My beloved American Library Association broke my heart this month. (This was not the first time.) The details are immaterial. I have seen it happen to everyone who cares about this association. My friends, mentors, and heroes deserve better.

No matter how much you love a community or an organization, it cannot love you back. Our irrational, steadfast belief that they can is a form of pareidolia. We see patterns and conjure meaning. It is our condition.

That gremlin, rampaging unchecked, is a big part of America’s present tailspin. Our most popular media sources care little about truth or facts. Many of them, like the current administration, see truth and fact as bugs to eradicate. Or as tokens to use in bending and beguiling. As ways to stumble into a reverse-engineered schematic of our biases and affections.

Libraries can ward off these daemons. At their best, libraries uphold privacy, scholarship, art, curiosity, empathy, mutuality, and trust. They are a communal endowment, achingly fragile and astonishingly resilient. They, too, deserve better.

Welcome to January 2026’s Disappearing Moment, an inventory of my experiences. I hope you enjoy it.

Podcast

Molly Conger’s “Cops & Klan” episode (2026-01-15) of her Weird Little Guys podcast gave me what I needed. Listen.

Nerdy Software

If you download Disappearing Moment, 2021–2025, you can read it in any browser with Flow. It’s free, open source, and protects your privacy.

Free Font

I wish I were more Courier: legible, modest, candid, mathematical. Courier Prime is Pope Francis with Brad Pitt’s ass and Jimmy Carter’s scruples.

Bougie Products

I hope you have some poster boards and markers.

Personal Finance and Investing

I believe in boycotts. The ICE List is well researched and has all the usual suspects. Yes, I’m writing about this shit yet again.

Reading

• Dr. Drang, “Freezing Pipes” (I Liked It): This month I learned.
• Heidi Li Friedman, “American Civil War II and Its Aftermath” (I Liked It): “… the American Democracy side and the Republican Fascist side are in existential disagreement….”
• Steve Yegge’s series on Vibe Coding, Beads, and Gas Town (2025-10-12–2026-01-29): I have enjoyed Yegge's writing for 20+ years. While I avoid all AI, this helps explain its appeal. See also, Maggie Appleton on Gas Town.

Literary Journal

The Kenyon Review: Writers want to be in it, journals want to be it.

Survey

To see the survey and respond to it, you have to subscribe via email and answer it through an email interface.

(I am not fishing for compliments. I suspect that some sections should stick around, and others are ready to graduate.)

Last month, I asked if you are making New Year’s Resolutions. It got more responses than any other survey. Five of you said that you are making resolutions, and six of you said that you are not.

I have had surveys in this newsletter for half a year. Those six surveys have had 46 responses from 21 readers. The thing is, I have 47 subscribers. I never would have expected that many people to submit responses. Thank you for playing along.

Each Integer Represents a Subscriber and Their Number of Responses:

• 0: 00000000000000000000000000
• 1: 1111111111
• 2: 2222
• 3: 3333
• 4:
• 5: 55
• 6: 6

Library Associations

Libraries are known for books, fines, shushing, dusty shelves, people experiencing homelessness, free WiFi, cardigans, hair buns, glasses, cats, tattoos, and fetishization (like every profession that is associated with women). Here are the things that I wish were associated with libraries:

• Abolition
• Accessibility
• Accuracy
• Advocacy
• Ambition
• Archives
• Art
• Assistance
• Balance
• Belonging
• Book Festivals
• Collaboration
• Convening
• Cooking
• Craft
• Creativity
• Curiosity
• Customer Service
• Dancing
• Diversity
• Ease
• Education
• Employment
• Entrepreneurship
• Equity
• Evidence-Based Decisions
• Falsifiability
• Film Festivals
• Financial Literacy
• Food
• Free Open Source Software (FOSS)
• Freedom
• Friendship
• Genealogy
• Generosity
• Gloves (for warmth, for redistribution, for free)
• Gratitude
• Happiness
• Heritage
• Honesty
• Honor
• Human Centered Design
• Humanities
• Humor
• Hygiene Products
• Inclusiveness
• Innovation
• Inquisitiveness
• Integrity
• Intellectual Freedom
• Intellectual Humility
• Jackets (for warmth, for redistribution, for free)
• Joy
• Kindness
• Kinship
• Laughter
• Learning
• Legacy
• Legibility
• Liberation
• Liberty
• Listening
• Local History
• Menopause Support
• Mental Health
• Mindfulness
• Mutual Aid
• Numeracy
• Nurturing
• Open Access
• Open Peer Review
• Overdose Medications (Naloxone, etc.)
• Period Products
• Plain Language
• Precision
• Pregnancy Support
• Privacy
• Public Good
• Public Health
• Qualitative Research
• Quantitative Research
• Questioning
• Reading
• Recording Studios
• Reparation
• Reproducibility
• Respect
• Restorative Justice
• Safety
• Sanctuary
• Scholarship
• Science
• Service
• Social Capital
• Social Work
• Socks (for warmth, for redistribution, for free)
• Stewardship
• Sustainability
• Tax Return Preparation
• Transparency
• Trust
• Understanding
• User Experience
• Valor
• Voting
• Wedding Dresses
• Well-Being
• Whimsy
• Xanadu (What if libraries were known for having stately bathrooms?)
• Yoga (or Qigong or Tai Chi or….)
• Zines

Thank you for spending a few moments with me. I appreciate you and look forward to corresponding again next month.

Brett

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