January 2026

Hey all,

The sending of last month's newsletter was a little bit dicey, thanks to the migration from Substack to Ghost. Behind the scenes, it took several days and technical hoop-jumping to finally get that email successfully delivered to subscribers. But from the reader's perspective, the transition was smooth. Which is all that matters.

The thing I love about projects like this is that you always walk away with new knowledge and experience. I have a deeper understanding of Handlebars (Ghost's templating language), coding with AI, and Mailgun. These skills will no doubt apply to different work in the future.

It's hard to learn a new skill unless you have a specific project that requires learning it. Among the numerous benefits to having a newsletter, that's one of the best.

Speaking of new skills, I've been building an Obsidian-related productivity tool for myself. I find it super useful and I'm curious if others might, as well. More details below, but if you've got an Obsidian vault you're actively working on and are open to chatting, I'd love to pick your brain.

Oh, and happy new year!

-Dann

📢 Calling all Obsidian Users

After years of tending my Obsidian "second brain," I continue to have one huge glaring weakness: it's easy to take notes, but nearly impossible to use those notes in a productive way. Perhaps 90% to 95% of my notes have never been viewed again after I wrote them.

I'm building a tool to help me consistently and consciously use the entirety of my vault. I've found it super valuable so far, in terms of the way that I work and think. I'm curious if it would also be useful to others.

I know that a lot of my newsletter subscribers found me through my Obsidian/productivity YouTube and blog content. I'm wondering if any of you might be interested in a 30-minute chat so I can pick your brain about this solution.

If that's you, please fill out this form and I'll reach out to you to schedule a virtual call. Thanks in advance!

🌊 Seismic Gains

Artificial Intelligence progress continues to leap forward, but this latest seismic jump may have been largely missed by people outside the development world. If you're not working with code, AI probably feels largely the same. It's not.

I know it can be difficult to separate the hype from reality. I struggle with it myself when it comes to AI. For most people, AI is still something major corporations are trying to force down our throats—shoving it into every aspect of our lives to see what sticks. And the result is often inferior to what it was before.

But on November 24th, 2025, Anthropic released the model Opus 4.5. The competitive advantage of Opus 4.5 is that it's good at writing code. Really good at writing code.

Before now, if a company had said "90% of our code is written by AI," you might be suspicious. This new model is so good at writing code that now, when a company says the same thing, developers will have more confidence in the codebase.

So when Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei says something like this:

I have engineers within Anthropic who say I don't write any code anymore. I just let the model write the code. I edit it. I do the things around it…We might be six to twelve months away from when the model is doing most, maybe all of what users do end-to-end.

…I actually believe him. We've been told for years that AI is going to take our jobs. I no longer think that's just hype.

Totally ignoring the threat of Artificial Superintelligence, and just looking at our current trajectory based on the technology available today, you'd be justified to feel worried about the near-future:

• Companies are already hiring way fewer junior developers (and junior employees of all kinds) because AI is already doing that work
• This will be devastating to countries whose economy relies on US outsourcing
• This is all happening way faster than (historically slow-moving) governments have time in which to respond

But we're entering a golden age of valuable side projects. Those who are able to leverage the technology to build things of value will be the haves. But a (potentially) unsustainable portion of the population will be the have-nots.

We're barreling towards something. That's for sure.

🗽 The OG hostile takeover

After finishing If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies, I needed a little bit of lighter reading. I decided to pick up Russell Shorto's Taking Manhattan, the follow-up to his critically acclaimed book The Island at the Center of the World.

Both books are stories about the founding of New York City as the original Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam. It's a surprisingly under-explored subject, one that Shorto brings to life thanks to texts that were only recently translated.

As a longtime resident of New York City, I imagine these books bring me so much joy because I can picture the exact locations that are discussed in the books. But the stories are completely American (and partially English/Dutch), so they'll resonate even if you're not based in New York.

I love non-fiction books that read like fiction. I really missed my time "living" in the world of New Amsterdam after finishing his first book, and it's been nice to return to that world.

👣 Toasty toes

Wintertime for me is synonymous with cold toes. Some people have great foot circulation and are perfectly content to walk around barefoot all winter. Others (like me) often have toes that feel like ice even when wrapped up in wool socks and winter boots.

I spent last weekend in the snowy Adirondacks with some friends for a weekend filled with winter activities (skiing/snowboarding, riding snowmobiles, hiking). I knew I had to get ahead of this guaranteed cold-toe situation.

What I found was the Hot Sockee, a neoprene toe warmer that's basically a beer koozie but for your feet. And it works surprisingly well.

I wore them in my snow boots when I was out-and-about and in my slippers while I relaxed at the house. They kept my toes nice and warm at times when they would otherwise be ice cubes.

☑️ Tap and hold

I'm a sucker for good design and an even bigger sucker for fun. There's a collection of iOS apps that regularly excel in these categories, and they're all made by one company: Not Boring Software.

I've been using Not Boring's habit tracker app !Habits, which claims to have the "world's most satisfying checkbox." They're not lying.

Using a combination of touch, feel, animation, sound, and haptics, !Habits makes you want to complete recurring tasks just to get the satisfaction the checkbox provides. That's why it won the Delight and Fun award at the 2022 Apple Design Awards.

All Not Boring apps bring this same design philosophy. I don't use any of the other apps regularly, but I'm happy they exist. The newest app in the collection, !Camera, almost makes me want to switch from Apple's stock camera app. Almost.

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