Smart people have told me,

"I don't actually think Trmp is an asset of Putin's, but I don't know what he would do differently if he were,"

and I think about that a lot.

My current age is "if I let the algorithms show me clothes online, it's a lot of Eileen Fisher, and I don't hate it."

The woman asked me something about the bread.

I understood nothing.

Languages have an excellent sense of humour.

Just when you think you have arrived, someone asks an unexpected question about a baguette.

Perhaps fluency isn’t a destination.

Perhaps it is simply having fewer baguette moments.

Keep collecting the words for yours.

(3/3)

The Taxi Driver

The taxi driver asked where I was from.

Germany.

Then what I was doing here.

Then how long I had been learning French.

Five minutes later we were discussing politics, food and whether Paris had become too expensive.

I got out of the taxi feeling fluent.

The following morning I went into a bakery.
...
(2/3)

I got a very short email newsletter from a language-learning app

It was so good

Why?

Because it was so short but told a little story. Here it goes:
(1/3)

Me: "You use Outlook, right? Why is it that every Saturday I have to go into my junk folder and rescue all the newsletters I have signed up for? I've put them on the safe sender list I-don't-know-how-many times."

Partner: "Last week I emailed a reminder TO MYSELF and Outlook put it in the junk folder."

😮‍💨

Due to a typo in the meeting minutes I sent out at the end of the day, management is now expecting us to deliver a new intranet built on Microsoft SharkPoint, and frankly, the team is PUMPED.

In 1963, the State Department got its first computer, decided to refer to it as female (the first computers literally were women, who sat at machines and computed), and named it Maggie for its magnetic tapes

The editorial team at the Department of State Newsletter added a boob joke when writing about it

I don't know a LOT about farming, but I was sure I knew where eggs come from.

You know Brick and other gadgets that block apps on your phone?

Writer @JustinPot shares an app that lets you instead scan a QR code that you print to do the unlocking instead. Or you can choose to scan ANY barcode, like on a book or a box of granola, instead.

https://www.wired.com/story/you-dont-need-to-pay-for-distraction-blocking-software/

Ah Saturday, the day when I rescue three to four newsletters from my junk folder because Outlook still doesn't understand when I've marked someone a safe sender

Waiting for the day when people

use AI agents to hire

Doordash/Seamless/GrubHub/Uber/Lyft/Instacart drivers

to protest the government for them

for its lack of AI policies.

Headline Writer Hit By Subject-Object Confusion, Unable to Tell Who is Responsible for Layoffs and Who They Happened To.

15. On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, Stephen King (2000), audiobook read by King. Another book about both writing and life. King is really funny.

16. Misery, Stephen King (1987). After On Writing, I really had to listen to the audiobook of Misery and I GASPED out loud multiple times.

17. This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage, Ann Patchett (2013). A book of gorgeous essay with universal reflections.

18. Trust, Hernan Diaz (2022). A good story well told, and through multiple points of view.

12. An Unexplained Death by Mikita Brottman (2018) is a read-by-the-author audiobook. In fact the physical book is hard to find because it's out of print. But it's a fun one if you like true crime/memoir, history, architecture, psychology of crime. Suic*de discussion warning.

13. Into the Wild, Jon Krakauer (1996). I read this book many many years ago and listened to the audiobook recently. A+.

14. My Year of Rest and Relaxation, Ottessa Moshfeigh (2018). I re-read this book once a year.

9. The Coin, Yasmin Zaher (2024). I'm a HUGE SUCKER for fiction about bat-shit crazy women. Zaher goes there.

10. Midnight in Chernobyl (2018) by Adam Higginbotham may convince you that the only reason human kind still exists is luck.

11. The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong (2025)—I thought this book was going to be heavy and difficult. It's not. It's about poor kids who work in food service, and if you have ever done that, you should read it.

6. Pick a Color (2025), Souvankham Thammavongsa. I read it bc I live in Laos currently, & the author is a Laos refugee in Canada. A tough immigrant woman runs a nail salon. It's introspective without giving away too much. Very good.

7. Mailman: My Wild Ride Delivery the Mail in Appalachia and Finally Finding Home by Stephen Starring Grant (2025). A jaunty little memoir about the postal service.

8. A Marriage at Sea, Sophie Elmhirst (2025). A novel-like true story of surviving a shipwreck.

3. My Death (2004), a little novella by Lisa Tuttle. Do you like weird? Creepy-weird? Read this

4. Tell Me Everything (2023, audiobook), Erika Krause. I've been getting into true crime/memoir hybrids, and this is a great one. Krause becomes a private investigator, and then she tells you about her own past. Trigger warning for r*pe

5. Swamplandia! (2011), Karen Russell. A family of alligator wrestlers in Florida who are stuck in the past come to terms with the present. Also r*pe warning

IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER

1. Alexander Chee's How to Write an Autobiographical Novel (2018). It's a collection of essays but comes together as memoir. Lovely.

2. Audition (2025) by Katie Kitamura. The library copy of the audiobook was available soonest, and it didn't disappoint. Loved it so much I stayed on the waitlist for the ebook and re-read the first chapter with my eyeballs.