Online Reading (Jan 19, 2026)

A weekly(?) summary of some of the best newsletter, blog, magazine, newspaper, journal, and other online writing I've read. I have quite the backlog of reading that I've been keeping in Bear but I don't think anything is so dated that it'll feel irrelevant.

I always have the feeling I need to store things so that I never forget them. I might record it in a book with a Post-it note, but I might not revisit that book for 10 years. Then I pull it off the shelf and I think, “Oh god, I remember that. That’s why I put the Post-it note there,” and then I’ll use it. So I have mental storage in my head at all times.
Meet Angela Hill, the Photographer Behind the World's Coolest Bookshop

While Arabfuturism cannot be pinned down to a concrete definition – intentionally so – vague science-fiction aesthetic descriptions are associated with it as well as a vehement rejection of our quotidian, everyday understanding of temporality.
Arabfuturism: Science-Fiction & Alternate Realities in the Arab World

Today's artificial intelligence is a tool for generating new numbers from patterns in massive piles of old numbers. Given the recent ebullience around AI, it's important not to lose sight of this. These tools are no doubt dazzling, but they are essentially next-word predictors, or next-pixel predictors.
The Desire Called Synthesis | Alexander R. Galloway

And by “great criticism,” he (Jacob Geller) means writing that goes beyond box-ticking, that understands video games as experiences and not fixed products.
Even When You’re Not Playing, You’re Playing: On “Critical Hits”

At different junctures, my siblings and I all tried public school, curious to know how our peers lived. I briefly went to fourth grade, for example, where the trifling emotions associated with immaturity—greed, envy, fear, conformity—overpowered the inspiring and desirable attributes of childhood: compassion, curiosity, imagination, playfulness.
The Unschooled Life: Astra Taylor's Story