Archive (Page 3) • text

Not for everyone, maybe for you

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

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

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...

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

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...

How to buy a water bottle

It seems like you’re thirsty. I get it! You’re active, doing lots of cool stuff, and you’re a human. Humans need to drink a lot water every day – more than...

Public service announcement (phone down day)

Due to apocalypse, we exist in a moment of capacity collapse, where we have consciously chosen for it to be “hard” to hang out for more than 90 calendar...

You think a clover infestation is trivial, but that’s where you’d be wrong

You have a problem. The ceiling is leaking. Clover has taken over your garden. Part of your roof collapsed. You seek help. This is easy, you think. There is...

You have a face

A video went viral recently, god help us, because a woman went over to a man’s place and could not believe he has a good skincare routine. He must be...

A reminder: hugs are free

Upfront PSA: The number of you who corrected me that asparagus is not a cruciferous brassica can only be measured in scientific notation. Sorry about that;...

Pilsner pack (nothing to hide)

Beer is an imperfect thing that requires controlling nature in defiance of god in order to make many versions of a thing consistently & well. Faults happen....

Green leafy stick text

We have referred, briefly, to asparagus before, but we haven’t really gone deep on it. You know that you should only be eating it when it’s in season in your...

The problem is that the markers are very good. They are probably accurate on a level that would impress Pantone. Really the best antecedent is Pantone: you...

I went to an art fair this past weekend and brought a fragrance nerd, and the entire time she validated what I had always suspected: the high-end art world...

Bags in bags in bags

We’re back on our nonsense over here, which is to say that we are traveling. I traveled too much at the beginning of 2023 and spent most of the rest of the...

Some brief links that sum up a lot of what text is about. On fast fashion This piece on Shein doesn’t convey much about the mindset of thoughtful consumption...

We have talked a lot about craft as applies to clothes over the past year. There are people who work in small ways, forming direct relationships with their...

I get on a fair number of airplanes, unfortunately, because the whole point of doing so is not the flying but the getting there. No sane person likes the act...

We bought a company and then nothing happened

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

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...

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

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”

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...

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,...

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

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...

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

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

“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

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...