Intro
Here we are, starting a new year which makes it clear that it’s not going to be any less crazy than the one we left behind. I don’t want to take credit for the “achievements” of the humanity in general but since I started to use “weird and deadly interesting” both as a concept and the name of this blog, each year makes sure we’re living through times worth calling with that name.
Greetings from Sangarius. Hope you’re all doing well.
Mission Control
Inbox: 40
RSS Reader: 1404
Upcoming Events/Travel in Next 30 Days: 1
- Have a day trip to İstanbul on Saturday for an event on media and AI on my calendar. It’s a morning event, meaning I need to take the 6 AM train.
- My plan is to make sure everything is set for my plans for this year and also get as many stuff as possible done in the house and my office.
From Last Week
- Tansel Erdem Yılmaz’s podcast with me dropped last week. We talked about futuring, my approach to the practice and more. It’s in Turkish but I’m always open to talk about these topics in English too.
Check my Now page if you want to see what I’m up to in a more detailed way.
Lessons from 2025
Since my career turned to completely independent route, one of the things I try to do at the end of every year is to look at what didn’t worked well and what can I learn from that. For 2025, the main theme was something I’ve been thinking about it for a long time and I feel like I hit the breaking point.
Working solo and/or as a freelancer means that financial management is one of the main things you should be careful about. This both means you’re keeping track of everything to not end up in a crisis but also means you need to be careful about the things you say yes too. I’ve already talked about what happens if you’re not careful enough recently.
This is related to something a bit more general: the value of your work and yourself. Most of the time you might think that any work is better than no work and it might sound right if you’re not in a good shape economically. But most of the time saying yes to the people who doesn’t value what you’re making or putting more time and energy into things which doesn’t give back to you accordingly (both in financial and psychological terms) you might end up burning out or start to despise the work you’re doing.
Let me explain what I mean with a recent personal example.
On October 5th, I published the Turkish media trends newsletter titled “Social Media is Turning Into Television” and talked about how recent data and apps like Sora and Meta’s AI feeds are obvious signs of this trend. Exactly five days later Derek Thompson wrote a newsletter titled “Everything is Television” with a similar argument and using some of the sources I also used. (As far as I know, he can’t read Turkish or even knows my newsletter exists.)
The issue isn’t how I came up with the same observation before him but the reception he received compared to me. Thompson’s post has become a major discussion topic, he was quoted in many places and interviewed about his argument. Basically people valued his observation and wanted to talk with him.
What about my article? Well, even though the newsletter has over 5000 subscribers almost exclusively from Turkish media sector or related professionals, I have received zero feedback. Not a single email, comment, social media reply or anything in person. Stats says it’s been read thousands of times but as far as I’m concerned no one actually read something I put so much time and effort into.
When you’re publishing something you really value for free to be helpful to people and not even get paid anywhere near the amount this kind of work deserves, it’s impossible not to start asking yourself whether it’s worth doing it at all. And when this becomes the norm in almost every work you do in Turkey and you start to feel that you’re always undervalued compared to the effort and time you’re putting into your work, it’s completely normal to consider stop doing that type of work.
What 2025 taught me is that I shouldn’t let being undervalued like this. If I really want to do the things I want to do, I should be the one determining the value of my work, not anyone else.
There are two reasons I wanted to start 2026 with this. First one is accountability. Writing it out there in public makes it more real and if you ever see me making the same mistakes, you’re encouraged to send this back to warn me. Second one is to help others learn from my mistakes and hopefully doesn’t fall into the same traps.
Now let’s see how 2026 will turn out.
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Song of the Week
“The car’s on fire and there’s no driver at the wheel
And the sewers are all muddied with a thousand lonely suicides
And a dark wind blows”
Reading Log
“I’ve squeezed myself dry for a bunch of folks / entities in my life (not complaining; just noting), and I have criminally neglected this husk’d man typing these words. My yoyū meter is low. Being “more selfish” means saying no to more stuff to say yes to / spend time with more moments / people I want to give time to. Refilling those yoyū reserves. We’ll see how I do. Historically I’ve been bad at this, but even if I can be just “10-20% more selfish” in 2026, that would be a huge win, I think. Maybe we all need to be a bit more “good selfish.” (There’s a lot of “bad selfish” happening en masse; less of that please.) I feel like the gentler folks among us are all a bit worn down.”
Tokyo TBOT Event, Selling a House, 2026 in Brooklyn? — Roden Newsletter Archive
“These live action videos are the non-player dynamic made flesh, and reveal how far the “agency fetish” has gone: we can celebrate creative self-performance, but what’s really happening is recursive modelling, the human becoming infrastructure.”
NoAI LoFi | Weeknotes – Jay Springett
“Extreme risk-taking has gone mainstream, becoming the ascendant strategy across politics, technology, finance, and geopolitics. We’re witnessing the emergence of what I’ve started calling “risk-maxxing”—the strategic abandonment of safety mechanisms to gain competitive advantage through deliberately maximalist contrarian strategies.”
The Era of Risk-Maxxing – Scott Smith
Outro
And that’s all for the first Weekstarter of 2026. I’m really glad that I started doing this and actually using my blog actively again. I highly recommend you all to do the same.
Take care of yourselves and I’ll see you around!
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