Archive • text

New era/what’s next/meta-text

September 9, 2025

I threw a garage sale the other day and, because I have taste, it was wildly successful. Pretty much everybody bought something, and I ended up with enough...

September 4, 2025

Sunchokes are very weird. They’re not related to artichokes or the sun. They’re a tuber, like a potato, and they look like a bit of ginger with some knobs...

September 2, 2025

The job of a catcher is largely to catch. You use the force of your very large, very muscular body to absorb the force of about 150 pitches that are thrown...

One perfect evening

August 28, 2025

I’ve written about the perfect evening privately before, but never on text. That changes now. I speak frequently with my friends about my perfect evenings....

August 26, 2025

It’s time. 2026 goes on sale in a week. First, a story. On January 07, 2018, I walked into one of my favorite stores on earth, the Shibuya branch of Tokyu...

How to buy a drop

August 19, 2025

There are drops occasionally, where something special arrives on sale, limited time only, a one-off, and everybody’s gotta refresh to get one. Of course you...

The intention, the pause

August 14, 2025

Given what’s coming, there are updated rules. Buy nothing on subscription.Buy nothing that inherently possesses a “subscription” to spare parts, refills,...

August 12, 2025

Yeti’s origins were formed in two crucibles at once: those who definitely need their coolers to be bear-proof while they drop off-grid for six weeks, and...

10 redesign principles

In the process of repositioning, I’ve held to a few high-level principles: Lead with who, specifically, you are talking to.No redundant points.Pain, then...

One small note on algorithmic resistance

Someone recently asked me where I find new music, because I’m not on any streaming apps and own my data, and because my tastes are weird & specific. The...

I once threw a stack of post-it notes on a shelf next to my bathroom wall and put up a note telling people to write nice things about each other. Now the...

Not the world’s only sandwich

We’ve written occasional text about Loaf Lounge, which is an okay café with peaceful vibes that makes good-enough bread and excellent pastry that also...

Notes on a side quest

I just concluded a brief 1-month series on my job’s mailing list about an unrelated topic. The topic itself is complicated, and everybody is thinking about...

Travel in clothes

All travel clothes are fake. They are just clothes. That’s it, that’s the whole text. I lied, here is more text. I recently saw a blazer that was billed as a...

A fun fact about (checks notes, squints at clipboard) citric acid

One of the things you learn as a home cook is dietary restrictions. Everybody’s got ‘em. I, noted cilantro hater, have one. And so in the back of my head...

Quacks like a Mac

We wrote some text recently about how Apple’s recent software redesign speaks to the ongoing psychospiritual impoverishment of the tech industry. It is a...

I was told the other day that there is a matcha trend, and this is creating shortages in matcha. That is sad, because matcha is both very good and quite...

Continuing on the banger-reads tip, this universally correct piece on taste hit for me over the weekend. I’m currently writing a new offering that is...

Been a while since I’ve cited other reads, so: Kyla Scanlon has been on a roll lately. Her recent piece on dialectical collapse and the ascendancy of fascism...

The same, with less but more

The chorus is nigh-universal: don’t buy this if you don’t already have a color rig. The idea of a color rig is in itself laughable, because hasn’t every...

As we’ve written a few times here, I don’t buy much. What we don’t talk about is how I am also slow to get rid of things. This is partly the result of not...

Malibu Stacy has a new user interface

There’s an argument to be said in favor of it, which is: Apple has five operating systems, and they should look somewhat the same. Currently, bar fonts, they...

How to pick a serviceberry bush

The last time we discussed the berries, Robin Wall Kimmerer had published her phenomenal essay, but not the book-length expansion that became an instant...

I’ve been under the weather this past week, so I’ve naturally gone and researched one-person operations. One person sits in a room, makes stuff, sells it...

Thanks to Tsutaya, my book stack is very tall right now. Thanks to one guy who is rapidly improving my thinking on independent consulting, I am moving...

Three buildings, one bookstore

Go to Shibuya, take the local Tōyoko line one stop, and you’ll find yourself in Daikanyama, which is a neighborhood with so much retail that it feels like an...

Pete goes golfing

The first thing you need to know about Pete Crow-Armstrong is that he is fast. He is so fast, in fact, that there were whispers as he came up in the minor...

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...