Link Log 21
2026-06-21
Great short article from The Creative Independent interviewing Sarah Wang, where she discusses her writing process and gave me another Literally Me moment. I love those moments, don't you? My favorite quote: I think I was able to sustain myself in part because I can't do anything else. I can't hold a traditional job down. I've gotten fired from almost every job I've had. I'm not that functional in a lot of ways. Literally. Me.
I've been playing this new game recently called Wesnoth. Well, it's not a newly released game, but it's one I caught on the Linux Mint Software Manager. I'm generally not the best at strategy games, but I've wanted to play them so I can at least attempt to become a more strategic thinker and flex my muscles in that way. I couldn't even beat the damn tutorial level at first, but once I did, I felt good enough to give the campaigns a solid shot. It's a really small game (about 500MB) and it's got a ton of replay value, so hopefully it'll turn into a fun little hobby and won't be as frustrating as Go was.
Former pickup artist Roosh V on his conversion to orthodoxy. This was a great testimony, outside of the conspiratorial tangent on depopulation. Why are right-wing guys on that stupid shit, anyway? I really liked the anecdote he gave about giving a young guy advice about asking a girl out from church. "Don't ask her; ask her brother." Insanely based.
Article from Compact on Argentina President Javier Milei's hard bet on AI. Uh, yeah, Argentina has always been kinda sus to me, man. Of course, Milei's whole schtick about being a hardcore techno-libertarian who wants to "destroy the state from the inside" is clearly cannon fodder for larger economic powers to avoid taxes. That's what it always is, man: avoid the taxes and keep the money from going stagnant. Well-being? Personal stability? Nah, baby, we gotta keep the gravy train moving or else it's all gonna crash. Reading shit like this makes me want to open three credit cards like right now.
Michael Silverblatt on his love of reading. This was a talk he gave to the Cornell creative writing program back in 2010, and it made me cry like a baby. I was a fan of Bookworm after discovering it back in 2017, and delighted in Silverblatt's sensibility and enthusiasm when discussing books with their writers. He made a distinct criticism of the current lit crit circuit: that most of them spend time either talking about books they don't like, or even worse, not reading them at all. We have all this talk about post-literacy or declining rates in functional literacy among children, but truthfully, it's less about being able to read, and more about not being able to read good books—the ones that challenge us emotionally and intellectually. We need more books where writers aren't afraid to use obscure words or turns of phrase; there shouldn't be so much concern about readability, and there should be infinitely more concern about unreadability—that's how reading helps us actually grow.
Longer essay from Aeon on the emotional struggles of being born wealthy. Most of the anecdotes in this article aren't from wealthy people themselves, but their beneficiaries: children, siblings, nieces, nephews, etc. Coming from money, but not actually having money, is a weirdly torturous existence, I must say. You have access to all these powerful people, all these immense resources, yet you're still under the thumb of whatever patriarch or matriarch you had to give your Power of Attorney to. That's gotta be tough, and I understand their struggles with personal agency and trying to fit into the dead concept of the "middle class." Most people who are "middle class" these days are just wealthy, but don't have the business sense to do anything with their money other than put it away and invest it into monolithic ETFs or some other "diversified" asset class. Still, some of these people are insane with their liberal delusions; putting their money to work by investing in refugee camps is stupid; those refugees wouldn't even care if you lived or died, so helping them is a weird way to cope with this self-imposed guilt. Maybe, uh, I don't know—pay some fucking taxes?
Cool short piece by Taylor Troesh about pumpkins.
An article from BBC exalting Finnish libraries. When you're in a rich, high-trust society like Finland, good library systems are a fairly predictable symptom of that. Here in the US, our libraries are less opportune for the public, particularly in cities that are liberal like Finland, because they usually just become makeshift camps for homeless people. And of course, those people end up stealing any resource given to them that isn't, well, a book. The article tries to describe the success of Finland's libraries as a result of higher government spending and historic roots in sharing things like farm equipment. Unsurprisingly, they didn't go into why that is exactly, so I'll spell it out for you: when everyone looks the same and speaks the same, it's easier to get along.
Tiffany Day's Boiler Room set was awesome. Hyperpop nostalgia beats.
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