January 2026 Bakery
My content diet from January 2026.
I am most of the way through four books this year and I think 2026 is off to a really strong reading start in terms of quality.
- The English and their History, Robert Tombs ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- No Country for Old Men, Cormac McCarthy ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Maintenance of Everything, Part One, Stewart brand ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Every Day is Sunday, Ken Belson ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Claude Code and the latest Opus 4.5 model that powers it is my favorite software. If you haven't used Claude Code, this podcast is a walk through of why and how it is so amazing.
Patrick McKenzie
I had my tts.verynormal.dev transcribed a twitter blog thing on the future of UI. Pretty interesting prediction here.
Fun things to do with AI and your kids:
You can code a 2d space shooter, like this one. Or, if your kids are big readers, you can help them prompt a modern model to create an interesting nonfiction article on a topic of interest. For example:
I want you to please create a narrative non-fiction account of the Chernobyl Disaster in the style of Malcolm Gladwell, yuval noah harari, and patrick radden keefe. It should be 100% real and include scientific, technical, social, political, economic, environmental, geopolitical, social themes and content. You should only use real people and places to the extent that this information is available. Please write 5-10 pages covering the lead up to, disaster, and aftermath. All non English words should have pronunciation guide so they are easy to read. Please write at a fifth grade reading level, though the intended audience is an adult. Conclude with a timeline of major events. What clarification do you need before producing this?
Or if your kids aren't into nuclear disasters,
I want you to please create a narrative non-fiction account of the construction and cultural significance of the Eiffel tower in the style of Malcolm Gladwell, yuval noah harari, and patrick radden keefe. It should be 100% real and include historical, social themes and content. You should only use real people and places to the extent that this information is available. Please write 5-10 pages covering the plan to build it, reasons for building it, key players, construction methods, and ongoing historical and cultural significance. All non English words should have pronunciation guide so they are easy to read. Please write at a fifth grade reading level, though the intended audience is an adult. Conclude with a timeline of major events. What clarification do you need before producing this?
People are no where near ready for what is coming.
Sean Goedecke remains mandatory reading.
A friend of mine said coding is becoming fun again. I never felt like coding wasn't fun, but Steve Yegge's energy is awesome. And this month I've started using beads. Maybe next month we'll try gastown.
I discovered Nate Smith this month and I really enjoy his drumming and talented band.
Utterly heartbreaking and relatable essay by the late Tatiana Schlossberg on her battle with Lukemia.
The stat here is that 90% of Kalshi is sports betting. I'm so glad I have absolutely zero interest in betting on sports because the declining barriers to entry and the growing ability to lose money seem dangerous.
I like thinking about the link between dyslexia and entrepreneurship discussed in this Conversation with Tyler, with the youngest unicorn founder to date.
Boris Cherny is the creator of Claude Code. One takeaway from his post is that I'm going to start using Claude Code on the web (on my phone) more.
I'm Boris and I created Claude Code. Lots of people have asked how I use Claude Code, so I wanted to show off my setup a bit.
— Boris Cherny (@bcherny) January 2, 2026
My setup might be surprisingly vanilla! Claude Code works great out of the box, so I personally don't customize it much. There is no one correct way to…
A developer took the open source POSSE Party by Justin Searls and asked an LLM to analyze the architecture. This makes it easy for me to copy Searls!
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