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...

No separation

September 29, 2023

I sometimes poke around a discord for support people, which I guess got renamed to “customer experience” while nobody was looking, which fine. I do this for...

Light phone

September 28, 2023

Normally, Apple is good at the narrative. This time, Apple was not. They say “3nm process,” everyone else says “USB-C.” They trot out a giant list of iOS...

Half size, kind of

$ · September 25, 2023

On a daily basis, my wallet contains two credit cards, my debit card, my ID, and some cash. Most of you are probably the same. Most of you carry only a few...

Juice 7 trip report

September 19, 2023

You are, above all, really tremendously tired. Your job is on fire, your dating life was on fire and now is a bunch of ashes, and your friends’ lives are...

Look, if you ate enough sacher torte to replace your body wholesale, you’d be grieving, too

$ · September 15, 2023

You haven’t heard of Selmarie. It doesn’t have a Michelin star. It is not Beard rated. It’s not really in any guides. People like it that way, because...

Deep fried text

September 13, 2023

Look, I don’t know what to tell you. It’s so easy. It’s rice and eggs and some oil. Khai jiaow is the recipe that you learn to make in Thailand when you’re...

Summer salad interlude

$ · September 11, 2023

Today you’re getting a foolproof recipe. Last week, a friend of mine made a summer salad that was so good that I instantly tried to reverse engineer & make...

No part of the bike share system in Chicago is confusing at all, fortunately

September 7, 2023

We’ve written text before about Divvy, the bike sharing network in Chicago, mostly about the time when they had a single red bike in a sea of blue ones and...

How to own your data

September 5, 2023

The internet was once pitched as an archive, a total codex of human knowledge. But in reality, nothing is really trustworthy on the internet. The whole thing...

Find the hits with this one cool trick

$ · August 30, 2023

I’ve talked a lot on the professional side about Aesop, the skincare brand that makes you smell like a hotel while feeling like a design-forward cool girl,...

Roomba #5

August 24, 2023

It was a sunny, beautiful day, and I made brunch for 12 people, like I do, and they rewarded me with an intervention. You know I got a dog in April. The dog...

You can never pack a Porter again

$ · August 22, 2023

In one sense, the form creates a framework. In another, the framework mutates and composts. Enter Yoshida Porter, a bag company that you have maybe never...

Don't talk about whether the bathrooms are clean

August 17, 2023

It’s August, which means I have thrown 487 picnics this summer. You know, enough to have this down to a science. It is time for picnic pro text. Look, one...

Paragons of carry normalcy

August 15, 2023

Look at this. Stare, like it is wreckage. They are abominations, yet not. They are luxury, yet not. They are the product, maybe, of an AI prompt to graft...

The base of pretty much everything

$ · August 11, 2023

I had a friend over for dinner the other week. He worked as a cook for a decade; his father is a regionally famous chef. He knows food, and cooks all the...

Too much light, too little time

August 9, 2023

There’s a certain genre of internet that gives generously, provides clear outcomes, and doesn’t really ask for more, but more is there, and you can pay for...

Send only text, forever

$ · August 7, 2023

In our previous text, I talked about how I have mostly disengaged from the merest concept of technology, an idea that is both universally correct and...

Live, log off, love

August 2, 2023

The internet is slowly failing for me, personally, and I kind of love it. This began on several fronts at once, it seemed. A major newspaper changed some...

The treatment of one pepper

$ · July 31, 2023

It’s that time in Chicago where every farmers market vendor has shishito peppers, and you have no idea what to do with them. I have spent five years...

Potatoes weren’t expecting this to happen to them

July 27, 2023

On the one extreme, you have the farmers market. The produce is abundant and unprepared. You are handed a zucchini; you have absolutely no idea what to do...

1,000 strawberries in the shape of a strawberry

$ · July 25, 2023

Strawberries are in season and everybody is just going about their business as if nothing happened. They look the same but are not. Each looks different but...

The quadrapartite ratio

July 19, 2023

The ratio changes, the ratio always stays the same. Dashi, soy sauce, mirin, and sake. You can read this and get the gist, but you’re also reading text, so...

Go do stuff you like

$ · July 13, 2023

So you have this glowy rectangle in your pocket, and you can do pretty much anything with it. Anything! Anything. You ask the rectangle for one job: you want...

How to promote a party

July 11, 2023

First, you announce that you are throwing a party, and then two months later you throw a party. That’s the skeleton. Now you have to fill in the skeleton....

Every instance of repair I have done on clothes in the past two years, in no order

$ · July 7, 2023

The suit Moths happened. I was told. I turned up at a wedding, threw on the only super nice suit that I own, had a great time, and afterward my girlfriend at...

A knolled clown car for your brain

July 5, 2023

The whole goal of good carry is to fit as much as possible in as small of space while taking up as little bulk and weight as possible. There are many...

Smoke journey

$ · June 29, 2023

Some tea you can steep a few times before it becomes something you don’t want to put in your face. Some you can’t. Don’t steep malty assam multiple times....

No bean rules

June 27, 2023

Sometimes you remember that you have an amazing ingredient that you have not used in a while, and you avail it upon yourself to attempt something with it....

Taming nature

$ · June 19, 2023

The same discipline, if not creativity, has helped make Budweiser the most popular beer in the world. Its sheer consistency, across tens of billions of...

Late spring, three ways

June 15, 2023

There is so much I could talk about right now. Draft just reached its earliest ever break-even point on the year. I feel like I’m back at full strength in my...

Laying siege to Dongletown

$ · June 13, 2023

When I first bought a bad laptop in 2014, it had some USB-C ports and nothing else, and so I had to buy some dongles. I eventually spent $500 on dongles. I...

Basil’s rule of innovation

June 7, 2023

New developments appear to have occurred in technology. Most people have viewed them with grim skepticism, saying that the new thing is gross, weird,...

What is wonder now?

$ · June 5, 2023

I’m writing this a couple of days before Apple’s big conference, and it should go out shortly after. This is deliberate. I want to be proven wrong here. I...

What should you ignore in an airport?

June 2, 2023

Almost everything. Airports are malls for the liminal damned. There are exceptions, which is why this text is longer than two sentences. Food 95% of airport...

Randy text

$ · May 31, 2023

If you had to pick a favorite baseball play of the past 5 years, you could go the “storied dinger” route with the most important swing of the entire...

Two contexts

May 29, 2023

Two years ago, I went on a bit of a failure of a first date. She was really cool, had a fascinating job, was lovely to talk to. But she was freshly out of a...

Sound Princess

$ · May 25, 2023

To know Japan is to crap there.‌ You are aware of smart toilets, yes, but you are perhaps not aware of their omnipresence there. Japan tracks sales of smart...