Stephen Harrison

Case study in the power of print: TikTok creator @jackbenedwards reaches millions with his videos, but always dreamed of seeing his work in physical form. He's now a books columnist for @EsquireUK and made a video about the thrill of tracking down a copy of the magazine.

This is as good as everyone says it is, and to me it’s not really about losing the money, which most gamblers do; it’s about how gambling changed Coppins, and changed his relationship with the people around him. A perfectly executed piece.

For Slate, I wrote about what it's like to get a terminal cancer diagnosis when you're 42.

I can't stress enough how important it is that you buy physical books.

One lovely part of book research is reading these deep cuts

I've said it before and I'll say it again: it really is enraging that university libraries have stopped buying physical copies of books.

I’m also interested in whether they prefer first-person present tense over first-person past tense. To me that would also say something about our culture—the tyranny of the now

If you can read a book by a writer like Jane Austen or Charles Dickens and not derive even a crumb of joy from it, consider that it is not that the book is “boring” but that you have become desensitized to beauty due to distractions frying your brain

@readswithravi “The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction” by Alan Jacobs

What are you all currently reading?

There are so many bigger concerns in the world right now (obvi) but dear god the things I would do to go back to an era where written content was more easily/widely accessible than video content. I want to READ the news, a recipe, a how-to, etc; I do NOT want to watch a video! 😭

New episode of MediaWiki podcast Between the Brackets: a "BTB Digest" featuring clips from recent episodes with Cormac Parle, Vera de Kok, @harrisonstephen, Brian Wolff and @shlomitlir . betweenthebrackets.libsyn.com/episode-202-bt…

@MichaelOChurch @TheLincoln I like the way you put this (subconscious branching, the extra energy of not context switching). Can you remember an article or book that described it in these terms?

@TheLincoln TBF, most textbooks are terrible. But replacing books in toto with tablets has been a fail. The cognitive load of subconscious branching (making decisions) is high, so that even when you're consciously _not_ context-switching or clicking links, it leaves you tired.

(╯°□°)╯ "Grok is this true!?!" fortune.com/2026/02/21/lap…

they also don't commission for originally online pieces. everything starts in print

Link to full Vox story: vox.com/culture/478731…

*sigh* There comes a time in every millennial’s life when you’re officially recast as the old guy. Thanks to @voxdotcom for making me sound ancient in this otherwise fantastic piece about Wikipedia’s role in the age of AI.

The Internet Archive stores physical books, preserving them as a back-up to digitization. Whereas AI companies despise the physical world so much they’ve shredded millions of books and tried to hide the evidence.

I'm so frustrated at being a parent in this garbage digital age. I hate short-form video. TikTok / YouTube trash is just pure brain-rot and I can't stand it. I try to keep my kids away from it. I gave them access to Spotify b/c I want them to enjoy music and develop their musical tastes and personalities. That was working pretty well. They would go onto Spotify on the XBox and listen to music and explore that space. Good for them. But what does Spotify do? They put short form videos into their app. Now my kids are watching the videos instead of listening to the music. I have to decide if I have to take Spotify away from them (along with all their playlists) because Spotify pulled this bait-and-switch on me and turned an app that I felt good about giving to my kids into another brain-rotting platform of garbage. Every month something like this happens. It's impossible to navigate this as a parent, even if you're largely on top of things. It's exhausting and dispiriting.

Pizza Hut is a core memory for me, the spot where we had so many class pizza parties. They were special, yes, but also just a normal part of mid-’90s childhood life. Now it’s a place of pilgrimage for anyone desperate enough to be “swaddled in a warm 20th-century embrace.”

Whole essay is worth reading, but I really liked this paragraph in particular:

@readswithravi I would love to interview you about your experience and how reading saved you @readswithravi

Reading a lot of books. Daily walks/runs.

This one is for the Marshall McLuhan and Neil Postman fans: “The medium is the metaphor” > “The medium is the message”