Archive • text

The sun blinked

November 15, 2024

Last year, I wrote some text about Shohei Ohtani. I tried to make it clear why this person is important, and why sports’ general penchant for hyperbole is,...

Hope & not hope

November 11, 2024

On November 09, 2016, I mauled enough dumplings to stun a yak and trundled my hollowed-out psyche two miles west to watch Nicolas Jaar tour one of the...

Intermission text (almost over)

November 5, 2024

Intermission is going well. It’s been a month. I’m grateful for your patience. It won’t be much longer. I’m done many things with text, and you have seen...

Finding ideas v. writing about them

October 9, 2024

Contrary to popular opinion, I don’t always just sit down here and write stuff. I’m often hard up for ideas, staring at the blank page like anyone. In...

America’s Team

October 7, 2024

Intermission began and so did October baseball. I’ll write about the former in a little bit, but for now you need to know about America’s Team. In 2015, the...

They all said the concessions would be better, and they’re not wrong

September 27, 2024

Well, well, well, look what we have here. A few weeks ago I summarized baseball for you, and one thing I stated is that the Chicago White Sox, shockingly a...

The price isn’t the price

September 24, 2024

I was in Paris during Fashion Week – I know, I know – and the whole town, unshockingly, was popping. I poured myself out of an airplane into my Airbnb,...

In person, not optional

September 20, 2024

One of the darker moments in Draft’s history involved a prospective client who ran a fragrance brand, who kept talking about how challenging it was to smell...

Snow Leopard intermission

September 16, 2024

15 years ago, noted computers company “Apple” released an operating system that they proudly touted as having no new features. Instead, they focused entirely...

They’re writing about travel adapters, which is maybe cursed, but we kind of have to do it so let’s at least try to make it entertaining

September 12, 2024

Now that we have, as a society, moved on to USB-C, it is time to discuss travel adapters. Of course, the power adapter must be exclusively USB-C, because we...

Say design without saying design

September 10, 2024

We wrote twice about the Kaweco, cursorily, and now it’s time to go deep into the text with it. Kaweco is a weird brand. It’s now owned by a big...

Unfortunately, the cake isn't made out of bear

September 6, 2024

Well, it only took 190 years, but someone finally decided to make a cultural artifact about the city of Chicago. There’s a TV show called The Bear, and I...

September 4, 2024

Like any creative person, I sometimes sit down to a blank window and wonder what to write here. And then, like a bolt of lightning: Illinois has decided to...

What to do when your flight is eternally delayed

August 29, 2024

You know the rain will pass because you have a radar app, but it’s going to take five and a half hours, so your flight is delayed by five and a half hours,...

August 27, 2024

You wear it on the front, see, under your jacket, like you’re a paranoiac kangaroo. It is as oddly shaped as your body is, and it is thin, so you can really...

August 23, 2024

Literally tens of thousands of people have been clamoring for a baseball update, and like look, I don’t know what to tell you, my team is bad and they’re...

Doing tech (framework, questions)

August 21, 2024

I think often of the practice of doing tech. What are the norms? What is allowed? What is venerated? What is looked down upon? What are we conscious to? What...

CAP0.5, two days

August 19, 2024

Like its two siblings, CAP0.5 is distinctive, retaining character in name only. Like the best families, each one has a personality, an approach, and only...

August 15, 2024

“Come by whenever,” you say. “We’ll be around 10a–3p.” The semiotics of open hours. You don’t need-need to be there at any given time, but eventually a more...

RAW is whatever you want to make it. Tell your own story, why not

August 13, 2024

JPEG is a rendered photograph and RAW is camera data. You’re never actually looking at a RAW file, but rather some software’s interpretation of a RAW file....

côte&ciel Isar, 2 years

What is the geometry of carry? Usually a grid. Objects are knolled, thrown in cubes, then thrown next to other cubes inside of larger cubes. The objects...

The supercut (handball, speed climbing, etc)

Go to NBC Sports’s YouTube channel. Filter by the past two weeks. Sort by popularity. Skip any sports that are remotely popular. Skip any sports that are...

Backpack text, again

$ · August 5, 2024

I went to the best coffee shop in Chicago recently and plunked down next to a guy who had a backpack that I had never seen before. This is an event, y’all. I...

It starts slowly and then all at once and now you have 43 pounds of tomatoes. Five days ago, you had nothing. You forgot you planted tomatoes, and now you...

Ten years of lunch

$ · July 30, 2024

In July of 2014, I went to a retreat in Seattle with a few other designers. On my way to the airport, I stopped in a bookstore, but it was closed, because...

J1B-GT, 9 months Is it possible to fall in love with a jacket? One for therapy next week, I suppose. I was nervous for a long time about getting a J1B, and I...

$ · July 24, 2024

I met a new friend. This happens. We hang out, it’s fun. One day, after a few months, I have them over, we have a great time, and I ask when we can hang...

Sometimes you do a bunch of research and find out that the best fountain pen costs $200, and everything else beyond that price point is just for ego & status...

Optimus Prime Day

$ · July 18, 2024

The first thing to keep in mind is that every time I hear the words Prime Day, my completely normal brain automatically grafts Optimus onto them. I was never...

I don’t even think we’ve talked about this, and I just made sauce three times in a week, so. You should never buy pasta sauce from a jar, you respect...

$ · July 10, 2024

You once threw a big party every year in the middle of July which, due to circumstances, began at 10:30p, ended at 4a, and involved several hundred bottles...

Solve the thing once

Get into carry for long enough and you end up down a very pointy rabbit hole. Knife carry is wild, y’all. Knives have been optimized with an inch of their...

Akahoshi, five times

$ · July 2, 2024

It begins, for our intents, with the book and its corresponding Reddit thread. There is a guy, and he decided to beastmode ramen to such a degree that, well,...

On Tuesday, we’ll be launching our first open consulting slot for the first time in two years. I am mildly terrified about it! I am more-than-mildly dreading...

The picnic pro, again

$ · June 26, 2024

After eight days of 104º weather, it finally drops to 78º and you are, like a normal person, invited to 41 picnics at once. Also like a normal person, you...

Get the better one

Look, I know they look the same. I’m trained to find the differences. One has two ribbons; the other has only one. One comes with more sheets. The paper...

Monte Carlo (for Justin)

$ · June 20, 2024

We haven’t talked about cocktails much lately, which is for a reason, but there is now something to discuss in the middle of the blazing summer, peak...

$ · June 18, 2024

Lettuce is at peak right now. We must discuss it. If you don’t have lettuce in your crisper in June, you’re missing out on one of the most important...

Q2, three years

It arrived the day before my second shot, the shot that let you out in the world, sort of. It felt less like a midlife crisis than a rebirth, although let’s...

Space iPad, 1 month

$ · June 12, 2024

The thing is dressed up as a laptop for a permanent halloween of the computing spirit. There is a trackpad, clicky keys. The keyboard even lights up. There...

Scattered gathering rules

A few scattered rules for gathering that nobody seems to tell you about. Groups favor circles Layout-wise, people like to sit in a circle. Trying to hem...

Not for everyone, maybe for you

$ · June 6, 2024

If you want to know what the inside of my brain sounds like, you could do worse than the Deep Ark, a brief eight-hour mix of mostly nineties IDM. It is...

Lore Guy comeback

There are many genres of baseball star. One of them is the record-breaker who goes against all received wisdom and changes history. One of them is the person...

Bluetooth as surrender mechanism

$ · May 30, 2024

It should be present, perky, wanting to help. You turn the device on and it connects. It tells you it’s connected. Status is relayed. This is feedback,...

The fancy furniture curse

This is the problem: you finally get that chair or that table, the one you had been coveting for years, the one that you know has the lore and the aura and...

The value of a simple wreck

$ · May 24, 2024

I woke up, showered, went downstairs to begin my work day, and then heard some form of the end of the world. There is major construction happening four doors...

I won’t say the household has perfected popcorn, but we’ve come close, and people keep raving about it. It has once again come to this: people think I am a...

$ · May 20, 2024

I’m writing this on an iPad. I have owned it for six years, materially half of the iPad’s existence. The keyboard is beaten to absolute hell. I have written...

Look, without him there would be no Cadence & Slang, no Draft, nothing. None of it. He is why I do what I do. He built his own building from the ground up,...

Good atoms are as few atoms as possible

$ · May 14, 2024

Add an atom to the pack and you’re increasing its weight. This is obvious and the essential tension. You want to add all of the atoms, give it all of the...