A sweatpants tablecloth

and that tweet about "female alt lit"

Firstly, I’m thinking about changing the subscription cost of Selling Out to incentivize myself away from jobs I don’t care as much about. I love writing here, and have truly appreciated the response, so it would be cool to feel better about prioritizing it more. If you were already considering it, I’d get that $50 annual rate while it’s still an option.

For Passerby’s Open Tabs column, I gave a list of recs including a box cutter, a children’s book, and candle adhesive. At the New York magazine Culturati 50 party, I spoke to Artforum’s Lola Kramer and was pictured in her holiday roundup. Yesterday, the Irish Times published a nice little review of Grand Rapids by Maija Makela.

Tonight, I’ll talk to Madeline Cash at the sold out launch of her book Lost Lambs: 7pm, McNally Jackson Seaport. Waitlist is here. DM or email me questions you think I should ask?

On Thursday, Book of the Month Club announced Lost Lambs as part of their January 2026 list with a party and live podcast recording on the roof of Nine Orchard. “Name something you pretend to like because everyone around you does, but you actually can’t get behind,” said the host. Madeline quickly responded, “London” (where her boyfriend is going to school), and then, “sorry, honey.”

That evening—which moved from bar to bar—was glazed with gossip and fodder for it: people making out in a banquette, me saying “banquette,” a man who’d moved to New York four months ago mocking that word—“ban-quette!?”—and the same man telling Zoe, who is from the Upper West Side, that the people in her neighborhood looked AI-generated. He then said that New York was difficult, that maybe he shouldn’t have moved here, and we nodded.