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I finished a book last night that made me mad. And I mean that in the best possible way. Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke had a premise I couldn't resist: a tradwife influencer forced to actually live in 1855. As someone who believes the past holds real wisdom worth recovering, I was curious. I wanted to see an author take that question seriously. She didn't. And I've been sitting with why that bothers me so much. I also wasn't expecting to end up disappointed in Anne Hathaway. You don't need to have read it — or ever plan to — for this to land. Because the book is really just the thing that cracked open a bigger question. People are hungry for simpler food, more presence, genuine self-sufficiency. Burke felt that pull herself. She admitted it. And then she wrote a book proving the pull is dangerous instead of asking what it's actually for. I think she should have asked: what is actually worth reclaiming from the past? That's the whole point of Renaissance Rachel. It's what we're here to figure out together. This isn't my usual type of post. I don't write a book review blog. But this one fired me up enough that I had to say something. And honestly? It got me thinking about writing the book it should have been. Have you read it? Staying curious, Rachel |
For people who are done letting outside voices — technology, experts, cultural noise — drown out their own. Every issue explores how to reclaim your discernment, your body awareness, and your creative authority across the parts of life that matter most: technology, relationships, wellness, work, and creativity.
When I joined Substack earlier this week, I accidentally found the AI companion community. Think people who have relationships with their AI models. Intimate ones. I'd heard about it before. I even researched it a little. And I thought it was weird. Researching is different than reading firsthand accounts. Reading is different than experiencing. I got curious. I've read some of Calder Quinn’s articles and the ones I've read have truly made me think. This quote here is the latest one I'm...
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Aside: I've been composing this newsletter in my head for a few days now and finally sat down to write it. I'd brain dumped my thoughts using a voice memo and took the transcript from my thoughts. It wasn't a dictation of what I wanted to write in the newsletter. It was the thoughts I had about the reading itself. So when I decided to see if an LLM could write the newsletter for me while on the go, I got so mad at the output. It was not AT ALL like how I'd been drafting it in my head. I...