Weekly Digest 042

Week of 5/16 - 5/22/2026

The Weekly Digest is a weekly (no shit?) update that captures highlights from the week that was. At the end of each week, I share a collection of thoughts, recommendations, and links. Like everything else I write, it's awesome, but it may be too long for email so make sure you click through.

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🏡 The Honey-Do List

On Personal Projects

House projects took a more-or-less three-year hiatus thanks to Kiddo and his need for constant supervision. We’re settling into a routine where we’re able to split up care for him, and work in some house- and yardwork. On Monday, I hung a new flagpole (and Pride flag 🏳️‍🌈) and hung a metal sign for Mrs. Reads’ bakery shed. Tuesday, I set up wasp traps and Wednesday we donated a bunch of all baby stuff that was taking up space in the basement/bakery/gym/dumping ground.

I broke down and bought one of those robot lawnmowers. I have a riding lawnmower, but I am not mechanically inclined and after driving an EV around for a couple years, anything gas-powered is just too much maintenance to be worth it. Sunk cost fallacy, though; I’m still getting the mower repaired. At least with the robot, my work will be considerably cut down (pun!) and it can get into smaller areas that a full riding mower cannot.

There is a nagging sense of “unfinishedness” around the Reads Compound. I’m not saying it’s a dump, but it needs better maintenance than I’ve been able to provide the past 3 years. Homemaking has never been a particular point of pride for me, but I am coming to realize that being surrounded by half-completed or aborted projects isn’t a conducive atmosphere for… anything.

On top of that, my wife who — on paper — I love and adore, sojourned to New York for a book signing and left me with Kiddo, three pets, and a sourdough starter to take care. That’s too many living things! I expect all my wards will live to see the weekend. For me, it’s a toss-up.

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📚Book Bits

• The Gate of the Feral Gods by Matt Dinniman

  • This book seems like it’s inspired by old Zelda games with different themed temples/fortresses. Of course, it substitutes Zelda’s with anti-capitalism and fart jokes, but maintain that seem worldbuilding charm.

• Red Dead’s History by Tore C. Olsson

  • The audiobook is read by the guy who voiced Arthur Morgan in the game which is occasionally unsettling. It’s pretty good as history texts go but not enthralling.

• Bloodline by Lee Clay Johnson

Recent Book Haul:

• Grime by Sibylle Berg

  • I enjoyed this review on The Metropolitan Review by Colin Dodds and decided to pick this one up.

• Not Even the Dead by Juan Gómez Bárcena

📺Screen Time 🖥️

On to season two of Deadwood, about halfway through it. It’s a weird mindfuck that this show came out in 2004. Ian McShane and Powers Booth are so good. And there are so many characters just absolutely killing it, especially Garret Dillahunt.

I’m also 70+ hours into Crimson Desert and less than halfway through the main quest. For those who have played, I’m on Chapter 6, fighting my way through a castle siege and about to call in artillery strikes. This game is like some weird “and then” experiment with different systems. It shouldn’t work, but it does.

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💡Substack Spotlight:

Language Makes Horror Bearable: The Linguistics Behind Tender is The Flesh by Livia J. Elliot

An excellent essay on one of the critical aspects of Tender is the Flesh. Tender is one of my favorite books of the past few years, short and impactful, and — as Livia examines — absolutely teeming with depth, layers, and nuance.

Language Makes Horror Bearable: The Linguistics Behind Tender is The Flesh

Magazine Non Grata continues to put out excellent work. I shouted this one out on Notes, but here again: Sudana Krasniqi’s “Where the Mermaids Sing;” a search for romantic connection in the frozen foods section.

Where the Mermaids Sing

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🖋️Writing

On Intelligence, Artificial and Lacking

The Granta controversy is the big bugaboo on Substack this week. An obviously AI-generated story won a regional round of a writing contest and was published in Granta. Lincoln Michel goes into in depth and captures a lot of similar thoughts on the controversy.

As Sam Kriss points out, most of the winners… kinda suck, furthering a point that the AI isn’t the issue so much as we’ve allowed literary standards to slip so far that human slop is indistinguishable from AI slop.

What’s interesting for me is I have a sort of double-life with AI. Vinny Reads is, generally speaking, against using AI¹. Vinny Not-Reads, however, works in corporate America. This gives me a perspective that emphasizes the gap in what the computational power of AI can generate and what it can’t.

For example, AI can generate a better PowerPoint deck than I can; a “skill” I’ve been developing for almost thirty years². Yet even as an unaccomplished writer I could still sleepwalk through writing better than the Granta-winning pieces. This is because not all tasks are created equal; think of the old adage about 9 women not being able to birth a baby in 1 month. You can’t brute-force creativity, but you sure as hell can brute-force a slide presentation, or a technical document, or a term paper, or simple image generation³.

Circling back to the Granta controversy, it mirrors my evolving perspective on AI. While I do not like that billionaires and corporations are raping the planet, stealing art, and generally transforming the world into a bad science fiction dystopia, I have come around on recognizing AI as a tool. Tools are beholden to the whims, skills, and morality of the user. The gradual erosion of attention, delayed gratification, and standards across all of culture is what has allowed AI to proliferate so rapidly. That is the fault of human beings.

After all, everything starts to look like a nail when all you have is a hammer.

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🌸Fleeting Thoughts

Finally, some nice weather! And I mean nice-nice; sunny, warm but breezy. What the Whites refer to as “golfing weather.” I’ve been taking advantage where I can, getting outside and doing some of my reading and writing outside, too.

I crashed at 9pm last night after a whirlwind of solo parenting. I think we need to rebrand that to “free parenting,” a la “free falling,” “free climbing,” or “freebasing.” Single parents, you all are the real ones.

That early crash, naturally, put me behind on a number of my to do’s, and back around we go. I’m going to read through Tom Schecter’s Book Two of THE SHIELDBREAKER SAGA this week and interview him (hopefully) next Saturday on Live.

Until then.

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🍻+🤙,

— V

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1. A gross oversimplification. See footnote 3.

2. Fun Fact: PowerPoint turns 40 in 2027.

3. Emphasis on “simple,” by which I mean “lacking artistic merit.” AI for image generation is an interesting uncanny valley. Both with images and videos, there is still something that just feels “off.” It’s not a lack verisimilitude so much as — I think — an innate human instinct or repulsion. At least for some of us.

I also think image generation is an interesting use case. It is good for images you don’t need but may want. For example, the little cartoon avatar I use. Vinny Reads would not lose anything if I didn’t have that cartoon guy, but it does add a little bit of branding that I certainly would never pay an actual artist to create for a newsletter that generates tens of dollars a year. This is likely a whole different essay though.