Unfiltered — June 2026
No answers. Just better questions.
Over time I learned to stop accumulating physical goods and shifted my focus. I’m not claiming a minimalist lifestyle — I just know when enough is enough. The same shift is happening with how I spend my time. This is a new format: what I’m accumulating instead. What fuels my urge to want more from life and inspires me to keep thinking for myself each month. What problems bother me the most. In all that I’m delighted to be proven wrong.
Every month I’ll bring you a few things I have on my mind. Book, a painting, something I’m watching or listening to. Anything that makes me ask better questions but has no place on my CV. No takeaways, no actionable insights, no top three.
I’ll do this intro once and only once — because I know that you, probably like me, hate hearing the same thing repeated month after month.
I can smell the summer holiday season from a mile away. That doesn’t entirely match my choices this month.
I’m taking AI literacy seriously. The more I level up, the more disgusted I become. This month the main reason behind it is one book: Algorithms of Oppression by Dr. Safiya Umoja Noble. It’s the kind of book I hate, because it describes the world as-is, without sugarcoating — and I’d hoped, naively, that this particular corner of the internet might be not as bad as everyone thinks. It isn’t. The system doesn’t discriminate by accident.
Someone decided who matters more and who less, long before any algorithm existed to automate the decision.
The Reluctant Bride (1866) by Auguste Toulmouche was the painting that stayed with me this month. Just look at it. You look at the bride’s face and immediately understand what’s going on. She’s not sad. She’s furious — deep inside, everything is beautifully arranged but you cannot force love and enthusiasm into someone’s soul.
A woman forced into a future she didn’t choose, performing composure for an audience that requires it of her. The essence of how women were treated for centuries. The other women comfort her, kiss her forehead, adjust her dress — all of it in service of getting her through the day without the mask slipping.
A century and a half later, we’re still doing it. Just with better lighting, smarter systems, and worse excuses for why nothing has fundamentally changed. Stick that smile to your face and keep pretending until you can’t.
I keep returning to her face because it’s familiar. Not the wedding — the staged show. The fluency of looking fine while something underneath you is being decided without your consent.
I watch very little streaming and I’m a nightmare for the industry — using shared credentials when possible and not paying a dime. I see what you did there, Netflix. This month I started watching From — didn’t even finish the first season yet. These are not times when I have the luxury to rot at home and binge watch anything. Still, I can’t explain why I can’t stop. A town people arrive in but cannot leave. Rules that make no sense but must be followed. Stephen King vibes. Institutions that promise safety and deliver confusion. I don’t know where it’s going. That’s exactly why I’m still watching.
Overall frustration — the book, the bride, the town you can’t escape — sometimes hits me like a heavy stone. There are weeks like this one when I feel like I’m on a hamster wheel. A series of unfortunate events caused all my meticulously planned weekend plans to completely collapse, so I’ll hop off the wheel for a while and enjoy the sun — keeping all the deep problems accumulated over centuries quietly in the back of my head.
I don’t have a conclusion for you. Stay opaque.
P.S. I’m always hungry, so drop what fuels you in the comments.
While you’re here:
