Link Digest: 12/9/25

Happy Tuesday, friends. It's cold as fuck here in New Hampshire, but my Inoreader feed has been cooking lately — thanks to various recommendations made by folks I was already following, I've added a bunch of new sites to the list over the past couple of weeks, and as a result, I've been eagerly ingesting a whole bunch of great writing on a daily basis. Who wins because of all this? YOU DO, because here's a big-ass pile of links to articles you probably didn't even know had been published, and if you did, you're polite enough to shut up about it and let me have my fun.

My favorite new subscription is probably Record Lung. Per their manifesto, "Record Lung concerns itself with records—discovering them and listening to them with friends, including you. You’re our new friend." Based on my experience, it takes no more than a couple of paragraphs before you feel like that last sentence is actually true, and after you check out the couple of Lung links I set aside to share below, I think you'll probably agree. I'm generally less than inclined to subscribe to Substacks, given that I generally prefer to avoid encouraging or enabling companies that choose to even tacitly attaboy Nazis, but good writing is good writing, and you'll find it there.

As always, I've got a few things bubbling on various burners, and I'm stirring them even as real life does a better job than usual of conspiring to keep me from doing cool, fun shit. I'll cook up a proper post as soon as I'm able; in the meantime, I hope you dig the writing I've rounded up here:

Flaming Hydra's Anna Merlan raises a lemon drop to the once-ubiquitous, frequently derided fern bar;

The Quietus offers ten entry points into the weird world of David Lynch;

Niko Stratis writes beautifully about the mix of emotions that follows the release of a book — or the achievement of any long-held goal, really;

Also for Flaming Hydra, Rax King writes about her history with The Last Waltz;

Rosy Overdrive posts a big ol' November playlist;

The Needle Drop digs into the dark side of Spotify purchasing WhoSampled, and outlines how much money Los Campesinos! made from streaming royalties in 2025;

Remember the Lightning invites us to "Power Pop the Holidays!" with a 40-song playlist of seasonal songs;

Record Lung digs a great old Jimmy Rowles album out of the stacks and shares some favorite needle-drop discoveries of 2025;

AM, then FM shares a list of favorite cover songs;

JB at The Hits Just Keep on Comin' uses one particularly embarrassing glitch to frame a personal and poignant post about how far commercial radio has fallen;

Kevin Alexander at On Repeat speaks directly to my soul (and possibly yours as well) with an eloquent anti-VC/pro-cool little spots screed;

and Dan Gorman at the Discover Tab shares his top songs of 2025.