Day: January 1, 2026

What is Instagram’s Adam Mosseri really saying in his year-end memo?

On the last day of 2025, Instagram chief Adam Mosseri posted a 20-slide memo on Instagram. It covered AI, fake content, reality distortion, and how the platform will change. Read it as a press release, and it’s heavy with buzzwords. Read it as a set of clues about what’s next, and it tells a different story. (The text of the 20 slide memo is at the bottom of this piece.)

For a former reporter who covered IG and its parent closely, this isn’t just about the memo. What is it really signaling? This 20-slide IG post portends something bigger, perhaps something more unusual, a first for Meta Platforms. 

Until now, everything Mosseri (and Meta more broadly) has said has focused on growth, promising to connect the world and empower creators. His latest memo is different. It is not about expansion; it is about containment and control.

Instagram no longer believes it can beat AI by making more or better content. It wants to be the referee, to decide what is real and what is

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Technology
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A Pen Hobbyist Looks Back at 2025 

RB Lemberg’s blog about pens, ink, and stationery is a must-read for me. A few days ago, Lemberg offered a seven-question journaling prompt that would help pen fiends like me earmark our #2025StationeryHighlights.

I decided to modify those prompts and create my own version of the year that was. While writing this post, I realized that I should do my top ten pens of the year round-up as well. I’ll work on that next.

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PEN OF THE YEAR

Of all the pens I acquired this year—and there were many, so I was spoiled for choice—I had a short list of two. Ultimately, I went with the Montblanc 256 with an oblique broad nib as my pen of the year.

All good things in life are accidents—unplanned and often the result of an alignment of cosmic energy. My pen of the year is one of those accidents. I had bought

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Om Loves Pens
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Welcome to 2026.

And just like that, we’re in a new year.

It’s a rainy morning around these parts. A good day to grab a cup of coffee, reflect on the year that was and the year to come, and consider how best to live in the now, since we can’t turn back the clock or predict the future. The now is the only truth.

The past twelve months have been challenging intellectually and creatively. I found myself doing less and consuming more. I think I needed my mind to lie fallow for a while before I could till it for new ideas. It showed in my output: only 125 blog posts, essays, interviews, reviews, and other bits and bobs across my various online homes. I did write a lot in my journals; I filled nearly twenty A5-sized notebooks.

Most importantly, I read a dozen fiction books and about 25 nonfiction books, and

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Technology
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