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here are some links I want to share with you
I'm traveling this morning/today, so here are three things to read in lieu of a full issue of Babe
Laura Winberry
February 17, 2026 • Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes
In partnership with
gm and welcome to issue 57. Let’s get right to it: last week I wrote about the beauty of Bad Bunny (again) and making pottery in the woods; this week I’m offering up three links to things I think are worth reading. Because I still have to repack, make breakfast, do some work I get paid for, and then get on the road—all within the next two hours (Bellingham —> PDX). Thanks for rolling with me on this one. And kinda always.
p.s. Because I neither had nor made the time I’d said I was going to have or make, I totally failed at cold calling last week. Fortunately, I can un-fail at making phone calls to strangers this week while also visiting businesses in person. K, good talk.
I pick up whenever you call
today’s ad is from Morning Brew (they wrangle business news and make it feel not boring or over my head).
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k, back to Babe.
here are three things to read, from me to you with love
Apparently this week I’m thinking about power, narrative, and who gets to define reality:
1. Remove Your Ring Camera With a Claw Hammer by Nolan Hamilton (from his How Things Work newsletter about labor, politics, and power).
“No panopticon is necessary… You want to point a freaking camera at every postal worker and cookie-selling Girl Scout and dinner party attendee that approaches your door? What is this, a house, or a prison? It is plainly crazy. It is far afield from reasonable… We don’t point cameras at our friends. We don’t leer suspiciously at our neighbors. We don’t assail humanity with an accusatory spotlight. These things are not okay.”
I started a 60-hr audiobook of War and Peace on the 9-hr drive to Bellingham. I’m more than an hour in and have no idea what’s going on.
2. Heavy: An American Memoir by Kiese Laymon. I just finished this one and, because the writing is so damn good, want to reread it again.
“For the first time in my life, I realized telling the truth was way different from finding the truth, and finding the truth had everything to do with revisiting and rearranging words. Revisiting and rearranging words didn't only require vocabulary; it required will, and maybe courage. Revised word patterns were revised thought patterns. Revised thought patterns shaped memory. I knew, looking at all those words, that memories were there, I just had to rearrange, add, subtract, sit, and sift until I found a way to free the memory.”
rest in big moira power, catherine o’hara
And speaking of identity and performance…
3. Post-Luxury Status Symbol #3: Aspirational Parenthood by Eugene Healey (from his Considered Chaos newsletter about “society revealed through the lens of brand.”
“But parenthood was never meant to be sophisticated. It’s chaotic, loud, messy, disordered - and also full of light and colour. Arguably the hardest thing you’ll ever do. By flattening it into an aesthetic performance, we reduce childhood to something two-dimensional. Something that exists not for itself, but as extension of parental identity.
This raises uncomfortable questions. To what extent can you shrink a new life into an aesthetic designed only to mirror you? What does it mean for a child to grow up as part of their parents’ brand identity?”
That's a super-quick issue 57. Thanks for rolling with it and see you next week, sweethearts.
xoxo,
lw
PS: Subscribe now if you're into this messy build-in-public energy. Miss the last issue? It’s right here. Also literally none of this is ever advice. I’m sharing what I learn through Babe, and perhaps you’ll learn from my mistakes. Hopefully, maybe, who knows, ily.