December 2025

Hey all,

If you're seeing this email in your inbox, my migration from Substack to Ghost was a success! 🎉

As part of the move, I designed an entirely new custom theme for this newsletter's website: thedannchronicles.com. I'm super happy with how it turned out. I spent a lot of time baking in a ton of fun features.

I also wrote a detailed post talking about my decision to move to Ghost, the development process, and a tour of the new theme. I'm particularly proud of the 404 page, so make sure you try and visit a page that doesn't actually exist.

You may have noticed that this email is now being sent from a different email address: newsletter@thedannchronicles.com. To ensure email delivery, add this address to your contacts. If, at some point, you discover email was sent to spam, or something else wacky happened, please let me know.

Thank you for your attention. On to the newsletter!

-Dann

📊 My 2025 year in review

In what has become an annual tradition, my 2025 stats and more post is now live!

This year taught me something unexpected: you never know which piece of content will resonate. I wrote a detailed review of Function Health in March, and that single article generated a surprising amount of affiliate revenue—more than compensating for my reduced YouTube output.

The post includes actual numbers, traffic stats, newsletter growth, coding projects, and personal goals for 2026.

If you're curious about the traffic and revenue of a casual content creator, you should check it out.

👅 The flavor of data

I just did something that I should have done years ago: I moved off of Google Analytics for all my websites. I've always hated Google Analytics. It's way too complex, and there's no straightforward "easy mode" that I could wrap my head around. Plus, it feels weird to give Google even more information about the internet.

As an alternative, I'm now using Umami, which has a free, open source edition that can be self-hosted. I got it up-and-running on PikaPods in about two minutes (literally), and it'll cost me less than $2.50 per month.

Honestly, it feels like I've been wearing a corset for the past fifteen years and finally took it off to take a huge breath. It's beautiful, simple, and feels premium.

I understand why Google Analytics exists: for the SEO and webmaster professionals who do this for a living. But if you're like me, and have a few websites and want some useful data, run—don't walk—to a Google Analytics alternative.

This is part of a larger trend for me of moving away from Google products. I've replaced Google Search with Kagi, Gmail with ProtonMail, and Chrome with Orion, just to name a few.

The only downside is a lack of traffic anomaly detection and alerting. This doesn't happen often, but it's nice to know if something on my site is suddenly getting a lot of attention. As an alternative, I built an alerting system for anytime my website is submitted to Hacker News or Reddit, so hopefully that'll suffice.

📺 A season for Caroling

There's a decent percentage of the population who had never heard of the TV show Severance until season two was announced. All of a sudden, it felt like everyone but them knew and loved that show.

There's a new show that's going to provide this same experience to a whole new expanse of people. It's called Pluribus, and the first season is currently airing on Apple TV.

I'm telling you, it's really good. It was created by Vince Gilligan (Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul) and proves that the creation of Walter White's universe wasn't just a fluke. Gilligan continues to operate at the top of his game.

But there's a reason why most people are going to turn around in a couple of years and realize everyone loves this show they've never even heard of: no one has Apple TV. And this may not be the worst thing:

1. Season one airs, watched only by critics (who love it) and die-hard fans
2. These two groups feel like they carry secret knowledge (this show is great) and spend the gap between season one and two proselytizing the good word and figuring out how to make others watch the show
3. The net widens, and praise for this show spreads like a virus (ha)
4. Suddenly, season two is announced, and it feels like everyone knows about and loves it.

Still, there's a decently-sized marketing push for Pluribus season one. You may have seen it and not even realized it. Hopefully the advertisements didn't trigger a mental health crisis and send you to inpatient psychiatric care.

👖 Jean-ius among us

I wear jeans nearly every day. I've done this for pretty much my entire adult life and never gave it much thought. I'd just buy a pair that was cheap, convenient, and comfortable, then wear them until they fell apart. Then buy another pair.

Several years ago, I decided to be a bit more mindful about my jeans consumption habits. Would investing a bit more money in higher quality jeans be worth the cost? It was in the search for an answer to this question that I discovered the rabbit hole of raw denim.

Raw denim is unwashed, untreated denim fabric that hasn't been pre-shrunk or processed after dyeing, which allows it to fade naturally over time based on your body's unique wear patterns, creating personalized creases and color variations.

Basically, you buy an expensive and uncomfortable pair of jeans with the hope that over time they'll wear in to become the best pair of jeans you've ever owned.

Convinced by the concept, I purchased an entry-level pair of raw denim jeans: Naked & Famous' Left Hand Twill. I wore them for a year and a half before a hole in the crotch forced me to retire them. And all that time, I never really liked them. They were fine. But for my next jeans, I was back to a cheap pair of Levi's.

This story is all a roundabout way of saying I recently decided to give raw denim another shot from a different brand, and they're already my favorite pair of jeans I've ever owned.

I had never heard of Unbranded Brand, but their value proposition first caught my eye:

Why do some jeans cost hundreds of dollars while others cost a fraction of that?...The answer usually comes down to...expensive campaigns, fancy packaging, and inflated markups. We think that's unnecessary...Our approach is straightforward: make great jeans from top-quality Japanese selvedge denim...and sell them for an honest price.

I purchased the UB101 model and have been wearing them every day since they arrived. I can already tell they're going to wear in nicely. Plus, the quality is fantastic, especially for the price.

I recognize that raw selvedge denim is a niche topic for a niche audience. But if you've ever felt the itch to upgrade your daily driver denim, I've been super happy with my purchase.

🏭 Colossus of Clout

Although Ari Aster is one of my favorite directors, I left the theater disappointed after seeing his most recent film Eddington. It's certainly a polarizing film, exploring radicalization during the peak of the COVID pandemic.

I recently gained a new appreciation for the film after listening to the Colossus 1 and Colossus 2 episodes of the Search Engine podcast by PJ Vogt. These episodes talk a bit about data centers (a topic I'm very familiar with, professionally) and then dive into the details of Elon Musk's new Memphis data center named Colossus, rapidly built to support xAI.

Spoilers (ish?) ahead: Eddington isn't, in fact, about rival political factions. Tucked away behind the action of the film is a story about a new data center being built in New Mexico. At the end of the movie, everyone loses except that bright new data center, lit bright and surrounded by desert.

The story is incredibly prescient. As humans squabble over politics, culture, and other disagreements, technology surges forward unabated. We can't necessarily predict the finer details about the future, but there are certain things we can predict with 100% certainty: there will be tons of new data centers.

At the end of the book If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies, the authors present a solution to the problem of deadly AI: an international agreement banning the development of artificial superintelligence. This agreement treats AI development in the same manner that we treat nuclear weapons, after presenting a compelling case that superintelligence poses an even greater risk to humanity.

I think this is why the movie Eddington is growing on me. Everyone, including myself, was distracted by the forward-facing story of Sheriff Joe Cross and Mayor Ted Garcia. But something much more sinister (and dangerous) is actually happening in the background.

End note

If you've enjoyed this, I'd love it if you shared it with a friend. You can send them here to sign up.

I send these newsletters once per month, and I'm happy you're along for the ride. I'm trying to make it one of the best things that arrives in your inbox each month, so thoughts and feedback are always appreciated. You can just reply to this email.

Also, if you find anything interesting, send it my way.

Thanks for reading. Until next time,
Dann