text

We bought a company and then nothing happened

April 4, 2024

Both of my main pens are made by Lamy, which until recently was family-run for three generations. Now it is owned by a giant conglomerate, and I am...

Right leaf, right time

April 2, 2024

Camellia sinensis is basically a small tree. Like every tree, it grows leaves in the spring. As those leaves mature, they get larger (duh) and hardier (also...

Perth text

March 29, 2024

They’re from Perth, but what else is even in Perth? You hear Perth and think of some sort of mirage. Unlike other Australian cities, Perth is never...

Flip, click, repeat

March 27, 2024

It tears through the problem space of ecommerce like it is a supplement company dressed as a hypebeast drop. It is neither. They sell fidget toys. Fidget...

Fun fact: a group of designers is called a “disagreement”

March 25, 2024

You’ve heard of the concept of a fun fact. Water swirls the other way in the southern hemisphere. A quarter pounder with cheese is called a “royale with...

Out front

March 21, 2024

I recently read a thing about Phoebe Philo, who built a minor cult following at two fashion houses in the aughts in rapid succession, retired, un-retired,...

Text text

March 20, 2024

Sometimes I forget that I do things that track, on face, to be completely unhinged. Like the bookmarks file.

Find 12, ditch 10, buy multiples of 2

March 18, 2024

This always happens. You get into this period of transformation and try a lot of stuff out. Some of it works. A lot of it doesn’t. You’re picky. You stick...

☎️

March 14, 2024

It all starts out innocently. You meet me at a party, or a dinner, or a yoga studio, or you’re posted up next to me at a café. We hit it off. You get my...

Cup as teacher, cup as intent

March 12, 2024

Text is supposed to be a durable canon of wonder, or so the page says. One of the things I’ve strenuously tried to follow is no dunks, because on the...

Earth’s only iPhone case

March 7, 2024

“What are you up to after this?” “Getting a new iPhone case.” “That’s a big moment!” “Is it?” “Yes! You hold that thing every single day, and most people you...

Build a wall of shaving cream that blots out the sun

March 6, 2024

One phrase that now lives in my head rent-free is “state of shopping,” courtesy of Blackbird Spyplane, our nation’s paper of record. They write mostly about...

Soup & Dread

February 29, 2024

I’m doing Soup & Bread next week. Soup & Bread is a monthly winter-to-spring thing at legendary (and sometimes deeply flawed) cultural institution the...

No gods but sourcing

February 27, 2024

Enough of you liked Zingerman’s text that I will continue to write about them. There is, as mentioned, a lot of ground to cover, including some stuff I omitted.

An object for the whiskey man

February 22, 2024

The dim realization of its price unfolds in slow motion, as if you wonder: is that a currency conversion thing? You recall, once, how in Mexico City you went...

The one thing you need

February 19, 2024

In my own spiritual journey, I have come to believe very few things as true axioms of existence. Most of them are very boring, obvious, Buddhist-of-center...

Detroit/Kingsley

February 16, 2024

Zingerman’s is a Jewish deli in Ann Arbor that is 45 days younger than me, but to call Zingerman’s a “Jewish deli” is like calling the Louvre an “art...

What does it mean for a system to be nourishing?

February 9, 2024

I’m halfway through Christopher Alexander’s brief essay about architecture The Nature of Order, and many ideas have been coming through as I’ve read it. In...

I spent my birthday in the normal fashion

February 7, 2024

You can’t go to most onsen in Japan if you have tattoos, and I have a lot of those, so the one time I wanted anything approaching an onsen experience I found...

Me season

February 1, 2024

Today is my birthday, which thank you, that’s very kind, please sit down, we have a lot to get through today, oh my god, please. Please. Okay. I need to tell...

J1B-GT, one month

January 30, 2024

I have written text already on the jacket, but I did not own one, which made the whole affair look a little like one watched a beautiful conversation in a...

Pitched fork

January 29, 2024

They weren’t relevant until they were. They were controversial until they weren’t. They were savage until they became anodyne. They were underground until...

Notes on matched sets

January 25, 2024

You never see anyone wearing both at once, do you? And yet there they are, shirt & pants, cut from the same fabric. Theoretically this is what a suit is, but...

Three things at Draft

January 23, 2024

I’m posting this here because the main mailing list would get too loud & incoherent, too full of yes people, and my intuition would get drowned out, which we...

Another text grab bag

January 16, 2024

You will never know if your USB-C connection “works,” by any definition of works. You will never know if it is transferring the maximum amount of data, or...

Bison chili: the latest iteration

January 10, 2024

So we’ve already established that I am lousy at recipes? I basically kitchen-witch the whole thing. The only two good things that I’ve ever done are bison...

Armor, natural enough

January 8, 2024

Welcome back to text, the world’s only remaining newsletter. I hope whatever permutation of holidays you observe went well, and I’m excited to have you here...

Accretion

December 21, 2023

In keeping with holiday tradition, here is 2023’s power ranking of Oblique Strategies cards, as a predecessor to two weeks of deep rest. I am deliberately...

Drip slowdown

December 19, 2023

At the world’s greatest coffee shop last year, I noticed the barista was using a different brand of filter than the bog-standard Hario V60 ones. I asked, and...

When Shohei Ohtani stares into the sun, the sun blinks

December 15, 2023

People are asking about him. Really? That much? Yes, that much. Why? Here is some form of why, although nothing makes sense anymore.

Why I don’t show unfinished work

December 13, 2023

When I first started out in design, I made a few agreements to myself. One of them is that I’ll never show unfinished work if it’s not presented...

On resonance

December 7, 2023

A decade or so ago, I was friends with someone who liked to knit a lot. She was never without some project in her lap, moving at mach speed. Then she got her...

Hard mode, I promise

December 5, 2023

I promise I’ll talk about non-food things very shortly, but for now I made scrambled eggs at brunch recently and everybody thought I was some kind of wizard....

Invite everyone, and then forget that you invited everyone

December 1, 2023

You put out feelers. Is this a good idea? Everybody says yes. You play it conservative. 13lb or 19lb? Smaller birds taste better and are easier to carry...

Marginal disaster example

November 28, 2023

The first thing to know about go is that you will always be terrible at it. Professionals take decades of constant play to be good at it. And nobody is ever...

How to make turkey

November 24, 2023

It’s a rare year where, for whatever reason, I have five clients over the holidays, and now I get to watch a very humorous psychic division play out.

The towel that did you dirty

November 21, 2023

I have towel problems. On the one hand, there are some bath towels in the guest room that have lasted 9 years and counting. They show no sign of wear. They...

This isn’t about barf, but all of you will think it is

November 17, 2023

My friends keep having people over and they are freaking out about it. They haven’t done this in 3 years, they say, or they haven’t done it at all, or they...

Find hunger

November 14, 2023

Fine dining in Chicago should be reasonably punk. Oh, yes, most people know of Alinea, the globally famous 3-star that pioneered molecular gastronomy...

Right plant, right time

November 10, 2023

There’s a certain genre of produce that looks, on face, to be sort of boring, but when in season it is the complete opposite. Or it’s boring in most places,...

A blunt instrument for uncertain futures

November 8, 2023

The phrase lands: …a blunt instrument for uncertain futures, with a feature set that is unorthodox, open-ended, and effective. You think I, too, am a blunt...

What tech causes

November 6, 2023

First, an administrative note: my apologies for no text this past week. I was sick. Really sick. I was so sick that I forgot to write an announcement that I...

Seeing is forgetting

October 30, 2023

How are you looking at the thing you’re looking at? In what ways are you aware of the thing you’re looking at? What are the contours of your awareness? In...

The hunt

October 26, 2023

In one sense, you are never not sourcing. Sourcing is a practice, something that goes hand-in-hand with seeing, such that you refine “what’s good” and never...

Trash people

October 20, 2023

People have to pick up the trash on their own time. Nobody does this for you. If you leave the trash to its own devices, it reproduces by sporing, somehow,...

Verlander

October 17, 2023

And like look, we want Justin Verlander to win but we definitely do not want the Astros to win. Justin Verlander is as old as I am. Justin Verlander looks...

Shrub text

October 13, 2023

I’ve been reducing the amount of alcohol in my space lately, and predictably I have been a total hippie about what replaces all of that. There are so many NA...

Some things that have helped

October 10, 2023

There are very few objects in my life that I’d classify as having universally made my existence easier, but I feel like the few that have are worth talking...

fonts

October 6, 2023

I bought a typeface recently, which is something I almost never do, so it feels like I should write some text marking the occasion. I am very into type but...

Ripstop text

October 3, 2023

Durable fabric resists tearing, which duh, but really durable fabric is engineered to resist tearing. In high-pressure environments like sailing or...