curation against consumption .17

how to stop brainrotting but like in an original way

i have been sick lately, and job hunting, which is an unholy combination if there ever was one.

this has resulted in exhaustion, and brain fog, and the dreaded endless scroll. the doom spiral, the feeling of helplessness in the face of regular, boring capitalism and also rising, spicy fascism.

so this substack is the result of me meditating on a few topics; namely how my choices and influences have led me to this point (of alternating between applying for jobs i don’t want and scrolling), exactly how much agency i can exercise in this moment, and the ways i can exercise that agency to reverse this sluggishness of the mind and of the soul that are paralleling the sluggishness of my body.

i know it’s super trendy to talk about brainrot right now, and how to combat it. and this is basically what this edition is addressing, albeit in a roundabout way. but i also hate hopping on a trend (i’m not like the other girls, you know) so this is not about becoming “disgustingly well-read”, or “reversing brainrot”, or “personal curriculums”, or even “going analogue”, or whatever trendy buzzword is floating on the winds of the algorithm toward me right now.

it is about critical thinking, reading deeply, and being curious. and maybe also a little bit about booktube, don’t judge me.

First, a sidebar…

Before we start, some resources I found helpful on dealing with what the fuck is happening in the world but mostly in Minnesota:

1. Snuff film political economy by Sarah Thankam Matthews

2. A Message from Minnesota by Mary Roblyn

3. A Murder in Minnesota by In Bed with the Right (podcast ep)

   1. They also released an episode on Alex Pretti that I haven’t had the heart to listen to yet, but I trust them and their analysis, it’s probably a good ep.

4. The Incel to ICE Pipeline by A Bit Fruity (podcast ep)

5. Scripts to call your reps if you’re American

6. Mutual Aid in Minnesota

7. Participate in the boycott of ChatGPT for having a MAGA donor for a founder and for allowing ICE to use their tool. If you simply must use AI, switch to another free alternative (Gemini, Claude) that also has the benefit of not being shitty and using dumb emojis. When you leave ChatGPT, make sure you also delete all your conversations and prohibit OpenAI from saving and using your conversations on their end.

Sorry for the big sidebar, but it’s been heavy on my mind for quite a few weeks now. And we shouldn’t forget them now that the news cycle/algorithms are trying to push other horrors on us.

But let’s get to the more light-hearted (ish) curated recommendations:

.01 - Annotating my books (with a nudge from @Plant Based Bride)

Listen, no LISTEN. This is the best thing I have done for my brain by far in 2026. By miles. By eons. Bar none.

And I was not an annotating girlie before 2026. I hated having a pen with me at all times, and I hated annotating physical books because it meant that I felt weird about lending them to people after. I also felt weird about, you know, “defacing literature” or whatever.

But I recently watched Plant Based Bride’s video on how to annotate ebooks and it changed everything. Like literally changed my life. I feel like I’m actually engaging with books again, my brain is switched on while reading, and I’m retaining information in a way I haven’t in years. Every book I recommend in this substack has been annotated to hell, and I feel like I had a vastly better reading experience because of it.

@Plant Based Bride (great Youtube channel for book lovers by the way) also has several videos on annotating physical books, if you don’t have an e-reader. I highly recommend also her videos on how to read critically, and how to focus.

am i experiencing brainrot or just a vitamin d deficiency?

.02 - Sand Talk by Tyson Yunkaporta

I’ve recommended this book to several people at this point and I still don’t know how to do it effectively. Not only because doing so can put me in the impossible position of trying to speak for indigenous people, but because this book is simply difficult to explain using a western system of thinking which necessarily shapes any review of literature.

Tyson Yunkaporta tries to impart indigenous wisdom and systems thinking in a way that is both accessible to western readers (it’s in a book, a format which Yunkaporta strains heavily against) and also just out of reach enough to convey respect for the unique lived experience of people I will never actually sit beside.

I suppose I would characterize this book as an invitation to think differently. It has stronger points and weaker points, but I felt my brain stretching as I read it, and I appreciate it for the exercise.

.03 - Ethel Cain’s Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You

Honestly this one isn’t about improving your attention or your brain or whatever. It’s just a damn good album. To be fair, it has been my reading soundtrack for like 2 months at this point, so maybe it is helping!

Regardless, the following is a series of disjointed thoughts about this album because it’s impossible to describe in a coherent manner for the fogged up car window that is my brain:

• “I know you love her, but she was my girl first” is an incredible line, and then girl gets replaced by sister??? Friends I am sobbing.

• I think I’ve listened to this album at least 35 times all the way through by this point. I’m literally listening to it right now.

• “Eighth grade death pact, strike me dead” tickles my brain in the best way.

• Dust Bowl goes SO hard, fuck. What did Mother Cain put in this?

• How are even the ambient tracks full bangers?

• “To love me is to suffer me”??? Like, come on. The album was made for me.

.04 - Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma by Claire Dederer

I spend a lot of time, as I think we all do, listening to critics talk about art. We hear opinions on art and pop culture bandied about every day on this here internet, and some of them are worth taking seriously and some aren’t. In this memoir/critical review, Claire Dederer pokes and prods at the question of whose perspectives we don’t just take seriously, but we take as objective. And why do these “objective” takes always seem to consider that good art is made my men who are, well, monsters?

And then what do we do with that? How do we deal with the monstrousness of supposedly objectively good artists, and the relationships we developed with their art before we knew they were monstrous? What, in fact, can we do?

It’s another book that stretches the mind and made me re-examine some well-trodden ground in my belief system. Read it if you want to think more deeply about a topic you’ve probably already thought a lot about.

.05 - Anti-Brain Rot Reading Challenge by @thisstoryaintover

Yes, I said this substack wasn’t really directly addressing brainrot, but sometimes you gotta recognize game. Jananie K. Velu, also known as @thisstoryaintover, got shown to me by the algorithms for her Anti-Brain Rot Reading Challenge which started in January. I’ll let you discover it for yourself, but I think it’s one of the more well-balanced yet ambitious challenges out there:

“The Anti-Brain Rot Reading Challenge focuses on consistency, consuming diverse media with intention, and forming your own opinions.”

This involves such challenges as: reading 45 minutes a day while annotating (!), reading diversely in terms of author culture, genre, and format, making a critical media journal and buddy reading, among other rules. But mostly I like Velu because I find her taste in books impeccable, and she is a north star for those of us trying to read more diversely.

Her 2026 book club has a truly stacked reading list, and I highly encourage you to check it out. I will not be following along as I have my own reading goals/plans this year, but here are some books I intend to read soon inspired by Jananie’s challenge and book club:

• Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI by Karen Hao

• Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives by Siddharth Kara

• Perfect Victims: And the Politics of Appeal by Mohammed El-Kurd

• Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century by Alice Wong

• Immaculate Conception: A Novel by Ling Ling Huang

.06 - Everything The Financial Diet is doing these days

I’ve talked about The Financial Diet before, because they’re the only finance-related channel I trust out here on this internet in 2026. But the team really stepped their pussies up this year, and I simply have to share. Here is some of the best work that Chelsea Fagan and her team are currently putting out, because if you’re going to rot in front of a screen you might as well learn something:

1. Asked & Answered is my favorite financial talkshow out there. It’s perfect, no notes (ok, one note, which is I’m hurting for financial content made for people that don’t live in the states, but hey that’s life). Fagan and her friend Erin Lowry just sit on a couch and answer submitted questions and engage in some light misandry.

2. Dynamic Pricing is Ruining Your Life was the best video essay of the month on something I previously knew nothing about and holy shit. Excuse me while I go scrub all my data from the internet right goddamn now. I will never buy anything online again. What the actual hell.

3. Just Getting Good is the new series where Fagan only talks to women over the age of 50 about life and money and I didn’t know how starved I was for content with older women until this show. God, it’s so refreshing. Plus the light misandry continues…

paris snow get so gross so fast but we ignore it because of the sunshine

.07 - Bibliophobia by Sarah Chihaya

I’m finishing this memoir right now and I may have to reread it immediately upon finishing. Which is funny because this memoir is about rereading, or reading closely, and the different ways that one can read both books and one’s own life.

It is equally about reading into things, getting too close to texts, and being blinded by your own narratives. It is also, major trigger warning, very much about depression, self harm, and suicide. The book swirls like water down the drain, circling around the inevitable mental breakdown brought on in part by an obsession with and fear of books.

Sarah Chihaya has this uncanny knack of sucking me into her narrative to the point where I start to worry I am identifying too closely with her text, and then turning on a dime and reprimanding me for doing exactly that. It is a masterclass in showing how good storytelling is also manipulation, yet it is truth.

.08 - Saffana’s Voicenotes by Saffana Monajed

Saffana Monajed is a comms expert and copywriter (hello, sister) who is hellbent on making sure you develop critical media literacy. If your algorithm is anything like mine, you’ve likely seen her short videos, where she is far more prolific than on her substack. And I will in fact recommend her short videos, something I so rarely do on this platform, because in them she asks interesting questions about propaganda and politics that always make me question my belief system.

But I prefer her substack, not only because I prefer long-form content for the sake of my brain, but mainly because Monajed’s writing is so insanely packed with wisdom and key frameworks that being able to go back again and again is essential.

Highly recommend her flagship post on how and why brands are obsessed with you, and how to spot manipulation. Also recommend her posts on how to save money, how to upskill/re-skill in the face of AI, and (I am not beating the allegations, folks) how to stop your brain rotting.

Catch up Corner

Rebecca’s quick bests not yet mentioned, no context.

Best reads:

• Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

• The Serviceberry by Robin Wall Kimmerer

• The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Best watches:

• The Wire

• Charlie Kirk: The Man Who Broke Politics by Alexander Avila

• The End of Abundance And The Last Liberal by Mia Mulder

Best listens:

• Books Unbound

• My own Intro to Opera playlist on Qobuz

• This specific performance of Not Good Enough by boygenius

whelp, we did it folks. we unrotted our brains. congrats.

actually though, i hope you click on at least one link here. i really was taken away by this edition, transported, motivated by the fire under my ass of trying to help my friends avoid the bad feelings i am currently feeling.

what do we think of the catch up corner? I feel it may not make it into all editions. helpful, useless? let me know in the comments.

anyway, back to job hunting while sick. wish me luck, babes. as always, i adore you.