Musings & Links for January 2, 2026

Happy new year, friends.

We closed out 2025 with my ideal party: surrounded by friends, drinking batched cocktails, eating decadent finger-food, encircled by near-feral children, and in bed by 9:30pm.

I have some fun and exciting plans for 2026, and I hope you do too. Today is my son’s first birthday. It’s wild to think how radically different our life is today than it was a year ago. The fact that it’s nearly 80 degrees Fahrenheit outside today in Waco, whereas it snowed in Austin the week we brought the boy home just accentuates this.

Here are some things I’ve found compelling this past week. Have a great weekend!

• My favorite fitness blogger, Mythical Strength, wrote some excellent thoughts on things he believes at age 40. I’m taking some of this to heart as I pursue my own strength goals this year.

• Alan Jacobs points out the error of experts acting as experts outside their own expertise, and how it serves to undermine social trust of actual expertise. Behavior like he identifies has caused me to lose respect for a number of writers and thinkers over the last decade.

• Speaking of trust, Mike Pesca on the faux-outrage over Bari Weiss’s editorial decisions at 60 minutes, and the falsehoods such outrage promulgated, poignantly demonstrates why many Americans continue to distrust entrenched legacy media.

• While the news cycle perpetuates a narrative of unceasing decline, it’s important to be reminded of the good things that happened.

• Patrick Collison and Tyler Cowen have introduced a grant for artists building an aesthetics for the twenty-first century. Given the drab sameness of everything (see the evolution of McDonald’s below), I’m curious to see what comes out of this.

• Mediaeval Baebes provided much of the soundtrack this Christmas.