Autodidacts Newsletter #25

25 new human-written posts

Posted by Curiositry on February 28th, 2026 Tagged Newsletter, 100DaysToOffload

It’s unclear how long human thought and human writing will remain relevant, so we are growing hay while the sun shines, and before the autonomous tractors make such efforts seem quaint.

Here are 25 new human-written posts, fresh this month, only some of which are about AI.

For those who are new: in 2026, we took on a writing challenge that’s a departure from usual Autodidacts deep dives. This newsletter is the Q2 report, covering posts written in February (posts 26–50-ish of 100).

If you’re in a hurry: my favourites are probably In Praise of Earnestness (not necessarily the most well-written, but something I feel strongly about) and Sonder is a word I like (more experimental style, and another topic I’ve been thinking about a lot).

I enjoyed writing about not being fake in social interactions (and helping other people escape from their tapeloops), semi-accidentally improving my memory, feeling more creative in the evening, the benefits of simplicity, bothering to eat flax and do pushups when I feel like a wet rag, and making my chronic insomnia productive.

A number of posts are on using local AI for optical character recognition and dictation: boring if you’re not interested in that, but quite a breakthrough in my workflow. You’ll also find assorted tech tutorials, and a few additions to my read-it-later migration saga (including a suggestion to use your nose as a touchscreen stylus).

Here are this month’s posts!

The questions, corrections, comments, kind words, and good advice we receive by email from strangers and long-time readers means a lot. Thank you! We are also grateful for the donations and paid subscriptions that cover our expenses and keep morale up.

We hope to have another 25 new posts for you by the end of march.

The Autodidacts

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