2026 Recap

Just like last year’s recap, these are the things I discovered or got into this year that made me nod and smile, or sent me down rabbit holes. Here’s a roundup of the channels, music, and tech that stuck with me in 2026.

Favorite YouTube channel discovered

• The Cod Mine Man. A War Thunder YouTuber with a cinematic twist. His gameplay edits feel more like short films than gaming clips, and they became a regular part of my feed this year.

Favorite musicians / albums discovered

• Pomme. I first heard her in her collaboration with Stromae on “Ma Meilleure Ennemie”, part of Arcane season two’s soundtrack, and the version that later featured Coldplay made me appreciate the original even more. But her duet with AURORA on “Everything Matters” is the one that really took my breath away. This live performance of the two of them is stunning.

Favorite way to “watch” movies

• Movie Recaps. With less and less time to sit through a full movie, this channel became my go-to way to keep up with films. Each recap boils a movie down to its story in a few minutes, so I can still “watch” something even on a busy weeknight.

Life-changing technology “discovered”

• DeepSeek. My first AI subscription. Cursor came free through work last year, but DeepSeek is the first one I pay for from my own pocket, and it’s been worth it.

Favorite project of the year

• This blog, rewritten. In the age of LLMs, I dropped the static site generator and rebuilt the site with a few shell and Python scripts. A plain build script is much easier to change when an LLM does the heavy lifting. From now on, I’ll have the LLM manage the blog.