text

One goodbye v. another

March 19, 2025

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...

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Gen text

March 17, 2025

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...

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One case

Premium post · 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,...

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WTF

March 11, 2025

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...

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Malibu Stacy has a monochromatic hat

Premium post · 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,...

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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...

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We pray for good weather

Premium post · 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...

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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....

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

Premium post · 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...

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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...

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

Premium post · 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...

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Hole store

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...

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Meaning v. practice

Premium post · 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...

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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...

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Hidden

Premium post · 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....

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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...

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J1B-GT, one year

Premium post · 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...

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Home range

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....

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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...

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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...

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