Eight inches. In some contexts, eight inches can be enormous. Close your eyes and imagine it. Eight. Inches.

Now imagine something completely different.

You and I are holding hands. We are skipping and skipping and skipping. We skip for a mile like that, hand in hand. At the end of that mile, the ground under your feet is eight inches lower than the ground below mine. It is a gradual descent. Neither of us can feel it happening.

It is like a flower blooming. You can see the difference over time, even if you cannot perceive the incremental change.

We keep skipping.

After two miles, you are another eight inches lower than I am. Now there are 16 inches between where you are standing and where I am standing.

We let go of each other’s hands and keep skipping, side by side. Each mile you descend another eight inches. At four and a half miles, you are a yard lower than I am.

We keep skipping. And skipping. And skipping. After we skip 25,000 miles, I am 25,000 miles from where we started.

You are back where we started. You have circumnavigated the Earth.

I am 10% of the way to the Moon. That is what eight inches can do.

I took eight inches from Isaac Asimov. I wasn’t prepared. It hurt a little at first.

I could have been the English major he addresses in “The Relativity of Wrong.” Nihilistic, Solipsistic, Perfectionist, Absolutist. Kuhn was not a Kuhnian. Rawls kept changing his mind. Jumping off the roof to the first conclusion I could find.

Asimov points out that some ideas are more wrong than others. In this sense, “wrong” is not like “unique”. Something is either unique or it is not. Wrong has gradations.

It can be difficult to assess those gradations. You can accomplish a lot even if you are wrong about the shape of the earth. You can explore, navigate, map. It is just eight inches per mile.

Which is wrong. Very, very wrong. On a scale of “almost accurate” to “not even close,” you are Mar-a-Lago. You are guzzling cream with Kennedy and Paltrow.¹

Another gradation example. If you are good and smart, you have big problems with Tim Cook and the company he leads, Apple. It can act as if the Earth is a smooth, featureless sphere. Uniform. Hermetic. Also, Lick My Ass is its new interface and government relations strategy.

Its competitors are much, much more wrong.

For instance, Spotify is “2 + 2 = purple” wrong. It thinks the earth is flat. It thinks raw milk is healthy and fluoride, Tylenol, and vaccines are not.² Your subscription underwrites fascist lickspittles and weapons manufacturers.

Or maybe you care more about musicians than you care about justice. Spotify pays artists a lot less than Apple does. The difference between averaging $0.00893 (Apple) and $0.00361 (Spotify) is the equivalent of 28 feet per mile.

You can get three months of Apple Music for free. Apple will transfer your playlists for free. Apple sponsored Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl performance.

You can save money and be a lot less wrong than you are now.³

How I wish to live in a world in which “the solution to all our problems is to shop very carefully.” I mean! One of the few activities that I love more than careful shopping is solving problems. Since that utopia is still, like, three years away, can we maybe shun the worst of the worst in the interim?

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

Podcasts

• Notes on a Native Son (I Liked It): Interviews about Baldwin. The format reminds me of my favorite podcast, Bughouse Square.
• Particles of Thought (I Liked It): I take joy in the joy that experts feel when they get to share their expertise.

Nerdy Software

Just a QR Code is useful. Warning: hijacking is real. Don’t use public QR Code generators for anything that needs to work long term.

Free Font

Adobe is frustrating. It can approach perfection, as with Source Sans and the Source typeface family. Or it can out-Microsoft Microsoft.

Bougie Products

AAdvantage, American Airlines’ frequent-flier program, now includes free, in-flight WiFi.

Personal Finance and Investing

You or yours may have unclaimed money. I check for myself, my family, and my employers every few years and often find something.

Reading

• Isaac Asimov, “The Relativity of Wrong” (I Loved It): See above.
• Lorin Hochstein, “Poor Deming Never Stood a Chance” (I Liked It): Reminds me of the Keynes vs, Hayek rap battles. Except I’m very much on team Deming. That man could wear glasses.
• Damon Kiesow, “The Irrationality of Clinging to a Sinking Platform” (I Liked It): Your monthly reminder to shun writers who publish on Substack (or X).
• Viktor Löfgren, “AI Makes You Boring” (I Liked It): As does social media, and for the same reason.
• Christopher Mathias, To Catch a Fascist (2026) (I Liked It): Righteous information access and research. At once titillating and soothing.
• Margaret Moorman, “Roger and the Smooth Fox Terriers” (I Loved It): Like Roger, I am an atheist: I do not believe in reincarnation; our cat, Suki, is all the chipmunks. (Thanks, Jake, for the recommendation.)
• Mary Roach, Replaceable You (2025) (I Liked It): Longevity and healthspan: sure, why not? Also, bodies will body. (Thanks, Jenn, for the recommendation. Whee! Mary Roach has a newish book!)

Survey

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

(Note: I did not include Literary Journals in the survey or this issue. It did not work well as a dedicated section. See below.)

There were 11 responses to last month’s survey, “What Is Your Favorite Section in the Disappearing Moment Newsletter?” These are the most popular sections:

• Introduction: 6
• Podcasts: 2
• Bougie Products: 2
• Free Font: 1

How I Evaluate Literary Journals

Next month, or soon after, I will include Literary Journals as a list. While I like the idea of featuring my favorite journals, I kept repeating the same reasons for liking them.

• Archives: I want free access to the work that the journal has published. I want my published stories to be available online for free.
• Bold: The editors should explain how they evaluate stories. And should demonstrate it in the stories they publish.
• Challenging: I like a low acceptance rate. I am a snoot.
• Duotrope: I will not submit my work to a journal that is not listed in Duotrope.
• Editors: I want a stable group of editors. Not students, and especially not undergraduates.
• Fees: Free submissions, at least for now. As I improve, I may pay to submit my stories.
• Genre: I write humorous, literary, mainstream, or realistic fiction. That is also what I like to read.
• Hometown: I want my work to appear in journals that are based in my community (Philadelphia or New Jersey). This is the one exception to the Fee criterion. I will pay to submit my work to local journals.
• Inclusion: I want journals to recruit and favor writers from diverse communities.
• Journal: I want the journal to be a journal, not a magazine or some other type of publication. At least for now. Someday, I would like to be asked to write for the New Yorker.
• Known: I like it when the journal has published work by authors whom I admire.
• Length: I do not write flash fiction. I am not writing novels. I want the word counts to match what I write.
• Monthly Visits: I want journals to attract regular readers.
• Nominations: I don’t care if the journal has published award-winning stories. What matters is that it submits nominations. They have to believe in themselves and the stories they publish.
• Ownership: Copyright has to revert to the author after the journal exercises its publication rights.
• Process: The submission process should be welcoming. Well explained and inviting, with a bit of style and humor.
• Quick: Acknowledge my submission immediately. Or within a day or two if instant is impossible.
• Responsive: They have to get back to writers who submit within the time frame they promise. Slow is fine as long as they are open about it and hit their deadlines.
• Simultaneous: I have to be able to submit the story to multiple journals at the same time.
• Taste: I want to like the stories. At least one story per issue needs to stick with me.
• Unpublished: Support emerging writers. Be kind and empathetic.
• Venerable: The older the better. I want at least a 15-year track record.
• Website: Attractive, accessible, navigable, readable. I need to enjoy reading what they publish. As web pages, not PDF.
• Xenophobia: This is me making fun of myself. I am only submitting to US-based publications. There are so many journals that I need artificial distinctions to help me focus.
• Yearning: A vision for refining the qualities that makes them unique. In what ways do they want to be better? Why does it matter?
• Zeal: A love for literary journals and short fiction. I want them to recommend other journals that they admire.

Thanks to Brecht De Poortere, Charlie Fish, and Erika Krouse for sharing how they evaluate journals. Duotrope was really helpful, too. I might have more interest in its primary competitor, except Chili Subs uses Substack for its newsletter.

This issue is dedicated to our household deity, Hari (March 21, 2012–February 25, 2026).

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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