Archive • text

nickd doesn't buy a pen

The first thing to remember about buying a pen is that I do not, in fact, need a pen. There are plenty of pens. I have Kaweco AL-Sport rollerballs strewn...

Most coffee shops go the same way: you walk in, grab something, maybe sit down, leave. Mameya Koffee is not that place. It is a single room with a counter...

The conference really was very good in spite of the rotting seaweed

I’m primarily a city traveler. Everyone knows this. 95% of my most successful writing is about some cool thing I found in a city. Yes, there are national...

As a humble reminder, we’re out at a conference this week. We’ll be back the week of May 19. Loaf Lounge is the sort of place where there should be more of...

As a humble reminder, we’re out at a conference this week. We’ll be back the week of May 19. Since we obviously aren’t buying anything anymore, we are now a...

Someday, they will make a cable that defeats all other cables, and it will cost $1.40

When you switched all of your devices, correctly, to USB-C, you were not prepared for the cabling situation. A cable is not just a cable in this world. Some...

Get better when things get worse

Nassim Nicholas Taleb coined the term antifragile a while back to describe something that thrives in a broader state of disorder; while other things...

One of the perils of going to fancy college is that you are told, your whole life, that you are great, that you are destined to do great things, and then you...

Klein x Carhartt WIP

There is a genre of handyperson called Chicago Guy: usually eastern European, usually a guy, not very talkative, gets the job done, always overbooked. As you...

Four short reads

You’re busy making stock, so here are some reads while it simmers. I haven’t read much in the past month that’s really hit for me, probably because we’re all...

Get bones, roast them

Okay, yes, there’s a whole chemical thing that happens when you roast the bones before throwing them into your stock pot. Start at 425º, 30m, check after...

Somehow, we have not discussed stock. Probably it’s too simple to write up in text. But also nobody seems to do it, and I’m going to teach stock to my...

Happy Black Friday

We will continue to discuss the ongoing apocalypse, and then we’ll get back to brighter text, promise. One of my close people took one look at the sales...

After a few months of retrenchment & deep stillness, I began a new offering for my close people this past week that centers around dialogue, which is not...

I was chatting with my therapist recently about the ongoing apocalypse, and what all I’ve done in response to it. This has not been much, strictly speaking,...

Fits as process

Blackbird Spyplane once coined the term state of shopping to refer to someone who is more obsessed with browsing & buying than actually living in the things...

Sometimes you regret grinding in the first place

In some earlier text, I told you about co-fermented coffee. The short description is this: one way to remove the coffee cherries to get to the beans is by...

Everyone needs a suit because weddings, funerals, New Year’s Eve, and jury duty exist. Usually you get something charcoal or blue, leave it in your closet...

You cannot hide the crackers. They will find the crackers.

“Oh, hey, deer,” you say, casually, noting two deer. Less than a second later, you look to your left and see a deer standing in the middle of a four-lane...

The world’s only packable daypack

Correction: In this text, I referred to someone as “a friend of a friend.” They have notified me that they are, in fact, a friend, one that is both actual &...

Working with sumi ink, you need three things: the ink, a brush, and an ink tray. The ink comes in hard stick form; you grind it into the tray with a little...

One goodbye v. another

There has not been enough text about the store goodbye, anywhere. In France, you’re supposed to say goodbye when you walk out of a store. The owner expects...

You place a phone call across an ocean at noon JST/9p CST precisely a week in advance, and after five busy signals someone with good English picks up. You...

$ · March 13, 2025

A friend of a friend has a habit of saying the word psychopath a lot. You describe something that someone does that feels a little confusing or off-brand,...

On my business’s mailing list, I talked a little about the new CEO of a fancy design consultancy who walked around with two notebooks. One was a plain black...

Malibu Stacy has a monochromatic hat

$ · February 20, 2025

I have spoken, frequently, of the stupid ding dang camera, the thing that instantly becomes part of your personal brand once you buy it. On the one hand,...

Japan & batteries: the two genders

February 17, 2025

PSA: We don’t really have text if I’m not living. And while winter in Chicago is a great time to hunker down & do bigger projects, it’s not so great for the...

We pray for good weather

$ · February 13, 2025

One of the less-discussed things about me is that I am good at refreshing for tickets. I have a wireline fiber connection, I am fast at computers, I keep a...

How to buy paint online

February 11, 2025

You bought a hole and created, then deleted, another hole, and now you must paint over the deleted hole in order to make it look like the rest of its wall....

Sometimes you have a busy enough week that you list good objects and call it text

$ · February 7, 2025

Spiritually related to our text from the other day, here’s a brief list of some things that I’ve used a lot and have, despite this, lasted in a way that...

Surviving (annoying v. apocalypse)

February 5, 2025

Two fun things I’ve read lately are Survive the Tyrant! and the CIA’s guide for citizen sabotage of fascist regimes, which are spiritually related but quite...

One frame of a Detroit Tigers outfielder completely upside-down, vaulting over a bullpen wall, as a cop rejoices instead of helping

$ · February 3, 2025

The problem with knowing a lot of people and being known for good parties is that, when you throw a big one, it is sometimes an overwhelming & terrible...

January 30, 2025

I bought a hole recently. We have already discussed the range, which is so high-powered that it needed a commercial-grade hood to ventilate the thing. So I...

Meaning v. practice

$ · January 28, 2025

The tagline for text is a durable canon of wonder. Given the current apocalypse, how does one embrace wonder while not giving into corrosive “good vibes...

We need to become literate with software

January 24, 2025

In my first book, I talked a little about how people parse technology. Fifteen years later, I think people still pay attention to technology, but they do so...

$ · January 22, 2025

There are no secrets anymore. Everything is on every travel platform. Post about it, it’ll pop off. The convenience this affords also creates sameness....

Five paragraph essay (is it useful?)

January 14, 2025

I’ve been heads-down on a bigger project that is just beginning. There are good bones to it, but it needs work, the kind of work where other people poke at...

J1B-GT, one year

$ · January 8, 2025

We now return to the jacket. I promised this after one year. It has been one year and one week. The jacket is not a year old. It is two days old. It is two...

January 6, 2025

By my senior year of college, I hated dining hall food, resented the expense of eating out, and loved food in general, and so wanted to learn how to cook....

Make a sudden, destructive unpredictable action; incorporate

December 19, 2024

We will now enter two weeks of deep rest, but first, per tradition: 2024’s Oblique Strategies power ranking. (Previously: 2022, 2023.) 10. Do something...

An apocalypse-proof boiling frog

December 17, 2024

We have talked a lot about buying the object, but not enough about tossing it. I tossed a bunch of objects over the past month, and text needs to occur about...

The Brand and not The Brand

$ · December 10, 2024

There is a category, within the category are a bunch of brands, and one of them is The Brand. You know some examples of The Brand. The Brand is overpriced to...

Yeast tamagotchi

December 6, 2024

You’re handed the starter by someone who later confesses to being antivax, is called in, then called out, then banned. Presumably there are no viruses in the...

Fruit salad stimulant, as a treat

$ · December 2, 2024

So when you make coffee, you start with a cherry, remove the pit, end up with a green bean, and then ship that to a roaster. Between the removal of the...

November 26, 2024

The human I’m dating has begun following these, and someone else just signed up because of a post I wrote 400 years ago about my dopp kit. Materially...

How to do nothing

$ · November 22, 2024

I’ve been spending the past couple of weeks protecting my field. This has involved removing something like 9/10 of the contacts from my phone, going...

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...