February 2007). Still, I vaguely recall seeing both on MTV around the same time. Either way, I love the song/video and it actually inspired an essay on artificial intelligence that I’m working on. There are two levels that play off each other well:
There’s a lot there to play with for artificial intelligence, for me at least, specifically around the fact that so much of the consumer demand for generative artificial intelligence seems to be companion bots, nonconsensual porn, erotica, and gooning material of various sorts. When it’s not sexual or romantic, it’s still masturbatory—wow, this is the most brilliant idea anyone has ever had, User! If it proves workable you’ll read more about it in the coming year. Back to the song: it’s nice, I like Panic! I like the bridge that riffs off My Favorite Things, the cello solo, the way some of the lines are sung sounding like they’re racing to catch up or shush the flow, highly recommended! One song I always wished there was a music video for was Nas’ “I Want to Talk to You”—this would be the second thing I did with a small fortune, right after burning most of it on trying to get an adaptation of GOD EMPEROR OF DUNE off the ground. Over the years Nas has had a tendency to try and make explicitly political songs, but they almost always fall short of the story telling itself. This song kind of waffles between them but it does a lot of things I really like:
The last one you should really just listen to the entire album. Have you ever listened to a rap album that doubles as a space opera? Introducing DELTRON 3030: New Crate FindsI wish I remembered how I found this song, but it really opened up punk music for me this year and I’ve been listening to more post-hardcore/progressive ever since. Another one for the life of me I cannot find but has been welcome. I haven’t listened to much Steely Dan besides what a close friend plays when driving us around the city and the needle drop in One Battle After Another. I loved this song, which is one of the dumbest songs I’ve ever heard but such a fun groovy time. BooksI read a lot of epistolaries last year because I’m toying with using the device for part of my sci-fi novel—unsure if I eventually will use the device. It led me to Augustus by John Williams, however, which was my favorite novel of that sort. A historical fiction that invents most of the documents used to (re)create the story of how Gaius Octavius Thurinus becomes Rome’s first emperor, then his struggles trying to plan for succession as his family and various forces conspire to tear things apart. Karen Hao’s Empire of AI book is a great look at OpenAI, yes, but also about the sort of power firms like it are accruing. It is imperial power in a true sense: resembling the evolution of colonial enterprises that were soaked in blood, deeply exploitative and extractive, rationalized via civilizing missions that adorn the guns with roses and wreaths. It will not look exactly like the imperial power of old or even relatively recently because the world has changed, but not so much because those imperial regimes still exist as do the relationships they carved into the world. What will AI look like as it successfully grafts itself onto governments, their police authorities, and militaries? What will its development look like as our grand old republic tries to forge a new imperial strategy that will sustain/regenerate global primacy? Never thought I’d read a Pynchon novel with a Nas reference (Bleeding Edge) or Crash (by J.G. Ballard) with a partner (or more accurately, the first few pages because they were so repulsed by it that I had to reread it myself). Bleeding Edge will probably end up being one of my favorite Pynchon novels (still have to finish Shadow Ticket/Mason & Dixon/Inherent Vice) for the horrible and amazing jokes, for the strange plot (who was responsible for 9/11 and who was responsible for its aftermath), for the concern about what happens next, for bits of red meat for me specifically (the tech bubble, Jay/Nas beef, etc.), and so much more. Crash, well I’ll let you read that for yourself. If you are unfamiliar, it is about a bunch of people who develop a new sexuality connected to car crashes. It is one of my favorite novels, but it is also easily one of the most grotesque things (maybe the most) you’ll ever read so steel yourself. MoviesI saw Lust, Caution at Metrograph with a close friend who’s taken to calling herself my movie domme—an amazing movie based in Hong Kong following Chinese university students who try to honey trap and assassinate a traitor collaborating with the Empire of Japan’s puppet regime in east China. It has such a mindnumbingly depressing ending that we stumbled out of the theater in a haze before remembering (with dread) that it was the night of the Democratic primary. What a pleasant night that was, leaving that horrible movie then learning we were about to witness a three-piece combo. Saw The Shrouds, Videodrome, and The Fly within three or four days (then rewatched Crash a week later). One of my favorite stretches of movie watching this year. The Shrouds follows a grieving businessman who creates technology that lets you monitor the decomposition of your late loved ones and the vast conspiracy behind the ransacking of multiple graves using this technology. Videodrome prefigures Infinite Jest’s Entertainment, following a CEO who discovers a broadcast of snuff films and gets pulled into a vast conspiracy that consumes and transforms more and more of his life. The Fly is a bit more deceptively simple: a scientist creates teleportation and as he tests it on himself a fly sneaks in and he accidentally fuses with the creature. None of these descriptions are doing the films justice. David Cronenberg is one of the only filmmakers with anything interesting to say about what technology is as well as what it does to human relations, is a huge romantic to boot, and keen on making movies that break my heart & make me squirm in equal measure. You will get none of that unless you watch them! Bound and Jade were two of my favorite erotic thrillers I watched this year—the former is such a sleek sexy film, I can’t believe this was the Wachowski sisters first film. Bound is about a lesbian ex-con seduced by a wife next door who hatches up a brilliant scheme: lets steal from my husband, a piece of shit mafia money launderer, pin it all on him, and run away together. What could go wrong? Jade is an erotic thriller that people say is not erotic or a thriller, these people are idiots. They will buzz in your ear about how this means it is a bad movie, about how it wasted the talents of Linda Fiorentino. It is a great movie, she is amazing in it, and it is so clearly a deconstruction of the genre that I want to hit them over the head. The plot follows a DA’s attempt to unravel a conspiracy involving sex, political corruption, and MURDER that goes up to the highest levels. It features what is one of my favorite car chases in any movie, honestly right behind One Battle After Another’s chase, it is full of so many dead ends and wispy mirages that never become anything. As it probably would be in real life. The Last Seduction was another erotic thriller I watched in this stretch, also starring Fiorentino who I kind of became obsessed with after seeing this movie (and learned that the idiotic reception to Jade eventually sank her career). This film is from the perspective of a femme fatale played by Fiorentino, who steals $700,000 from her husband and fucks off to a small town (Buffalo) where she gets a new name, a new job, and a new mark. She is one step ahead of everyone at every single point of the movie and it is a sight to behold. Anything more would be a spoiler, watch this and all the others as soon as you can! Next up, you’ll be getting pt 2 of my AI Bubble in 2026 essays. I’ve also been inspired by Brian Merchant posting more speculative fiction here (he just shared Busy by Omar El Akkad, from a short story anthology he published at TERRAFORM that I blurbed). I am sitting on a few dozen short stories, I only write them for readings I’m asked to do—I like to write a new story for each one and use that as an experiment for something I’m thinking about doing in my actual novel. Sometimes I am trying to ape a certain author’s voice or play with one specific part of it or outright steal an image they use, sometimes I’m testing out a character in an intrusive scene that I think might help me understand them, sometimes I’m just tending to the garden and seeing what’s growing, you know how it goes! To everyone who read and subscribed last year: thank you for supporting my work, with your money or your attention! I hope to be a bit more consistent and ambitious with this newsletter in the new year, here’s to 2026! 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