Subscriber Writing, July 2026
Hello folks! Here’s the latest bimonthly roundup of writing written by subscribers, for the month of July 2026. Readers, please take a little time and see if any of these descriptions appeals to you. This post will exceed the allowed size of most email clients so please click through! I’ve discovered so much great writing through these roundups, and many who submit things report that they’ve meaningfully grown their audience this way. If you aren’t a subscriber and you want to take part in this opportunity in July, you know what to do. Be kind in the comments, far kinder than you feel you have to be with me.
Now on with the show.
Luke T. Harrington, My email is overflowing with AI chatbots, and I absolutely deserve it
Maybe that’s my greatest fear: that the world is filling up with language that means nothing because none of our language ever meant anything.
Alexander Zaitchik, Don’t Blame Old People for American Decline
Review of new Sam Moyn book
Luke Allen, A Humble and Incomplete List of Things People Can Actually Work Together On These Days
In my experience there are many issues that are possible to organize on with people across the ideological spectrum.
Christopher J Feola, America’s 2.5 Century Political Fight Club: Our government is chaotic, rude, and famously inefficient. And working exactly as designed
Almost all governments are designed as efforts of utopian optimism. Not ours. The Founders believed we live in a criminal world peopled by a sinful mankind, so they designed a system of government that works best when swarmed by criminals and charlatans, a Political Fight Club that brings progress and prosperity by making the bad guys fight each other.
Roxy, Emergency Management
A flash fiction response to the prompt “rabbits.”
Barrett Hathcock, What’s not to like?
Resist the categorical impulse!
Hal Johnson, What Is the First American Graphic Novel
An investigation, digging through the early years of American comics in search of the elusive graphic novel…
Pretty Good Blog, The Fifth Day
A four-day work week for all*
Steven of the Club, What is a Woman?
A funny-but-serious argument autopsy about definitions, edge cases, and the difference between being precise and being right. It begins with a simple question about an ordinary object, follows the logic until the definition machine starts eating itself - and also, there’s a turtle.
Joi, From Red Clay
A newsletter about my journey, where I became a warrior poet both by mistake and on purpose.
David Roberts, Wealth Derangement Syndrome Comes For Belle Burden
My counter to the New Yorker’s attempted and amateurish hit piece on Belle Burden’s memoir.
Landon Rordam, Vapors From Consciousness
This is a sample from Substantially Human, where I struggle with the question of what it means to be human in an age of AI. Emphasis on “human”. Trying to ford a nuanced path between writing it off completely and falling prey to the hype. Always 100% human written.
Matt Caito, The medical profession is failing young myocarditis patients like me
I spent three years navigating a medical system that didn’t know what to do with me. What saved me, barely, was learning enough cardiology to argue back.
Amy Letter, The incident with the squirrel
Here’s some light reading for people who want reassurance that the world doesn’t completely suck
Tony Bozanich, Equestrian Statues Ranked
The top 10 equestrian statues
Rob Benvie, Life of Intrigue: On Fathers, Paperbacks, and Unsolvable Mysteries
A discussion of my specific relationship with my father, but also a consideration of the clichés and conceits common to hypermasculinized, highly unfashionable (though commercially gargantuan) novels,
T J Elliott, chasing the dead: amateur Adventures and genealogy
The latest chapter in an exploration of how ancestry does and does not form that Irish Catholic guy born in the Bronx
Triangulation, Precision Exposes Vagueness; Culture Fills the Void
From gender dysphoria epidemic to microaggressions, a similar pattern emerges: we encounter an ambiguous reality, impose a conceptual framework to make sense of it; then the framework changes what we notice and how we categorize things. Lastly, we mistake the framework-dependent perception for a discovery about reality itself, creating the very reality it claims merely to reveal.
Dana Van Ostrand, Power and Love
Political change won’t happen because of the United States Senate.
Mark Newheiser, Don’t Start with Prequels: Publication Order Is Better than Chronological Order
Starting with Prequels is generally a mistake; there an explicit scholarly consensus that the Narnia books should be read in Publication Order, and the same arguments used there apply to franchises like Star Wars and the MCU.
The Memory Hole, As Odd as a Clockwork Orange
It turns out the origin story of the famous novel was also an invention of its author.
Joshua Pauling, Humanitas: Mundane, Magnificent, and Wanting More
This is a piece I wrote reflecting on the Pope’s encyclical on AI, Magnifica Humanitas.
Erica Etelson, The Small Town Revolt Against Big Tech
Rural communities are leading the charge against AI data centers
Bryan Vale, The Fourth Shed
A work of fiction. Miri owns a dive bar in post-Covid, “doom spiral” San Francisco. She did something during the pandemic to set herself up financially, but no one’s quite sure what. Then one day her past comes back to haunt her...
Mari Schindele, Whipping the Hellespont, or Why Write?
A story, a joke, and a defense of the five-paragraph essay all help me make the case against AI in education.
Andrew Berg, When a household practices hospitality, who is being honored: the host or the guest?
Unpacking the typical American understanding of hosting
Jeff DeLisle, 15-Oct-69
This is a poem based on an incident from my adolescence. Apart from some poetic license, it is fairly close to how I remember it, save for the names being changed. As we celebrate our nation’s 250th anniversary, it seems appropriate to call attention to and affirm the values we believe or at least hope the United States embodies.
Esther Berry, Against Ethical AI
An argument that Anthropic, the “good guys” of the AI industry, are delusional self-serving crocks like the rest of them
Dad Mag, What a sportswriter wants his daughters to know about the incessant march of time
Kevin Van Valkenburg is a sportswriter whose career has spanned stops at the Baltimore Sun, ESPN, and more recently, golf-focused media companies like Fried Egg Golf. We talked about how fatherhood can bring out vulnerability in even the biggest jocks, how to hold a marriage together when you’re gone for three weeks out of four, and what Norm Macdonald taught him about the only thing time never gives back.
A.W. Martin, The Virtues of Multi-Party Democracy
Most countries have different election laws which allow multiple parties to be represented in the legislature. The United States should adopt these with the intention of moving towards a system of ~5 parties.
Brian Howard, Jack Handey: The Greatest Works of Genius Ever Created By Man
A tribute to the funniest writer of the past 40 years.
Adam Whybray, We on the left could gain a lot from being honest
I felt ratty after an old socialist I know said that I shouldn’t say that //some// of the many, many immigrant-run barbers’ in our town are fronts for money laundering and human trafficking when this has been repeatedly shown to be the case, uncomfortably.
Jay, Wilkinson
After 25 years of writing for pleasure, it finally hit me last year that this has been a major way I have processed trauma, created pleasure and even joy. My essay starts there and extends into other arts. Your response would be very welcome.
Andrew Galvin, Secular spirit
An inhuman perspective on our lives.
Drew Holden, A COVID Autopsy, Part 1: ‘The Virus Can Be Stopped, but Only With Harsh Steps, Experts Say’
Part One of a retrospective on what I see as the media’s failures during COVID.
Kody Cava, A Few More Thoughts On the Problem of Psychosis
An argument in favor of involuntary treatment for severe psychosis, and also a response to various critiques from readers of my previous article on the violently mentally ill.
Eric Stinton, Here’s How To Approach Using AI In Schools
AI instruction should be harm-reduction through educating students about the pitfalls.
John McMillian, Inside a Campus Civil Rights Investigation
A first hand account of being subjected to an a skewed and annoying campus civil rights investigation.
John McMillian, When You’re Right, You’re Right
Complimentary review of Harvey C. Mansfield’s “Where Harvard Went Wrong.”
Old Mole, Competition under Socialism
Socialism is too often perceived as unfriendly to competition, and even as a grumpy and censorious opponent of novelty, fun, and progress. After the implosion of the Soviet system many concluded that the kind of competition necessary to an innovative economy is squelched even when socialism is democratic and liberal. Like many other arguments against socialism, this one is unsound.
Alexander Kaplan, How to Write an H.P. Lovecraft Story
A humorous critique followed by a more sincere review.
Nigel Bowen, The abrupt rise and imminent fall of the PMC
The professional-managerial class has overreached and is now being eviscerated by (a) AI-enabled automation and (b) a populist backlash
Ransom Wells, Love, Coffee, And Cigarettes: Survival in the Modern World
A lengthy reflection on how time, addiction, and reprieve intersect in the modern world.
John McMillian, Atlanta Feels Like Its Falling Apart
Encounters with violent crime in my neighborhood of Midtown, Atlanta
Jimmy Nicholls, Brexit didn’t matter much
The disaster perspective on Britain leaving the EU is not the gloomiest
Damian Penny, Death by 271,000 small cuts
Neo-Nazi rhetoric keeps worming its way into the mainstream.
Rob McDago, Rumors of my death have been slightly exaggerated
About my struggle with addiction, particularly the last year
Alan Cook, I’m not sure what you have in mind here. Mr.??
A long ramble on a couple of English idioms, mostly, but touching on some philosophical topics
Amod Sandhya Lele, Freedom of speech was never just about government
Yes, it’s still censorship when a corporation does it.
Jena Martin, Repressed and Recovered
After working on my podcast about the recovered memory movement, I wrote an irreverent rebuttal to critics who still insist repression is real.
Adam Omary, Research Fellow, HumanProgress.org
It has become fashionable to argue that intelligence cannot really be measured and that available measures are discriminatory. That is wrong, and harms the very type of equity it means to promote. See more on psychology and human progress on my Substack, The Psychology of Progress: psychology.humanprogress.org
Dr. Dana Leigh Lyons, DTCM, What still feels true after two years in Thailand
Life’s path can look all kinds of ways.
Samuel Lynn-Evans, Mission
Satirical account of my 10 years in Tech, where we’ve strived to make the world a better place.
Bram E. Gieben, Crisis Masculinity: Coffee is for Closers
In the final part of the series we look at the manosphere, ‘Adolescence’, and what must be done to help men, boys, and a society in crisis.
Dirk Hohnstraeter, Work and meaning
There is life outside of academia
Jesse Relkin, How Social Media Is Killing the Essay
A copywriter argues that social media has turned the essay into an instrument of branding rather than truth-seeking. Part cultural criticism, part confession from someone who’s fallen into the same trap herself.
Alistair Fairweather, There be dragons
Fatherhood is fear and joy, bound up with meaning and purpose.
Deferred Maintenance, The Never Ending Olive Garden Cheese Grater
The time my dear mother-in-law caused an obscene cheese incident...
Stephen Skolnick, A Bone to Pick
The biblical “rib” is a mistranslation. The truth is there, if you go back and read the old texts. Amd it’s obvious, once you hear it. But they’ll never believe you.
Harjas Sandhu, I can’t stop thinking about Obsession (2025)
Obsession (2025) is easily the best movie I’ve seen this year, and I need discuss it with more people. If you’ve seen it too, pleaseeee read this movie review and leave a comment with your thoughts on the movie so we can talk about it. Please. I need this.
Matt Pope, Edinburgh 2016
story about things turning up right when you need them, especially when you’re young, winsome, charming and keep your word to strangers
Andrew Printer, Good For Something
Good For Something is a living archive of writing—often illustrated—drawn from a life of adventure and a career in the arts. It began in 2023, during my first year of sobriety, as a place to take stock. My aim is to be serious, vivid, and entertaining.
Samantha Hedges, Self-sufficiency is patriotic
Self-sufficiency is a prerequisite to self-governing, and learning how to be self-sufficient begins at a young age.
Shane Cleveland, I Love You, Man
From kidney donation to poem recipient.
Penny Kittle, Penny Kittle
I write about teaching and learning beside my students. This is my 42nd year teaching K-13 across several states and in different roles, always beside young people, trying to center their development in literacy in all I do. I like to tell student stories--with their permission, of course. I have this tiny audience, which is nice, but I’d also like to connect with the larger world of educators out there. I enjoy your Substack, so thanks for considering this.
Mark Pietrzyk, Did the Bush Administration Lie About Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq?
The Bush administration made a mistake thinking that the Iraqis possessed large and capable WMD arsenals by the early 2000s. But it was not an honest mistake. The administration buried credible reports that the Iraq regime had destroyed its WMD and hyped reports that claimed Iraq’s WMD program was more threatening than ever.
Eva Sylwester, Weekend Entertainment Guide 6/13/26
Thoughts on the puer aeternus archetype, neurodivergence, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., The Telepathy Tapes, and more
Chris Burlingame, It turns out “picture this” wasn’t just metaphorical
This is a piece about learning I have aphantasia (the inability to voluntarily visualize mental images) in my forties.
Miranda DiPaolo, On the Reform seminary debate
A rabbinical student responds to the question of whether anti-Zionists should be accepted to and ordained by the only Reform seminary, Hebrew Union College, a Zionist institution. For non-Jews interested or engaged in the matter of Israel-Palestine, this is a glimpse inside the very real and sensitive Jewish debate about how to deal with serious political differences within our own communities.
James M Mills, The Pygmalion Delusion
Educated, progressive women seem increasingly prone to accepting unreal, morally and cultural popular and socially validating ideas - regardless of evidence or consequences. The strange case of Dr. Anna Stubblefield, which I describe here, is one extreme instance of this.
Robert Francis Lynch, Why Soccer Is So Boring
How the beautiful game convinced the world that boredom is sophistication
Dhruv Pathak, Log Kya Kahenge
For the 250th anniversary of July 4th, this is my attempt to offer an analysis examining the path of Indian American immigrants more than 50 years after the 1965 Immigration Act. The essay explores how the deeply ingrained cultural anxiety of log kya kahenge (”what will people say”) has pressured the diaspora to prioritize professional compliance and economic security over genuine self-determination and action that is foundational to our people.
Anthony McDonnell, What Souls Are Made Of: The Autistic Genius of the Brontës
A view on the importance of the Brontë sisters to autistics written by an autistic.
Robyn, Friday Legs
Robyn Writes is a weekly autofiction blog, with Friday Legs being another glimpse into my experience in the floral industry and all its colorful characters, particularly a delivery driver who always puts his second breakfast over your pew flowers being delivered on time and a few other folks I’ll never forget.
Jake Beardsley, It Matters Whether Your Gender Identity is Coherent
I am pro-trans, but I argue against the view that “it doesn’t matter whether trans women are really women, it only matters how we morally ought to treat them.” I argue that it actually does matter whether trans people’s identities are typically coherent. Luckily, they are coherent, and progressives should continue to defend the claim that they are usually saying true and informative things about themselves when describing their gender identities.
Joe Ballou, The Fourth Wave
Are we in the Fourth Wave of Democratization? From the Spain to the US and around the world, understand the leading indicator of actual democratic movement - People Power.
Maquisart, Oh!Darling...
This text remains to this day the one I’m the most proud of. In its strangeness, it expresses some of the deepest values I find in music. I hope it can resonate with some people, perhaps as much as the song resonates with my heart and soul. Thank you for this opportunity, I am much obliged.
Larissa de Lima, How Is Money Actually Created?
Wealth grew 8.5% in 2025; the money supply 4.6%. This post goes over six toy models of the economy (from a moneyless world to deposits), providing a visual guide to untangle growth, financial claims, and money creation
romanoff, The Tricky Trans Question (And How It Has Poisoned the Left Side of the Aisle)
This is a piece with several points but the basic idea is that the trans issue is, at its core, about breaking norms, which is ironic considering how the left never allows anyone to break any of their own dominant norms. This has alienated people who see a double standard from the left in this regard, and not allowed any semblance of a more moderate trans policy people can get behind to exist.
Fredric Hamber, Seven Tips for Success as a 19th Century Merchant Seaman
Insights from Richard Henry Dana’s Two Years Before the Mast
Steven McFann, Joaquin Murrieta’s Confessions
A historical fiction/revisionist western short story originally published in the Saddlebag Dispatches anthology Greed, Gold, and Gunsmoke (December 2024) about the infamous and highly mythologized outlaw Joaquin Murrieta as he grapples with his own “posthumous” fame.
Twerb Jebbins, What You Really Need is an Edible and a Vaporware Mix
An essay about the virtues of getting faded and watching Vaporware mixes on YouTube which becomes a medication on Louis Althusser, Walter Benjamin, and ideology in a Marxist sense.
Adam Piovarchy, Ok, but what actually is ‘Slack’ anyway?
A philosopher examines the contours of a much-loved concept from LessWrong
Rain Oliver, This episode of Bluey is called propaganda
What lessons is Bluey teaching adults?
Genevieve Conaty, What If I Don’t Got This?
10 things to try when you can’t face the day ahead
Equestrian statue article slaps
Holy shit!
I made the list!