Branches of barbed wire | 26 Jan 2026
kirkkittell.com/newsletter
Intro
Walk-up song: Murder By Death, "End of the Line", Who Will Survive, and What Will Be Left of Them? (2003)
There's a girl with
A flower pot
Full of dirt and bullet shells
She puts it by her window
Gives it sunlight
Restores its health
After a month or two
The shells start to grow
Into branches of barbed wire
They spread across the walls
The windows and the floors
And their grip
Never tires
Words
I don't much understand how immigration works. The first person in our family landed in Fort Orange, New Netherland—Albany, New York. 1641. One of many wanderers set into the void following the Thirty Years' War. So the story goes. There aren't any records like that. No why. There's just a ship manifest. A German person on a Dutch boat from the Old World to the New.
My feelings about immigration were not visceral for most of my life. Not even intellectual, really. How do I feel about it? "Um, OK". I've just been here for a long time. Ignorance is bliss, don't let anyone tell you otherwise. My ignorance might not be bliss for other people, but it has always worked out for me.
Marrying an immigrant is interesting. It wasn't by design, more like what Vonnegut said in The Sirens of Titan, "I was a victim of a series of accidents, as are we all". Most of the time it isn't interesting. Happy little accidents, unhappy little conflicts, , but mostly just the banality of every day life. Cooking, cleaning, etc. I can be cursed at in a second language now, and if she does it slowly enough I can understand bits of it. But usually I can't. Again: ignorance like a soft cotton cushion, protecting me from harm.
Anyway.
Her friend, who isn't a citizen, just someone churning on the decade long treadmill to becoming one, asked if she needs to keep her papers on her now when she goes to work.
Papers, please.
I still don't understand, and I never will. Even if I wasn't lazy, wisdom comes from experience, if it comes at all. I don't recall answering the question. At the very least, I didn't say "Um, OK". I don't think I would carry my legal documents. Maybe a copy. It's not like these people are very discerning about things, so what's the difference. At least you won't have to clean the boot marks off your visa, you can just make another copy. No more questions, please.
There was one more question though: "Are they actually detaining people for having accents?" I mean… I don't know. As long as I can close my eyes, put my fingers in my ears, and say that magic spell "lalalalala", I'll say it can't happen here. Scrub my memory clean with soap and water, unsee any unsettling footage from someone else's neighborhood. Revert to the crib. Soft food. No shame. Blissful. Ignorant.
Want to apprehend criminals? Please. There should be names, faces, crimes—something tangible, some reason, some motivation. Want to terrorize just folks? Fuck you.
Seven links, plus-or-minus two
Tim Kreider. "The Least Merry Prankster". The Loaf (2026-01-11).
But [Robert Stone] was, I contend, one of the great American comic novelists. I suspect this talent is so often overlooked because he deployed his capacity for hilarity so judiciously—perhaps once in a hundred pages, and always at moments of maximum tension—instead of slathering it indiscriminately all over everything from funerals to parking tickets, as alleged “humorists” do.
That Stone only shows his humor in rare, brilliant flashes, and always against a background of deep darkness, only makes them glint out the more fiercely, like the highlights in a La Tour. He really only comes out of the closet as a wiseass par excellence when the shit truly hits the fan.
Ryan Broderick. "Am I too stupid to vibe code?". Garbage Day (2026-01-19).
I use Google Docs instead of Notion or some complicated second brain app because I think most of them are just LARPing productivity. And, after years working in chaotic newsrooms, I tend to assume that almost every process that can be automated can also, probably, be cut entirely.
Park Han-na. "Six-decade math puzzle solved by Korean mathematician". The Korea Herald (2026-01-04).
Describing the research process, Baek compared it to repeatedly building and discarding ideas.
“You keep holding on to hope, then breaking it, and moving forward by picking up ideas from the ashes,” he said in an interview with a web magazine published by Korean Institute for Advanced Study.
Kelsey Vlamis. "A Las Vegas strip club says it's gotten a surge of auditions from laid-off hospitality workers". Business Insider (2026-01-17).
Things may be down in Sin City, but the talent is up for it.
Mike Bedigan. "US is granting way more visas to OnlyFans creators under ‘talent’ provisions typically used for celebrities". The Independent (2026-01-06).
Don't worry, the talent reinforcements are here.
Steven Sinofsky. "225. Systems Ideas that Sound Good But Almost Never Work—"Let's just…"". Learning by Shipping (2024-12-28).
And in computer science a hard problem means it is super difficult and fraught with challenges that can only be learned by experience. This problem is difficult enough with a full semantic and transacted data store, but once it gets to synchronizing blobs or unstructured data or worse involves data translation of some kind, then it very quickly becomes enormously difficult. Almost never do you want to base a solution on synchronizing data. This is why there are multi-billion dollar companies that do sync.
Brian VanHooker. "The guy who discovered South Park's creators was as shocked by the new season as you were". Polygon (2026-01-19).
But what I love is, early on, if you look at the pilot, there was no social commentary. But by, I think it was the Big Gay Al episode, we sort of happened upon the ability to say things. And because the show was done last minute, as you would see later, they could do a show about the presidential election because it could be done that week. So the beautiful thing is that the show has evolved over the years, long before this season, where it has something to say, and it's going to challenge your presumptions.