Open tabs #4

At the beginning of the year my laptop stopped working. I turned it on, or tried to, ready to begin 2026 with positivity and productivity, and… nothing. A black screen but for a strip of fuzziness at the very top. I took it to the Apple store, waited a week, picked it up and brought it home again. And still… nothing. It wouldn’t boot up, come back to life. I pointlessly, desperately jabbed at the power button. My heartrate increased. Pure, stupid anger rose. My husband told me to calm down, that it was okay, and I snapped at him. It was decidedly not okay. Except of course, fundamentally, it was.

After a long and frustrating conversation with what may or may not have been AI, I had a more helpful conversation with a human being on the phone. I sent the laptop off again, this time to the Netherlands. And then after another 10 days the laptop was returned to me, brand new. Literally, brand new. For no extra cost (aside from the £300 + VAT I’d paid for the initial repair) I’d been given an entirely new laptop. 

The moral of the story is opaque at best. Perhaps there isn’t one. But I do like to find some meaning in these most random and strange occurrences that end up not feeling that random, or that strange, at all. I am dismayed but not surprised by how paralysed I felt by a forced break from my laptop. How angry I was about it. And I am chastened by the good fortune that came from it. I am preoccupied at the moment by reports and news about our tech addiction – the danger of AI, our attention, children growing up knowing nothing but a tech-addled world, and whether there is, at this point, actually any way out. I am though, ironically, exceedingly grateful that my laptop broke and the Apple Store failed to fix it the first time around. I saved like 700 quid. 

I have, as a result of all of this, been locked out of my Substack account except for via the app on my phone. No amount of talking to Substack’s chatbots has helped. They seem as stumped as I am. I was intending to post the latest edition of Open Tabs last Sunday but because I had yet another technical difficulty and my blood pressure was once again rising unpleasantly, I let myself off the hook, went for a walk and then scrolled Instagram instead of worrying about it too much. I could, like I am now, have posted it via the app on my phone, but I kind of think when technology is frustrating you so much you think you might cry, it might be time to stop trying and go outside. 

Ps. When I start to feel too anxious about technology and AI I remind myself how Boris Johnson pronounces ChatGPT and it makes me feel a lot happier.

Right!

Some links and recommendations for your Sunday afternoon:

Chris Power is a novelist and book critic, and he wrote this wonderful piece for the Observer last weekend about a Pulitzer Prize winning history of cancer which has just been reissued with a new chapter: The Emperor of all Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee. Power was diagnosed with lymphoma in 2023 so comes to the subject and his interviewee with powerful and genuine curiosity. It’s interesting, to read about Mukherjee’s perspective on the future of cancer treatment, how much is changing every year but, ultimately, that he doesn’t believe the human race will ever eradicate cancer. 

I haven’t quite finished it so I won’t go into huge detail but my goodness I am loving Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano. It is a sprawling, emotive family drama. A homage to Little Women and full of the unique complex feeling that is shared between families and those who enter the family as a beloved new member. It is about identity and purpose and where we fit in the world. A truly beautiful novel.

I might have found this article especially interesting as a book publicist, but I think most people who read a lot of books also, almost by default, read a lot of ‘book lists’. You know, the recommendations lists that pop up at the beginning or the year/season/month that we save and screenshot. This article by journalist Lydia Kiesling about the history and mechanics or those lists is so interesting. You might remember the infamous fake book list:

In May of last year, images of an insert from the Chicago Sun-Times with the title “Summer Reading List for 2025” began circulating on Bluesky. It was a capsule list of the sort that was ubiquitous online and in print: a cheery array of book covers accompanied by one- or two-sentence blurbs. There were fifteen books, all of them by well-known authors, mostly of literary fiction. Someone skimming this document might not realize that the majority of these titles did not exist; whoever had produced it, sans byline, had used AI, which had hallucinated ten of the fifteen books and their plots. 

Look at me recommending a podcast that is never not in the top 10, but bear with me, because The Rest is Politics has been not much short of lifesaving these past few weeks. The world is a hellscape. Powerful men are abusing women and children and other men (and some women) don’t give a shit. A dictator is running the US and is threatening to wage war on whoever and wherever his tiny egotistical mind lands him upon that week. Our government is weak and imploding and opening the doors wide to Reform and the flag-flying anti-immigration far-right. It is confusing and deeply upsetting and I have leant heavily on the insight of Rory Stewert and Alistair Campbell. I don’t necessarily agree with everything they say (they don’t always agree with each other) but understanding the context behind the news, rather than just the headlines, feels imperative right now. 

On a not entirely unrelated note: I really recommend rewatching (or watching for the first time) The West Wing. When T suggested a rewatch I was hesitant. There are so many well-reviewed TV shows on my list that I’ve been meaning to get around to. But as soon as we pressed play and the rousing strings of the theme music played, I felt soothed and happier. It is many ways depressing to see a depiction of a flawed by ultimately good man in the Oval Office. Come for the politics-done-well, and stay for the 90s outfits, the Donna/Josh chemistry, Toby Ziegler’s dryness, the slurped coffee, and Rob Lowe. Every night after M has gone to bed we have dinner in front of TWW and the fire and I feel hugely comforted. 

This poem by Jenny Clark:

I'm eating Maggie's marmalade

on a thick slab of buttered toast

in the kitchen where the cat is 

perched in a place I call my home

the sun is shining through the window 

in a holographic ring and I'd say 

the world's a perfect place—

but I know better, that's the thing

 

Wild in Berkhamsted. This recommendation is a little exclusive, as it won’t be of much use to anyone who doesn’t live in or near Buckinghamshire, but I went to Wild for lunch yesterday and it was so good I can’t not mention it. We were given a voucher for Christmas by T’s sister and, wanting to celebrate February marking the end of an unpleasant time in my life, we dropped the baby off with my mum and went for a delicious lunch just the two of us. We ordered wine and way too much food and experienced what was undoubtably the best leek dish of my life. I was tragically too full for pudding but I must go again and take my parents because I feel I sorely missed out on the made-to-order sharing apple tarte tatin. 

Have a lovely week.