149. Anne Frank's lost fountain pen

Hello everyone (new readers included, with thanks to Ernst-Jan Pfauth!) —

At the supermarket near my place, there’s a little free library next to the checkout. I’ve come to think of the books on its shelves (which you can take away) as a discount on the pricey groceries. A while back I picked up The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank. Never read it, so it was high time. This week I could barely put the diary down. Now I face a dilemma: what do you still write about a book almost 80 years old, sold and read millions of times, written about countless times already? It’s well known that Frank had a gift for writing and a remarkable power of observation. The same goes for the tragedy with which she describes her dreams. They never came true, or only after her death. In short: everything has already been said. On the other hand, a blogger can hardly let that stop them.

Anyway, this is what came of it.

I.

On 11 November 1943, Anne Frank writes about the loss of her fountain pen, her “precious possession” with which she had been filling her diaries until then. “I valued it greatly, especially because of the thick nib it had, as I can only write really neatly with thick nibs.”

As it turns out, the gold pen had ended up in the stove and been destroyed there. Anne writes a loving “in memoriam” and tells in a few paragraphs about the role the pen had played in her life. It is a lighthearted way to deal with losing a pen, but when I read it I felt the pain.

In the annex where she was hiding with seven others from the Nazis, Anne barely had a space (or belongings) to call her own. Not at night either, since she shared her bedroom. She therefore had to constantly relate to others around her. Only in her diary did she probably find the space to be wholly herself. I can well imagine that such a pen — a gift from her grandmother — was a precious possession.

It is a famous passage from Anne Frank’s diary letters. After reading this ode to her pen, I found I was far from the only one who wanted to know what kind of pen it had been. Online there are all kinds of discussions and pages of people trying to identify the exact model. Most think it was a Montblanc pen. An expensive item. A Pelikan 100 is also possible. Or a Pelikan with a Montblanc nib.

These are the kind of mysteries that should remain mysteries. Employees at the Anne Frank House don’t know either. “In her diary she only writes that it was a gold fountain pen,” I read in a forum response. “That is all we know.”

II.

A week ago I wrote in my blog for NU.nl about fake images surrounding the kidnapping of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro. This kind of nonsense on social media risks reaching a point where we no longer believe reality itself. In The New York Times I read a fascinating behind-the-scenes account. The photo editor describes how difficult it is nowadays to verify images.

Readers emailed asking why AI-generated images can’t be permanently watermarked. Well, it’s complicated.

Others didn’t see the problem at all. Photoshop has existed for years and you can use it to cobble together the most outlandish things. Completely true. But Photoshop requires knowledge and skill. With AI, anyone can generate fake images at scale. The combination of scalability and disinformation is the problem.

Photo editing isn’t inherently wrong. It can elevate images. That it has been done for decades is something the Rijksmuseum will soon demonstrate with the exhibition FAKE! Fifty photo collages and photo montages from the period 1860 to 1940 will be displayed in the photo gallery. The exhibition runs from 6 February to 25 May 2026.

The museum’s website already has some examples to whet your appetite. The photo below is already amazing — made in the decade before 1900!

PS.

Jason Velazquez writes a lovely essay about those damned For You pages on social media. “Curation used to be part of our media consumption process. We would hop from website to website looking for a laugh. We used to click on hyperlinks for Christ’s sake. Now, all we must do is sit at the trough and let daddy Zuck feed us.” That we go along without protest with the constant stream of nonsense not only damages our curiosity, writes Velazquez. It is a vicious cycle. “It’s helping to cheapen creativity for the people who produce what we consume.”

Following that, this article by Kathryn Jezer-Morton. Tech companies are teaching us a few things, she writes. “Reading is boring; talking is awkward; moving is tiring; leaving the house is daunting. Thinking is hard. Interacting with strangers is scary. Risking an unexpected reaction from someone isn’t worth it. Speaking at all — overrated. These are all frictions that we can now eliminate, easily, and we do.” This is a pleasingly sharp piece; Jezer-Morton lands one blow after another. She argues for friction-maxxing in 2026 (great term): seeking as much discomfort as possible.

A fascinating article in NRC about how autocorrect is sabotaging young people’s sense of language. “Sometimes I just type whatever,” says a student. “Some words I genuinely couldn’t spell myself. Autocorrect is my savior then.” What a quote.

It’s so good to have Jon Stewart back at The Daily Show. Who else can summarize and make sense of the current state of the world in this way?

Publisher Reshift is putting the Power Unlimited brand name up for sale. After 30 years of gaming history (which gamer of my generation didn’t grow up with it?) the brand is being sold to a shady Maltese gambling company. We saw this happen before with the gaming platform PlaySense: it was turned into an AI slop machine that steals articles and lures young readers to online casinos. The magazine Power Unlimited lives on under a licensing deal, but Reshift is folding the online and social media editorial team into consumer platform ID.nl. Bastiaan Vroegop wrote an excellent analysis of this debacle at Villamedia.

RHCP bassist Flea is working on a jazz record coming out in March. A tour is attached, which passes through Paradiso in May. On the album Honora you’ll hear not just Flea but also some of his friends, such as Nick Cave and Thom Yorke. With the latter he previously made a superb album under the name Atoms for Peace. The track with Yorke is called Traffic Lights and came out this week.

You read blog №149, written in the week of 12 to 18 January 2026. Subscribe to my newsletter and you’ll receive it every Sunday free in your mailbox.